Gadgetory

welcome back to hard Ron boxed for a lot of people the gaming monitor I'm looking at today has been a long time coming it was first shown off at Computex 2017 it was then delayed repeatedly and finally in the middle of 2019 it will be available to buyers shortly I'm of course talking about the Asuza rog swift PG 35 VQ you've all seen the time of this video and boy is there a lot of content to fit into this review so to start with the PG 35 V cube is one of several designs along with an Acer and AOC model that's based off a new super high-end ultra wide HDR capable panel from a you Optronics the specs are extremely impressive a 35 inch 34 40 by 1440 curved VA panel and up to 200 Hertz for starters that's a significant increase on the refresh rate capabilities of these 1440p class ultra whites and then on top of that we're getting proper HDR functionality through a 512 zone full array local dimming backlight 1000 nits of peak brightness and 90% DSO ip3 coverage and the cherry on top is chasing ultimate support all of that comes at an enormous price tag a soos wouldn't confirm exactly how much this will cost in the US Australia given its still a few weeks away from launching officially but it is up for pre-order in the UK for 2,700 pounds which were put in in the 2500 to 3,000 US dollar range when you account for tax so yeah certainly quite a pricey monitor but before that this video is brought to you by raid Shadow legends the latest hero collect a role-playing game that you can play on your phone right now for free it has an amazing storyline awesome 3d graphics seriously check out the level of detail on these characters plus they're a giant boss fights and more than 400 champions for you to collect and customize this game reminds me a lot of classic RPGs and the strategy games plus it's growing fast and is expected to receive a huge update this month which will add even more fun for new players with a 4.6 star rating on the Play Store from over 150,000 reviews this is the best time to join the action so what are you waiting for click the links in the and below and you'll instantly get 50,000 silver and a free epic champion as part of the new player program to start your journey now let's get back to the video anyway lots to cover here so let's get into the basics the design it's very similar to a Seuss's previous rog swift designs and once again not a huge fan personally I prefer a more sleek and minimalist aesthetic as soos has historically gone with these more heavy gamer designs I get why they do it but the crazy patterns on the back and copper highlights on the stand just don't really get me excited RGB is still present here you get a larger soos our og logo on the back a projected light that comes out at the bottom of the stand and an additional light in the top of the stand a lot of these elements you won't see in standard operation or you can just to say but like I did build quality again stared for a soos the stand is very sturdy and uses metal for the legs but the rest of the housing is just basic plastic in a few different textures I am happy that the bezel size is a lot smaller than the previous 27 inch chasing ultimate displays though there's a decent amount of functionality here the stand supports height tilt and swivel adjustment as you'd expect from a premium on etre there's also a visor mounting compatibility if you need it for ports you get hdmi 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 you should be using DisplayPort here plus there's a two port USB hub and a 3.5 mm audio output jack doan screen display is controlled through a directional toggle for the most part and there's a lot of features in here to access the 200 Hertz mode you have to enable that in here the monitor ships with a default max refresh rate of 180 Hertz so that's something to keep in mind then there's a number of color controls backlight controls HDR features and so on that I'll mention throughout the review plus game of specific features like cheat crosshairs FPS counters and more everything you used to with masseuse ROG monitor like the Zeus PG 27 uq and other similar g-sync ultimate monitors the PG 35 eq does require active cooling there's a small fan built into an area near the inputs but it's noticeably quieter than the fans that shipped with PG 27-year cube instead of being audible almost all the time the PG 35 V Q is basically silent you will hear the fan in a very quiet room but in most conditions it will be drowned out by other noise and to be honest it's basically a non-issue unless you ever unless you must have the silent room let's move into before now and obviously one of the big features here is the 200 Hertz refresh rate which is a first for 34 40 by 1440 ultra wines previously the capita these monitors was 144 Hertz you can get that with monitors from LG and soon MSI for around $1000 but for some 144 Hertz may not be future proof enough so now we have 200 Hertz available in this monitor the good news is DisplayPort 1.4 has enough bandwidth for 34 40 by 1440 at 200 Hertz with 8-bit color this is in stark contrast to the 27 inch 4k 144 Hertz HDR panels which were kept to 120 Hertz with 8-bit color and needed chroma subsampling at 144 Hertz there's really no need for chroma subsampling at all with the PG 35v q and you can happily use this in an SDR configuration at 200 Hertz for HDR gaming the bandwidth limit for uncompressed 10-bit HD are at 34 40 by 1440 is 144 Hertz above that say you want to play HDI games at 200 Hertz you have one of two options you could use chroma subsampling or you could drop down the monitor to 8-bit color with HDR which is the default behaviour here now you might be thinking hang on a moment don't you need 10-bit color for HDR and the answer is kind of yes and kind of no while 10-bit color is one of the improvements HDR is designed to make over SDR and is part of the HDR 10th standard there's actually nothing stopping you from dropping down to 8-bit while maintaining HDR support with a wide color gamut and increased contrast 10-bit color merely increases the number of colors to 1.0 7 billion and helps smooth out gradients to reduce banding but it isn't a requirement for any other aspect of HDR video for the most part a 10 bit source can be shrunk down to 8 bit with minimal quality loss I tried many games in the HDR mode with both 8-bit and 10-bit color and really couldn't notice any differences whatsoever in fact in games that did have some color banding with gradients that banding was still present in the 10 bit mode given the panel itself is still a native 8-bit panel with FRC 4 10 bit support I don't think there's a significant downside to running this display at 8-bit HDR at 200 Hertz that said your mileage may vary especially for HD films which is a bit of a different story to games and if you do notice some gradient banding it could be worth dropping down to 144 Hertz to gain a 10-bit color support for me though the simplest solution is to run the monitor at 200 Hertz with 8-bit color where I was in the SDR or HDR modes the visual quality was excellent and far better than what you get of chroma subsampling was required in fact I'm stoked that you can use the full capabilities of this panel without having to mess around with subsampling as for 200 Hertz itself to my eyes it is a big step up from 100 Hertz in terms of smoothness and a lesser but still somewhat noticeable step up from 144 Hertz the main question is whether you have the GPU horsepower to drive games at this resolution and refresh rate as of today with an RT X 20 atti you can get 150 to 200 FPS in games like fortnight and other less intensive eSports ish titles but with big triple-a games on Ultra settings 100 FPS isn't more realistic target of course you can tweak the settings for better performance but this is with the 2080 TR anyone with a lower tier GPU will face an uphill battle to even hit above 144 FPS that said upgrade cycles for monitors along and so having something that does 200 Hertz now is going to be right at the top of the market for years to come and will let you enjoy many new GPU upgrades without maxing out the capabilities of your monitor I feel this sort of future proofing is more the goal of offering 200 Hertz now which makes sense given the enormous cost of this display and as it supports a g-sync ultimate of course you will get a smooth experience if your frame rates are well below 200 FPS so with chroma subsampling a non-issue with this monitor the next question is whether this VA panel is actually capable of a 200 Hertz refresh rate given response timers tend to be an issue with VA s I was super curious to see where the AU Optronics could deliver the required sub 5.0 millisecond response times for a true 200 Hertz experience before showing you the numbers response times are a really interesting situation with this panel as this monitor has an F Ald backlight response times are actually governed by two aspects the response time of the liquid crystals which is the usual determining factor for overall response times as well as the response of the backlight and this is crucial because the page 35 VQ has different response behavior depending on whether the dynamic backlight is in abled or disabled with the FA LD backlight enabled the best overdrive mode to use is extreme with this mode enabled there are some good benefits overshoot is well managed and often non-existent and there's not much dark level smearing from very slow dark transition times however the FA LD backlights full time is a little slow on the tail end in some instances which pushes out some transition times overall though the average greater grade transition is six point zero nine milliseconds a little shy of the 5 millisecond target but considering more than half of the overall transitions measured were within that window some as fast as 2 milliseconds I'd say this is borderline capable of 200 Hertz and fine for 144 Hertz with the FA LD backlight disabled the best overdrive mode to use is normal as the extreme mode introduces far too much overshoot with a dynamic backlight off it seems the extreme mode has been specifically tweaked to work well in tandem with the FA LD backlight which I guess makes sense as most users will leave it enabled for gaming without the FLD backlight impacting the tail end of transitions this combination of settings has a faster greater grade average of 4.5 5 milliseconds which is perfect for 200 Hertz however the dark level smearing is worse in this mode than if you leave the FLD backlight on with extreme overdrive it also has more overshoot in general although not to a severe extent so this pros and cons to each scenario I think most gamers will leave the dynamic backlight enabled for non HDR gaming in which case extreme is the better choice and 200 Hertz is borderline achievable for most users this will be fine and with this combination ghosting smearing or inverse ghosting isn't much of an issue despite being a VA panel input lag results were excellent I measured these numbers with the dynamic backlight and gsync enabled and with under 3.0 milliseconds of latency this monitor is in line with other gaming grade panels I've tested let's talk a bit about the backlight now there's 512 individual zones across this 35 inch panel which is enough for a solid HDR experience compared to the 27-inch HDR monitors with 384 zones each zone is a bit larger with the ultra wide but this is mitigated by the use of VA technology instead of IPS haloing is still present but it's less noticeable when the monitor is viewed from in front it can look a bit worse than up angles due to the middling viewing angles of VI panels but in most use cases the FAL D backlight works better here than in the PG 27 new q2 do hire a native contrast for gaming and video playback in almost all scenarios it's impossible to notice the FLD backlight in action especially when set to the fastest mode which is lightning quick however it's a mixed bag for productivity when viewing large areas of solid colors you can often spot halo against the white mouse cursor moves around my recommendation is to leave the backlight enabled for SDR gaming and general usage unless the haloing bothers you in which case you should disable it for productivity work the HDR experience from this monitor is outstanding as of today I'd say this monitor delivers the best HDR experience of any monitor on the market including the older 27 inch 4k panels it's not as good as modern TVs which have the benefit of more mature HDR technology but for monitors this is as good as it gets first up is the checklist every box is ticked here so it's a true HDR panel the color space is wider than SDR with 90% DCI p3 coverage in my testing it was a little under this but close enough brightness it's over 1000 its peak and of course we have the high zone can't F Ald backlight which provides much better contrast than SDR monitors digging a little deeper on the brightness behavior here is outstanding 814 it's sustained in a full white window is higher than the PG 27 YouTube and you get 1000 nits at 50% which then increases to around 1016 it's at 25% or lower this panel has a better and more powerful backlight they can be utilized up to 1000 nits in more conditions on top of 840 in its peak it is still capable of a 1109 white flash across the entire display which certainly is I scorching black levels push the tools at my disposal to the limit the best I can say here is that the contrast ratio is at least a hundred thousand to one in the HDR mode which again is higher than the chasing ultimate monitors that use IPS panels so combined with excellent brightness you get excellent contrast exactly the intention of HDR displays there are also far more HDR capable games these days compared to last year when I first checked out the PG 27 UQ both Windows 10 and the games themselves are slowly improving how they handle HDR and many titles look absolutely spectacular when viewed on a proper HDR monitor like this the experience is a lot better than the standard SDR in these games and is quite hard to capture on camera it's something you have to see for yourself especially beside an SDR display with better depth better contrast and better colors games look truly amazing on the PG 35 feet q how about SDR performance well brightness is capped at around 500 nits whether the FLD backlight is enabled or disabled with the dynamic backlight disabled native contrast is around 20 to 80 to 1 which is weak for a VA but typical for a you Optronics technology that said given their feldy backlight increases the contrast ratio to over 25,000 to one at 200 nits it's a bit of a non-issue the PG 35 VQ does come with some degree of factory calibration and a soos has done a lot of things right here out of the box there is an SDR mode gamut switch in the monitors OSD which defaults to srgb but can be switched to a wide gamut if you need it for DCI p3 work I'm not going to touch on DCI p3 performance here in detail but it's about as accurate as the srgb mode srgb performance is decent out of the box grayscale performance is really the only weak point and even then it's still very good for a gaming class display with the Delta II average of 2.37 and serviceable CCT and gamma performance the white point of around 6300 K is close to being accurate saturation performance is strong a delta a average of one point six two is close to the results as suits provides on their calibration sheet that comes in the box color checker results are also good with a delta average of one point seven six and again you get similar sub 2.0 Delta averages in the wide gamut mode when measuring against DCI p3 interestingly accuracy actually decreases if you disable the FLD backlight it seems the soos has optimized this monitor for FLD usage which makes sense given you probably should be using it in most circumstances Delta averages pushed to above 2.0 with default settings with the FLD backlight disabled it's a small change but it's one worth noting it is possible to correcting further with a software icc profile and some small OSD tweaks but i'm not going to discuss that in detail given Delta performance is already boy to point out of the box it's not quite at the level of a professional display but for gamers this sort of performance is excellent and isn't worth the hassle of software profiles uniformity with the FLD backlight enabled is excellent as well especially for a curved via ultra wide panel which tend to be weaker in this area Center performance is great with sub 2.0 Delta G's across pretty much the entire central zone it's only on the outer edges where things fall away somewhat which is typical for a backlight with 512 individual zones this is a fabulous results and gives a generally uniform image so that's all the performance data in obviously lots to talk about so time to run over just my general thoughts on this monitor first up I'm really happy to see that a number of issues that were present with the first generation of juicing ultimate displays like the Zeus PG 27 UQ have been resolved or somewhat mitigated with the PG 35 VQ not having to mess around with chroma subsampling at the highest refresh rate is a huge bonus and although you are restricted to 8-bit color depth above 144 Hertz even for HDR gaming this was basically a non-issue in my testing the use of VA technology along with FA LD backlight has reduced haloing it is still there but it's better than first gen III PS panels and it also brings with it better overall contrast and the fan while still present is less obnoxious than with the original monitors I was also pleased to see that 200 Hertz is a viable refresh rate for this panel response times vary depending on the configuration you go with but with the FA LD backlight enabled which I think most people opt to use at all times for gaming 200 Hertz is borderline doable without much dark level smearing with the FLD backlight disabled you can get well within the 200 Hertz barrier but with worst dark level smearing and overshoot so it just depends what you're after overall considering the known limitations of VA technology this is a better than expected result other areas of performance are also top-notch there's excellent input latency even in the HDR mode superb HDR brightness levels decent out of the box calibration with support for both srgb and wide gamut modes a great array of OST features very good uniformly and an adjustable stand when looking across all areas of this monitor it has to be the best I've tested and the best on the market today it combines a high resolution that's well suited to gaming with a top-end refresh rate and throws in true HDR performance into the mix with few issues and performance to back it up it's better than the 27 inch 4k 144 Hertz chasing ultimate monitors in my opinion although obviously it's a different format display so it won't appeals to everyone the only thing it's really missing is a 4k class resolution but to pay that with the rest of these specs is well beyond today's technology the main issue here is going to be the price this is a premium monitor and it shows with a premium price tag of what I'm assuming will be near the $3,000 mark certainly above 2500 US dollars going on UK pricing it will likely end up $1,000 more expensive than the 27 inch 4k juicing ultra monitors if not more which will keep this entirely in the range of buyers with deep pockets and high-end systems to match looking at the entire display ecosystem today with this monitor priced at say $3,000 I just feel it's not great value even though you're getting the best on the market it's an extremely high price tag so higher than for the same money you could get a very nice 55 inch LG c9 OLED TV plus a high refresh ultra wide gaming monitor to me I think a reasonable price would be fifteen hundred to two thousand US dollars which is obviously a huge price cut from what it will actually cost my reasoning here is that you can buy a monitor like the LG 34 GK 950 F right now for about $1,000 which offers eight 3440 by 1440 resolution at 144 Hertz without much HDR capabilities so I think adding five hundred to a thousand dollars to the price for a higher of fresh trade and proper HDR sounds fair unfortunately it will likely be three times the price when it hits the market in a few weeks and that will push it out of reach of even those with high-end twenty atti gaming rigs if you're buying a $3,000 monitor you're probably going to be the sort of person that has a spare twenty atti in case their current 20 80 TI dies you know the kind of person that would spend $3,000 without blinking an eye hopefully the price drops in the next few years for this technology because the tech here is super exciting and I'd love to see it in the hands of more enthusiasts at a more reasonable price that's it for this review of the seuss rog swift PG 35 v2 I'm also hoping to check out the ASA predator and AOC egg on when they hit the market but it sounds like they're a bit behind a Seuss in getting these panels out subscribe for more monitor content consider supporting us on patreon and I'll catch you in the next one