LG's Best Value 1440p Gaming Monitor - LG 27GP83B Review

[Music] welcome back to hardware unboxed today i'm back in the monitor review hot seat to check out an affordable 1440p gaming monitor from lg the 27 gp83b this monitor has always interested me because it appears to be very similar to lg's higher end 27 gp 850 just with a lower price point that potentially makes it a better buy for most gamers we're going to see just how similar these two monitors are today and whether the 83b model is the way to go a quick look at the specs reveals the 27 gp 83b to be your typical 1440p medium refresh rate gaming monitor it packs a 27 27-inch ips panel with a maximum refresh rate of 165 hertz with all the usual adaptive sync features including g-sync compatible and freesync premium it has a rated 98 dci p3 color gamut and a supposed 1 millisecond greater grey response time in line with lg's other nano ips panels that they've been producing for a few years now the 83b has a usmsrp of 450 dollars which is about 50 less than the gp850 those sales often bring the 83b model even lower on paper the specs look very similar to the 27 gpa 50. in fact both monitors look virtually identical visually as well however there are two discrepancies that you'll find if you look closely the first one is that the 83b lacks any overclocking features so you can't take this 165hz refresh rate and push it up to 180hz like on the 850. that's a pretty minor difference in my opinion as an extra 15 hertz at this sort of refresh rate it doesn't add a whole lot to the experience it's nice to have but it's not essential the second is the lack of a usb hub on the rear of the monitor again to me this is a relatively minor difference as the full 850 model only provided two usb ports but in any case you get zero usb ports with the 83b however the other ports are still included so one displayport and two hdmi ports providing a fairly typical array of inputs for this type of monitor the hdmi 2.0 ports are limited to 144hz aside from the small difference to port selection you'll be extremely hard-pressed to spot a difference between the 27gp83b and 27gp850 visually so if you like this sort of design you'll be pleased to learn that you can save some money here without needing to opt for a crappier design most of the build is still plastic there are still some red highlights on the stand and rear of the display the ports are still as easy to access as ever in the central ring design and you still get a stand that's fully height adjustable i quite like these lg ultra gear designs so this is all good news to me daddy 3b also offers the same sort of osdn features as the 850 controllable through a directional toggle on the bottom edge of the display this means that the 83b has indeed received lg's new updated osd design and almost everything that comes with it there is one exception though and that's the backlight strobing through lg's motion blur reduction feature the 850 supports this technology but the 83b does not so if you want backlight strobing you'll have to pay for the higher end model due to the slow red phosphate in lg's nano ips panel backlight strobing performance isn't amazing on these sorts of monitors so my opinion this isn't a huge emission and it's probably not something worth paying extra for one thing that i'm always interested in with these sorts of cut down lower cost monitors is whether the actual performance of the panel has changed in any way we know the 27 gp 83b panel is virtually identical to what you get in the 27 gp850 and that it's run at a lower 165hz refresh rate but are there any other impacts to a response time performance well let's find out the off overdrive mode is first up and it delivers typical nano ips performance an average response time of 8.5 milliseconds and no overshoot is exactly what you'd expect but there's not much point using this mode when you can switch up to normal overdrive see the same sort of overshoot experience but improve performance by over a millisecond on average the fast mode is really where the 27 gp 83b begins to shine while overshoot has increased to a small degree and is now present for a few transitions it's not really visible in practice what is visible though is the additional clarity you get from improved response times which are now sitting at 4.84 milliseconds on average this is a pretty good result and that's also seen by decent cumulative deviation for an lcd panel at just a touch over 400 the balance of response times and overshoot is great here and that's what cumulative deviation shows the faster mode is still not worth using due to high levels of overshoot while this mode isn't as bad as the original faster mode that we saw on the 27 gl 850 a few years back inverse ghosting is still visible here despite an upgrade to sub 3 millisecond response times the overshoot cost is too high and really this mode is only included so lg can advertise a 1 millisecond greater grade response time although it doesn't actually hit 1 milliseconds using our strict testing method that's only possible using our older method where the 83b indeed hits 1 millisecond in the best case in terms of performance across the refresh range for those gaming using adaptive sync the fast mode is pretty decent performance holds up well and while overshoot does increase around the 100 hertz mark the level of inverse ghosting in practice is hard to notice the only time where overshoot begins to be a bit more noticeable is at 60 hertz where cumulative deviation is higher than at previous refresh rates we've been looking at the alternate choice for gamers is to drop down to normal overdrive this mode isn't as fast for higher refresh rates and the cumulative deviation results tell us this mode isn't as good for anything at or above 100hz but when we get to the lower refresh rates in particular 60hz overshoot is nowhere near as strong as with the fast mode so if you do find inverse ghosting to be annoying with the fast mode the normal mode is better for 60hz gaming this brings up the question of whether the 27gp83b has a single overdrive mode experience like with the 27 gp850 it both does and doesn't it doesn't in the sense that gamers who are mostly going to play at high refresh rates should choose the fast mode and gamers sitting more in the 60 hertz range should choose normal however the performance across the refresh range in either mode is still pretty good so i wouldn't bother changing between the modes depending on the refresh rates you're playing my preference here is to use the fast mode and i think this is suitable for the vast majority of gameplay and overall it looks pretty similar visually to the normal mode compared to other monitors best performance at their maximum refresh rates the 27 gp 83b is very similar to the 27 gpa 50 which is a good thing as it indicates that performance has been tuned to basically the same level with both monitors the a3b model was very slightly slower in my testing but ultimately that difference is meaningless as both variants perform in line with modern ips gaming monitors the experiencey is very good for motion clarity it's a similar story when looking at average performance across the refresh range once again the 83b and 850 models perform within a couple of percent of one another suggesting that both deliver the same experience for gaming this puts the 83b on par with other decent value choices on the market such as the dell s2721 dgf which is still often available at crazy discounts the dell model is a little slower but it uses the same lg nano ips panel in terms of cumulative deviation we see that all three of lg's 27 inch 1440p medium refresh gaming monitors and indeed most of the current generation of ips gaming displays in this chart perform virtually identically on average the balance between response times and overshoot is pretty good with a product like the 83b and that makes them well suited to gaming across the refresh range with few artifacts or issues blur trails are not common on this sort of monitor one of the reasons to buy an ips panel at this price point instead of a va panel are response times in general but specifically dark level performance the 83b being an ips monitor has no dark level smearing with dark performance really no different to any other segment of performance in contrast typical entry-level va panels have dark level smearing which is an unsightly visual artifact and one of the reasons why i prefer ips panels for gaming in this sort of price range at a fixed 120hz the a3b is a great performer offering speeds in the ballpark of the 850 model and several other ips products including high-end stuff like the asus pg279qm performance is also decent at 60hz though more mid-range as for the optimal experience at this refresh rate you have to turn down the overdrive setting input lag is a non-issue with the 83b like is the case for most modern gaming monitors the processing delay here is less than half a millisecond which is similar to the 850. the main difference between these models is more in the refresh rate the 850 goes up to 180 hertz which delivers a small improvement to smoothness and latency again i don't think it's really worth paying that much to access this higher refresh rate but it does have its benefits then for power consumption we see no real difference between the two lg models we've been comparing throughout this review these sorts of ips panels sit power and don't produce much heat color performance is another area that can be impacted when companies choose to produce lower cost variants of existing products but that's not really the case with the 27 gp 83b either lg is still providing full wide gamut access leading to in excess of 98 dci p3 coverage which is perfect for content creation in this color space compared to other displays this leads to a strong result of 75 rec 2020 coverage although it's not the outright best as some displays that hit over 80 coverage can also reproduce all of the adobe rgb color space the 83b can't do that but we still get great coverage of two color spaces out of the box factory calibration with my unit was pretty mediocre my unit had a cold tint as seen in the cct average over 7000 k and gamma performance was wonky not really following the srgb curve this led to high delta ease for greyscale meanwhile saturation and colour checker performance isn't amazing either as the wide p3 gamut is left unclamped by default so regular old srgb content is a bit oversaturated if you just use the monitor how it's configured from the factory compared to other displays the gp83b was slightly less accurate from the factory than my gp850 model that ultimately both had similar issues neither monitor is particularly well factory calibrated and tweaking is required the main way to improve performance is to switch the monitor into its srgb mode this changed the color temperature to a more accurate level with not as much of an appreciable tint though gamma performance is still not ideal and as lg locks down many of the osd controls in this mode there's no way to adjust the gamma that's disappointing as while greyscale performance is better here the ability to tweak gamma would improve it even more however the srgb mode does appropriately limit the display's gamut to srgb which massively reduces oversaturation and leads to much more accurate colours for viewing srgb or x709 content like youtube videos and most websites as some basic examples while the srgb mode is decent a full calibration can take things to the next level and fix up any remaining issues with both srgb and p3 content consumption we use portrait displays calman for these results and it's great for both gamuts only the very top end of the p3 range is affected in general the hardware provided here is well suited to calibration and productivity work brightness is very strong the 27 gt83b like the 27 gp850 is capable of over 400 hits of brightness better than most other 1440p monitors with similar specifications this makes the 83b quite easy to view in most conditions minimum brightness is also excellent at just 26 nits so those wanting to use this display in very dark environments will be able to do so without burning a hole in your retina the major downside to the 27 gp-83b and other lg nano ips based monitors is the contrast ratio while lg lists 1 000 to one as the display's typical contrast ratio in practice this is not really true as most 27-inch lg ips panels i've tested have a contrast ratio more around 850 to 1 which i'd say is typical the gp83b was especially poor at just 811-1 after calibration with bad black levels that are not great for gaming in dark rooms where poor black levels are much more noticeable so for this display like others with this sort of panel my general recommendation is to only use them in lit rooms that tend to hide poor black levels if gaming in the dark is a thing that you do a lot of then the 27 gp 83b black levels might be a problem for you this is a major area that ips panels in general need to improve as for display uniformity my retail unit was average with a somewhat uniform panel in the center section but with some vignetting and fall off around the outer edges which was slightly visible in practice this is similar in its uniformity characteristics to the 27 gp 850 i reviewed earlier this year so it's not a situation where the 83b is giving you a worse experience than that monitor it's just what to expect from this sort of product overall i've generally been quite impressed with what the 27 gp gp83b is offering buyers from a value perspective the main point of this review was to see how close it gets to the more expensive 27 gp50 and it turns out it gets very close in most key areas the only real things that have been cut away here are the top end of the refresh range 165 hertz versus 180 hertz the removal of backlight strobing from the feature set and a removal of a usb hub basically everything else here is identical between the 83b and 850 variants the two key findings were that motion performance and color performance are unchanged for the most part when opting for the lower cost model response times are just as fast with the gp83b giving you the same excellent motion clarity we've come to expect from lg's current gen ips panels and the reduction to refresh rate is pretty negligible meanwhile colour performance is still pretty good giving you the full 98 p3 gamut coverage and a usable srgb mode although contrast does remain poor so to me if you're tossing up between the 27 gp850 and 27 gp83b i see no real reason to waste 50 on the 850 variant the 83b model is basically the same it's cheaper and the feature emissions are no big deal i've also seen some great deals on the 83b that see it cost as little as 350 us dollars which is an excellent price for this sort of monitor and far better value than the full 500 you usually need to spend on the gp850 the bigger question of course is whether you should buy this or another mid-range ips gaming monitor the 27 gp 83b certainly has a lot of strengths it's speed color gamut and srgb mode being the main ones but there's also a lot of competition particularly from the gigabyte m27q dell s2721dgf and several other options i think the 27gp83b is better than most other mid-range offerings that i've tested but its msrp is also more expensive the way i see it is that while the gigabyte m27q is priced at 350 or less it's hard to recommend the 27gb 83b for 450 that's nearly 30 more for the lg model and while it's the better product that's pretty hard to justify similarly the dell s2721 dgf is often found in that sub 350 price range down substantially from its launch price of over 500 that's another product that i'd consider but if the 27 gp 83b is available for below four hundred dollars ideally three hundred and fifty dollars it becomes much easier to recommend at three hundred and fifty dollars it's easily the product that i'd go for i think it's a no-brainer to spend an extra thirty dollars or so given the additional benefits of the 83 a3b so as usual pricing is key and this will be region dependent so make sure to do your research anyway that's it for this review of the lg 27gb 83b we did buy this monitor for testing so thanks to our patreon and floatplane members that make testing these sort of products possible if you're interested in supporting our monitor testing allowing us to yeah buy monitors to test or just continue upgrading our test methodology then yes sign up to our floatplane or patreon accounts links to those in the description below you'll get access to the icc profiles we create during the calibration of these monitors as well as many other things like our wonderful discord community and all that great stuff so thanks for watching and i'll catch you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 247,821

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: aHh91RvpR3k

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021