The Brightest WOLED Gaming Monitor - Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM Review

welcome back to monitor's unbox for another OLED monitor review it really has been the U of the OLED in the first half of 2023 that's only a good thing for gamers that have been desperate to access this technology for years in the labs today for review is the Rog Swift OLED pg27 aqdm which is asus's take on the LG 27gr95qe that we reviewed a couple of months ago same panel same sort of specifications but a few interesting differences up its sleeve that we'll cover throughout this review the pg-27aqdm features a 27 inch 2560x1440 W OLED panel with a maximum refresh rate of 240 hertz it packs the usual sort of features for a panel like this such as adaptive sync support branded as both g-sync compatible and freesync premium rated 0.03 millisecond response times a thousand nits of peak brightness and 99 DCI P3 color gamut and of course true HDR support Asus surprising all of this at a thousand dollars US which is the very same price as the LG model ensuring a heated battle between the two options Asus are definitely offering The More gamery Design which is pretty standard for their Rog line however we're not seeing the same dated design that has been used on some of their other recent monitors this design is specially built to harness the OLED panel so the front is a lot sleeker and doesn't have a huge chin outside the Rog logo in the center and the rear is quite nice overall with the box in the center housing the components and the thin OLED panel itself extending outwards the outer housing uses a mixture of plastic and metal which looks pretty reasonable and there's no doubting this is a well-constructed product though as usual I would personally prefer something a bit less gamery Asus do claim the pg27aqdm uses a highly efficient custom heatsink which helps to increase brightness and according to them reduce the risk of burn-in I presume this heatsink is only found within the central component area and doesn't extend across the entire OLED panel because the thickness of the outer edges of the panel are identical to the 27 gr95 QE certainly that's where it looks like from the render on the Asus website the heatsink being in that sort of central area so it's not some super thick product with a huge heatsink on the back it is all well integrated as for the stand Asus offer a great range of ergonomic control including all of height tilt swivel and pivot support it's a very sturdy stand with little wobble there's plenty of height adjustability and the raised tripod legs use an average amount of desk space there's also some LED lighting Integrations there's a pixel grid Rog logo on the rear with RGB LEDs that honestly looks pretty good and a red projected logo out of the bottom of the stand which is pretty gimmicky the port selection is a bit disappointing with only one display port 1.4 with DSC and two HDMI 2.0 ports no issues with the display port but only using HDMI 2.0 limits these ports to 120 hertz instead of the full 240 hertz and restricts console compatibility there is vrr Support over HDMI so that will work with the consoles but unlike the LG model that does have HDMI 2.1 the Asus model does not support 4K 120hz downscaling as an example it's a minor thing but ideally I'd like to see more than one port that's capable of the maximum refresh rate the OSD is controlled through a directional toggle that's hidden behind the Rog logo on the front no remote control access here but at least everything is accessible through the monitor controls themselves quick and easy to navigate plenty of the usual features plus some things that aren't super suitable to oleds like crosshairs and FPS counters which may lead to burn in so just use those features with caution also this monitor does support firmer updates over a PC USB connection and I'd recommend people update their unit to the latest firmware as there's already an update available version MCM 103 which is what I tested with as the pg27 hudm uses the same panel as the 27 gr95qe it shares many of the inherent panel qualities such as screen coding and subpixel structure this means that like the LG the Asus model uses a matte anti-glare coating which is a reasonably controversial Choice among OLED enthusiasts some of whom prefer a glossy experience but as I said in my review of the LJ model I think this is one of the better matte screen Coatings it is on the heavier side so those that hate any coating grain may not be a huge fan here but it does do a great job of eliminating Reflections reducing diffuse light and preserving all that blacks and in general these are my thoughts on Matt vs glossy if you are using this display in a brightly lit room if there are light sources directly in front of the display or if you can't control room lighting very well with blinds and matte coding for an OLED is preferable and the pg27aqdm looks great in these conditions in a dimly lit room with some ambient light or if you can optimize light in the room by putting light sources behind the display or using blinds a glossy finish is preferable as it will look richer and clearer in a dark room like Gaming With the Lights Off There is almost no difference between glossy and matte with a slight advantage to glossy as it will have no coding related grain the W OLED sub pixel array is not ideal for desktop usage I think this is a more noticeable issue than past W OLED displays due to the size and resolution of this panel previously we had big 42 inch panels at 4K which weren't sitting further away and perhaps using a 125 or 150 scale factor this panel is 27 inches in 1440p so I suspect people will be sitting closer and using 100 scaling which exposes the issues with W OLED more significantly the main concern here is the use of an rwbg layout instead of traditional RGB which operating systems expect when rendering text using modern subpixel rendering techniques W OLED uses that additional white subpixel which changes the way color is rendered and for fine elements like text that causes a bit of blurriness and almost shadowing relative to a normal RGB subpixel LCD I don't think it looks very good and it's a noticeable downgrade over an LCD for text quality as a result I don't think this monitor is well suited to desktop use or productivity work and that's exacerbated by the risk of permanent burn-in when using an OLED for desktop use which often has a lot of static elements you shouldn't be concerned about burning or the subpixel layout for that matter when using OLED for Content consumption like watching videos or playing games but if you have the same elements on screen for a long period of time like say the toolbar in an application that will likely burn in over time which is why I don't recommend OLED as a productivity monitor Asus do offer a great range of burn-in protection features including a screensaver logo detection pixel shifting and pixel cleaning the logo detection is disabled by default so something you may want to enable however the warranty coverage here is not great only matching the LG monitor with two years of coverage and no specific mention of OLED burn-in so it's safe to say there is no burn-in coverage like we get with some QD OLED monitors that offer three years of burn-in protection Motion Performance like other OLED monitors isn't particularly interesting as we're getting the same Elite speeds we've seen on other products at 240 hertz this is an extremely fast monitor with an average response time of 0.26 milliseconds no appreciable overshoot and excellent cumulative deviation the only notable difference versus the LG model is a less pronounced period of overshoot that lasts for one refresh cycle but otherwise this Asus variant performs the same we also get excellent numbers across the refresh rate range as OLED panels do not change performance at lower refresh rates unlike LCDs so for variable refresh rate Gamers this is an excellent choice as you'll get superb performance even at moderate refresh rates like 120 hertz we also don't see any overshoot artifacts at 60 hertz which was a minor issue on the LG equivalent so overall this Asus model is slightly better tuned as I've said in other OLED reviews there's really no difference between this OLED Monitor and others that use OLED Tech so far all the monitors I've tested have performed between a 0.2 and 0.37 millisecond average at their maximum refresh rate which is a negligible difference the big difference though is between OLED and LCD with oleds being the clearly Superior technology for Motion Performance typically a 240Hz OLED is roughly equivalent to a 360 Hertz LCD in overall motion Clarity due to its faster response times but at the same refresh rate the OLED will be better average performance across the refresh rate range is more favorable to oleds as they maintain consistent performance at all refresh rates whereas LCDs typically get worse at lower refresh rates this gives older quite a substantial advantage over a typical LCD on average as you can see in the charts cumulative deviation is quite favorable to the pg27aqdm and we do confirm here that it's better tuned than the 27ga 95qe which had a few small overshoot concerns at lower refresh rates but when looking at this W OLED versus the QD oleds in the chart there's really no difference here and shouldn't form any part of your buying decision aside from the refresh rate Which is higher here input latency is excellent and on par with other 240Hz OLED monitors that I've tested with a negligible processing delay and super fast response times the pg27aqdm is an extremely responsive monitor to use with a noticeable improvement over most moderate refresh rate displays it was also good to confirm that like most other oleds there's no difference in input latency between the SDR and HDR modes so gaming using HDR is just as responsive as we like to see whereas some LCDs with full array local dimming do have higher input lag using HDR power consumption was slightly lower from the Asus model relative to the 27 gr95qe after the LG model's latest firmware update it can get very close to 200 nits here as can the Asus model but the Asus model is slightly more efficient interestingly on asus's product page they claim this monitor operates at a five percent lower average temperature compared to other 27 inch OLED gaming monitors and we see here a four percent reduction in power consumption this is likely to be a contributing factor to running cooler unfortunately this LG OLED does not support backlight strobing or in the case of an OLED black frame insertion oleds are a perfect candidate for this sort of motion Clarity improving technology but for whatever reason Asus has not implemented the feature here color performance is next up and the pg27aqdm produces fairly typical results that we've seen from other W OLED monitors this means 96 coverage of DCI P3 as seen here as well as 72 coverage of the wide Rec 2020 gamut sufficient for gaming although not quite as wide as cudia led panels which typically hit around 80 Rec 2020. for some reason both LG and Asus do a poor job of calibrating their 27-inch OLED at the factory my unit shipped with a strong blue tint which gives the monitor a cold color temperature and this affects Delta E's gamma performance doesn't vary as much at different window sizes as the LG model but the gamut is unclamped leading to oversaturation when viewing SDR content like desktop apps or YouTube videos which expect an srgb color space compared to other monitors this is not a particularly impressive result and certainly requires some tweaking to get better performance on the pg27aqdm there are two methods of accessing an srgb mode One is using the built-in Mode called srgb which is the more lockdown way of doing it this adjusts the color temperature to 6500k and nicely restricts the color gamut to srgb significantly improving performance however most settings are locked in this mode preventing further tweaks to white balance or gamma and ultimately this mode only has what I describe as maybe borderline Factory calibrated performance it's better than default but only average among gaming displays when comparing their srgb modes the other method which allows a much greater range of tweaking is using the setting called display color space switching it over from DCI P3 to srgb this option doesn't lock down any settings but also doesn't adjust white balance though this can be easily rectified as the setting is unlocked creating an srgb configuration this way is more accurate than the built-in srgb mode and is my preferred way to use the monitor for SDR content this gives the Asus monitor an interesting set of contrasting features to the LG the Asus monitor allows full tweaking in both color space modes while the LG monitor doesn't but does offer Hardware calibration using consumer grade calibration Hardware there actually wasn't much separating the two monitors after various OSD and Hardware tweaks while the Asus model offers more functionality for those that don't own a Colorimeter and just want to adjust settings best way to get accurate performance out of the PGA 27aqdm is a full software calibration which we performed using kelman the results here are pretty good not the best I've ever seen which tends to be the case when calibrating oleds but definitely a great experience brightness in the SDR mode is where the fun begins double OLED monitors in the past have been criticized for poor brightness and this was certainly the case with the 27 gr95qe but the pg27aqdm is much brighter hitting 243 nits for a full screen white image even using the uniform brightness mode which disables the automatic brightness limiter and thus stops annoying brightness changes at various window sizes this is a 23 improvement over the LG equivalent which is massive for an OLED monitor that uses the same panel and puts it in the range of cutie OLED monitors Practice still isn't amazing overall and Falls well short of most LCDs but I think 243 nits is very usable for most people and does give it a notable advantage over other W oleds for those in brighter environments also due to the matte screen coating versus glossy for most cutie oleds I'd say this new Asus monitor is the most usable in bright rooms of any gaming OLED that I've tested so far minimum brightness is good too at 23 nits contrast obviously fantastic as the display is capable of true zero black levels leading to an effectively infinite contrast ratio which is unmatched from LCDs Dark Shadow content looks amazing on this monitor viewing angles are also excellent on this OLED as we've come to expect from this technology you can basically view this display from any angle and get a great experience plus it's a flat panel so there's no issues arising from a curve uniformly though is a bit less impressive while an OLED cannot suffer from backlight bleed or IPS glow my unit did have a bit of a dirty screen effect when viewing gray content which is where you can see some great uniformity issues viewing mid-dark tones relative to an LCD that shows these tones in a more consistent fashion while white uniformity overall was excellent the pg-27aqdm isn't that good for apps that have dark gray background which is surprisingly quite a few of them the LG variant also had this issue to a greater degree actually but it does seem that this W OLED panel fundamentally suffers from this issue due to its Hardware the Asus PG twice of an aqdm is an excellent HDR display this is due to all their Technology's inherent Hardware qualities that are tailor-made for displaying HDR content the key feature here is that each individual pixel is self-lit meaning at a pixel level the display can turn on or off to accurately display everything from Dark Shadows to bright highlights when the display needs to show pure black it can fully switch off giving us the trademark Rich zero level blacks and Deep Shadows that OLED is known for this is in contrast to most HDR capable LCD panels which are not fully controllable at the pixel level LCDs require a backlight and for HDR displays this typically means the use of full array local dimming a technology that splits the backlight into zones whereas OLED can turn off each pixel individually LCDs with local dimming can only turn off certain zones encompassing hundreds or even thousands of pixels this can still be effective for HDR content and look great but it has some fundamental flaws in difficult circumstances for example when showing a bright and dark element close together an OLED can control each pixel as needed with a clean accurate distinction between bright and dark LCDs with local dimming need to masterfully control the zones to achieve the necessary distinction between bright and dark and when the element is too small or not in the optimal position the bright element can spill into the dark area within the backlight Zone creating ugly blooming artifacts OLED therefore has the edge when it comes to displaying clean HDR content with minimal blooming or haloing in some scenes this will be the difference between raised blacks and deep blacks such as for Star fuels and Christmas lights at other times OLED can have a brightness Advantage for small bright objects within a dark scene subtitles will look cleaner on an OLED with reduced blooming and generally oleds produce richer Shadows thanks to its inherently higher contrast ratio aside from Rich blacks all Deads also have other advantages for HDR as there are no backlight zones old leads are faster to transition between bright and dark with no visible Zone transitions All Leads are much less likely to suffer from backlight flickering although light pwm Behavior especially when using a variable refresh rate is common and oleds like this one do not increase input latency in its HDR mode as they do not run a backlight Zone algorithm the downside to hdr on an OLED is brightness all Lids typically don't get as bright as an LCD with full array local dimming in HDR content especially for large window sizes for example the pg27aqdm hits just 196 nits for full screen content which is well below LCDs that start at 300 nits and also short of cutie OLED monitors that can reach 250 nits however this is a noticeable upgrade on the 27 gr95qe which only manages 145 nits the Asus variant is a very decent 35 percent brighter 10 window brightness is a better story this Asus monitor is the brightest I've recorded from an OLED in this test at 905 nits using the more accurate 6500k mode this is well in the ballpark of decent LCD monitors like the Odyssey Neo G9 and while it's not as bright as the best panels I've tested it's a very good result from an OLED what's also impressive is this result is again 35 brighter than the 27 gr95qe 12 brighter than the pg-42 uq and almost double the brightness of a typical cutie OLED ultrawide when looking at brightness versus window size the pg27aqdm is very impressive and all window sizes except 50 the Asus model is brighter than the LG model and this is especially true for smaller Windows two percent brightness of 851 nits is again 35 brighter than the LG model and even at a 25 window size we get a 14 Improvement there is no doubting whatsoever that the Asus implementation of this panel is brighter and is actually the brightest W OLED that I've tested how it compared to qdo lead is more complicated though it's certainly a much closer battle than with previous W oleds for the smallest elements cutie OLED takes the lead with 1000 units of brightness compared to about 850 nits while the pg27aqdm can hit a thousand nits it's only capable of doing so in the highly inaccurate 8200k mode which has a strong blue tint and cold color temperature here we are looking at 6 500k mode performance but for other small window sizes generally the Asus w o letters in the lead with a particularly large gap at 10 percent when we get to 50 window sizes and larger QD OLED retakes the lead never dropping below 250 nits however in real world HDR content the use of high brightness across such a significant portion of the screen is quite rare So generally the results at 25 and below are most indicative of real world performance speaking of real world performance let's take a look at some real scene measurements in our first example the PGA 27aqdm actually doesn't fare very well at just 337 nits which is on the lower end of results I've seen from an OLED and quite behind even the 27 gr95qe but in scene 2 this Asus model is right up there with the best qdob monitors and LCDs delivering 31 higher brightness than the LG variant the Asus model was also much brighter for gaming while the LG typically topped out at around 650 to 700 nits in games the Asus hit 850 to 900 nits in my testing in this scene pumping out a whopping 45 percent higher brightness it doesn't quite reach the levels of the best qdo LEDs at a thousand nits but again this is the closest to qdob results I've seen from a w OLED Asia accuracy isn't especially amazing though and could use further tweaking through a firmware update eotf tracking using a 10 window in the 6500k mode shows wonky performance for some lower parts of the curve meaning that at times the aqdm can be dimmer than it should be you'll see that here in the dark tracking charts this is inferior performance to the 27 gr95qe which has very good eotf tracking and it's also inferior to the best qdo leads like the Samsung OLED G8 there are also some issues with color accuracy this display doesn't do a particularly good job of saturation tracking leading to high Delta ease which shows itself as a few wonky colors at times in games and videos a P3 tracking Delta e average of 21.7 is higher and therefore worse than the LG 27gr95qe 16.9 in the same test while the aw3423dw comes in with just a 7.1 Delta e average I wouldn't say the pg27aqdm is unusable in the HDR mode far from it most of the time it still looks good but it accuracy is disappointing considering its strengths in other areas of HDR playback final section of this review is the Hub Essentials checklist Asus does a good job of advertising bezel size correctly however the use of HDMI 2.0 instead of 2.1 does limit the refresh rate over HDMI to just 120 hertz there are also a few questionable aspects to the spec sheet in terms of colors such as the 450 nits of Max brightness while this is achievable for small window sizes with uniform brightness mode disabled I don't think it's a particularly representative number for the typical experience this monitor delivers hence the borderline results similarly gamut coverage and color accuracy are overstated as our response times with an unrealistic 0.03 millisecond ranking despite excellent Motion Performance from this panel HDR performance is excellent though with true Edge share capabilities while suits do advertise 1000 its brightness and this is possible in the 8200k mode it's less achievable using realistic settings the monitor also has a non-standard rwbg subpixel layout and is at risk of permanent burn-in but the display's active cooling is effectively silent and firmware updates are supported the Asus Rog Swift OLED pg27aqdm might be a mouthful of a name but it's the most impressive W OLED gaming monitor I've tested so far Asus has been able to deliver a notable Improvement to performance over the LG model I looked at a few months back which already impressed me in several ways so there's no doubting that this is a high quality product that I can recommend the big advantage and a huge talking point to the pg-27aqdm is its high levels of brightness for a w OLED monitor this Asus variant hits nearly 250 nits full screen for SDR content and up to around 900 nits in HDR content without using cheat mode settings this makes it around 35 brighter in real world HDR content and 23 brighter for SDR content which is a decent Improvement in a key area to OLED performance and one of the main drawbacks that we typically see from this technology while the LG variant is not very competitive on brightness with QD OLED equivalents this new Asus model is very much capable of going toe-to-toe with Samsung's technology this leads to a largely excellent experience for HDR gaming not only do we get deep zero level blacks great Shadow detail and per pixel local dimming we also get quite reasonable levels of brightness on top of this we get Elite Motion Performance thanks to the pure speed of OLED and its high 240Hz refresh rate this is a great monitor for both HDR single player gaming with dazzling visuals and fast-paced competitive multiplayer games it's basically the perfect choice for someone that likes to play a variety of different titles have complimented this nicely with the high-end design and build quality the full range of OLED care features including pixel shifting and Logo detection firmware update support and uniform brightness mode plenty of gaming features and of course adaptive sync with low input lag like many products the pg27aqdm is not perfect and there are some areas that Asus could have easily improved I love the unlocked range of color controls but Factory calibration is mediocre and HDR accuracy could do with some further tweaking addressing this would really Elevate this product into the elite Echelon of gaming monitors including HDMI 2.1 would have also been an easy win opting to use only HDMI 2.0 is disappointing other aspects are harder to resolve as they are limited by W OLED panel technology for example the subpixel layout leads to poor text Clarity relative to most other monitors of this size combined with the risk of permanent burn-in it's hard to recommend this monitor for productivity work or desktop app usage this is really designed to be used purely for Content consumption like gaming and watching videos also doesn't offer any specific burn-in coverage with their warranty and by running this panel at a higher level of brightness that will surely have implications for burn-in with static content though again I don't expect this to be an issue for Content consumption all up the introduction of this Asus model especially at its one thousand dollar price makes it very difficult to recommend the LG model anymore there's little reason to buy it over the superior Asus model so if you're after a 27 inch 1440p 240Hz OLED the pg-27aqdm is absolutely the way to go the higher brightness on offer outweighs any of the drawbacks like no HDMI 2.1 or somewhat weaker HDR accuracy what's more difficult to decide is between this 27 inch Asus and some of the 34 inch cutie OLED Ultra wides we've covered previously a lot of the decision making here will come down to which format you prefer as obviously Ultra wide haters wouldn't buy the Cutie OLED versions but with the Asus W OLED offering similar brightness to the many cootie OLED options it becomes hard to otherwise separate ultimately I don't think there's a wrong choice and I'm certainly very impressed with this Asus monitor and I think most buyers will be quite happy with what it offers anyway that's it for this review as always if you are interested in supporting independent testing you like these sorts of reviews and comparisons you like all of our comparative data then please do consider supporting us by patreon or float plan making these reviews is not possible without the support we receive from you guys so thanks very much if you are a patron and floor plan member but if you can't support us then doing things like subscribing to the channel giving the video a like sharing it with your mates who are interested in these sorts of monitors is a great way of doing that so yeah thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next one [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Monitors Unboxed

Views: 99,491

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Id: R0AkfhZp70w

Length: 27min 24sec (1644 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/TheDoct0rx]

Not that these are in stock regularly, but I would wait for the corsair monitor with the same panel next month and its reviews before buying

[u/YoungJawn]

So far, it looks like the choice over the LG if you play a lot of games that don’t support HDR. I wish it had HDMI 2.1 like the LG, though.

[u/mytommy]

where the hell is the frog blurbusters test?

[u/Prestigious_Cap4934]

any reasons video become unavailable & private?

[u/No-Box2376]

This proves that LG can make the HDR brightness way brighter if they wanted but chose not to. I assume 1 year down the line they will do just that.

[u/Bluefellow]

Seems like the best all around monitor outside of productivity

[u/NullToes]

Correct me if I’m wrong but brighter. Oh led would mean quicker burning no?

[u/Skizim1702]

My calibrator measured my brightness in sdr at 219 nits on my lg 27gr95qe after the update. Personally I rather have hdmi 2.1 instead of like 20 more nits brightness

[u/skittay]

Are there any updates about when these will be available again?