Gadgetory

welcome back the hardware unboxed I'm really excited about today's monitor review because the product I'm looking at falls into my favorite category and that is affordable but decent gaming monitors lots of companies try and target this market segment but it's difficult to come away with a winner but I think that LG might have just managed it with their 32 G case 650 F this monitor is 32 inches in size and packs a 1440p resolution with a 144 Hertz refresh rate so it falls into that golden zone for modern gaming but on top of that it uses VA technology which is popular with gamers and perhaps the best for this type of display and crucially it's flat which will please the curb display haters LG hasn't bothered with any HDR stuff here this is just your standard 1440p high refresh monitor and as a result its retailing right now for just 350 US dollars this doesn't make it the outright cheapest 1440p 144 Hertz display on the market you can often find others for around the 320 maybe 330 dollar mark like the vo-tech G + 27 DB and GM 32 DB but there is genuinely lots to like about the 32 GK 650 F which I'll get into in the performance section I've made a lot of LG monitor reviews over the past few months so if you've watched any of those this design will be very familiar to you the 32 GK 650f uses LG's current Ultra G's style which includes a simple v-shaped stand made from black plastic a basic front panel design with slim bezels on three sides and again a simple black plastic career which I think looks pretty good there's a few red highlights here giving the design a bit of additional interest but it's not overly game aesthetic and there's no RGB LEDs here which I kind of appreciate despite its simple design visually LG has included a lot of functionality the stand is fully height adjustable and also supports tilting swiveling and even pivoting so you can use this monitor in a portrait orientation the sturdiness of the stand is average but unlike a lot of other budget monitors in this class it actually supports a good range of motion the ports are easily accessible on the rear panel of though cable management can be a little tricky the main ports are DisplayPort and two HDMI ports plus a headphone jack no USB hub here although like the emission of RGB LEDs I'm fine with this Bank to say it costs the monitor does require an external power brick though LG's ultra gear line seems to mostly use directional toggles but controlling the on-screen menu which again is an advantage this monitor has over some alternatives and it's also quite a few handy features to be found within like a backlight strobing options some cheap features like crosshairs and black level adjustments for gamers this monitor has a great feature set headlined by a 2560 by 1440 resolution and a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hertz it also has free sync support with low framerate compensation and it's fully compatible with NVIDIA GPUs although free sync is disabled by default so make sure you enable it some of the absolute cheapest monitors with these specs do not include adaptive sync so having hit here is definitely welcome and basically a requirement I think for any modern gaming display response times for a VI panel are better than average as well there are several response time modes but the default fast option is the best with faster introducing a bit too much overshoot still with the fast mode we're looking at a greater great average response of 6.5 zero milliseconds which is faster than the required 6.9 for milliseconds to transition fully at a 144 Hertz refresh rate aside from a few particularly slow transitions this panel is properly capable of a 144 Hertz refresh around 80% of the time which is better than average for a VA display in fact when looking over the charts you can see that of the 32 inch 1440p 144 Hertz VA monitors I've reviewed and there have been a few it's quite a popular product type the 32 GK 650 F is the fastest the average response time for this type is 7.7 milliseconds so about 1 millisecond faster than expected it's a great result for a VA and puts it within IPS territory input lag is also decent coming in at a 3.3 milliseconds which is within the normal bracket we see for gaming - this gives an overall latency of below 10 milliseconds which is what I like to see LG does list a typical contrast ratio for this display of 3000 to 1 although in my testing I recorded more like 2400 to 1 which is a fair bit lower but not unusual for this sort of VA in fact with this result it still sits around its competitors which all slide in below 3000 as well it just seems this set of specs leads to a lower contrast at least the panel's being made with these specs have a lower contrast that said even at 2400 to one the contrast ratio is still at least double a typical IPS and will still give you the contrast benefits of this technology as for brightness 329th is fine for most viewers particularly as there's no HDR support here as for colors well this is just your standard srgb compliant panel so there's no wide gamut support here although that does make it easier to work with in most cases as outside of HDR modes your standard content is mastered for srgb so to avoid over saturation you do want an sRGB monitor default out-of-the-box performance well it is an amazing though and that's largely down to incorrect grayscale performance a white point of 78 40 K which blooms out to an average of 80 120 K over the grayscale range means this monitor ships with a cold blue tint some users like this but for it to be correct you actually want to warm a 6500 K white point so a grayscale Delta II average of five point zero five isn't surprising here it's a similar story with saturation performance with a cold white point you can see that the rest of the color points have been translated so everything has been dragged colder than expected we get a delta e average here of 3.26 with particularly poor blue cyan and magenta performance and you'll see similar numbers with the colorchecker test luckily the incorrect white point can be corrected through a few tweaks in the on-screen menu for my unit I said they use the color controls to read 50 green 43 and blue 34 only the brightness of 61 for approximately 200 nits these settings may not apply perfectly to every 32 GK 650 f-22 panel variants both should bring things a lot closer to accurate with these settings applied alone so no formal calibration just yet the CCT curve had drastically improved to an average of 68 55k which led to a grayscale delta-e average of just one point six six which is pretty damn accurate for just a few setting tweaks this helped out a lot with saturation leading to adults a average of one point three nine and colorchecker which improves to one point five three with averages below 2.0 across-the-board this sort of performance is pretty accurate from here you could go and perform a proper calibration which does tighten things up further it's it's even better at Gama and so on but for most users I think these basic tweaks will suffice especially if your model has shipped with a noticeable blue tint if you want my calibrated ICC profile as always that is provided for our patreon members lastly we have uniformity which as expected for a VA panel is a touch on the mediocre side the center channel is good enough but as you look to either edge there's a bit of deviance relative to the center nothing drastic it is somewhat noticeable but for gaming it's not a big deal and you won't get much better from a competing v8 monitor all up the 32 GK 650f is my new favorite affordable high refresh gaming monitor and that's not a crown that I give out lightly or easily I've spoken before about how 1440p 144 Hertz is my favorite monitor hardware for gaming right now it's that great combination of resolution and refresh rate that's achievable with modern GPU tech and the 32 GK 650f delivers that with the best feature set at a great price previously I used to recommend monitors like the vo-tech GN 32 DB or the pic Co px 3 to 9 in this category the biotech option being curved in about $330 while the pic Co is flat and 350 dollars but with the 32 GK 650f also slotting in at $350 it simply offers more than the alternatives at that price and I'd have no hesitation in spending an extra twenty dollars if required specifically the 32 GK 650f has faster response times which reduces blur and provides a true 144 Hertz experience unlike the pic 0 which is advertised as 165 Hertz but really can't deliver 144 Hertz let alone that higher refresh rate it's still a large 32 inch VA panel with good contrast and a flat design which I feel is better than curved alternatives and it comes with a better stand that's height and pivot adjustable which neither biotech nor pixi offer crucially this monitor is also much easier to find as in via tech or pixel monitors which are only sold in North America it's not as good value here in Australia where it retails for $600 but it should still be a great option in a number of territories globally it's another perfect monitor but there's no glaring flaws here so when you're offering the best value proposition it's really hard not to recommend it if you are interested in this monitor or any of the others I've talked about in this review as always there are links to check current prices in the description below subscribe for more monitor reviews always getting new ones into tests consider supporting us on patreon for access to our discord community behind the scenes videos and more we'll catch you in the next one