Gadgetory

welcome back to hadron box today we are finally taking a look at a monitor that loads of you guys have been wanting me to test for quite some time the sous rog swift PG 27 UQ for those that aren't familiar this is the first g-sync hgl monitor on the market sporting top-end specs like a 4k 144 it's IPS panel with the thousands of peak brightness and 384 zone backlighting it's basically the highest end monitor you can get right now with proper support for HDR and never-before-seen refresh rate capabilities at this resolution it's also the most expensive monitor you can get right now outside of high-end professional monitors certainly the most expensive gaming class monitor in the US you'll need to fork out $2000 for this beast in in Australia we're faced with a price tag of $3500 redos this makes it roughly twice as expensive as the next most expensive gaming monitor so you really wanted to take every possible box and last for many many years without needing an upgrade there's many different aspects of this monitor to go through in the performance section but let's first take a look at the design because this isn't your typical 27-inch gaming monitor yes we're getting all the usual a sooth gamer style garbage like RGB LEDs on the back projector light under the stand plenty of interesting patterns and design elements in a typical a soos rog color scheme it's not a minimalist or stealthy design whatsoever in fact it's very obvious this thing is designed for gamers much to my annoyance but it doesn't tick every box in the modern gamer display checklist it's not curved which personally I prefer for 16:9 monitors and particularly for those of this size I don't think having a curved panel adds anything to the experience of 27 inches so that's a positive also the bezels are quite large it's 17 to 22 millimeters and the display overall is a bit of a chunky beast in fact it's just as fat as some curved monitors without being curved at all not of this really matters it's also the first monitor I've ever reviewed that requires active cooling a vent just in front of the display inputs on the rear pumps out hot air through a slow spinning but audible fan the fan is needed to cool the new g-sync HDR module which is essentially an expensive reasonably powerful FPGA the module obviously dumps out quite a bit more heat compared to the old g-sync module so the fan is required in a quiet room the fan is very obvious it's definitely not loud but the hum is audible above my PCs fans while idling so silent PC enthusiasts will hate it especially considering basically every other monitor in existence does not require active cooling the fan does stop eventually after being in an idle state and off for a long time but you think the process could be a bit quicker particularly as the monitor uses 27 watts while in idles displaying nothing before going into a deep sleep moving on we get to the usual inputs reducing Camano DisplayPort 1.4 an HDMI 2.0 along with the two port USB 3.0 hub and a 3.5 million a only DisplayPort supports the full refresh rate HDMI is limited to 60 Hertz and does not support g-sync distend it's sturdy and supports a great range of motion including tilt height adjust swivel and pivot so you can use the monitor in a portrait orientation if you desire only the legs are fully constructed from mineral the rest of the monitor including the stand pillar is a rather unimpressive plastic especially for a $2000 product the build quality isn't bad you know there are no visual defects or misaligned elements but a more premium finish would have been appreciated at this sort of price the on-screen display does use the directional toggle though which is a necessary inclusion when you pack in as many features as a su stars you won't find if the unusual in the OSD Oliver soos as usual cheat crosshairs low blue light modes and different gaming modes have made the cut there are also some HDR specific features like backlight modes as I'll talk about later while UL mb or ultra low motion blur is missing a beech are normally found on high-end g-sync monitors to improve clarity through backlight strobing my guess is you LMB is incompatible with the new g-sync module and i doubt many people would choose to use it over to sync with XJ anyway so I guess it's not a big loss moving on to performance which I'm sure a lot of you will be interested in there's quite a lot to say here considering there are so many features packed in let's tackle HDR first before moving on to color performance and response times I've already made a separate video discussing what features are required for a good HDI experience I made a checklist for assessing Hg are compatible monitors so if the interest in what specs are necessary for a good hgr monitor and why you should check out that video but let's see how the PG 27 uq stacks up in the checklist looking at brightness support we have 1000 nits of peak brightness and 600 Nissa stain brightness which is well above what is required I measured full white sustain brightness of 634 nits which is absolutely i scorching in regular viewing conditions and that gradually increases to nearly 700 nits for a 25% window and 900 nits for a 10% window or smaller I achieved an impressive sustained brightness of 933 nits for a 2% window with flashes pushing well over 1000 100 nits meeting a Seuss's specification claims the display can also produce a full white image for around 1 second at 1000 nits which basically requires sunglasses to view it so bright for local dimming we have a 384 zone full array back light so at this monitor size each dimming zone covers roughly 22 by 26 millimeters the backlight is extremely responsive adjusting its light output in under 10 milliseconds in worst case transitions which is like a 1 frame delay at 98 Hertz as the backlight is also so responsive there's no visible afterglow when a bright object suddenly disappears review and the zones are small enough that HDR glow around bright elements is minimal and not typically noticeable in most near standard viewing conditions like gaming or watching movies the only time I notice the glow effect was when the panel tried to show small white text on otherwise completely black screen and that's not something that happened often in actual games the dynamic range between a flickering fire and the darkness of night was massive and that's where the FA LD backlight really shines in its ability to simultaneously display 1000 nits in some areas and just 0.02 nits in others the very high contrast ratio this type of backlight provides and brightness levels way above SDR screens is the reason HDR looks incredible when done properly and the PG 27 UQ is one such display that does hgl well in terms of contrast ratio measurements I achieved fifty three thousand to one at peak although that falls to thirty three thousand to one when judging based on the monitors sustained brightness output when disabling the dynamic backlight the monitor is just a typical IPS in terms of contrast with the ratio just about a thousand to one but really I see no reason to disable the dynamic backlight unless you are viewing something where the Glo issue is very noticeable for the vast majority of users in the vast majority of content you'll be viewing even in the SDR mode leaving the FA LD zones active is the way to go you can also adjust the speed of the FA LD backlight just in case the default fast mode is too fast for you there might be some occasions where rapid changes to backlight brightness aren't ideal for the content you're viewing in which case the slower modes will be better for you however there wasn't a single time where I felt the fast mode was too fast especially while gaming so again I don't think this is a setting you'll want to change the final things on the HDR checklist are color space the PG 27 UQ supports 97 percent DCI p3 coverage which is much wider than srgb and of course there's the usual stuff like 10 bit processing and an 8 bit plus FRC panel in my testing actually achieved 93% DCI p3 coverage but that's still pretty good and above what is required for HDR I'm not going to show color accuracy results for DCI p3 because I've been informed by several people that the testing tools I have available to me aren't accurate enough to test this type of monitor in wide gamut some tools can do it but not what I currently have or what is available in our budget so I'm not going to show inaccurate results and instead skip wide government accuracy entirely however I will mention there is a mode to use wide gamut with SDR so content creators working with DCI p3 in an app that doesn't natively support HDR can still make use of this monitors support for that color space now it's probably a good time for just some general thoughts on HDR the PG 27 UQ is quite clearly the best hgr monitor I've used the contrast and brightness specs illustrating this on paper but when you actually get to using the monitor it's far and away superior to a regular SDR monitor in games that support HDR properly even SDR content gets a handy boost from the FAL d backlight because this LCD has a contrast ratio far higher than regular LCDs in the SDR mode in games like Far Cry 5 that support hgr really well you'll not only get a more vibrant image as the panel can actually display more colors but there's so much more detail visible particularly in high contrast scenes take an outdoor sunny scene with heavy shadowing for example this monitor has the ability to dazzle you with the Sun burning at a thousand hits while simultaneously providing plenty of visible detail in a dark shadowy area neither of these elements have blown out because the monitors dynamic range far exceeds a regular SDR display and it more closely simulates how the scene would look in real life it won't come as a surprise that it's very hard to demonstrate on camera exactly how different this monitor looks it's just one of those things you have to view for yourself to see the difference between HDR and SDR but unlike several other monitors with weak HDR support the PG 27 UQ gets it right and the result is a fantastic xgr image that blows boring old SDR away of course there is one elephant in the room and that's the issue with refresh rates and chroma subsampling the PG 27 you can only natively support full four four for RGB sampling at 10 bit HDR at 4k at a maximum refresh rate of 98 Hertz it can also only support for four for sampling of 8-bit SDR 4k content at 120 Hertz this is entirely down to DisplayPort one point force bandwidth there simply is not enough bandwidth to display 4 4 4 10 bit 4k content at 144 Hertz don't blame a Seuss or a Optronics for this one the technology just isn't there right now now you might recall this monitor is actually a 144 Hertz panel so this throws up a bit of an issue to achieve 144 Hertz through DisplayPort 1.4 a sues has resorted to 4 to 2 chroma subsampling for HDR content above ninety eight Hertz and SDR content above 120 Hertz what for - to subsampling means is you're getting full 4k luminance resolution but chrominance resolution is below 4k approximately 1440p for simplicity's sake so for every group of 4 pixels you are getting 4 luma samples and just 2 chroma samples this sounds bad but luckily for humans the eye is more sensitive to luminance than chrominance so for general imagery there's very little difference between 4 4 4 and 4 - 2 content in the games I tested and videos I watched I honestly could not tell the difference between the two sampling this isn't a shock really because blu-rays and even UHD blu-ray is actually use a more aggressive four to zero sub sampling method and blu-ray quality is of course fantastic for video however for two to subsampling is noticeable in desktop apps and also in some very specific game menus if you look quite closely anything with clearly defined edges on solid backgrounds particularly fine edges like text will have edge artifacts with four to two subsampling provided that edge has a color component so black text on a white background is not affected but blue text on a green background for example is heavily affected for two to subsampling is a minor issue but it does result in a noticeable quality loss for desktop usage I'd advise running the panel at a maximum of 120 Hertz in the SDR mode and that's what I tested with later so you don't run into subsampling while using desktop apps while refresh rate you should use for games is trickier HDR gaming is limited to 98 Hertz without subsampling in most cases your graphics card probably isn't powerful enough to run at above 4 km 98 fps I tested with the Titan XP and 60fps is more around the mark in modern games so if you're not actually running above 98 FPS I limit the monitor to 98 Hertz to avoid subsampling just in case there is some noticeable quality loss but realistically you're not going to notice any significant quality loss in games by opting to run at 144 Hertz with subsampling evening games that do have menus with coloured texts and backgrounds the font size is usually large enough that the artifacts are practically invisible unless you're hunting for them so if you have the power to play at 4k 144 FPS you can still get a good experience running the monitor at 144 Hertz with that extra bit of smoothness compared to 98 Hertz of course the subsampling issue isn't ideal because you should be switching back to 120 or 98 Hertz for desktop usage and ideally the full refresh range would be accessible without a quality loss however ie Optronics has developed a panel capable of 4k 144 Hertz before display interfaces could support it properly so this compromise solution is literally the best we've got right now let's talk color performance in the SDR mode here we're limited to three hundreds of peak brightness and with the dynamic backlight enabled you'll get a contrast ratio 14600 two one and two hundred nits which we use for calibration that's cut down to just shy of ten thousand to one which is still outstanding for LCD technology there are some situations where content creators may want to disable the dynamic backlight in which case again you revert to a standard 1000 to 1 contrast ratio but for most users as I said earlier just keep it on the page g27 yuku comes factory calibrated to a delta e of a less than 3.0 which isn't the tightest standard but in my testing of default performance color accuracy was significantly better than Delta ease of just 3.0 in general the monitor produced a grayscale Delta e average of just one point four three with a color temperature average of 64 19k and near-perfect gamma which is a fantastic out-of-the-box result saturation results revealed a delta e average of one point six zero with 99.9 percent srgb coverage while in color checker Delta ears were entirely under 3.0 with an average of one point five eight all up this is excellent factory performance from a monitor with performance near indistinguishable from true accuracy the most strict users may want to calibrate it further to get Delta YZ sub 1.0 but anything on a 2.0 is basically accurate anyway so I probably wouldn't bother attempting to deal with often troublesome color profiles just to get a very minor improvement that said I do calibrate the monitor fully using a combination of color profile and minor OSD tweaks and achieved average Delta is around 1.0 or lower with a tighter gamma and CCT curve the hinter contrast was basically irrelevant as well do note that color profiles are ignored in Windows HDR mode but the good news is the factory SDR performance is preserved when HDR and WCG is enabled to Windows support for SDR tone mapping in the HDR mode is improving with each update to the point where leaving the setting enabled for desktop users is now a genuine option panel uniformly it was good without being great the top left and bottom right areas are slightly off compared to the rest of the panel in my review unit but overall uniformity is a bit better than most gaming displays however it's not in the same ballpark as professional-grade monitors so while the soo's is providing very good color accuracy for professionals out of the box there is still merit to purchasing a top-end Pro monitor to get extreme uniformity for response time testing I tested with the dynamic backlight enabled as I recommend most people leave it enabled for gaming this actually improves response times by 1 to 2 milliseconds to my surprise I'd also recommend leaving the monitor on its default normal overdrive setting the extreme mode introduces overshoot so my testing was done with the normal setting the PG 27 UQ uses IPS technology so naturally it will sit between TN and VA in terms of response times a soos quotes a greater great figure of 4 milliseconds and surprisingly I reported a four point one eight millisecond greater great average which is very good for this sort of monitor fall times are slightly longer than rise times on average but there were no crazily slow outliers the black white black response of 9.5 6 milliseconds is also in line with the Seuss's quoted specs so no complaints here input lag is slightly down on other monitors I've tested though it's not outrageous in just the SDR mode with the dynamic backlight and gsync enabled at 120 Hertz estimated lag is around 15 milliseconds which is similar to the s8 a Predator X 34 as I test more monitors will have a wider range of data to compare with that input lag testing methodology so stay tuned and a quick note on power consumption the PG 27 UQ sucks down a huge a hundred and seventeen watts displaying a 200 nits or white image which is well above other 27 inch monitors I've tested a typical power consumption figure for this size and resolution should be around 60 watts but with the backlight and gsync module and the higher refresh rate that's ballooned out significantly as for peak power consumption this beast sucks down 300 watts to display a full white image at 1000 nits after all this testing it's time to go over at all and give my final thoughts on this monitor there's no doubting it's a very impressive piece of hardware with excellent performance in both HDR and SDR modes it's great to see who's providing factory calibration for the monitor which you'd pretty much expect at this price point but it's the HDR support and specifically good HDR support that elevates it to the next level features like 1000 nits of peak brightness the high zone count local dimming backlight and wide color gamut support hit the three key pillars of HDR provide an excellent viewing experience the PG 27 UQ looks much better than any SDR monitor in games that properly support HDR and there's not just a minor improvement the difference in visual quality is significant from a number of perspectives it's truly the best and highest quality experience you'll get from a gaming monitor in 2018 however there are many things to consider before going out and buying a PG 27 UQ for starters it's $2,000 which is ludicrous money to spend on a gaming monitor you can get really good 27-inch 1440p 144 hertz g-sync monitors for $500 these days which may not be as high resolution or support HDR but you're going to get a great game experience at that price is the bump to 4k with HDR support really worth an extra $1,500 the PG 27 you tube is very good but it's impossible to justify that price difference the PG tween 7uq also suffers from being a first generation product Nvidia g-sync HDR module is by all reports expensive to produce in its current form and the panel is also the first of its kind combine those two things and suddenly the price of the monitor has skyrocketed issues like the active cooling fan larger bezels and chroma subsampling are all also symptoms of first gen tech that does work well and achieves its advertised goals admittedly but with compromises and teething issues that will no doubt be ironed out in the next iteration it's not unusual for early adopters to have to put up with high prices and a few oddities but it's compounded by the lack of games that properly support HDR on PC you're not only spending a lot of money to get HDR today but you're also limited to a small handful of titles that make the most of this monitors top head features as good as I think the PG 27 UQ is I honestly think the best move is to wait I'd be mighty disappointed spending $2,000 on this monitor right now only to find out that in a year the tech is available for half that price with way more games that support it and a few of those issues ironed out after all this is a massive investment and for $2,000 I want to be sure I was getting not just the best monitor available today but a near perfect long-lasting product that won't be superseded quickly that's not to say all PG 20 7uq buyers will be disappointed it's an outstanding monitor today and perfectly complements high-end pcs but there are a lot of things to consider before forking over that sort of cash for a first gen product and if I had that sort of money to spend on a monitor myself I'd be holding off for now until the hgr monitor ecosystem is a bit more mature that's it for this review of the PG 27 uqr a lot of testing went into this review so if you like a monitor coverage consider supporting us on patreon where you can get exclusive access to calibrated display profiles and our hardware box discord chat I've got a massive backlog of monitors to test so subscribe for those and I'll catch you in the next one