The new OLED panel is from Chinese manufacturer TCL CSOT and is derived from technology first developed by now-defunct Japanese OLED specialist JOLED. We've already seen the first PC monitor based on the TCL CSOT's novel inkjet-print OLED panel from MSI. But now a new generation of the inkjet-based tech has already been announced and it's much brighter than before.

This panel tech from TCL CSOT is known as "inkjet" because the OLED material is "printed" onto the display substrate using a process akin to inkjet printers. That's in contrast to the evaporation and metal-mask deposition techniques typically used by Samsung and LG in existing OLED panels.

Showcased by Vincent from YouTube channel HDTV Test at the IFA 2026 event, the demo panel is a 27-inch 4K model running at 120 Hz. The first-generation inkjet OLED panel from TCL CSOT in the MSI Pro Max topped out at 300 nits for full-screen brightness. That's roughly on par with the latest QD-OLED and WOLED panels from Samsung and LG, which are capable of 300 nits and 335 nits respectively.

Samsung and LG's panel's have been getting incrementally brighter with each generation, with both lines of OLEDs kicking off at 250 nits full-screen when they debuted in PC monitors a few years ago. But that process has been pretty long winded. At 500 nits full-screen, this new inkjet OLED therefore promises the single biggest leap in OLED full-screen brightness since the technology has been widely adopted for PC monitors.

For now, the wider specifications of the panel and exactly how this increased brightness is achieved isn't clear. We know the DCI-P3 coverage is 99% and, like the first-gen inkjet panel, this new technology offers true RGB-stripe subpixel structure, which bodes well for both clarity and colour brightness and vibrancy.

Speaking of colour coverage, one other detail that TCL CSOT has revealed is that inkjet OLED has another advantage in terms of colour volume. Apparently, both Samsung QD-OLED and LG WOLED have limitations maintaining full colour volume or coverage at lower brightness levels.

However, the new inkjet panel is claimed to maintain its colour volume regardless of brightness. The extent to which this is visible to the naked eye, I cannot comment.

Anywho, I've long taken the view that the problem of OLED panel full-screen brightness can be considered "solved" once it hits 500 nits. I can't see that in terms of full-screen brightness as opposed to small detail brightness, where currently available OLED monitors are already capable of 1,500 nits, anything much above 500 nits would be needed. Indeed, 500 nits full screen is well above what most people would find comfortable, day-to-day.

Yes, there will always be niche scenarios, perhaps involving strong ambient light and specialist displays for use outdoors, where well beyond 500 nits is needed. But for conventional PC monitor use cases, I think 500 nits has got to be enough to ensure a vibrant experience.

So, if TCL CSOT's claims are accurate and we soon see retail monitors with that capability, that will be game over in a good way for OLED monitors. Well, barring ye olde burn-in.

There's no word on when we might see this new panel tech in a monitor you can actually buy. Likewise, it's unclear what formats it may become available beyond the 27-inch 4K demo panel shown as IFA 2026. Watch this space.

39 5K OLED Gaming Monitor AW3926QW: was $1999 now $1449.99
If you're a Prime member or using a free trial, this discount on Alienware's blissfully excessive 5K widescreen OLED monitor will be available to you. Of course, you're going to need a damn fine rig to make the most of this display, but if you managed to build something at the bleeding edge before prices skyrocketed, aren't you a lucky bean: this is for you.View Deal

The RAMpocalypse has kicked my ass: about 18 months ago I was preparing to upgrade from a long in the tooth 30 series gaming laptop to something with a whole lot more grunt. Alas, the kind of specs I want are nowadays extremely expensive and upgrading is no longer on the cards. My only consolation? I know I'm not alone.

But if you're not like me and happened to upgrade just before the AI-induced pandemonium was unleashed (or indeed, if you're just filthy rich) you might be in the market for a gaming monitor that can squeeze as much life out of your high end GPU as possible. For that, no mere 4K display will suffice: you probably want a 5K2K display, or in other words, a 5120x2160 display.

The 39-inch Alienware AW3926QW, while not without its launch controversies, is among the best you can get if an extreme excess of pixels is your bag. Complimenting that ultrawide resolution is:

• DisplayHDR True Black 500 (for bright brights and deep blacks: vibrancy, basically)
• A maximum 330Hz refresh rate (165Hz at the full 5K2K, or 330Hz at 2560x1080)
• RGB-stripe subpixels (basically eliminates some OLED bugbears, like blurry text)

Normally this monitor sells for AU$1,999. Indeed, that's what Dell is currently selling it for. But as part of Amazon Prime Big Deal Days you can get it for AU$1,449.99.

The catch? It's small: You'll need to be a Prime member, which means grabbing a free trial. Once that's activated, the AU$1,449.99 price will be available to you, with free shipping to boot.

I referred to launch controversies above, and while they're not insignificant, they're being fixed. As Jeremy Laird reported last week, the AW3926QW's habit of vignetting around the edges during gameplay—which can be blamed on its Convex Power Control tech—will be fixed in a forthcoming firmware update, as per Alienware's Kris Graft.

But that annoyance aside—and it is an annoyance, and if you buy this monitor tomorrow you may have to cope for a while—Jeremy's 89 / 100 review of this model was obviously well deserved. "This is the biggie, the 5K2K 39-inch ultrawide that everyone was going bananas for," he wrote. "Well, it's here in all its RGB-stripe, Tandem WOLED glory. And it's mostly incredible. But there is also some truth in those Reddit threads about the flaws."

The AW3926QW is of course a 39-inch 5K2K OLED masterpiece. It's huge, it has the pixel density of a 32-inch 4K panel and it comes with LG's very latest Tandem WOLED panel tech complete with RGB-stripe subpixels for purists like me. It's even relatively affordable (given its specs) at around $1,100.

There was just one problem. As I explained in my review, "during gaming the edges of the panel gradually dim ever so slightly," an issue generally referred to as "vignetting."

The reason why this happens comes down to a feature called CPC, or Convex Power Control. "It’s an LG Display WOLED panel protection feature and dims all four edges of the display to help prevent burn-in. As far as I am aware, it can't be toggled on or off on this Alienware, but if CPC is causing the vignette issue, it should be easy to address in a firmware update. Broadly, I don't think this is a hardware limitation, but a configuration issue," I explained.

Turns out that was correct, which is precisely why a fix is possible. During a recent AMA on Reddit held by Kris Graft, Alienware's monitor expert, the company revealed that a solution is in the works.

"We hear the feedback on uniformity and are actively testing a potential toggle that could give customers more control over uniformity. We want to make sure we understand the full customer experience implications before we enable anything. More to come soon," Graft said.

Graft appears to be saying that Alienware is planning a firmware update that will add a toggle for CPC in the AW3926QW OSD menu. The possible catch is what Graft was hinting at when he said, "We want to make sure we understand the full customer experience implications before we enable anything."

The implications here likely involve OLED burn-in and its increased likelihood with CPC disabled. I would guesstimate that the CPC feature exists to reduce brightness around the edges during gaming specifically to minimise the extent to which persistent in-game screen furniture and UI elements like status bars, minimaps and so on can be permanently burned into the panel after extended gameplay.

My slight fear is that if Alienware does introduce a toggle to for the CPC feature, it might have an impact on the panel's burn-in warranty. Maybe turning CPC off will void that warranty or maybe there will be a counter recording how many gaming hours with CPC toggled off have accrued, with a trigger point that eventually voids the warranty.

But that's speculation. We'll have to wait and see exactly how Alienware deals with this. For now, it's simply good news that the "vignette" problem has been recognised by Alienware and that it is working on a fix.

At Logitech's G Play event (featuring a Counter-Strike 2 tournament) in Warsaw earlier today, I spoke to Oscar Bell, AKA 'Azuwu', and Simon Boije, AKA 'yxngstxr'. Both currently play for Luminosity, a team that particularly tugs at my CS2 heart strings given it was very big circa 2016 when I was still lapping up the tailwinds of CS:GO novelty.

Regarding refresh rates, Azuwu tells me: "When I had 240 at home, I didn't even really notice 360. But now I'm 360 I can't go back down, you know, I feel it a lot. So I think 360, 400, 600 are all pretty similar... I'd say 400 is a nice spot and 600 is extra nice. But anyway, in a lot of PCs, you won't hit 600 frames."

And Yxngstxr says: "I think it's kind of a placebo, personal thing, you know? Because on most PCs you rarely get 600 fps, right?... 600 Hz with like 300 fps, it doesn't even matter."

I run CS2 on a pretty high-end rig—featuring a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and RX 9070 XT—and I can't usually hit 600 fps in CS2, even at 1280 x 960 or 1080p. Usually I'm hovering around the 500 mark.

One thing that does make a difference, according to Yxngstxr, is Zowie's DyAc anti-ghosting tech. The team all uses Zowie monitors, as do many other pro players, and it's in part because of this.

"The edge of the players," Yxngstxr says, "get more noticeable."

I noticed the same when I tested the 600 Hz Zowie XL2586X+. The tech is a proprietary kind of backlight strobing that helps improve motion clarity. For most uses it's overkill, but if you're a pro gamer I can see why it would be useful.

However, regarding this DyAc tech, Azuwu says, "I have it on, but it's hard to tell."

If there's one thing we all seemed to agree on, in so many words, it's that when you get up to these ultra-fast refresh rates, the returns start to become diminishing. But given what both pro players said, I don't think I was wrong when I said 360 Hz is the sweet spot for competitive FPS.

According to a new report, it might just be part of the solution, at least. According to Taiwanese outlet Economic Daily, Intel is partnering with display specialist AU Optronics on a new approach to embedding electronics into microLED glass substrates.

The report says that has obtained a US patent for "IC Package with Micro LEDs" which involves, "embedding at least part of a semiconductor chip within a glass substrate." The implication of this is that the display control chip would be integrated into the microLED panel itself, which could have have both packaging and cost advantages.

More broadly, Intel probably wouldn't be pushing into a new display technology unless it foresaw the sort of large volumes that come with mainstream adoption, which again implies a more affordable price point. Currently microLED displays cost tens of thousands of dollars and upwards, preventing them from entering the consumer market.

Economic Daily also says that AUO's chairman Peng Shuanglang has indicated that the company is increasing its range of microLED products this year as it pushes to make the technology more accessible.

As for why you should care about any of this, well, microLED is widely expected to be both the next big thing in display tech and, just maybe, the actual end game in display tech. In many ways, microLED is a lot like OLED. In both cases, each pixel and indeed each subpixel is an individual addressable light source, making for perfect lighting control.

Like OLED, microLED is super fast, too. It differs from OLED in a few key areas. First, it's less prone to degradation, so the whole OLED burn-in thing would be a thing of the past. MicroLED is also much brighter and capable of producing a wider range of colours.

Put those factors together and you have a flat panel tech that solves all the problems of OLED and promises pretty much the perfect flat-panel solution. As for why it has yet to take over from OLED, there are two main issues. The first is the cost issue mentioned above. It's super expensive.

The other problem is pixel density. Right now, the smallest 4K microLED panels are about 100 inches across. Not exactly ideal for PC monitors.

Anyway, it's worth noting that we have somewhat been here before. Years ago, Intel dabbled with LCOS or liquid crystal on silicon tech, creating a line of LCOS chips for projectors. That experiment got cancelled pretty quickly.

Moreover, Intel's track record for product lines that are outside its CPU wheelhouse isn't great. Whether it health diagnostic chips or GPUs, when Intel does something other than a CPU, it doesn't tend to go well. But here's hoping its foray into microLED goes better. We'd certainly love to see microLED in affordable PC monitors, that's for sure.

Until now, every OLED gaming monitor we've reviewed has been rated at 0.03 ms for pixel response. Well, not any more ladies and germs. Give it up for the new Sony Inzone M10S II, which clocks in at a mere 0.02 ms.

Is it a bit of a stretch to think the human eye can tell the difference between three one-hundred-thousandths of a second and two one-hundred-thousandths—or 30 microseconds and 20 microseconds, if you prefer. But the point here is what that pixel response spec hints at.

The Sony Inzone M10S II is unambiguously, unashamedly, unapologetically aimed at fast-paced gaming and esports. Indeed, this monitor has been developed with the help of pro esports outfit, Fnatic.

Along with the almost pointlessly fast pixel response, you get a 1440p native resolution and 540 Hz refresh. Oh, and we're talking 27 inches and an LG WOLED panel. That basic recipe of 27-inch 1440p OLED is carried over from the first generation Sony Inzone M10S, but this time Sony is using the latest LG Tandem WOLED panel generation.

The most obvious upside of that panel involves brightness. Sony has this model pegged at 1,500 nits peak HDR and 335 nits full-screen brightness. Those numbers are about as good as gaming OLEDs get, today.

They also indicate that this is an RGWB panel rather than one with the so-called pure RGB-stripe subpixel structure we've seen monitors like the Alienware AW3926QW and Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM. We'll come back to the implications of that in a bit.

Further gaming centric features include the image processing trifecta of dual-mode support, motion blur reduction and anti VRR flicker tech. The dual-mode options include both 24.5-inch modes and a 720 Hz 720p mode.

Actually, even the stand has been optimised for gaming. For starters, the round base is absolutely tiny. You might think that makes for an unstable monitor. But provided you place it on a flat, hard surface, it's rock solid, while leaving minimising intrusion into your desk space. In classic Sony style, it also looks and feels expensive in a way that very few monitors manage.

What's more, the tilt adjustment allows for 35 degrees of upwards movement. Some pro gamers like to tilt their monitors aggressively and then shove their faces right into the panel. If that's something you want to emulate, well, the Sony Inzone M10S II will cater for that right out of the box. You won't need to buy an aftermarket VESA stand.

Connectivity, meanwhile, includes HDMI and DisplayPort, but there's no USB-C for single-cable connectivity to a laptop. Obviously, this is an out-and-out gaming panel, so USB-C connectivity isn't automatically a high priority. But at this price point, it seems like something of an omission.

Oh, yeah, I hadn't mentioned the price, had I? The Sony Inzone M10S II weighs in at $1,099 in the USA and £1,199 in the UK. Yup, that's mega money and it emphasises just what a premium has been placed on achieving the 540 Hz and 0.02 ms speed.

Both of those fancy RGB-stripe OLEDs I mentioned earlier from Alienware and Asus can be had for similar money. One is a 39-inch 5K2K panel, the other a 32-inch 4K model. In short, you are paying dearly for the Sony Inzone M10S II's refresh rate and response performance.

Just to round everything out before we get to what this thing actually looks like, Sony has gone for a matte anti-glare coating as opposed to glossy. Again, this arguably squares with the tight focus on esports over optimising for the last word in contrast and HDR image quality. Finally, the panel is covered by a three-year warranty, including OLED burn-in.

On, then, to the actual performance. Out of the box and the first thing you notice is that matte anti-glare coating. By today's standards, it's properly matte as opposed to the semi-glossy coating that most "matte" panels have these days.

That has an immediate impact on the look of the display. Subjectively, it's not as contrasty and saturated as most OLED monitors. The upside is that reflections are suppressed really well, especially in bright ambient light. But it does slightly undermine the immediate impact of an OLED monitor.

The RGWB subpixel structure feeds into that somewhat. This is certainly a very bright monitor for an OLED as the specs imply. But as with all RGWB panels, the colour saturation isn't all that great, so it doesn't seem quite as vibrant as a monitor using Samsung's QD-OLED tech or arguably even the technically less-bright alternative LG Tandem WOLED panel tech with the RGB-stripe structure.

But the speed, there's absolutely no problem with the speed. I recently reviewed LG's new 1,000 Hz IPS monitor, the 1080p one with the clunky pixel density but mega low latency. For motion sharpness, this 540 Hz OLED frankly tears it a new one. This monitor has the best motion clarity I have ever seen, it's absolutely fantastic.

What's more, as I found with that LG monitor, actually achieving the in-game frame rates required to saturate 1,000 Hz refresh isn't easy. I couldn't get near that in Counter-Strike 2, for instance. So, in terms of latency, you could argue that going beyond the 540 Hz offered by this Sony panel is pretty pointless. Well, it is until AMD or Intel release a CPU that'll do 1,000 Hz in most esports titles without the need for liquid nitrogen cooling.

Anywho, the Sony Inzone M10S II is just lightning quick, both in terms of pixel response and latency. It also offers 24.5-inch modes in both native 2,368-by-1,332 pixel and 1080p resolutions. And because this is an OLED, the unused area of the panel around the 24.5-inch image is completely off, not bleeding light in a distracting fashion.

All of that means I'd take this 540 Hz Sony over the 1,000 Hz LG all day long for esports, it's absolutely fantastic for my esports distraction of choice, Counter-Strike 2, let alone general gaming and computing. And I think even pro gamers would, too. Partly that's because of the real-world limitations around frame rates I just mentioned. But it's also because the image quality on offer here is so much better.

When it comes to spotting enemies, motion clarity and contrast matter and this Sony absolutely owns the LG IPS monitor. The inclusion of the 24.5-inch dual-mode options only makes the serious esports proposition even stronger.

On that note, Sony has included a couple of FPS Pro presets which accentuate the contrast even further and make red tones more vibrant. The latter is handy in games like Valorant where enemies are outlined with a bright red border.

To cover off a few of the other gaming-centric features, what about the Motion Blur Reduction and anti-VRR Flicker modes? The former does an impressive job of effectively making 270 Hz look about as clear as 540 Hz.

It basically works by inserting a black frame in between each rendered frame, effectively halving the refresh rate from 540 Hz to 270 Hz. It does reduce brightness noticeably, but not catastrophically. I think for esports titles where you're not getting anywhere near 500-plus fps, it could come in handy for maximising motion clarity.

As for the anti-VRR Flicker tech, well, that was a bit of an odd one, albeit in a positive way. No matter what game I loaded and regardless of both in-game and monitor settings, I couldn't detect any VRR flicker at all on this monitor. Where it gets odd is that this was true whether or not I had the anti-VRR Flicker feature enabled or not.

Whatever, the Sony Inzone M10S II is unquestionably an outstanding gaming monitor. Not only is it dramatically more versatile for all kinds of gaming than a 25-inch 1080p monitor thanks to its larger 27-inch panel and half-decent 1440p pixel density. I think it's actually preferable for the ultra-narrow remit of really serious esports, too. It has better motion clarity, far superior contrast and the real-world latency gap is probably negligible.

Of course, in a broader gaming and computing remit, the Sony Inzone M10S II doesn't look like a great deal. Not when you can get a really nice 32-inch 4K OLED for far less money and a fabulous 39-inch 5K2K for the same investment. But that obvious caveat aside, and assuming you are okay with a matte as opposed to glossy OLED, this is one of if not the best ultra-high-refresh gaming monitors currently available. It's really, really, super.

1,000 Hz. That's 1,000 frames. Every. Single. Second. Welcome to the wild world of the new LG UltraGear 25G590B, the first ever 1,000 Hz gaming monitor.

Well, it's the first gaming monitor capable of 1,000 Hz at full 1080p resolution, as opposed to displays hitting that kind of refresh rate at, say, 720p. The tempting immediate reaction, of course, is to doubt the relevance and benefit of something so fast.

I mean, at what point do diminishing returns kick in with this refresh rate stuff? You could argue that anything above 144 Hz is overkill for most gamers. That was a common view just a couple of years ago. And it's certainly true that 144 Hz is enough for very smooth visuals and a good sense of immediacy and response.

But as the frame-rate ante has been upped in recent years, to 240 Hz, 260 Hz, 480 Hz and well beyond, that narrative has shifted. In fact, our resident competitive shooter, Jacob, is adamant that 360 Hz is the current sweetspot. Keen esports gamers, it turns out, really can feel the difference, especially in terms of latency, as the refresh rates ramp up. And so here we are in 2026, somewhat inevitably, with LG bursting through the 1,000 Hz barrier.

Aside from the headline refresh rate—the UltraGear 25G590B is actually capable of 1,100 Hz using an "overclock" mode—many of the rest of the spec list is, predictably, pretty pedestrian. That goes with the territory with this type of monitor.

So, we're talking 25-inch panel size and IPS technology. Brightness comes in at 400 nits, contrast is a mere 1,000 to 1 and there's only the most basic DisplayHDR 400 certification. So, this panel will decode an HDR signal, but it can't really render HDR visuals.

Again, all of that is expected in this class of gaming panel. It's not about high-DPI visuals or OLED-style per-pixel lighting. It's all about speed. Actually, it's primarily about one aspect of speed: latency. The other major metric of speed, pixel response, isn't such an obvious win for theUltraGear 25G590B.

LG has rated it at 1 ms for the most often quoted grey-to-grey transition. That's pretty quick for an IPS monitor, but not actually exceptional. Not when there are 0.5 ms LCD-based monitor models knocking around, never mind the OLED crew which all clock in at a mere 0.03 ms.

That's something of a surprise given the absolutely cutting-edge refresh rate. On paper, the 1 ms response perfectly matches the 1,000 Hz refresh. But then measures of pixel speed are infamously mercurial. There isn't actually an enforced, or even widely agreed upon metric for pixel response in the monitor industry. So, response ratings are really only ever a rough guide.

Anyway, connectivity includes two HDMI ports and a single DisplayPort input. Only the DisplayPort interface is capable of the full 1,000 Hz refresh and it's critical to note that you need a GPU that supports the latest Displayport 2.1 standard. DisplayPort 1.4 is only good for 850 Hz at 1080p.

In practice, that means for the full 1,000 Hz you need AMD GPUs from the Radeon RX 7000 series of 2022 onwards, while in Nvidia terms only the latest RTX 50-series chips will do. There are other system spec and configuration issues that you'll also want to consider if you're thinking about dropping a grand on a monitor this fast. But hold that thought, we'll come back to it.

Just to round out the speeds and feeds, further features include FreeSync and G-Sync support, Motion Blur Reduction Tech and small dash of configurable RGB lighting via the logo on the rear of the chassis. It's all housed in a pretty anonymous looking dark grey plastic chassis with fairly chunky bezels. But you do get a full complement of adjustment, including tilt, height, swivel and a touch of pivot, so it's easy to get this display set up just so.

All of which brings us to the most important question of the day. What is a 1,000 Hz monitor actually like to game with? It turns out, that poses quite the conundrum. Initially, it's easy enough to get a basic impression of the impact of 1,000 Hz on motion clarity. All you need do is load up something like UFO Test and watch those little flying saucers zip by at multiple different refresh rates.

And you know what? The benefits in terms of motion clarity do keep on coming, even as you climb beyond 500 Hz. Yup, 1,000 Hz is noticeably better, at least in that narrow, rather synthetic metric, when it comes to clarity.

But what about in-game motion clarity and, perhaps more importantly, latency? That's where the trouble comes. Because it's quite hard to achieve the 1,000 fps required to saturate the 1,000 Hz refresh actually in a game.

By way of example you cannot, to the best of my knowledge, achieve it in Counter-Strike 2, the CPU ends up bottlenecking performance long before that. Well, strictly speaking you can get that high, somebody managed 1,300 fps, but that was with an Intel Core i9 chip overclocked to 8 GHz courtesy of liquid nitrogen. Not exactly practical.

Something like an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is probably the fastest stock-clocked CPU for running Counter-Strike. And that's good for about 600-odd fps at medium 1080p settings. I was getting in the high 400s with an Intel 14th Gen Core i9-based rig. So, yeah Counter-Strike 2 wasn't cutting it.

But there are other games which run fast. And that's how I found myself installing Valorant. The things I do for you people. But even Valorant wasn't giving me 1,000fps, more like 500 to 800 fps depending on how much is going on, on screen.

Actually, using this monitor raises a whole lot of questions about your rig and game engine setup. For instance, you want a mouse with a fast polling rate, but not too fast. An 8,000 Hz polling rate just saturates the CPU with hardware interrupts to no benefit.

Suddenly, everything from CPU cooling and memory timings, to enabling features like Nvidia Reflex become critical to eeking out every frame and minimising latency. Actually seeing the full 1,000 Hz in-game, though? That is far from straight forward even with titles where it may be theoretically possible.

With those provisos noted, what is 1,000 fps gaming, or as close as I could get to it, like? The immediate impression isn't exactly mind blowing. It doesn't look dramatically clearer or feel dramatically more responsive than, say, a 480 Hz panel.

But there is a subtle difference and the more you game, the more you key into it. I'm not sure the motion clarity advantage, such that it is, is really a major factor in that, however. Maybe a 1,000 Hz OLED panel would be different. But I think in subjective terms, motion clarity above 500 Hz on an LCD is likely a case of diminishing returns.

I think that applies doubly to a monitor like this that uses an IPS panel. It's a legitimate question to ask if the liquid crystals in this monitor are actually fast enough to fully deliver on the 1,000 Hz promise in terms of pixel response. Like I said, LCD response specs should be viewed with some healthy scepticism. And this monitor doesn't even claim to have the fastest IPS panel out there.

For the record, I'm not much of a fan of the Motion Blur Reduction feature, either, which is basically a backlight strobing solution. It dims the brightness and doesn't give much visible benefit at higher refresh rates. It is a bit more impressive at lower refresh rates, but then running at 120 Hz is not why you just spent so much money on this monitor.

The latency, however, now that's a little different. The sheer speed and immediacy as you whip your mouse around to the next target definitely gets under your skin. The more you play, the more you feel hard-wired right into the game engine, any and all sense of disconnection falls away. It's pretty cool.

Reverting to a lower refresh rate makes that a touch more obvious. Put it this way, once you've played for a while on a monitor that can respond fast enough for a game engine knocking out 700, 800, 900 fps and beyond, a 360 Hz panel feels like a tiny bit of a retrograde step. Maybe, just maybe even a 500 Hz display, too.

All that said, I also don't want to overstate the upside. You'd readjust to that "sluggish" 500 Hz monitor pretty quickly. And we are talking about very marginal benefits at best. Ultimately, then, this is going to come down to how serious you are about competition in games and esports.

In part that's because this monitor is pretty rough for everything else. Once upon a time, widescreen 1080p-ish monitors like this felt huge and futuristic. Anyone who was around when the Dell 2405FPW launched in 2005 will remember how awesome that panel was. Well, 20-odd years later, a 1080p 25-inch monitor now looks small and very pixellated.

The colours are fine, ditto the viewing angles. But this monitor is $999 / £899 and at that price point, you have so very many options. Heck, the monumental new 39-inch Alienware 5K2K RGB-stripe OLED I reviewed recently isn't really much more expensive.

Of course, the LG UltraGear 25G590B is unambiguously targeted at a very narrow niche of the most serious and committed esports fans and pro players. A 39-inch ultrawide OLED really isn't relevant. On the other hand, a 27-inch 1440p OLED probably is. That would mean a bit of a compromise on frame rate, but also a monitor that's a much better all-rounder for both gaming and general computing.

Indeed, it's a little hard to understand just where the money is going with this 1,000 Hz LG. Peruse our best monitor deals page and you'll find high-refresh 25-inch 1080p IPS monitors from about $100. There's an Alienware model with 320 Hz refresh for just $199. Yes, this LG will need extra driver ICs, a custom TCON, that DisplayPort 2.1 interface, a quick backlight driver for the Motion Blur Reduction feature. But none of those are hugely costly.

Ultimately, then, there's a pretty big tax being applied here in return for being at the very cutting edge in terms of refresh rate. If you want the absolute last word in frame rates and low latency, this is unambiguously it for now. If you're a pro esports gamer, for instance, the broader context of the monitor market really doesn't matter. For everyone else, you have to think there's better value elsewhere.

Dual-mode is still not perfect in gaming monitors, but we are consistently getting the option for nearly no extra cost, and that is making it a mighty viable choice, especially if you are running a rig that can only sometimes run the native resolution.

The option to flit from 1080p at double the refresh rate for competitive or highly intensive games, and then back to 4K for lush sights or just a clean desktop in only a few seconds, and with native resolutions, makes so much sense to me. Koorui manages to offer both dual-mode and aggressive 4K pricing at the same time.

It's been more than a year since our review, but the Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG, which sits as our pick for the best budget 4K gaming monitor, is $100 more and offers almost identical specs. That's a few ticks in my book already.

But stats don't tell you absolutely everything; I've had this Koorui gaming monitor planted on my desk for a few weeks, and I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Features

In most of its basic specs, the Koorui G2741L fits the mould for a budget-oriented 4K gaming monitor. Koorui claims a 1 ms response time and 160 Hz refresh rate in 4K. It makes compromises where it needs to, being not massively bright and not super fast, but good enough in both categories to work just fine for 4K gaming. The 400 nits brightness (in HDR mode) is slightly above budget spec, though, which makes it bright enough for gaming beside a window.

The only place I might have expected even more compromises is in the size, perhaps going down to 24 inches, but then that's small enough that 4K likely isn't worth the price bump and performance hit—4K monitors smaller than 27 inches are quite rare for that reason. 27 inches is a sweet spot for dual-mode monitors, being big enough to get value out of the super high resolution, and small enough that 1080p doesn't feel like a massive hit.

It's super easy to set up too. The monitor comes in two parts, the panel and the stand, which clip together in mere moments. Despite this being very easy, it's not a weak stand, and my desk shaking does not cause anything to pop out of place.

You're getting two HDMI ports here, plus a DisplayPort port and an audio jack. that makes it a decent pick for a console and PC at the same time, or as a spare for your laptop when you need a second screen. You get no built-in speakers here or a USB port for charging, which is a slight shame but understandable given the cost.

The monitor itself can pivot 90 degrees to the left and right, making it a solid pick for both vertical and horizontal use. It can also tilt up to 25 degrees, and the stand holds it in place firmly.

Dual-mode is the standout feature here. You can swap from 4K to 1080p in just a few seconds with the button on the back. As it only has one button, you do have to scroll through menus, and I'd personally love a single button for activating dual-mode quickly, but it doesn't take too long to activate once you know where the button is.

Performance

Being an IPS panel, you're getting a strong viewing angle, good colours, and consistent performance. The HDR400 rating is pretty barebones, but in practice, it's punchy and feels rather bright. In fact, the monitor seemed rather stale without HDR on, and that's down to how day and night it feels. With 95% DCI-P3 colour coverage and 100% sRGB, its colour accuracy is lush for the price, though obviously it lacks the true blacks and vibrant colours of an OLED.

Though there are the typical 'not quite black' blacks of an IPS here, the contrast is strong, and made stronger thanks to the monitor's software. Mine needed very little tweaking out of the box, though I did up the contrast and brightness just a touch. I'll get into it more in the software section, but I'd advise not tweaking it too much, as it's pretty finely tuned already.

Generally speaking, using the desktop day-to-day is best in 4K, as it's not super intensive, but the smoothness of text and even just casual video really pop here. Then, picking between 4K and 1080p for gaming is largely reliant on whether or not your rig can actually handle it. In my RTX 4070 Super machine, I'd almost always opt for the higher resolution, occasionally with a helping hand from upscaling or frame gen. However, my RTX 2070 rig benefitted from being able to swap at a moment's notice. It is worth noting that 1440p is still a very solid resolution, especially at this panel size, as it still offers a solid pixel density. Therefore, there's a good reason to consider a monitor with a native 1440p output.

Koorui has gone for a matte anti-glare coating here, which makes it slightly more viable near a window letting in a lot of light, but glossy finishes tend to offer a clearer image.

Control looks phenomenal in 4K, its angular brutalist architecture contrasting against all the blood and moody lighting. Even without true blacks, the G2741L does a great job at contrasting blacks, reds and blues, with little clarity getting lost in high-contrast scenes. The RTX 2070 can handle it at 4K, though with lower graphical settings. That's the beauty of dual-mode, though; you can bump up the textures, get a higher FPS, or just get a higher refresh rate quickly by cutting the resolution by a quarter.

Dual-mode is still, however, in somewhat of an infancy stage. I find the Koorui's 1080p performance to be just fine in the majority of games, but there's a slight fringing and softness to text on the desktop that isn't quite as present in native 1080p gaming monitors. If I were purely going for 1080p, I'd be picking a dedicated, much cheaper 1080p gaming monitor instead. It's not quite a 'best of both worlds' situation, but it's the best of 4K at its price and pretty good 1080p. Though that's not quite as catchy.

For gaming, the monitor feels plenty snappy to me, with it being decently responsive. Naturally, IPS panels are more limited than say OLEDs in terms of response time, but I wouldn't call it slow.

Dual-mode does take a few seconds to swap over, though, and you may have to exit your game and go back in, but Windows swaps resolution without any prompting. Generally, it's not a major inconvenience to swap to 1080p when I want high frame rates in Fortnite and then swap to 4K for lush sights in Cyberpunk 2077's Night City.

Aesthetics

The Koorui is a gaming monitor, and its stand suggests as much. It's angular with red trimming, and not particularly subtle. However, with no RGB and no ugly branding slapped on the side, it looks pretty sweet to my eyes. Not understated but not loud either.

The bezels aren't super trim, but they don't distract from the gorgeous sights of 4K in between them, and the build quality is solid for the price too.

It does have a fairly wide panel and rather large base, which may make it struggle on smaller desks, but I'd wager smaller desks wouldn't be looking for 27 inches anyway. It has a VESA connector should you want to connect it to a monitor arm too.

Koorui does use a lot of plastic in the monitor, as you might expect from the price, but it doesn't feel flimsy, and it looks solid too.

Software

I suspect the OSD picks its size on the screen based on resolution, as it's oddly small in 4K. Not so small it's unusable, but certainly not as big and upfront as the 1080p version. Though it's easy to navigate, dual-mode takes a few more button clicks than I'd personally want.

You are getting a whole pile of fairly superfluous options in the OSD, like a crosshair mode that, well, adds a crosshair in the middle of the screen. Personally, this seems niche at best and distracting at worst, so I'd never use it.

You also get a DCR mode that automatically adjusts brightness and contrast based on what's on your screen. This is neat in principle but, in practice, it feels like the monitor is constantly adjusting brightness and contrast, which is just a little annoying. You get all the settings you would otherwise expect here, like brightness, contrast, an HDR game/movie mode, plus other tweaks like the overdrive mode, but it's plenty snappy, bright, and vibrant in HDR game mode, which is where I'd leave it. I mostly just used the software dual-mode, as it's not particularly laggy or hard to navigate.

Value

Though the MSRP is $350, the G2741L regularly hangs around the $250 to $300 mark. I look after our roundup of the best cheap gaming monitor deals every week, and this price tag puts it at around the same place as the MSI MAG 275UPD, which offers similar specs but a lower refresh rate.

It is around $100 more than the Acer Nitro VG270K L1, which is also a dual-mode 4K monitor, but the Acer panel offers a very limiting 72 Hz refresh rate in 4K. That's all to say that the G2741L is very competitively priced, hanging around the lowest-cost 4K panels right now.

If I were looking for a 4K monitor, this Koorui would no doubt be on my list. If I had exactly $250-$300, I can't think of anything I'd be picking over it.

But there's an elephant in the room here, and that's OLED. OLED gaming monitors have become such good value recently that budget 4K IPS panels are sitting around the budget OLED price point, and that opportunity cost is fierce. For instance, the gorgeous 1440p Alienware AW2726DM comes in at the same price point, and though its max refresh rate and resolution are lower, you are getting the true blacks of an OLED, plus super snappy response times too.

As is ever the case, the biggest problem with gaming monitors right now is that there are too many choices, but Koorui has successfully made that decision even harder.

As such, monitors are one of the few things I check over without rolling my eyes, and therefore, they're one of a handful of techie bits that actually excites me. But that doesn't mean even they can't improve; when I chatted to gaming monitor brand AOC a few months ago, even its designers are aware the software isn't up to snuff.

I've been testing out the Koorui G2741L, a dual mode 4K/1080p monitor, over the last few weeks, and all I can think is 'gosh, why aren't more companies doing dual mode,' and 'why aren't more companies doing dual mode better?'

The central argument for dual mode makes so much sense to me. When you want your games to look pretty, you swap to 4K at a lower refresh rate, and when you want something snappy and competitive, you drop it to 1080p with a much higher refresh rate. You can get dual mode monitors like this Acer Nitro 4K/1080p one for as cheap as $160, they're even pretty reasonably priced right now (even if the 4K refresh rate is a pretty tiny 72 Hz).

Sure, you can technically just swap the resolution of your monitor at any time, but dual mode gives you access to a max refresh rate that is above what you would get if you just turned down the resolution of a 4K monitor.

But dual mode monitors have a few problems. For one, the thing I spotted instantly with the Koorui is that the swap between 4K and 1080p is a tad slow. The swap happens with a physical button, and in the case of the Koorui, it's a series of physical buttons. These navigate through the monitor's built-in software to then switch modes. It also just takes a while to swap, and the more seconds it adds, the less convenient it feels.

Another problem with dual mode monitors is the added blur. 1080p on a dual mode monitor tends to look worse than 1080p on a 1080p native screen. The reason 4K dual mode monitors go down to 1080p is that dual mode traditionally reduces the resolution to a quarter while doubling the refresh rate (though some monitors now triple or quadruple the refresh rate).

Most gaming monitors seem to use some sort of interpolation algorithm. Our Jeremy said in his Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG review, "You wouldn't want to use this monitor's 1080p mode on the desktop. It's a little soft and blurry. However, in-game it actually works pretty well and is certainly preferable to 1080p interpolated in the normal fashion onto a 4K panel."

Gaming monitor companies do have the ability to make better dual mode monitors. The Alienware AW2725QF opts for a form of pixel doubling (doubling up pixels in both vertical and horizontal directions), getting you much closer to a 'native 1080p' resolution. This is called integer scaling.

So, right now, if you buy a dual mode monitor, you are likely making a compromise on the lower of the two resolutions. But even with that downside, I'd take a 4K desktop experience and 4K gaming in singleplayer games, then 1080p for competitive games over 4K for absolutely everything.

There's plenty of room for dual mode monitors to grow. Just look at how far OLEDs have come since their inception: Burn-in has become far less of a problem, and LG's latest RGB Stripe panel has effectively killed font fringing. Not only could interpolation algorithms get better, but integer scaling could become more commonplace with the growth of the dual mode market.

The same could be said for the process of actually swapping modes. The ability to swap between resolutions could benefit from being snappier and easier to access. I'd personally love a single button that makes the swap in just a moment. And I'd also love that the biggest downside of swapping to 1080p is simply the resolution, and no other artifacting or blur.

But even now, with its flaws, I quite like dual mode. 1080p for some gaming on a dual mode monitor, even with plain 'ol interpolation, works well enough, and 4K for a standard desktop experience isn't such a resource hog that I'd want 1080p for it anyway.

I particularly like the fact that the price point has become so good on dual mode monitors that it's almost just an added bonus, and not something you specifically pay more for. As even OLEDs are becoming downright reasonably priced, I'd love for dual mode to get the love it deserves. Now, a value-oriented dual mode OLED monitor with integer scaling and good software? That's the dream.

Once in a while, something comes along that recalibrates your expectations and also sort of ruins your enjoyment of what was once impressive. The Xgimi Titan Noir Max does just that. It makes mainstream projectors look positively pedestrian.

That's not to say it's perfect. There are a few niggles that take the triple-laser shine off this $5,000 beast, especially for gaming. But Xgimi's new big-screen beamer is an absolute stunner and deeply, deeply desirable.

The basics begin with triple-laser RGB technology that's good for an eye-popping 7,000 lumens. That's combined, inevitably, with DLP and pixel-shift tech to deliver full 4K resolution at 60 Hz, plus 1080p at up to 240 Hz. Running at the latter setting, Xgimi claims that the Titan Noir Max is good for just 1 ms of latency.

That makes it a pretty plausible proposition for online gaming and esports, at least in terms of response. The ergonomics of playing Counter-Strike on a projector might be pretty questionable, but in performance terms, well, the Titan Noir Max delivers the numbers.

If that's the broad brush of what the Xgimi Titan Noir Max offers, the details are arguably even tastier. Xgimi is using a new generation of DLP chip that enables improved native contrast. That's combined with a 50-laser light source and Dual Intelligent Iris technology to deliver 10,000:1 native contrast. Factor in other digital contrast enhancements and you're looking at 100,000:1 claimed dynamic contrast.

Then there are the optics. This thing has some very trick lens hardware. It's built around a 15-element lens system that's said to deliver consistent edge-to-edge focus. You also get very broad optical lens shift of 130% +/- vertical and 50% +/- horizontal. That gives this projector immense installation flexibility without the need to resort to digital keystone correction.

And you absolutely, positively don't want to use digital keystone correction on any projector. It does horrible things to pixel precision and in turn image sharpness. It's also worth noting that this is, essentially, a traditonal long-throw projector rather than one of those nifty short throw things that can sit right below your projection screen.

That said, it has 2x optical zoom and a throw ratio of between 0.98:1 and 2.0:1, so it's actually pretty configurable. It can create both a pretty large image at short distance and shrink the image from distance to fit your projection screen.

All of that is built into a beautifully lush looking alloy cube chassis that's presented in a nifty carry case and goes some way to justifying the hefty $5,999 MSRP. The real-world pricing of this projector is a bit more complicated than that on account of it being the subject of a Kickstarter campaign. But hold that thought, we'll come back to the value proposition later.

Connectivity includes three HDMI ports, LAN, both optical and 3.5mm audio, and Wi-Fi. Note that the latter doesn't indicate that this projector has built-in smart TV functionality. It does not. It's a pure projector and that's fine by us. Devices like Firesticks, after all, are so very affordable, if that's your use case.

Still, you do get a very slick remote control with, again, a lush metal chassis that lights up when you pick it up and allows access to the Xgimi's various menus and settings. And, boy, are there a lot of settings.

That's immediately obvious as soon as you fire the Titan Noir Max up. After choosing your language upon initial boot, the system goes through an automated setup and focus routine, powered by its triple-sensor TOF, which among other things detects the range to your projection surface and automatically focuses the image and optimises framing and geometry.

In testing, I found the auto-focus worked really well, but the rest of the automated setup is more problematic. For starters, the automated digital keystone is on by default. Especially in a computing context, that's a bad idea. The Titan also failed to frame the image correctly on my projection screen, albeit it's not absolutely clear to what extent the automated features are supposed to be capable of that.

Whatever, that's not really a negative given how excellent the manual lens shift functionality works. Lens shift, for the uninitiated, allows the image position to be adjusted without compromising geometry. In other words, it means you don't have to be as precise in terms of physically positioning this projector to achieve an image that lines up with your projection surface perfectly.

Not only does the Titan have a really wide range of adjustment, it also provides a grid pattern that makes it super easy to perfectly align the image. Slightly less user friendly is the rest of the settings menu. Part of the problem is that there are just so many options, whether that's features like so-called AI-enhanced contrast, iris aperture settings, colour spaces, and much, much more.

It's definitely a little bit more difficult than it should be to ensure whether features like digital keystone are enabled or not. To me it's also a bit of a worry that there are no controls on the chassis save for a power button. Lose that remote control and you really are in trouble. Though I suppose you could say the same of most TVs.

Anywho, this is a complex device and I've barely touched on a whole range of further features and functionality. There's the Harmon-Kardon audio, which produces pretty decent sound in a pinch when you don't have access to some speakers, for instance. Or the broad HDR support including Dolby Vision, the MediaTek image enhancing chip or even Xgimi's own X-Vision chip that powers the AI contrast capability, known as Dynamic Black Level Enhancement.

But let's get to what really matters, namely how good this projector actually looks. Xgimi has clearly configured Titan Noir Max projector to pop from the get go because the dynamic iris functionality is enabled by default and hence maximum brightness is essentially toggled when hooked up to a PC. And it is really, really eye poppingly bright.

In practice, the sustained brightness capability is actually 5,000 lumens. The 7,000 figure is something that can only be sustained for short periods. But, seriously people, 5,000 lumens is still awfully, awfully bright. Happily, the Titan Noir Max has such fantastic native contrast, that doesn't translate into washed out black tones.

The caveat here is that this thing is so bright, light reflecting back onto the screen from the general surroundings is an issue. If you have a dedicated black-out cinema room with low reflectivity walls, that's not a problem. But in a regular room with white walls, it's an issue.

Still, this is one heck of a bright projector and that means it works better in the daytime than dimmer alternatives, though I personally don't think any projector looks great when there's lots of ambient light around. At night, well, you can adjust the brightness to suit.

I won't get too bogged down into the movie watching experience. It's frankly stellar once you've got everything setup correctly, albeit I wasn't quite able to achieve a colour balance I was completely happy with, no matter what colour space or colour mode I chose.

And you do need to dig down into the settings to get a good result because there's far too much image processing on by default in the non-gaming modes. The MEMC (Motion Estimation, Motion Compensation) motion smoothing feature is on by default in most modes, and it looks like absolute crap.

For gaming, all that nonsense is mercifully disabled to achieve the lowest possible latency and, indeed, the very last word in colour calibration is likewise less critical. That said, most of the colour options while running in Game Mode are atrocious, even for gaming. After a bit of a panic, I eventually discovered that, for whatever reason, the only colour space in Game Mode that gives decent results is Rec.709.

That's a relief because you absolutely want to use Game Mode to game. There's noticeable latency in all the other modes, even the pared-back Filmaker Mode that supposedly disables all the image processing to "faithfully convey the film director's creative intent."

That initial caveat aside, gaming at 4K on the Xgimi Titan Noir Max is to die for. So many projectors look a bit weedy and washed out when playing games. Not this beast. It's so bright, the desert sun in Cyberpunk 2077 is actually kind of painful when you point your mouse at it.

The detail and precision thanks to the true 4K resolution is fantastic, too. Just to put this into context, a lot of digital cinema projectors are still 2K, so you're getting a far sharper image with this projector than you often do at the cinema. Of course, 4K support is pretty commonplace these days, so that's not unique to the projector by any means. But the high-quality optics make for an exceptionally sharp image thanks to the precision and consistency of the focus across the screen. It's pretty special.

At this point, so far so good. This is the best gaming experience I've had on a projector. But here come the caveats. First, the variable refresh rate support is problematic. Enabling VRR at 4K results in the image being downscaled to 1080p. The game itself is still running at 4K with all the GPU load that implies, and your PC will still be outputting at 4K. But the projector is downscaling the image. And that's pretty obvious. Long story short, you don't get true 4K with VRR enabled.

I assume this is related to the fact that, as with most 4K projectors, the Titan Noir Max uses a 1080p DLP chip to create a 1080p image that shifts the image four times per frame, very quickly, to achieve 4K. Doing that fast enough to make VRR viable at 4K is perhaps too much to ask, given the DLP chip is actually generating four different images for each rendered frame.

The 1080p modes are using the DLP chip at its native resolution, of course. So, there's no problem running VRR at 1080p 240 Hz. And, really, there's still decent image detail at 1080p. Like I said, a lot of commercial cinemas are still running 2K projectors today. Oh, and I found that there's relatively little visible rainbow effect in any mode, even without Xgimi's anti-RBE technology enabled.

All of which means it's hard to gauge the Xgimi Titan Noir Max as a gaming display. It has an MSRP of $5,999 which probably makes it irrelevant to nearly all gamers. It can currently be had for $4,999 and it was available to early adopters on Kickstarter for $2,999, though that early tranche of units is sold out. There are cheaper versions of the Titan Noir series available, too, starting from $3,999. But even that is a hill of money.

The things that the Titan Noir Max is really good at, aside from the sheer brightness, like achieving near perfect focus and geometry with absolute ease are certainly impressive. But are they worth paying thousands more for in a gaming context? I'm not so sure.

But, in all honesty, one of Xgimi's own cheaper projectors will almost certainly make more sense. The Xgimi Horizon 20, for instance, goes for $1,559, is a full 4K model with optical lens shift and 3,200 lumens and offers the same 240 Hz, 1 ms 1080p gaming mode. Indeed, the Horizon 20 is one of the cheapest 4K projectors currently available with lens shift and the projector I'd recommend to pretty much any mere mortal, even before seeing the new Titan Noir Max.

Money no object, then, the Xgimi Titan Noir Max is a stunning piece of engineering. It really is. But in the real world where money does actually matter, it's almost certainly overkill for gaming.

We’ve been reviewing some silly-priced gaming monitors in recent times but, some of the latest-and-greatest models wield premium features that are unnecessary for many buyers. Gigabyte’s GO27Q24A strives to keep things simple by stripping-away some of the less-universally popular, expensive technologies to produce a spartan gaming monitor that focuses on the category’s most-important facets, to keep the price down. Gigabyte has successfully done this before using WOLED and Tandem OLED panels in the same range, so how will this QD-OLED model fare?

Assembling the Gigabyte GO27Q24A is simple: the stem clips to the screen and the stand uses a single thumbscrew to attach to the stem without any tools being needed.

The stand is the same, solid, small-footprint unit that Gigabyte’s premium monitors use and it lets competitive types sit right up close to the screen. The stem is also the same seen on its superior siblings and affords a generous degree of manipulation to get the screen sitting just so: there’s -5°~+21° tilt, ±15° swivel and 90° pivot. There’s also 13 cm of height adjustment. Impressive.

All that comes in the box is a cable-tidy clip that attaches to the stem, and a DisplayPort cable (I rather feel an HDMI cable would be more universally useful). Still, you don’t actually need many cables as there aren’t many places to stick ’em—there are just two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort 1.4 port and a headphone jack. Forget your USB-C, KVM hub and optical ports. There’s also no RGB. We’re on a cost-saving mission, here.

Once up and running, you’re presented with a 27-inch, 1440p Windows Desktop that offers plenty of real-estate for work, but displays text that’s a smidge spidery for all-day office use in this day and age—people who often squint at spreadsheets would be better served elsewhere. But, this monitor isn’t for them.

It’s a Samsung QD-OLED panel (likely Gen 3) which has the usual, impressive-sounding 0.03ms pixel response time and 1:1,500,000 contrast ratio. It also displays 99 percent of the tricky DCI-P3 colour space (so pernickety designer-types will warm to its colour accuracy). However, despite its support for HDR10, the (understated) standout spec is its peak fullscreen brightness of just 200 nits. In a market where everyone (not least Gigabyte) is yelling about their 1,000+ nit brightness, that’s unusually very low (for a QD-OLED panel especially) and likely related to where many of the production costs have been reduced. But, how does it actually perform when gaming?

If you don’t regularly look at super-premium gaming monitors, you could well be wondering where the limitations are. Contrast is excellent, colours are vibrant and, in HDR mode, both colourful and monochromatic transitions and gradients are smooth and step-free. The lack of peak brightness means HDR can be kept active all the time without melting your eyes. It generally does a good job of displaying bright and dark areas of content simultaneously and details still get revealed in darker areas (making it hard for enemies to jump out of shadows) but details can get lost in brighter highlights (not unlike many premium monitors, frankly).

Gigabyte veneers the screen with a semi-gloss, anti-reflective coating which, in some scenarios, does a physics-defeating job at eliminating reflections. However, when viewing dark content, or when you’re in a bright environment, it can still transform into a black mirror.

Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium technologies are present to help prevent image tearing, and VRR is present to stop brightness flickering. Gigabyte’s also states that its Ultra Clear motion-smoothness technology (black-frame insertion) will be present in a future firmware update, but we’ve heard that one before.

The GO27Q24A also has a fast (0.03 ms stated grey-to-grey) pixel response time and this marries with a 240 Hz refresh rate to keep very-fast-moving objects looking smooth, crisp and clear to the point where only elite-level eSports players might grumble.

Ultimately, it functions very well as a gaming monitor. The HDR peak brightness of 400 nits means the in-your-face, potentially eye-piercing impact of premium models is missing and technical, true-black performance is only very good rather than outstanding (a black screen can feel slightly washed out), but most gamers will care more about the excellent colour vibrancy, contrast and speed on offer.

Gigabyte packs in most of its premium gaming enhancements too. They’re activated by a joystick button at the rear (on the right) of the screen. Their degrees of usefulness will depend on the proclivities of each user and most detrimentally affect overall image quality in some way.

The AI Black Equalizer destroys contrast (to selectable degrees) by brightening dark areas to prevent enemies hiding in very dark shadows. Super Resolution enhances details in areas of uniform colour to make objects look bad but harder to miss.

Game Info features include adding an on-screen timer that counts up or down. You can add on-screen crosshairs of various designs and offset them from the middle of the screen if necessary. These can be useful when playing CoD in Hardcore mode. Also, unlike (for example) MSI, the crosshair won’t move around the screen every time you move the joystick button.

Night Vision turns the screen green for those who like to LARP as a Navy SEAL super soldier. Flash Dimming helps prevent flashbangs acting like in real-life, while Eagle Eye magnifies the middle of the screen like a sniper scope. I’ve found the latter to be unusably poor in past iterations, but the new implementation (which features a round-shaped ‘optic) feels increasingly like an unfair advantage. Still, it’s still some way off being a hacker tool.

Many of these settings can be activated using Gigabyte’s ‘Tactical Switch’ which sits just below the joystick button. However, the primary function of this is to transform the screen into a more competitive FPS-display. Using the menu, you can change the settings with one press to: 1920 x 1080 (16:9); 1280 x 960 (4:3); 1024 x 768 (4:3); or 1280 x 1024 (5:4) while (potentially) dropping the display-size down to 24 inches. This suits competitive eSports players who sit close to the monitor, want low resolutions for easier headshots and who don’t want to be distracted in their peripheral vision. Clicking the button simply acts like you’ve added a different screen (from Windows’ perspective). It works very well. Unlike other Gigabyte gaming monitors, it doesn’t increase the refresh rate, though.

Another feature that can be activated by the Tactical Switch is pixel cleaning which is part of the OSD’s OLED Care technology. This can automatically (or manually) scan the pixels of your screen and eliminate any dark or bright spots that develop over time. It can also detect static images and logos by arousing the relevant pixels to help prevent burn-in. It works in tandem with Gigabyte’s bespoke, fan-less cooling technology (which uses optimised heat flow channelling, a bespoke heatsink and a graphene film layer) to enhance longevity and back Gigabyte’s three-year warranty that includes burn-in.

At the end of the day, the Gigabyte GO27Q24A doesn’t put a foot wrong. Yes, there are brighter models out there and they might have features like KVM switches and even-faster refresh rates, but these are unnecessary and expensive embellishments to many gamers. The GO27Q24A’s RRP of $450 is low compared to many rivals (and Gigabyte siblings). It even launched at $299 via Newegg for its first month on sale, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see good deals on this again. Frankly, even at $450 it’s a bit of a bargain, but it's hard to look past the excellent Alienware AW2726DM, a monitor that uses the same panel but despite being an Alienware it comes in cheaper.

During the announcement, head of product Matt McGowan said that Alienware were aiming to offer "more price points people can actually reach," though that pricing promise isn't the only thing that piqued my interest.

First, something for the esports sickos: the AW2527HX. Head of product Matt McGowan pitches this as Alienware's "fastest monitor ever," featuring a 560 Hz refresh rate and a 0.03 ms response time.

Co-designed with 4-peat World of Warcraft Race to World First champions Team Liquid, McGowan said that "Every detail [of this OLED has been] informed by how pros actually set-up and compete." Pricing and release details for the AW2527HX OLED will be announced in early 2027.

Alienware isn't the only company who has set its sights on the competitive scene recently. Last month, Asus announced that the ROG Swift OLED PG259QWS Ace would be the official monitor for PGL CS2 Major Singapore 2026 later this year. Odds are, Alienware is hoping for a similarly lucrative slice of the tournament pie. But it's worth noting that the Asus OLED has a very slightly faster response time of 0.02 ms and a higher refresh rate of 720 Hz. Could Alienware be attempting to compete on price point instead? We'll find out next year.

Some of the AW2527HX's tournament-friendly features include a built-in headset hanger, plus a matte coating on the screen to minimise glare. On top of that, esports fiends can look forward to a screen with brightness to write home about thanks to Penta-tandem OLED tech. RGB Stripe subpixels will keep text sharp and offer overall improved image clarity too.

Alienware's second OLED, the AW3226Q, is much less mysterious. For a start, I can already tell you it's a 32-inch 4K OLED that will arrive this Autumn, and will set you back about $699. That's more than twice the price of our top pick for the best budget OLED, the AW2726DM, which is also from Alienware but only costs $350. That said, this cheaper option doesn't have the tandem OLED tech. The MSI MPG 322UR X24 that our Jeremy recently rated is a '5-layer tandem' QD-OLED (so that's Samsung's tech, not LG's) but will set you back over a grand from Newegg. With that comparison in mind, $699 is a good price for that level of brightness on the Alienware.

But what else is the AW3226Q offering for the money? Well, 1,000 nits of peak brightness plus Tandem OLED tech, though it may turn out to be slightly less bright than Alienware's esports monitor. This gaming OLED also has a lower refresh rate of 165 Hz, but the same 0.03 response time plus the same clarity of image offered by RGB Stripe subpixels. Overall, it's a less specialised bit of kit, with McGowan saying it will be "Stunning for gaming and equally impressive for everyday use." Well, us lot on the hardware team will be the judge of that.

For a new gaming monitor that ticks an awful lot of boxes, the Alienware AW3926QW has also arrived with an awful lot of controversy. Some early adopters of this epic 39-inch 5K2K OLED panel have reported numerous issues, including green tinting, so-called "vignette dimming" and adaptive refresh flicker.

We'll get into the specifics of what Reddit is losing its hive mind over with the Alienware AW3926QW later. But first let's consider the stellar on-paper proposition of this monitor. For starters, it's OLED. Not just any old OLED, but LG's fancy Tandem WOLED tech.

Oh, and it has pure RGB-stripe subpixels, it's a 39-inch ultrawide with sensible 1500R curvature for epic immersion, packs a 5K2K native resolution and thus excellent pixel density, has a glossy screen coating, DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification, a high-refresh 330 Hz dual-mode and, well, plenty more besides. Heck, it's even cheaper than you might expect, coming in at just $1,099 in the US and £999 in the UK, therefore undercutting LG's own $1,799 5K2K 39-inch OLED model by miles. And that LG monitor doesn't even get RGB-stripe tech. No question, this Alienware is absolutely stacked.

If that's the broad brush strokes of the Alienware AW3926QW's proposition, how about the finer details of its tech specs and configuration? The basic panel format is 21:9 aspect and 5K2K resolution, which means it's essentially a 32-inch 4K 16:9 panel widened out to 21:9 and with exactly the same pixel density, just on an even more immersive ultrawide panel.

As I've covered on several previous occasions, Tandem WOLED is LG's very latest panel tech. Confusingly, the "W" doesn't refer to the white subpixel that all previous generations of LG's monitor panels have included, but rather the white colour of the light produced by each subpixel, which in turn is passed through a colour filter.

Likewise, the "Tandem" bit as used here doesn't mean two full OLED panels sandwiched together as per, say, a tandem OLED panel in a Apple iPad Pro. Instead, it's a reference to the additional emissive layer LG has added, again within the sub pixels.

Anyway, this new Tandem WOLED generation is brighter than ever before. At least, it is in some cases. This is actually the fourth OLED we've reviewed this year with the new Tandem WOLED panel tech. The first two, the aforementioned LG UltraGear Evo GX9 39GX950B and then the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS, use LG's traditional RGWB subpixel structure, cranked out 1,500 nits of peak HDR brightness and good enough for DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification.

But the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM adds a twist by taking that Tandem WOLED panel tech and inserting LG's new pure RGB-stripe subpixel structure that does away with the additional white subpixel in a quest for sharper, more precise rendering and broader colour coverage. In that Asus Swift, RGB-stripe comes at a pretty pointed cost when it comes to brightness.

Where the two RGWB Tandem WOLEDs I mention hit around 330 nits full screen, the RGB-Stripe Swift can only manage 250 nits. It also tops out at just 1,000 nits peak HDR and makes do with DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification. But here's where it gets really confusing. This new 5K2K 39-inch Alienware is also RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED just like the Asus Swift, but achieves 300 nits full-screen brightness, 1,300 nits peak HDR and DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification.

Long story short, then, what this Alienware seems to offer is the benefits of RGB-stripe subpixels, including more precise rendering at subpixel level and so crisper text and fonts, plus wider colour coverage more akin to Samsung's competing QD-OLED tech, while minimising the downsides in terms of compromised brightness.

Of course, all this also promises a monitor that might match QD-OLED's vibrancy without that technology's own downsides, which include purple tint and compromised contrast in bright ambient light, plus overly warm colour balance. Then there's the usual upsides that come with all OLED monitors, like perfect per-pixel lighting and ridiculously quick 0.03 ms response times. It's a lot to keep up with but a tantalising overall proposition.

For the record and just to cover off the broader feature set, the Alienware AW3926QW is very well specified beyond the core panel tech. You get DisplayPort 2.1, two HDMI ports and USB-C with 90 W of power delivery, plus a multi-port USB hub and a KVM switch. As for refresh rate, at the native 5K2K or 5,120 by 2,160 pixel resolution, the AW3926QW hits 165 Hz, while an alternative 2,560 by 1,080 resolution dual-mode ups that to 330 Hz.

There are also additional alternative resolutions of 4K at 165 Hz, and a couple of further 25-inch and 27-inch 330 Hz modes which run at sub-1080p. As you would expect, further gaming-friendly features include AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync support. It's all buttoned up by a full three-year warranty that includes the all-important cover for OLED burn-in.

Finally, the physical design is a dead ringer for other Alienware monitors. Gone is the Storm Trooper-style white plastic and retro lines, which is a bit of a pity. In is a more organic vibe and dark blue plastic throughout. Still, it's well enough built and looks modern with slim bezels on all four sides of the WOLED panel.

Hopefully that covers off the context, now we can consider how this display actually performs. And that performance is mostly incredible. It's immediately obvious that there are fewer compromises when it comes to brightness with this RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED versus the similarly equipped Asus Swift.

How Alienware has managed to make this huge 39-inch 5K2K model noticeably brighter than the 32-inch 4K Asus, I don't know. But it clearly has. It's punchier everywhere, whether you're talking SDR or HDR content. What's more, there's very little noticeable dimming when, say, you expand a small white browser window across the display. It's much less clunky than the Asus in that regard.

Subjectively, you lose very little compared with RGWB Tandem WOLEDs in terms of perceived brightness, too. But you gain loads when it comes to colours. This is not only a more vibrant display, it's more accurate. Gone is the slightly green-tinged colour balance of an RGWB WOLED. Overall, it's right up there with a QD-OLED panel for vibrancy, but with a more natural and accurate vibe. It's really super.

It's also bloody quick, like all OLEDs. The caveat to that is the 165 Hz refresh rate at native 5K2K. Some commentators have criticised this display for that supposed shortcoming. After all, most 32-inch 4K OLEDs run at 240 Hz.

Admittedly, the fact that you have to step down from the 240 Hz widely available from 32-inch 4K OLEDs doesn't sit comfortably with is otherwise a bleeding-edge monitor. Personally, I think the idea that 165 Hz is a major limitation given the huge resolution isn't terribly convincing.

Indeed, the immediate assumption is that you'd want at least an RTX 5080 to make the most of this display and even then you're probably not going to run into that 165 Hz limitation with a lot of games. With graphics card prices escalating by the day, that's a significant worry.

In practice, you might be surprised how usable this monitor is with an RTX 5070-level card, such is the effectiveness of the likes of DLSS upscaling these days. Okay, it's not a super slick high-refresh experience with an RTX 5070-level card, but you can get playable results and fantastic image quality with only minor settings tweaks. Of course, you have those higher refresh dual-modes to fall back on when frame rates really matter, too, though as ever with dual-mode features, image quality and sharpness take quite a hit.

Anyway, the general picture, no pun intended, with this monitor is very positive. I cannot tell you how lush it looks fully lit up running the latest titles with HDR enabled. The scale of the thing, the clarity and detail, the incredible contrast, the pixel speed, it's just fantastic.

It is, however, not perfect. Apart from the arguable refresh rate limitations, let's cover off those Reddit concerts. First, the claimed green tint. That's essentially a viewing angle thing. Yes, it is visible at the edges of the display, but it's really only clearly apparent if you shove your nose a few inches from the panel then crane your neck to view the edges.

Personally, I couldn't detect any VRR flicker, either. It's possible there are settings and frame rates I didn't try where it's more obvious, but I don't think that's a major limitation. The one Reddit-raised issue that I do think is more problematic, however, is the so-called "vignette" or corner dimming.

This is a tricky issue to isolate. But to summarise, during gaming the edges of the panel gradually dim ever so slightly. The best way to see this is to have an app displaying full-screen white on the Windows desktop that you can alt-tab out to. At which point you'll see the "vignette" effect of dimming around the edges with a brighter central area of the display.

If you remain on the desktop, the dimming gradually fades and normal full-screen brightness returns after about 30 seconds. Equally, the dimming takes about 30 seconds of bright-scene gaming to fully kick in. It doesn't seem to happen when gaming in darker scenes.

In terms of why this happens at all, the most likely candidate is a feature called CPC, or Convex Power Control. It’s an LG Display WOLED panel protection feature and dims all four edges of the display to help prevent burn-in. As far as I am aware, it can't be toggled on or off on this Alienware, but if CPC is causing the vignette issue, it should be easy to address in a firmware update. Broadly, I don't think this is a hardware limitation, but a configuration issue.

Exactly how much of an actual problem it is, on the other hand, is subjective. It's worth noting it seems to happen in all modes, SDR, HDR, the works. I'd say it's one of those issues you won't immediately spot, but once you are aware—either because you notice or because you've read about it—well, it does then niggle a little.

That said, the reported issues with this panel are generally pretty subtle in reality and fall into the category of minor flaws from which pretty much any monitor will suffer at least a few. The somewhat frenzied community discussion around this Alienware, then, probably comes down to the fact that it's an expensive panel with fantastic specs that has generated a lot of anticipation and scrutiny.

It's probably inevitable, therefore, that any minor glitch was going to be immediately jumped on by the tech community. But I've seen far worse flaws on displays that have generally reviewed very well, the obvious example being backlight oddities on just about every mini-LED monitor.

In the end, it's a very tough and subjective call to make. I'd say the vignette dimming is an issue that needs to be factored in to a purchase decision. It's by no means catastrophic, but it is a tiny bit bothersome. It's just enough, I think, to prevent a full, caveat-free recommendation and pull our score below the critical 90% mark.

This is still an incredible monitor. I personally prefer it to the other 39-inch 5K2K OLED option out there, the LG UltraGear Evo GX9 39GX950B, which also didn't achieve 90-plus percent for its own reasons. This Alienware is, as things stand, still the monitor that I personally would buy right now, money no object. But to attach an unreserved buy recommendation for everyone else, that vignette dimming issue, relatively subtle as it is, needs to be sorted.

Asus' new monitor, the ROG Swift OLED PG259QWS Ace, is going to be the official monitor of the 2026 PGL CS2 major. It's a glossy tandem WOLED with a response time of 0.02 ms (GTG), which is low even for OLED.

More relevant here, though, is that it's a 720 Hz, 24.5-inch panel. We've seen high refresh rate OLEDs before, but most of these (A) are 27-inch or bigger, and (B) only achieve their high refresh rates when dropped to 720p. Getting up to 1080p is ideal for pro gaming, especially in CS2, where some will want to stretch a 4:3 resolution, and 24/25-inch monitors are preferred.

It might seem silly to some, but I've tested some pro-level monitors and can confirm that 24/25-inch monitors can make playing CS2 a little more comfortable, allowing you to see the entire game scene without squinting in a way that pushing a 27-inch monitor further away somehow doesn't quite replicate. I did also find in that testing that there are diminishing returns to higher refresh rates above about 360 Hz, but hey, I'm not a pro. I have no doubt they can make use of those extra returns, diminishing as they are.

All this is to say, the fact that we've now got a 24.5-inch OLED reaching up to 720 Hz is really going to give TN panels like those from Zowie a run for their money. Especially given OLEDs don't need to use backlight strobing to reduce motion blur because their pixels already change incredibly quickly. And, of course, given they look gorgeous.

It seems PGL (the tournament organiser) agrees. According to Asus, PGL CEO Silviu Stroie remarked: "The first OLED Major on the fastest OLED ever made—it’s a new generation of competitive Counter-Strike."

And you know what? I actually don't doubt it. CS2 tournies have been run on TNs for, well, forever. And pros have been reluctant to switch away in part for this reason: it's best to practice on the monitors you'll be using in tournaments. So if tournies start switching over to OLED, this could indeed be the start of a new generation of pro gaming, at least as far as monitors are concerned.

And we couldn't really ask for a better kind of gear for such a change to happen to than the monitor. I love writing about monitors these days, as they're one bit of PC gaming kit that hasn't felt the pricing bite of the global memory shortage.

It also helps that technologies seem to be not only improving but also actually getting cheaper, and nothing highlights that more than the wonderful world of OLEDs—$299 for a 1440p, 240 Hz panel, anyone?

However, RTings has some disappointing news. A long-term test of OLED TVs manufactured between 2020 and 2023 did not show significant reduction in burn-in compared to a 2017 LG model—and it's the increased screen brightness that is likely to blame.

The newly-tested OLED TVs are significantly brighter, which means any major improvement in burn-in resistance appears to have been offset—at least under these test conditions. RTings found that the average 2023 OLED was 28% brighter then the 2017 OLED's average in a 10% SDR window test, and 52% brighter in a sustained full-screen SDR test.

This higher brightness appears to have resulted in a stalemate when it comes to burn-in avoidance. The tested TVs were subjected to thousands of hours of non-stop CNN viewing, where the static banner at the bottom of the screen remained present for the entire experiment.

At the 10,500 hour checkpoint, the banner still burnt its way into the display of the newer models to a noticeable degree. Boo, hiss, etc.

However, there is some good news to take from this data. Each of the TVs were tested at their maximum SDR brightness settings, without adjustments to account for the higher brightness levels compared to the older model.

As the newer panels are capable of pumping out a much brighter full screen image, turning down the brightness may result in a longer burn-free lifespan. Or at least, less noticeable burn-in over the same period.

It's also worth noting that this is a deliberate, "worst-case scenario" test, which is far from representative of actual TV usage. The full 18,000 hours stint would be equivalent to 10 years of watching nothing but CNN for five hours a day. Mixed viewing over the same period would be very unlikely to create similar burn-in results.

"What's clear is that for most mixed-content viewers, burn-in remains unlikely to become an issue," RTings concludes. "Users with static-heavy SDR workloads can lower the brightness setting to reduce cumulative stress while still retaining more usable brightness than earlier OLED generations offered."

So, swings and roundabouts. It appears you can't have searingly bright OLED panels and significantly reduced burn-in at the same time, but if you're prepared to turn the brightness down a notch or two, things may well have improved.

For what it's worth, we've tested lots of OLED gaming monitors over long periods of regular usage without noticeable burn-in issues. And for those still on the fence, many manufacturers offer extended warranties for burn-in protection.

It's still worth taking reasonable precautions to extend the lifespan of your expensive new display, but OLED tech is developing at an astonishing rate. Here's hoping that anti-burn-in measures improve as time goes on—because how eye-scorchingly bright do you really need your TV to be, anyway?

According to analyst firm TrendForce, shipments for OLED panels have increased 26.1% in the past three months. Comparing to last year's figures, they're up 98%. And the firm chalks that up to gaming, specifically, noting that adoption is strong for 27-inch QHD monitors, which sit at the top of the increasingly large pile of panels for popularity.

TrendForce says these "results underscore the rapid penetration of OLED technology in the gaming and premium display markets."

In the first three months of the year, TrendForce reckoned shipments for OLED panels increased 78% year on year. This suggests OLED monitor shipments are still on the rise through 2026.

The analyst firm lists the biggest companies in the space by market share, as it stands today: Asus at the top, then Samsung, MSI, AOC, LGE, and the rest. Samsung slipped due to a "gradual withdrawal" from the Chinese market, while MSI made some waves. Panel supply is said to be improving, too, with new brands entering the market as a result.

Though it's worth noting that most OLED panels for gaming monitors are made by Samsung and LG, even if rebadged under another company's name. We have seen some new developments in recent weeks regarding OLED panels from Chinese goliath TCL making their way into MSI's professional lineup; however, for gaming, we're mostly all in on those Korean-made panels.

Nevertheless, OLED monitors are becoming way more accessible for PC gamers as the technology develops and new products make it to market. Once upon a time, most OLED gaming monitors would demand upwards of $600–$1000. Yet our best budget OLED, the Alienware AW2726DM, has an MSRP of $350. That's brand new. Sure, it's an older panel tech than the very latest panel as found in our top pick, the MSI MPG 322UR X24, but an OLED looks fantastic either way.

We've said it a whole lot lately, but monitors are one of the few good deals left in PC gaming. You can thank the memory crisis for everything else sucking. That pox hasn't touched the monitor market. Prices are still coming down, the technology is still rapidly developing, and OLED monitor deals are still to be found.

Our James checks for deals every week and he's spotted this Samsung Odyssey G50SF for $350 over at Amazon. There's also this AOC Agon Pro for $350. Both 27-inch, 1440p monitors as was suggested to be the most popular by TrendForce. Though even the 4K-capable MSI MAG 321UP is down to $700 over at Newegg.

It's just nice to see a healthy market that's actually serving to the benefit of us regular consumers right now. Demand is high, supply is sufficient, and there's loads of competition; which all feels like a bit of a rarity right now.

Every time a new OLED gaming monitor comes out of late, it seemingly poses pretty much the same question. Is this the one, is this the model that effectively "completes" the task of gaming monitors, that represents 2D panel technology perfected? Give it up, therefore, for the latest candidate, the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM, a 32-inch 4K model.

There's a lot to keep up with when it comes to OLED panel technology developments, but big news here is the inclusion of a new LG Tandem WOLED panel with RGB-stripe subpixel structure. We've already seen LG's Tandem WOLED tech in 32-inch 4K trim recently in another Asus monitor, the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS. But that didn't get the RGB-stripe version of the new panel type, instead retaining the additional white subpixel LG has long used to boost brightness in an "RGWB" configuration.

In theory, then, this new panel has it all. You get the very latest LG Tandem WOLED panel generation with all the benefits that brings, but applied to a pure RGB-stripe subpixel structure. That's it then, job done, the perfect OLED gaming monitor?

Not quite. It's not all pros with this RGB-stripe panel. There are some cons, too, at least on paper. The RGB-stripe subpixel structure—or red, green and blue subpixels arranged vertically in that order—should mean more precise rendering, especially for elements like fonts that rely on addressing the panel at subpixel level to achieve maximum crispness. It also promises more accurate colours and a wider overall colour volume, too.

However, LG has been using the white subpixel on all of its previous OLED panel generations for PC monitors for a reason. And the consequence of removing it is that this RGB-stripe 32-inch Tandem WOLED panel has lower full-screen and peak HDR brightness ratings than its RGWB cousin.

So, where the Asus Strix model was rated at 330 nits full screen and 1,500 nits peak HDR in a 2% window, this RGB-stripe Asus Swift clocks in at 250 nits and 1,000 nits respectively. It also makes do with DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification instead of True Black 500.

Just to confuse things, this new RGB-stripe panel tech is also being used in the new Alienware AW3926QW 39-inch 5K2K monitor, a review of which we also have coming. That has exactly the same pixel density, but somehow Alienware has managed to squeeze 300 nits, 1,300 nits and HDR True Black 500 from that panel. Odd.

Anyway, it should also be noted peak brightness specs aren't the whole story, in any case. As I've explained before in reference to monitors using Samsung's competing QD-OLED panels, which have never used white subpixels at all, peak brightness ratings are for pure white.

But panels with lower brightness ratings thanks to using pure-RGB subpixel structure can actually offer superior colour brightness. Put another way, if you want to show pure and accurate red, for instance, the white subpixel isn't much help in boosting brightness.

Speaking of QD-OLED monitors, it's notable that the likes of the MSI MPG 322UR X24 uses a Samsung panel with no white subpixel to achieve 300 nits full screen and True Black 500 certification. What's more, Samsung has also announced an even better 32-inch 4K QD-OLED panel with 360 Hz refresh and True Black 600 certification. Samsung hasn't quoted panel brightness, but the True Black 600 tier requires 350 nits full-screen at minimum. Like I said, it's a lot to keep up with.

One last note on the panel tech. LG's branding for all this stuff is getting really confusing. The "W" in Tandem WOLED doesn't refer to the white subpixel, hence its use here. It refers to the fact that each subpixel emits white light that is then passed through a colour filter. And the "Tandem" equally doesn't actually mean two full OLED panels stacked atop one another, but instead refers to additional emissive layers, again within the subpixels.

My actual final note on the panel is that it's glossy, not matte, which isn't always a given with LG-based OLED monitors. Anywho, aside from the panel specs, this is an Asus "Swift" model, which makes it more premium than the Strix version I reviewed recently and that has implications for the feature set. First up, that includes a 480 Hz 1080p "Dual" mode to complement the 240 Hz native 4K refresh rate.

Connectivity wise, you get full 80 Gbps DisplayPort 2.1, two HDMI 2.1 ports, plus USB-C with 90 W of power delivery. There's also full KVM switch support. Further gaming-friendly features include ELMB motion blur reduction and VRR anti-flicker. Oh, and there's not only HDR10 support, but Dolby Vision, too, albeit Dolby Vision is more relevant to HDR video than HDR gaming.

It's all wrapped up in a premium chassis that includes height, swivel and tilt adjustment, RGB lighting, including a down projector, and some nifty design elements. Most unusual is the partly transparent rear chassis cover.

It's a lot like the see-through rear cover on devices like Nothing's smartphones and headphones. It's pretty neat, albeit you're obviously not going to see it day-to-day on a monitor sitting up close to a wall.

Without further ado, then, how good, exactly is this new RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED panel? Pretty darn good, but not quite perfect, is the short answer. There's some subjectivity in this, but I have never personally much liked LG OLED panels with the added white subpixel. They lack colour vibrancy and suffer from slightly green-tinted white tones.

That's all fixed with the RGB-stripe panel. To sum up the experience, it's a lot closer to a Samsung QD-OLED panel in terms of how pleasing and punchy the colours are. But you don't have to worry about the purple tint that even the latest QD-OPLED panels suffer from in bright ambient light.

This RGB-stripe WOLED also has a more accurate and neutral colour balance compared to the slightly warm colour temperature of QD-OLED panels. Add in the precision of the RGB-stripe subpixel structure, especially as applied here to a super-sharp 4K panel, and all the usual OLED upsides, including ridiculously fast 0.03 ms pixel response, perfect lighting control and very wide viewing angles and, well, you have one heck of an experience.

For the record, the banding or "dirty screen effect" that some other lower resolution Tandem WOLEDs suffer from is more or less invisible here. So, that's good. And if you are wondering, yes this monitor does have something akin to MSI's EOTF boost mode that essentially enables maximum available brightness in both brighter and darker HDR scenes.

Asus calls it "Adjustable HDR" on this model, but it does basically the same job and works well enough, albeit with some limitations, which we'll come to in a moment.

Now, I know I go on about this routinely when it comes to OLED monitors. But the night time HDR scenes in CyberPunk 2077 really do look spectacular on this panel. Let me give you an example to get across the experience. You know those neon lights and signs that populate many of Cyberpunk's moody urban scenes? They don't look like images of neon lights and signs. They look like actual light sources.

That's actually the point of HDR done right. To recreate the true dynamic range of reality and that means light sources that look like actual light sources.

The reality is that most supposedly HDR-capable screens can't really do HDR. Well, this one can, and it looks epic at its best. But what about at its worst? Brighter gaming scenes inevitably show up the limited full-screen punch.

Again, we're into subjective territory here. Do you really want the screen to light up at 500 nits and beyond across the whole screen? That wouldn't actually be comfortable for extended use. But it cannot be denied that 250 nits full-screen is not hugely punchy and there are moments when this monitor can look a bit, well, dull.

Overall, I'd definitely take this RGB panel over the RGWB alternative. Where the choice becomes more tricky is versus a QD-OLED. I think the latest QD-OLEDs are still a touch punchier in brighter scenes and on the Windows desktop.

If you disable uniform brightness in order to max out the visual pop in SDR mode, there's more apparent dimming according to how much bright content you are showing with this LG RGB-stripe panel than a Samsung QD-OLED.

That dimming, as more and more of the screen is lit up, is also apparent in HDR mode when the Adjustable HDR setting is maxed out. And that dimming is more significant than you'll see on the latest QD-OLED panels, including that MSI MPG 322UR X24, which is something to think about.

On the other hand, there's no purple tint to contend with and, like I said, the colour temperature is more natural. In the end, it's now a very close run thing between this LG panel and the QD-OLED alternative. That's a major step forward given I'd have taken QD-OLED easily, before.

Really twist my arm and I'd probably pick this panel. There, I've said it. Wait, can I take that back? I've just remembered this LG RGB-stripe dims a tiny bit more than I like. Argh. Ultimately, it's probably too close to call. Both of the current LG and Samsung options have their own slight shortcomings, but both are also great panels.

More to the point, however, 32-inch 4K OLEDs of any stripe—pun fully intended— make fantastic all rounders. They're big enough to be really immersive, in-game, but also have sufficient pixel density to look crisp and sharp for daily computing.

So, really the main problem for the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM is how the value proposition stacks up. At $1,299 or £1,099 this is a very expensive display. You can typically get a first-gen 32-inch 4K QD-OLED for somewhere in the $600 to $700 range, currently. Yes, this new RGB-stripe Tandem OLED is better by several metrics. But not that much better.

Then there's the comparison with that Alienware AW3926QW. That isn't quite on sale yet, but it's expected to come in at $1,100. Okay, it doesn't have USB-C connectivity. But it's not only brighter, but larger at 39 inches and offers that ultrawide 5K2K upgrade.

Of course, you're going to need one heck of a GPU to drive this display at its full 240 Hz refresh at 4K and that challenge is only going to be stiffer with a 5K2K panel. But perhaps that's a separate issue to the reality that you're paying more for less with this Asus compared to that upcoming Alienware. The choice is yours, but I'd want a look at that Alienware before pulling the trigger, that's for sure.

If you are unfamiliar with what that means, inkjet printing is a cheaper process than the traditional deposition process used by LG and Samsung. LG and Samsung produce almost every OLED screen for PC monitors right now, but TCL, the producers of this MSI panel, have been looking to burst into the market for some time.

The new MSI panel offers a 120 Hz refresh rate, up to 1,000 nits peak brightness, and an optimised RGB stripe subpixel layout that MSI claims "closely resembles the uniform RGB structure of traditional LCDs." This should eliminate colour fringing and enhance image clarity, and is something we've seen arrive on LG and Samsung-made OLED panels only recently.

As you might be able to guess from the 120 Hz refresh rate and 'Pro' moniker, this MSI panel is not traditionally intended for gaming. We don't yet have the response rate, but it's an OLED, so it's likely to be good. Yet the focus on colour precision over speed implies a use case for professionals. The monitor offers "99% of the DCI-P3 wide color gamut with an exceptional Delta E ≤ 2 accuracy."

In a way, this new monitor for MSI will be a good testing ground for what more OLEDs could look like in the future. If inkjet-printed screens get a foothold in the market, it could make for some more budget options, and a third option away from the duopoly of Samsung and LG.

Unfortunately, though, we are missing the two most pertinent bits of information about this monitor. We don't know when it's supposed to release or what pricing will look like. The MSI Pro Max 271UPXW12G, which appears to be the QD-OLED counterpart to the inkjet monitor, seems to sit around the $700 mark. If it can cut away substantially at that price, then the swap to inkjet will be well worth it.

Still, as it's an early model for inkjet tech, I'm not expecting too big of a price cut. And non-inkjet OLED monitors are becoming more and more budget-friendly. I check over our roundup of the best cheap gaming monitors every week, and regularly spot OLED panels around the $300-$400 price point.

Even Alienware put out a $350 OLED gaming monitor as recently as this year, so here's hoping OLED only gets more competitive in the pricing arena.

Can it really be well over four years since Alienware rolled out the AW3423DW, the first mainstream OLED gaming monitor? The AW3423DW wasn't perfect, but by many important gaming metrics, it absolutely monstered every LCD-based display. That model, of course, was a 34-inch ultrawide and now Alienware has released its most significant update yet for that form factor, the Alienware 34 AW3426DW.

So, what does four years of OLED gaming monitor development buy you? In really simple terms, some new threads, a bit more brightness, and a higher refresh rate. But when you dig down into the details, there's way more going on here.

Most importantly, Alienware has upgraded to Samsung's very latest QD-OLED panel tech, known as Penta Tandem. In terms of headline specs, that means a bump from 250 nits full-screen and 1,000 nits peak HDR brightness of that OG Alienware OLED, to 300 nits and 1,300 nits respectively. You also get an upgrade from VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black to 500 True Black certification, again highlighting the punchier panel.

The refresh rate is up, too, from 175 Hz four years ago to 280 Hz today, albeit there was an interim Alienware 34-inch ultrawide OLED, the Alienware 34 AW3425DW, that upped the refresh to 240 Hz while keeping most of the other specs the same.

It's also worth noting that there are versions of this Samsung-sourced new-gen 34-inch QD-OLED panel with yet higher refresh, most obviously the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36 which I reviewed earlier this year. Apart from the higher refresh, the MSI's panel specs are largely the same.

The MSI kicked off at $1,099 when I reviewed it back in January. Now it's available for $899. So, it's still $100 more expensive than the Alienware's $799 launch price. But let's park that value comparison for now and come back to the Alienware's overall value proposition later.

As with the MSI, the new-gen QD-OLED panel used here has plenty going for it beyond the simple brightness upgrade. The Penta Tandem emissive layer doesn't just produce more light. It makes the panel more resistant to burn-in. On that note, you get the usual Alienware three-year warranty including burn-in cover. So, you at least know burn-in isn't a worry for three years.

Next up is the RGB-stripe subpixel structure. Previous Samsung 34-inch ultrawide QD-OLED panels have used variations of a triangular subpixel structure. That can cause problems when the rendering pipeline is assuming the presence of a standard LCD-type RGB subpixel structure, where each pixel is composed of red, green and then blue vertical stripe subpixels.

The most obvious example is font smoothing technology like Microsoft's ClearType. The coloured text fringing that triangular subpixel structures can result in with ClearType enabled is most obvious with relatively low pixel density panels like this monitor, which comes in at 110 DPI. It's never really been an issue for gaming and, honestly, it was never that bad on the Windows desktop. But, in any case, it's now effectively a solved problem with the introduction of a true RGB-stripe subpixel structure.

Arguably more important are a couple of other panel tweaks. First, the characteristic purple tint that QD-OLEDs suffer from in bright ambient light has been reduced, albeit not actually removed entirely. That's welcome if, for instance, you position your monitor near a large window. In that scenario, this generation of QD-OLED maintains better contrast and black levels.

The glossy panel surface has also been revised with a tougher, more scratch-resistant surface. Owners of earlier QD-OLEDs with glossy coatings, which was nearly all of them, often reported that the screen scratched easily and extensively, for instance when cleaning the panel. This new gen panel should be more durable in that regard.

Elsewhere, this new Alienware AW3426DW looks pretty similar to its interim update sibling, the Alienware 34 AW3425DW. It uses the same AW30 design ethic with its rounded forms and deep-blue plastics. It's well enough slung together, though I actually preferred the slightly retro "Storm Trooper" vibe of the AW3423DW and its swooping white and black plastics.

Whatever, as with previous 34-inch Alienware OLEDs, connectivity is decent but not comprehensive. Along with a couple of HDMI 2.1 ports and a DisplayPort 1.4 interface, there's a USB hub that includes USB-A and USB-C data ports on the lower bezel.

However, there's no primary USB-C input and thus no option for single-cable connectivity to a laptop and likewise no KVM switch. Notably, the more expensive MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36 includes both of those features. So, you'd want to factor that in with the higher refresh into your value calculations.

Of course, what really matters is image quality and here the news is almost all good. Out of the box, the new Alienware 34 AW3426DW immediately has that little bit more pop that the OG Alienware OLED. It's not a life-changing difference in terms of full-screen brightness. But as with the MSI MPG 341CQR X36, it's getting awfully close to the point where it's hard to imagine anyone demanding more day-to-day punch from an OLED panel.

The reduced purple tint in bright ambient light is really welcome, too. This is a somewhat subjective call. But I'd say it will no longer be a nuisance for most users. It's also likely that whatever changes Samsung made to reduce the purple tint also contribute to improved colour balance. Previously generations of QD-OLED panels suffered a pretty obviously overly warm colour temp. This new panel is better, though again it still tilts a little warm.

If that all applies to regular SDR running, the HDR sizzle on offer is something special. On paper, LG's latest Tandem WOLED panel tech is brighter. But only because it includes an extra white subpixel to boost brightness. In terms of colour brightness and the subjective look of the panel, this new QD-OLED generation is absolutely competitive. It may even look more vibrant in some scenarios.

Alienware has also included just about every HDR mode you could wish for. Along with the standard VESA True Black 500 mode and the panel's Peak 1300 mode, there's a Peak 1300 Bright mode.

It's essentially the same idea as MSI's EOTF Boost mode. In both cases, it's an attempt to combine maximum full screen brightness, as per the True Black 500 mode, with the highest peak HDR brightness for small details. For the most part, it's very successful.

The monitor looks absolutely superb in contrasty HDR game scenes, the type where there's a mix of small bright details punctuating a dark overall vista. Nighttime sequences in Cyberpunk 2077 is the obvious example, here, and this panel absolutely rocks for that kind of play. It's so much better than any LCD monitor, it's not even funny. Once you're used to the vibrant, contrasty OLED experience, going back to the watery, light-bleedy LCD look is a bit of a bummer, that's for sure.

It's pretty darn good for daytime game scenes, too. I only hesitate slightly because full-screen brightness is still a slight limitation, even with this latest Penta Tandem QD-OLED generation. Would you really want the desert sun brighter than this panel can render it? It would feel a bit more realistic, but then you'd also be flirting with an uncomfortable level of brightness.

One thing that's for sure is that the SDR calibration in the Peak 1300 Bright mode is a little off. That's a pity, because it's very good in the other two main HDR modes and were it as good in Peak 1300 Bright, you could plausibly leave the panel in that mode for all kinds of content, all the time, rather than having to switch modes between SDR and HDR.

Unusually, Alienware has also included support for Dolby Vision. That's an HDR standard distinct from the HDR10 used by default by Windows. In truth, Dolby Vision is more relevant for video and movies than games, but it's a nice little extra.

Overall, the HDR implementation is really very good. But the deeper we get into these latest OLED panels, the more complicated the HDR proposition becomes in practical usage terms. Should most PC gamers really have to worry about things like multiple HDR modes, EOTF curves and all that stuff? Having options is great, but it's about time one of the major monitor brands had the confidence to work out an optimal HDR setup and make that a very clear default. And then perhaps bury all the other options in a submenu.

What else can I tell you? Well, there's good panel uniformity and none of the banding or "dirty screen" effect that some LG-based OLED monitors can suffer from. And as with pretty much every OLED, the pixel speed is fairly ludicrous. It's easy to gloss over pixel response given all OLEDs are so fast, but as the quoted 0.03ms response time implies, this panel is getting on for two orders of magnitude faster than any LCD monitor. It's a huge advantage in terms of in-game motion clarity.

While we're talking speed, Alienware has included an "Esports Mode" that will compress whatever signal you're sending to the display into a 25-inch 16:9 window. Obviously, the idea here is to mimic the typical 24-inch to 25-inch panels favoured for serious online shooter play.

LG offers a similar feature on its own monitors and while it works okay in both cases, I do struggle to entirely believe that anyone who is truly serious about esports is going to choose an ultrawide like this. Pretty obviously for the $800 launch price, you could have something running at well, well beyond the 280 Hz this Alienware offers, too.

More broadly, with this category of gaming monitor, you are making a trade off. The 110 DPI pixel density is relatively low. Even with the RGB-stripe subpixel technology, you're not getting super-sharp image detail and nice, crispy fonts. You could very much argue that a 32-inch 4K panel, like the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS and its LG Tandem OLED panel, is a better overall compromise between gaming and general-purpose computing. It's certainly a lot sharper and clearer.

But then the immersion of a 34-inch ultrawide is something special, while the added pixel density of 4K comes with a lot more GPU load. For pure gaming, 34-inch ultrawide would be my pick. For a broader remit, it's a very close call, it really is.

So, this new Alienware is undoubtedly a very nice implementation of Samsung's new Penta Tandem QD-OLED tech. It's also cheaper than the 360 Hz versions of essentially the same panel, such as the MSI MPG 341CQR X36.

Personally, were I buying today, I'd still try to find the extra $100 for the MSI. The superior 360 Hz refresh isn't exactly critical, but it wouldn't hurt. And I'd want the USB-C connectivity and KVM switch for maximum utility and flexibility.

The thing is, the gap is only $100 because the MSI has dropped substantially from its $1,099 launch price to $899 of late. I doubt it will be very long before the new AW3426DW is offered at some kind of discount over its $799 launch price by Alienware. And it wouldn't take much of a haircut before it looked like the better deal versus the slightly better specified MSI.

Then again, if you think 280 Hz is plenty, and it probably is for most gamers, most of the time, and you don't care about USB-C, why pay more? Right now, and without any kind of discount, this is easily one of the most compelling gaming monitors on the market. It's seriously good.

The short version: that KTC panel is currently going for AU$177.64on Amazon, down from AU$208.99. It's much better than the AU$216.50 it was going for during Prime Day.

This, by the way, is our favourite budget 1440p monitor. It has a silky smooth 210Hz refresh rate, which is very good value in this price range. It has an IPS display, Freesync and G-sync compatibility, a 1 ms response time and 450 nits of peak brightness.

Honestly, it's above and beyond what you should expect in this price range.

Do keep in mind that this model seems to have received a cut to its RRP between now and early July: it used to be AU$289.99 at full price on Amazon, now that's dropped to AU$208.99.

In his review, Jeremy Laird praised this monitor's "punchy IPS panel" and the 200Hz refresh rate, while criticising its "limited" HDR capability and tilt-only stand. It's well worth reading the review if you want a fuller picture, but the H27T22C-3 is also a bit lacking when it comes to connectivity.

"The fear with a low cost monitor from a less familiar brand is that it might suffer from some or other really obvious flaw," Laird wrote. "Maybe the calibration is a mess, the overdrive doesn't work or the backlight is horribly dim. But none of that applies here. This isn't a perfect display, but it is pretty nice by any reasonable metric. And in the context of the price, it's pretty darn brilliant."

If that's not what you're after, check out our list of the best gaming monitors.

Asus isn't the immediately obvious pick when it comes to value-orientated PC hardware. But its mainstream Strix sub-brand does occasionally deliver some pretty sweet deals. Enter, therefore, the new Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32UQWMS.

It's a 32-inch, 4K gaming monitor based on LG's latest Tandem Primary RGB OLED panel tech, the specifics of which we'll come to shortly. And it's yours for $899, which is a pretty punchy price for a 32-inch 4K OLED with the very newest panel tech.

However, as a Strix model, the XG32UQWMS doesn't throw everything at the wall when it comes to features. Well, that's the theory. In practice, the XG32UQWMS has an awful lot of the stuff you'd want from a gaming display.

The one obvious omission is USB-C connectivity. But then that's not an unambiguously gaming-adjacent feature, albeit it is desirable for use with a gaming laptop and likewise if you're planning on sharing this monitor between a gaming rig and, perhaps, a work laptop.

Anyway, apart from the LG-supplied OLED panel itself, there's one little extra that's worth mentioning first. Along with the 240 Hz available at the OLED panel's native 4K resolution, there's also a 1080p dual mode running at fully 480 Hz.

Yes, these kinds of dual mode features are increasingly common on 4K gaming monitors. But given the Strix branding and relatively competitive pricing, not to mention the fact that not many OLED 4K monitors have yet offered it, you still might not have expected it on this particular model.

As for other specifications, this Asus represents a step up in terms of brightness compared with previous 32-inch 4K monitors with LG OLED models. The full-screen rating is now 330 nits, up from 275 nits on earlier models.

Asus is also quoting fully 1,500 nits for peak HDR brightness in a small window. Notably, both of those figures are well up on the 300 nits and 1,000 nits, respectively, that MSI claims for the MPG 322UR X24.

That MSI model uses the latest QD-OLED 32-inch 4K panel from Samsung. So, on paper at least, this new LG panel tech seems to have the edge over Samsung. For what it's worth, both this new Asus and the MSI get VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification. Despite all that, the MSI is quite a bit more expensive, at $1,099.

There are a few other upsides beyond mere brightness that come with this latest LG Tandem OLED generation. First, there's a glossy panel coating. That's not to everyone's taste, but it certainly heightens one of the main strengths of OLED tech, namely contrast.

There's also more colour performance, now up to 99.5% of the DCI-P3 gamut and much more competitive in that regard with Samsung QD-OLED. Asus also says this generation of LG OLED panel tech is 60% more durable in terms of light-emitting lifespan and so should resist burn-in even more robustly, an issue which is covered in any case by the three-year warranty.

What you don't get, however, is true RGB-stripe sub-pixel structure. Confusingly, the "Primary RGB" nomenclature LG applies to this new panel tech refers to the layers of emissive material actually within each subpixel.

The sub-pixel structure itself remains the RGWB or red, green, white, and blue layout seen in many recent OLED panels. Strictly speaking, pure RGB and without the white sub pixel LG adds to boost brightness offers both better rendering precision and superior colour fidelity. For the record, Asus has announced a monitor with LG's new Tandem OLED panel that does have pure RGB-stripe subpixels, the ROG Swift OLED PG32UCWM. But that monitor is not this monitor, and the Swift models always command a much higher price.

Whatever, as is usual for all these OLED panels, response is rated at a startlingly scant 0.03 ms. In short, pixel response is essentially a solved problem with modern OLED panel tech. Rounding out the main features are dual HDMI 2.1 inputs, DisplayPort 1.4, a USB hub and support for G-Sync adaptive refresh technology on Nvidia GPUs and FreeSync on AMD GPUs.

Incidentally, this may be an Asus Strix model and therefore not its most premium offering, but the build quality is still decent. Okay, you miss out on pivoting the panel into portrait mode. But all the other adjustments, including tilt, height and swivel are included and, frankly, it's every bit as well put together as an 8K Asus monitor I happen to have in at the moment that sells for an incredible $8,800.

With all those details covered off, well, it's time to get to the main event. How good does this new LG Tandem OLED panel tech look in 32-inch 4K format and, likewise, how does it stack up against the Samsung QD-OLED competition as represented by the MSI MPG 322UR X24?

Out of the box, it's immediately apparent that this new panel has both more punch and more colour vibrancy that the previous LG-sourced 32-inch 4K OLED panel. But there are caveats.

Subjectively, the full screen brightness is a little disappointing. With a large proportion of the panel being driven hard, it's definitely duller looking, subjectively, than the MSI. If that seems to contradict the paper specs, well, this Asus monitor has to rely on LG's additional white subpixel to hit that 330 nits full-screen figure.

In practice, the white subpixel doesn't automatically boost brightness for colours as opposed to pure white. So, much of the time, that 330 nits rating is a bit notional. As with most OLEDs, you can boost the brightness by disabling the ABL or automatic brightness limiter, which Asus refers to as the Uniform Brightness setting.

However, more than with QD-OLED panels, the overall panel brightness varies substantially depending on how much of the panel is being lit up. It only requires a disappointingly small application window, such as a web browser, showing a predominantly white image, to have the panel dimming quite noticeably.

Even using dark mode for most apps, the panel will quite often dim in a manner that the QD-OLED competition doesn't, not quite. That said, this monitor can still deliver some spectacular visuals for HDR content.

It's at its best when rendering small bright details on a dark background. That's when you'll get the full 1,500 nits and a truly eye-popping experience. That's not the reality for most games, most of the time of course. And for day-to-day gaming I'd give the subjective edge to the MSI monitor and its Samsung panel. It's that little bit more vibrant, that little bit more immersive.

Of course one thing the MSI lacks is a 1080p dual mode. So, how does that factor into the equation? Certainly, this Asus Strix is lightning fast running at 480 Hz. The motion clarity is pretty stupendous ripping your mouse around in an online shooter like Counter-Strike 2, ditto the lack of latency.

The image quality at 1080p is also among the best I've seen in terms of pixel definition on a 32-inch 4K panel running in dual mode. But the thing is, if you're really serious about esports, do you really want to be playing on a 32-inch monitor?

I suppose you could mimic the apparent size of the preferred 24-inch monitor by pushing this thing further away. But I'm not totally convinced that's a satisfactory solution for someone who plays loads of online shooters. And if you don't, I can't see you using the dual mode much.

What I can say for sure is that I still give the slight edge to Samsung's QD-OLED tech. Yes, even the latest QD-OLEDs have a slight purple tint in bright ambient light that you entirely sidestep with LG's Tandem OLED panels.

But, overall, QD-OLED still feels noticeably more vibrant and colour rich. Moreover, the variable brightness on this Asus's LG panel when you disable uniform brightness in order to get the best performance is also more noticeable and more distracting.

All that said, there's a price differential to take into account. This Asus goes for $899 to the MSI's $1,099. Personally, I think the MSI is worth the extra $200 for a bit more subjective pop and USB-C connectivity. But the value proposition is certainly very tight between the two. And if you don't care about USB-C but would like the 1080p 480 Hz dual-mode feature, well, the Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32UQWMS is pretty compelling.

Is this the monitor cashed-up PC gamers have been waiting for? At last, a 39-inch ultrawide with decent pixel density thanks to its 5K2K resolution, plus the latest LG OLED panel knowhow? The new LG UltraGear Evo GX9 39GX950B certainly sounds pretty sweet, even if it also costs a pretty penny at $1,799 or £1,549.

The sordid matter of money aside, there's just one snag. The Ultragear 39GX950B does indeed offer LG's hot new Tandem OLED technology. But there's another otherwise almost identical 39-inch 5K2K panel from LG Display that has one notable advantage over this monitor, the inclusion of true RGB-stripe subpixel structure.

It turns out Alienware has announced a monitor using that LG panel, the Alienware AW3926QW, and, to be frank, it looms large over this new model from LG itself. However good it is, you'd really want to see how that Alienware shapes up before pulling the trigger.

Still, the LG Ultragear Evo 39GX950B does look epic on paper. We're talking 5,120 by 2,160 pixels across that 39-inch diagonal. To provide a little context and to define this panel in terms of pixel density and vertical screen size, this is essentially a 32-inch 4K 16:9 monitor taken out to 21:9 aspect and 39 inches.

For many fans of high-end gaming displays, the basic proposition here is just about perfect. The 143 DPI pixel density is enough for crisp fonts and lots of space for day-to-day computing and multitasking while also delivering oodles of in-game image detail.

At the same time, the ultrawide aspect and huge 39-inch panel size makes for epic immersion. Then add in the latest LG Tandem OLED panel tech and, well, you get the idea. This thing promises to be a bit special.

Beyond the basic form factor, of course, there are plenty of other details to absorb. In terms of brightness, ever a key OLED metric, LG claims 335 nits full screen and 1,500 peak HDR in a small window. Those figures are as good as PC OLED monitors currently get.

Speaking of HDR, the 39GX950B has VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification, which is a hallmark of the latest LG Tandem OLED panels. Response comes in at 0.03 ms, which is standard for pretty much all current OLED panels and miles faster than any LCD-based monitor.

As for refresh, at the 5K2K native the 39GX950B tops out at 165 Hz. However, it supports various dual-mode alternative resolutions, the fastest of which can achieve 330 Hz. That's fairly nippy by any sensible measure, though it's pretty hard to imagine anyone really serious about esports and online shooters going for a huge ultrawide like this.

Having said that, the 39GX950B does offer the option of running at 1080p and 330 Hz in a 24.5-inch window, which pretty neatly mimics the preferred form factor for esports. The image quality is pretty clunky and pixellated, as it is in all of the dual modes. And I'm not totally convinced that many esports fans will actually want to play like that.

It certainly looks pretty odd to have a small 24.5-inch section of the huge panel active and rest fully blacked out. But there's no question it works and means this monitor is a thoroughly versatile gaming tool.

If the downscaling support is comprehensive with this panel, so too is the upscaling. Obviously, some kind of upscaling is now pretty much standard with any remotely recent graphics card, in the form of Nvidia's DLSS, AMD's FSR or even Intel's XeSS. But LG has included its own "AI" upscaling functionality with the 39GX950B via an integrated image processor. But hold that thought, we'll come back to how effective it is and how it might compare with GPU scaling in a moment.

Rounding out the speeds and feeds, you get HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1 and USB-C connectivity, the latter with 90 W of power delivery for single-cable connectivity to a laptop, albeit a gaming laptop will typically need rather more than that.

Last and certainly not least on the specs, the panel has a matte anti-glare coating rather than glossy and a mercifully gentle 1500R curve. Most people know if they are glossy or matte fans, but suffice to say that the heavy majority of current OLED gaming monitors are glossy.

One further detail involves the warranty. Where most big monitor brands offer three-year cover, including burn-in, LG is only offering two years. That's disappointing on several levels. For starters, LG Display, the subsidiary of the sprawling LG empire that makes the actual OLED panel (as opposed to LG Electronics, which makes this monitor), says its new Tandem OLED panel tech is more durable than previous generations. So, why not back it with a three-year warranty?

Moreover, given the hefty asking price of around $1,799 or £1,549, the thought of being on your own when it comes to burn-in after just two years is pretty off putting. That alone makes this monitor tricky to recommend.

But let's park that caveat for a moment and consider this monitor's performance. What's it actually like? Well, it's definitely punchier than monitors based on LG's previous WOLED panel generations. Oddly, it's also a more consistent performer than the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS I reviewed recently.

I say "odd" because that Asus uses essentially a 32-inch 4K version of the same LG Tandem OLED panel tech. But I found the brightness variability on the Asus to be awfully distracting if you disabled the uniform brightness feature in order to maximise performance.

The Ultragear 39GX950B does still suffer from that issue, and probably more than comparable OLED monitors based on Samsung QD-OLED tech. But not enough for it to be a major flaw. Overall, the full-screen brightness is pretty decent and this panel can actually be too bright if, for instance, you tend to run most applications in dark mode and then have a third of the screen lit up by a bright browser window.

Of course, that's a good problem to have. Turning brightness down is simple. There's not much you can do, on the other hand, if max brightness isn't good enough.

So, as a desktop general computing panel running in SDR mode, this LG is pretty sweet. Fonts are sharp and crisp, there's loads of desktop space for multitasking, and the panel is plenty bright enough. If you really want to split hairs, I think the latest Samsung QD-OLED panels still look a touch more vibrant and saturated. But it's not a huge delta.

For HDR content, meanwhile, it's likewise mostly good news. LG's OSD menu is a bit baffling, but once you've got everything properly set up, the results can be spectacular, especially on a panel this size.

As ever with an OLED panel, it's at its best showing small bright details on a dark background. Neon lights in a nightclub scene, fireworks in the night sky, a large flame burning in the inky darkness, that kind of thing. Then the full impact of the 1,500 nit peak HDR brightness really hits home.

It's a touch less impressive for outdoor daytime video and game scenes, where the full-screen brightness limitations can leave it looking just a tiny bit underwhelming. To be clear, it's far better than earlier LG OLED panel generations in that regard. But, again, my preference for that kind of rendering remains Samsung QD-OLED.

That said, it's an open question just how good LG's new RGB-stripe panel as used by the aforementioned Alienware will be by comparison. In theory, and because it doesn't rely on an additional white subpixel to boost brightness, that RGB-stripe panel should have superior colour saturation and look more vibrant. Exactly how that pans out, well, we'll have to wait and see.

While we're talking HDR visuals, the SDR calibration in the best HDR mode is pretty wonky to the point where you'd never leave it in that mode, day-to-day. You can actually get decent SDR visuals in one of the other HDR modes. But then that compromises HDR performance. Long story short, you're going to have to switch monitor modes depending on the kind of content you are viewing, which is a bit of an annoyance.

As for the AI upscaling feature, it's awfully hit and miss. For instance, it doesn't work at all at 3,440 by 1,440, which you'd think would be the ideal alternative setting to 5,120 by 2,160 native in terms of knocking the res down to release some performance.

At other resolutions like 1080p, meanwhile, it only works at certain refresh rates. Once enabled, yes it does make things a bit crisper, but it's really not comparable to DLSS or FSR. In short, in its current form the built-in AI upscaling feels pretty underbaked.

Still, if you add panel speed to this monitor's other qualities, the overall experience is frankly epic. It's so huge and so super sharp and so immersive and just so awesome. And yet I can't help having a few reservations.

First, I'd love to see the latest Samsung QD-OLED tech applied to a panel this size and resolution. I'd likewise like to see this monitor with a glossy coating. That could be fantastic in terms of heightening the sense of visual pop and contrast.

And, again, I'd really want to see that upcoming Alienware with its LG Tandem OLED RGB-stripe panel before pulling the trigger, especially as the Alienware looks like it could be as much as $600 cheaper.

Then there's the disappointing two-year warranty. It really is hard to look past that at this price point. All of which leaves me in a state of cognitive dissonance with this monitor. In some ways, it's the best gaming monitor I've ever seen. And yet it's ultimately impossible to issue a strong buy recommendation. At the very least, anyone considering the LG UltraGear Evo GX9 39GX950B really has to wait and see how that cheaper RGB-stirpe Alienware turns out.

The plant will produce 10 million OLED panels this year alone, according to FlatpanelsHD, and significantly more in the second year of its operation. The plant took just over two years to build, cost roughly 63 million RMB (around $9.3 billion) and resides in Chengdu.

Representatives from Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, ZTE, Transsion, Xiaomi and Nothing reportedly attended the opening ceremony, indicating that each will be using the OLED panels produced.

One of the first is said to be a 14-inch OLED panel for Asus, Acer, and Lenovo laptops. The high-end products (being 8.6-gen offerings) will feature stacked tandem panel layers utilising Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide (LTPO), and support 240 Hz VRR refresh rates.

At first, the focus will be on small to medium-sized OLED panels, with no timelines currently announced for TV-sized variants. The plant will also have competition, as Samsung Display booted up a similar 8.6-gen facility in South Korea earlier this year. TCL and Visionox also have 8.6-gen OLED panel plants in the works, so it looks like it won't be long before we're flooded with even more OLED displays from a variety of sources.

This is likely a very good thing for those of us with a tasty new OLED in mind, particularly in our next gaming laptops. Vast numbers of new, high-specced panels entering the market will hopefully lead to some very competitive pricing, and we've already seen some smaller OLED gaming monitors dropping to much more reasonable money over the last few months.

Bring on the OLED pricing revolution, that's what I say. It's been long enough coming, at the very least.

Nearly, that is, but not quite. The glimmer of hope in the barren wasteland that used to be affordable PC gaming? That'll be monitors. They keep getting cheaper and better at the same time, a bit like computer chips used to. In fact, in the last few months I've reviewed the most affordable examples yet of two cutting-edge display technologies, mini-LED and OLED.

Both can now be had for under $350 in 27-inch 1440p format. Representing mini-LED is the remarkable KTC M27T6S, a monitor so good it actually shifted my view on mini-LED technology in general.

Stepping up for OLED is the Alienware AW2726DM. Alienware has form when it comes to bringing OLED display technology in at a lower price than the competition and the AW2726DM makes what many gamers see as the ultimate display technology more accessible than ever before.

We're not quite at price parity, of course. The mini-LED KTC monitor comes in around $290 to the Alienware OLED's $350. But they're close enough for cross shopping to be pretty plausible. So the question is, should you make budget mini-LED or budget OLED your PC gaming panel of choice?

What are OLED and mini-LED?

First up, it's worth understanding just how dramatically different these two display technologies are despite the fact that they both exist for essentially the same reason. The name of the game for both mini-LED and OLED, after all, is improved lighting control.

What you might call traditional PC monitors in the flat-panel era have typically used LCD technology with a big, dumb monolithic backlight. OK, you could vary the brightness of that backlight. But that isn't much help if you want to display both bright and dark image elements at the same time.

Mini-LED is actually still an LCD-based display tech. But it attempts to fix the lighting issue courtesy of an array of individually addressable backlight zones allowing different brightness levels across the screen. Current mini-LED monitors usually have in the order of 1,000 to 2,000 such zones, enabling much better lighting control.

Of course, the ultimate in lighting control would be on a literally per-pixel basis, with each pixel acting as its own light source. And that's exactly what OLED panels deliver. Indeed, it's worth noting just how much more precise OLED is than mini-LED in that regard.

While the KTC M27T6S's 1,152 mini-LED dimming zones might sound like a lot, the fundamental resolution of the backlight is extremely low, something in the order of 40 by 25 zones. With a native image resolution of 2,560 by 1,440, the result is over 3,000 pixels in each zone. But with OLED, each of a 1440p panel's 3.7 million pixels has individual lighting control. That's a huge difference.

OLED panel tech comes with other fringe benefits, too. They have much faster pixel response, not far off two orders of magnitude faster. LCD panels generally come in at about 1 ms claimed response, while OLED is typically rated at 0.03 ms. OLED also has better viewing angles.

Not everything goes OLEDs way, however. Full-screen brightness is a notable weakness and it just so happens that's something mini-LED does very well. Even the very latest OLED monitors top out under 350 nits full-screen, while some mini-LED monitors can exceed 1,000 nits.

OLED also comes with the worry of burn-in. The evidence is building that OLED burn-in is something that the vast majority of users won't have to worry about for many years. But it is a real problem and something you don't have to think about at all with mini-LED.

What's better for gaming, budget mini-LED or budget OLED?

On paper, the Alienware AW2726DM looks like the faster, more responsive monitor. It's got a slight edge when it comes to refresh, hitting 240 Hz to the KTC M27T6S's 200 Hz, or 210 Hz if you want to use the slightly silly "overclocking" feature.

The Alienware's Samsung-supplied QD-OLED panel also offers massively faster 0.03 ms claimed pixel response. The KTC's IPS panel is only good for 1 ms, and even that's only for the less demanding MPRT metric as opposed to the Alienware's grey-to-grey rating.

In practice, the subjective gap isn't nearly as big as the objective specifications. Yes, the Alienware is faster. But the difference isn't nearly as dramatic as 1 ms versus 0.03 ms would have you expect. That says a lot about how far IPS panel tech has come and the fact that the KTC has sourced a pretty nippy example of the IPS panel breed.

Put it this way. If the KTC M27T6S was superior in most other ways, you wouldn't take the Alienware AW2726DM just for its speed. It is faster, but that speed isn't a killer blow. A possible exception here is esports, where refresh is king in terms of latency. But then if competitive online shooters are your absolute priority, you don't want either of these monitors. You're better off with the fastest 1080p panel you can find for this kind of money, and it's probably going to be a TN.

Instead, where the Alienware really delivers is HDR visuals, albeit with some caveats. The Alienware AW2726DM is actually only rated at 400 nits for peak HDR brightness, where the KTC will hit 1,000 nits. But the way we dumb humans perceive brightness isn't as simple as comparing specs.

Contrast matters just as much for perceived brightness as outright brightness. And the Alienware absolutely nails contrast. It can do a single pixel hitting 400 nits right next to another putting out basically zero nits. That means it's far, far better at achieving precision lighting across the whole image and a subjective sense of contrast. Small, bright details actually look brighter because they are surrounded by greater contrast.

In other words, OLED black levels are actually, well, black. The go-to test that really emphasises the difference here is a starfield panning across the display. The Alienware's OLED panel has no problem perfectly lighting individual stars as they scan across the sky.

Mini-LED monitors always involve some kind of compromise with that kind of image. The KTC M27T6S actually does the starfield test better than any other mini-LED monitor I've seen, which is pretty remarkable when you consider it's a budget model. KTC has done a really nice job on the M27T6S's backlight algorithm, that's for sure. But it's still nowhere near as good as OLED.

If all that seems a little abstract, what this all translates into is a much more natural and immersive game world using an OLED panel. There's no backlight bleed, no glowing at the edges of the screen, just what feels like a window into a stunning game world.

The Alienware's glossy panel coating actually heightens that sense, it's so clear and crisp. KTC has gone for a fairly coarse matte anti-glare coating and it both slightly softens the image and further compromises perceived black levels and contrast. In darker game scenes, the Alienware QD-OLED therefore absolutely hammers the KTC mini-LED.

However, ramp up the brightness and the tables are somewhat turned. There are some desert scenes in Cyberpunk 2077 that really show what mini-LED can do with HDR enabled. The KTC M27T6S absolutely pops, it renders the afternoon so bright that it almost hurts your eyes.

Running the two monitors side-by-side, the Alienware OLED looks awfully dull by comparison, it simply runs out of pop when you try to light up a large proportion of the panel. Meanwhile, the KTC never looks anything but retina-searingly bright.

The thing is, however, the QD-OLED panel's deficiencies are much less obvious in isolation than they are when you've got the super-bright mini-LED monitor sitting right next to it. Your eyes adjust to the light levels, to at least some degree cancelling out the objective brightness advantage of the KTC. On the other hand, you never stop seeing the washed out black tones, the lack of contrast, the glow at the edges of the panel, with an IPS panel, even one with a mini-LED backlight.

What's better for daily computing?

First, let's square away something that is often overstated. Just as OLED's speed isn't quite as massive an advantage in the real world as you might expect, the mini-LED KTC M27T6S's font rendering is not, in truth, dramatically better than the QD-OLED Alienware AW2726DM.

Yes, that QD-OLED panel has a suboptimal triangular subpixel structure, as opposed to conventional RGB-stripe. And yes the KTC's fonts are clearer, but only marginally. The bottom line is that neither monitor has particularly good pixel density and even the KTC doesn't render terribly nice fonts. If that's what you care about, you need something like a 27-inch 4K panel or even a 5K model.

For daily computing, both monitors are likewise plenty fast enough. So, it's more the static image quality where the differences lie. As ever, the QD-OLED Alienware has much better black levels and contrast, the mini-LED KTC can run brighter.

There are caveats to all that, however. For starters, there's the question of how bright you actually want a monitor, day-to-day. Arguably, the KTC is too bright for daily comfort in SDR content when set to full reheat.

But what if you do tend to prefer a really punchy looking monitor? Does the QD-OLED Alienware fall short? The simple answer is yes, but it can be mitigated. In SDR mode, the Alienware only hits 200 nits. However, if you switch to HDR mode and then max out the SDR content brightness in the Windows Display Settings menu, you can get pretty good results.

It works best if you prefer to run apps and view websites in dark mode. As with pretty much all OLEDs, the more of the screen you light up in HDR mode, the lower the peak brightness you can achieve. With both monitors running Windows in dark mode, HDR enabled and SDR brightness maxed out, the brightness gap is substantially closed and the Alienware feels really very punchy. And at the same time, it retains its contrast and black level advantage.

The exception to that involves the characteristic purple tint of QD-OLED panels in bright ambient light. This can be problematic during the day, if you, for instance, situate the Alienware right near a big window that lets in lots of natural light. In that scenario, the QD-OLED will also look a little overly warm in terms of colour temperature, while the KTC's IPS panel looks more neutral.

So, what's the best budget panel technology overall?

This is going to sound like a massive cop out, but much of this comes down to personal preference. No question, there are some objective pros and cons. The Alienware and its QD-OLED panel is definitely faster, it has better black levels and contrast, plus superior viewing angles.

The mini-LED KTC, on the other hand, is clearly the brighter of the two and renders fonts more precisely thanks to its RGB-stripe subpixel structure. But what you, personally, make of those pros and cons will be another matter.

The fact that it's not an absolute slam dunk for one or other of the two options is in itself telling. But if you absolutely twisted my arm for a verdict, it would go something like this. It all comes down to brightness.

The QD-OLED option is better in almost every other way, so the question is what you make of its outright brightness. In standard SDR mode, I'd say the brightness of the Alienware AW2726DM is problematic. If I had to use it in that mode all the time, I'd still take it over the KTC M27T6S because of the far superior contrast, black levels, speed and viewing angles. But it would be a close run thing.

On the other hand, if I am allowed to switch on HDR mode, ramp up the SDR brightness in Windows and view basically all my apps in dark mode, then it's a much clearer win for the Alienware and thus for cheap OLED tech. But there would be times in games when it looked just a little bit dull and I'd know, deep down, the KTC and its sizzling mini-LED backlight would have given a more vibrant experience in that moment. As ever, you pays your money and you takes your choice. Good luck!

This is the monitor I've been waiting for. As someone who has just entered another Counter-Strike arc that is sure to last an epoch, as my arcs tend to, I've been on the look-out for a 1080p monitor around the 360 Hz (ish) sweet spot that doesn't break the bank. Enter stage left: the KTC 25M1, at just $350. And I've already seen it on sale for under $300, which bodes well.

Of course, this price-to-refresh-rate ratio wouldn't matter if the monitor sucked, but I'm happy to report it doesn't. Far from it, I'm finding it a genuine pleasure to use for my late night Faceit matchmaking sprees. In what is proving to be both a blessing and a curse, gameplay is so smooth, clear, and snappy that I find it impossible to blame any blunders on the panel. Even if I could convince myself my opponents are using the $1,000, 600 Hz Zowie panel I recently tested, it wouldn't matter because the difference in practice is so slight that I highly doubt it would actually make my enemies any better.

The 24-inch, 1080p monitor, clad with detachable flappy side-wings (to prevent distraction), rear-side headphone stand, cable management feed, and the usual smattering of ports including a 3.5 mm headphone jack, is bred for one purpose: competitive shooters.

No matter how fast it is, you're probably not getting a TN panel for casual gaming or even competitive non-FPS gaming. Even though this panel's colour is damn good for TN, it's not as lush as an IPS and certainly not as vibrant as an OLED.

While it offers a solid 98% sRGB coverage, its DCI-P3 is only rated to 85%, meaning its HDR content is average at best, which is what I'd expect from a TN panel. That fits for my experience turning HDR on in Doom Eternal and eyeballing it: lighting seems a little more natural, but it's hardly night and day between that and sRGB mode.

The sRGB mode thankfully seems pretty well calibrated to my eyes. In addition to making casual gaming pleasant, this makes day-to-day use outside of gaming surprisingly comfortable, too—surprising, that is, for a TN panel.

HDR, though, is certainly not as good as what you get on the 320 Hz Alienware IPS panel I tested. Still, that was an IPS, not a TN. And more expensive esports TN panels like the 600 Hz Zowie one don't have it as an option at all.

For this monitor's real purpose, though, HDR is irrelevant. Sticking it in FPS1 mode but raising brightness a little, Counter-Strike displays flawlessly: enemies are clear and easy to spot, and movements are incredibly smooth.

I used an Nvidia Latency and Display Analysis Tool (LDAT) to test end-to-end latency—thus indirectly testing the response time—and it reported an average of 6.42 ms in-game over 150 muzzle flashes. That's well within a threshold where shooting feels and appears instantaneous to my eyes.

Latency performance

End-to-end latency

KTC 25M1

6.42

Alienware AW2525HM

6.09

Zowie XL2586X+

6.81

012345678910

Time (ms)

End-to-end latency Data

Product	Value
KTC 25M1	6.42
Alienware AW2525HM	6.09
Zowie XL2586X+	6.81

Tested using Nvidia's LDAT over 150 muzzle flashes in-game.

It's even quicker than the 600 Hz Zowie panel (6.81 ms), and only a little slower than the 320 Hz Alienware one with overdrive on (6.09 ms). These differences are all sub-millisecond, though, meaning they're imperceptible and for all intents and purposes we can say they perform about as well as each other when it comes to response times. I certainly didn't notice any difference in snappiness between the three when playing Counter-Strike.

For whatever reason, with this KTC monitor, I can't seem to find a mode that allows me to enable its 'Ultra Fast' overdrive, the fastest setting. But that's okay, because the middle 'Advanced' setting is snappy enough, and it's usually inadvisable to use the fastest overdrive mode in monitors anyway, as it risks inverse ghosting/halo effects. With the Advanced mode enabled, I haven't noticed any pixel overshoot.

Motion clarity is impeccable to my eyes, too, thanks to that 400 Hz refresh rate. As you can see from my slapdash moving photo of an also-moving UFO test, the high refresh rate really does make a difference. The top animation shown was running at 400 fps, the second at 200, the third at 100, the fourth at 50, and the bottom one at 25.

This difference is visible when eyeballing the moving alien targets, too: 400 Hz is just that much clearer than the rest. Admittedly, playing at 240 Hz in game will still be plenty clear, but this is just another example that goes to show what I've argued previously: around 360 Hz (or 400 Hz, in this case) is the sweet spot for competitive gaming.

To my memory, this monitor is also a bit clearer than I found the 320 Hz Alienware monitor to be when I tested it. I simply can't fault it for smoothness and snappiness.

The bonus here is you're getting the 360–400 Hz sweet spot for a damn good price. The 400 Hz Zowie equivalent costs $650, while this KTC monitor costs about $350 and can even be found for just shy of $300 when it's on sale. The 320 Hz Alienware monitor comes in cheaper than this, but honestly for the extra refresh rate and motion clarity boost, I'd say the KTC is worth it if you can afford it. If not, the Alienware will serve well.

With the KTC 25M1, you're hitting the refresh rate sweet spot just before diminishing returns kick in, which means you're getting some of the absolute best competitive/esports performance you can hope for before prices start to soar.

I feel KTC has struck the balance very well, keeping the price as low as possible for the performance on offer, and keeping things within a budget that doesn't only cater to pro players but also to your average competitive FPS gamer like yours truly. This would be the monitor I'd choose for competitive FPS gaming right now if my own money were on the line.

As noted by TechSpot, user Mags_Smash took to the PCMR Subreddit last week to show that the LG Monitor App Installer was prompting them to get a free 30-day trial of McAfee. They claim the LG Monitor App Installer was silently installed via a Windows update without their consent. After searching through the technical details of the reliability monitor in settings, they found the LG app had been downloaded via one of their three LG monitors.

They urge users to not only disable this from happening by clicking through settings and activating the 'prevent automatic download of applications associated with device metadata' option, but also suggest users should completely disable the Windows Store, where the app was downloaded.

The comments section on this thread has many other users complaining about seeing the exact same pop-up, linked to the silent installation of LG's software. One user claims they don't hate Windows for its bloatware, "but this is the first time I've had it install bloatware without my knowledge and genuinely made me think it was a virus."

Notably, LG isn't the only brand accused of doing this in the thread. One user complains their Alienware monitor asks to install Dell/Alienware software, and we've definitely had experience of continual pop ups from Alienware screens reminding us to download the Alienware monitor software, however nothing has ever automatically installed without our consent. Though they aren't the only user to name-check Dell in the comments section.

However, one thing does make LG stand out above the rest here, in a negative sense. Where some peripherals prompt users to download their software, or just download it without asking in the worst cases, LG is prompting users to get a subscription to a service it doesn't directly own. As well as this, users would have to pay for McAfee after the 30-day trial, so LG is incidentally prompting users to spend cash.

I have reached out to both LG and Alienware for comment on this story, but have not yet heard back. Either way, companies being able to serve ads to your PC without asking and prompt you to get a subscription to a separate service, because you've bought a monitor from them, certainly rubs me the wrong way. I don't particularly like anything installing software without asking, but attempting to get me to download even more bloatware is more than a minor annoyance in my book.

Oops: that's a rant.

One thing this Prime Day has been good for is gaming monitors, especially if your budget is under AU$300, and especially if you're after a 1440p display.

The highlight is probably the Alienware AW2725DM 27-incher, at least in terms of the amount you're saving. The QHD display has a Fast IPS panel, a 180Hz refresh rate (more than adequate for mere mortals) and the usual adaptive sync compatibilities. It's usually AU$449.90, but Amazon is flogging it for AU$284.05. That's a good price for an Alienware display with these specs.

If that's still a touch pricey, you can pay around AU$70 less for the KTC H27T22C-3, which has comparable specs. Again, it's QHD, but the refresh rate gets pushed upwards to 210Hz.

I know what you're thinking: KT-huh? They're a Chinese monitor company who you may not have heard of, but this particular model is something PC Gamer can vouch for: it wins best budget 1440p display in our list of the best gaming monitors. You can read more in our full review, but the short of it? "This isn't a perfect display, but it is pretty nice by any reasonable metric. And in the context of the price, it's pretty darn brilliant."

Anyway, the already budget AU$289.99 price has been cut to AU$216.50 for Amazon Prime Day.

If you have less than AU$200 to spare, amazingly, there's an option just for you. The Lenovo LOQ 27Q-10 is, as the name kinda implies, another 27-incher with a QHD resolution. Like the Alienware above it has a 180Hz refresh rate on a Fast IPS panel.

This screen, usually bearing an RRP of AU$299, is currently AU$170 for Amazon Prime Day.

If you're looking for more expensive discounted monitors or, indeed, anything else going cheap during Amazon Prime Day, check out our rolling live blog.

You can't have too many screens. That's pretty much been the guiding moral in my life. Enter the new Asus ROG Strix XG129C and a minor existential crisis. This is a screen, but I have to ask—I can't believe I'm saying this—is there any real point to it?

For starters, this "gaming monitor" (Asus' words, not mine) measures just 12.3 inches. So, it's pretty puny. Actually, it's worse than that. It sports an ultra-wide 24:9 aspect ratio and thus isn't even as big as those 12 inches might imply. In terms of vertical viewable screen height, we're talking sub-4.5-inch.

But here's the thing. While I came in decidedly sceptical about the Asus ROG Strix XG129C, this isn't a proper monitor. It's a device for keeping track of, say, your PC's operating status or providing space for some supplementary application controls. Somehow, I ended up quite liking it. And not just because I'm a total sucker for screens. But more on my journey in a moment. First, let's cover off the core speeds and feeds.

The 24:9 aspect translates into a native resolution of 1,920 by 720 pixels and a pixel density of 166 DPI, the latter being about the same as a 27-inch 4K monitor. So, it's pretty crisp.

It uses IPS panel tech and tops out at 300 nits for brightness and 75 Hz in terms of refresh rate. Oh, and quite importantly, it supports capacitive 10-point multi-touch input. For the record, the touch functionality works essentially out-of-the-box provided you are connecting via USB-C.

Speaking of which, there are two USB-C ports. Both will drive the display, while one doubles as power in and the other supports 20 W of power out. So you can, for instance, connect via a single USB-C cable to both drive the display and power it, which is the ideal in terms of cable management.

That's easy from a laptop, but less of a given with a desktop PC. There are desktop graphics cards with USB-C out that support up to 30 W of power delivery and so would be able to power the display and drive it. But that setup would not support the touch functionality, which requires data passthrough.

So, for a true single-cable solution on a desktop, it all gets a bit complicated. In theory, you could do it with a motherboard that supports Thunderbolt and DisplayPort passthrough from the iGPU and thus have the Asus ROG Strix XG129C running from the iGPU in your CPU and your main monitor running off your graphics card.

I understand this setup is supported, for instance, on Intel Z890 motherboards, again in theory. In practice, results seem to vary and there can be issues with the Thunderbolt port supplying sufficient power. In a worst case scenario, then, you might need to use the HDMI port for the video signal, one of the USB-C ports to power the display and another to send touch data to your PC, which is pretty messy.

But I think a decent chunk of users will be able to get it working with two of the three ports hooked up. If one of those is the HDMI port, you'll then have one cable coming out of the side, one out of the top. It would have been tidier if Asus had located all the ports on one side. Never mind.

That ergonomic glitch aside, this is otherwise a really nicely built display. It feels high quality and the screw-in kick stand is very sturdy and capped with a rubberised foot to provide grip, as is the base of the display itself.

You also get a proper OSD with a joystick controller and full set of features, just like a conventional Asus monitor. What's more, you can control the OSD with the touchscreen input, which is a nice, well, touch.

If that's the features covered, what is the Asus ROG Strix XG129C like in use? Asus bundles a year's subscription to an OEM version of Aida 64, so you've got something to play with immediately.

That's handy, because it would be a nightmare to configure the standard version of Aida 64 to fit this display perfectly. As it is, you can use it to track CPU and GPU operating speeds and temps, storage use, that kind of thing. You'd have thought a permanent license would be part of the deal, but at least you have something to run immediately.

Outside of that, your mileage will vary depending on your preferences. You could use this display to do anything from keep track of social media feeds or work collab' platforms like Slack while you game, to using it to situate secondary controls or a timeline for video editing.

Much will depend on the exact applications you use and what kind of tools and controls they offer, how much configurability they support and so on. But what I would say is that, for this display to really deliver, those tools and controls need to be touch friendly.

That's generally quite a big ask, given that so many applications are either poorly or not at all optimised for touch. Ironically, that includes Asus' own Display Widget Controller app, which really doesn't work at all well on this display. Whatever, it's the ability to use the touch interface, as opposed to needing to "mouse over," and the immediacy that offers, that is most compelling.

Of course, that in itself can create problems with application focus, in-game. And there's no doubting the Asus RoG Strix XG129C works most reliably and consistently as a status display rather than something you directly interact with. But the shortcomings there are largely down to how Windows operates, rather than the display itself.

In the end, this little display is very much in the nice-to-have rather than must-have category. It's also the sort of device where your benefit from and use of it will depend on a whole range of factors.

Some people may be able to get quite a bit of value out of it as a touch device for controlling application tools and menus, such as video, image and music editing. But I would advise caution in that regard. You'll need to do a little homework to see what really works. Don't assume too much.

On the other hand, if you just like the idea of a small secondary display for keeping track of your PC's hardware status or viewing work and social feeds, you can be more confident that the Asus ROG Strix XG129C will deliver.

What's more, as someone who prefers a single ultrawide monitor to a pair of more conventional 16:9 panels, what this mini monitor offers is a way to have the status-tracking functionality that a second screen offers, but keep it small and ergonomically tidy. I don't need a huge screen to watch a bit of Slack or keep track of emails arriving in the background, in other words. The Asus ROG Strix XG129C does that kind of job rather nicely.

Which brings us to the final important factor, namely price. At $199, the Asus ROG Strix XG129C is either pretty reasonable for such a specialised device or crazy money given what 200 bucks buys you these days in the monitor market. This year during Amazon Prime week, I found some KTC 34-inch ultrawides for barely over $200, while $250 will get you a 27-inch 4K dual-mode panel and $150 a decent 1440p panel. It's all a bit bananas.

In that context, the Asus ROG Strix XG129C is definitely a luxury item rather than a value proposition. You'll certainly have to specifically want a smaller, and in some ways less functional, screen to choose it over a 27-inch 1440p panel for less money.

But, personally, I actually might. I already have a large ultrawide for my primary viewing. I don't want another full-sized screen hanging miles off to the side. This nifty little accessory display can sit below my main monitor and would be just the thing to have running discretely, keeping me up to date. I've just got to decide if that's worth $200 to me…

Strictly speaking, the Viewsonic VX24G26J-4K measures 23.8 inches across its panel diagonal. But that puts it firmly in the 24-inch class. Combined with the 3,840 by 2,160 pixel native resolution, the result is a pixel density of 188 DPI.

That's well beyond the 140-ish DPI of a 32-inch 4K monitor and even a fair step up from the 163 DPI of a 27-inch 4K panel. However, in terms of currently available PC monitors, 5K 27-inch monitors like the Asus ROG Strix XG27JCG remain the pixel density kings at 218 DPI.

If you're wondering what the gaming relevance of all this is, well, that's a fair question. However, the new Viewsonic VX24G26J-4K is being pitched as a gaming monitor, rocks a refresh rate of 160 Hz and is also rated at 1 ms for response. So, this is a decently quick panel.

The benefits for gaming are still questionable. For sure, the heightened pixel density will make for sharper images. The extent to which you'd actually notice those extra crispy visuals actually in-game, on the other hand, that is a little dubious, especially compared to a 27-inch 4K monitor, which most would argue is plenty sharp enough for gaming.

More likely, this monitor will appeal to someone who wants really high-quality font rendering in a smaller package than was previously possible. That said, one intriguing possibility, given the 24-inch form factor and 4K resolution, is a 1080p alt mode using pixel doubling and running at a much higher refresh rate.

On paper, that would make for a 1080p 24-inch gaming panel, which is the preferred form factor for really serious esports types, that could switch into a higher resolution mode for day-to-day computing with nice fonts and crisp visuals instead of the blocky, pixellated experience you normally get on the Windows desktop from 24-inch gaming monitors.

However, as far as we can see, there's no mention of dual-mode support on Viewsonic's website. Indeed, it's only listed on Viewsonic's Chinese website (via TFT Central) for now, so perhaps that early listing isn't complete. But if it's accurate, this seems like an opportunity missed.

Whatever, what we definitely don't have right now is pricing right. However, this monitor is part of Viewsonic's value-oriented VX range and lacks USB-C connectivity, so it's likely to be relatively affordable. There's no word on when the Viewsonic VX24G26J-4K will get a broader release outside China, but we'd expect to see it land later this year.

If you've been on this planet as long as I have, you might remember the sentiment that your eyes can't see above 60 fps. At least, that's what console gamers seemed to tell themselves once the PC gaming scene moved on. But actually using 120 Hz or 144 Hz quickly put an end to that myth.

Something about it must have sunk into my subconscious, though, because until recently, I stuck to 144 Hz monitors ever since I got my hands on one around 2014. It's as if I'd accepted that while 60 Hz isn't the limit, perhaps 144 Hz is—or, more realistically, it's as if I'd assumed that diminishing returns might kick in soon thereafter.

I've since discovered that's incorrect. It might be true if you're kicking back in a third-person RPG, and it's certainly true if you're not hitting north of 144 fps in-game. But as I've discovered recently, for competitive FPS gaming, ultra-high refresh rates are genuinely fantastic and much better than sticking at 144 Hz or 165 Hz.

There is truth to the idea that there are diminishing returns to upping your refresh rate, but they don't diminish as drastically or as quickly as a lot of people seem to think they do. I'd say 360 Hz is the sweet spot before real diminishing returns start to kick in, but it's also a little more complicated than that.

I first discovered this when testing the Zowie XL2586X+. Zowie monitors are the most popular for tactical FPS esports pros, for a few main reasons. First, there's the fact that big tournaments often use them across the board, so it makes sense to practice with them—that's one reason for sticking to a 24/25-inch 1080p monitor, too, by the way.

Apart from that very pragmatic reason, though, there's the fact that these monitors have ultra-high refresh rates, panels and colour profiles that are tailored to popular esports titles, and DyAc 2 anti-blur tech.

Of all of these factors, though, I've found that having a high refresh rate is the most important, in my opinion. Which is good news because it opens the field to a whole load more monitors than just Zowie ones with DyAc 2.

I've recently been impressed, for instance, by the $250 Alienware AW2525HM, which has a 320 Hz refresh rate. DyAc 2 and better-tailored panels do give Zowie monitors the edge, but for my money, as long as a panel is generally accurate and clear, I'd take a cheaper one with a similarly high refresh rate.

The question then is: What refresh rate do you need?

One answer to this is, 'As high of a refresh rate as you can afford.' Another answer is 240 Hz, because most pros use either 240 Hz or 360 Hz Zowie monitors. Both of these answers are true in their own way, but neither is fully informative.

With both the 600 Hz Zowie and 320 Hz Alienware, I spent lots of time swapping between different refresh rates and testing things out in Counter-Strike. I came out the other end of this realising these main things:

• The jump from 144 Hz to 240 Hz gives a very noticeable improvement in the gameplay experience and how well I play.
• The jump from 240 Hz to 320/360 Hz gives a big enough improvement to gameplay experience that I think it would be worth paying extra for, but this improvement doesn't translate to making me play any better.
• Beyond 320/360 Hz, increasing to (say) 600 Hz does feel better, but the difference isn't as big as from 240–360 and is nowhere near as big as from 144–240, and it doesn't make me play any better.

In addition to just seeing how different refresh rates actually feel in practice while playing CS2, I also used an Nvidia Latency and Display Analysis Tool (LDAT) to test real-world response times—ie, the end-to-end latency between clicking and having your gun's muzzle flash appear on-screen. The muzzle flash is lower down on the screen, which means (given how monitors refresh from top to bottom) latency will be measured higher than towards the top, but what's important here is the comparison between the numbers.

End-to-end latency (ms)

144 Hz

7.5

240 Hz

7

360 Hz

7.38

600 Hz

6.81

02468

End-to-end latency (ms) Data

Product	Value
144 Hz	7.5
240 Hz	7
360 Hz	7.38
600 Hz	6.81

Tested on a Zowie XL2586X+.

As you can see, when you're using a really good monitor, there's very little in it. These sub-millisecond differences are all within a margin of error, as is made clear by the actual, non-averaged test results. I did 150+ tests at each refresh rate, and there was often variation of a few ms between different ones at the same refresh rate.

In practice, this means that sometimes clicking at 600 Hz will cause the corresponding on-screen effect slower than it will at 144 Hz, though more often than not the opposite will be true, but not by much.

What made more of a difference was whether the frame rate was kept capped or uncapped. I tested this on the Alienware monitor, comparing 144 Hz and 320 Hz, and found that this had a more definite effect on end-to-end latency, though again the difference was small and probably imperceptible in practice.

End-to-end latency

Latency, VRR on, capped (ms)

Latency, VRR off, capped (ms)

Latency, VRR off, uncapped (ms)

144 Hz

11.97

11.35

8.32

320 Hz

7.62

7.81

6.2

03.757.511.2515

End-to-end latency Data

Product	Value
144 Hz	11.97 Latency, VRR on, capped (ms), 11.35 Latency, VRR off, capped (ms), 8.32 Latency, VRR off, uncapped (ms)
320 Hz	7.62 Latency, VRR on, capped (ms), 7.81 Latency, VRR off, capped (ms), 6.2 Latency, VRR off, uncapped (ms)

Tested on an Alienware AW2525HM.

Note that the results are the same whether VRR (FreeSync Premium) was enabled or disabled. VRR only kicks in when frame rates are below your refresh rate, but even with frame rates capped so it could take effect, it didn't change latency.

Here are the two main takeaways from this:

1. It's better to have your frame rate uncapped if your system can churn out frames higher than your refresh rate, as this can lower your response time.
2. If your system can't produce a frame rate higher than your refresh rate, you might as well cap it just below and enable VRR to have the benefit of zero screen tears.

There are, of course, caveats to all of the above. For one, you shouldn't ignore differences between panels: if it's an OLED, it will have an ultra-low response time, if it's a VA, it will likely have a higher one, and if it's an IPS, it will very much depend on the panel.

You also shouldn't ignore differences between people. A younger pro gamer might, for instance, be able to derive more of an actual benefit to how well they play by stepping up from 240 Hz to 360 Hz, where I, as a 31-year-old non-pro, cannot.

And probably the biggest caveat is that all of the above is redundant if your system can't pump out enough frames to keep up with your refresh rate. It's also irrelevant if you mainly play casual games and don't care so much about having the snappiest response time and clearest view of enemies in motion. I don't particularly care for much above 144 Hz if I'm sitting back with a controller in a third-person shooter, for instance.

Ultimately, though, I think most people who are into competitive shooters will be similar to me in how they are likely to perceive differences between high refresh rates. For my money, I think 360 Hz is the sweet spot before diminishing returns kick in, not only in terms of how much it helps you play well but also how pleasant it feels to experience. 240 Hz isn't much worse, though, and if I were on a strict budget, that would be what I'd opt for—but no lower. 144 Hz and 165 Hz are certainly far from the limit before significant diminishing returns kick in.

That's because it seems designed for people exactly like me: people who are into competitive FPS gaming more than anything else, but who are also on a strict budget.

Not too long ago, I tried out the 600 Hz Zowie XL2586X+. That monitor is perfect for serious tactical FPS players like me, but it also costs *gulp* $1,000. This Alienware is a much more sensible proposition: $250 for a 320 Hz panel. Plus, here you're getting an IPS rather than a TN panel, and some pretty nice HDR to boot. That's irrelevant for competitive FPS gaming, but even if you only very occasionally dabble in casual games, it's nice to have.

Make no mistake, though, both the Zowie and the Alienware here are for a particular market, and that is the competitive FPS gamer. While most similarly priced panels are 1440p, 27-inch deals, monitors for this market skim off a couple of inches and drop down to 1080p resolution.

That's great for giving a full view of a tactical FPS scene and permitting split-second reactions, and it can help boost your FPS a little, but for other games, higher pixel density and a wider view are probably where it's at, even if you have to sacrifice some smoothness by dropping the refresh rate.

Jumping into Counter-Strike 2 with the Alienware AW2525HM after gaming on a 144 Hz IPS monitor for so long was a surreal experience: I couldn't quite believe just how much of a difference doubling my refresh rate could make. Flicking my aim felt incredibly smooth, and I felt like I was seeing animations—including, importantly, enemy movements—in more detail and more quickly than I had seen them before. It's hard to convey just how much better 320 Hz feels than 144 Hz if you're a competitive FPS gamer; all I can say is the difference is more than noticeable.

That being said, there's more to smooth and snappy gameplay than just the refresh rate, and this monitor isn't perfect in at least one other area. That area is motion clarity, which shouldn't be overlooked for competitive shooters. Unfortunately, the Alienware has significantly more noticeable blur—caused by pixels taking a long time to change colour—than a monitor like the Zowie one, which uses backlight strobing to keep motion very clear. I checked how the Alienware performs in the UFO test, and there's a definite blur behind the friendly green creature's flying machine.

Swapping from something as smooth and clear as the $1,000 Zowie, I certainly noticed the difference, even with the Alienware's overdrive settings enabled and on their highest. (Side note: I noticed little contrast between the three overdrive options, so I kept the middle one selected just in the name of caution, given the 'extreme' option would be the most likely to cause inverse ghosting.)

Saying all this, coming from another 144 Hz IPS—as I swapped back and forth between the two for comparison—I didn't really spot any additional blur in practice. The only thing I noticed was the buttery smooth, increased refresh rate. My brain simply doesn't register any perceived blur in the face of such a step up in refresh rate. If I had the choice between a 144/165 Hz panel with great motion clarity or this 320 Hz Alienware panel, I'd choose the latter without a doubt.

There is some competition in this budget, high refresh rate space, such as the 210 Hz KTC H27T22C-3, for instance, which our Jeremy rated pretty highly after testing. But we're talking 320 Hz here, and while going from 210–320 isn't going to be as big of a jump as from 144 or 165, it's still noticeable, and every little helps if you're playing competitive FPS games.

Going from 144 Hz to 320 Hz gives a night and day difference in terms of how enjoyable the gameplay is, and it can even improve your personal performance. Using Nvidia's Latency and Display Analysis Tool (LDAT), I witnessed an end-to-end response time of 7.9 ms at 144 Hz, but a noticeable decrease to 6.1 ms at 320 Hz, tested over 150+ runs each.

It's also worth noting that this kind of response time matches—in fact, even beats—the response time I saw with the Zowie monitor. It's as snappy as you could want for competitive gaming, and you'll only really get better if you opt for an OLED, but even then, any extra you gain won't be perceptible.

I should also note that I found the darkness stabilisation feature (on its lower setting) genuinely beneficial, which I didn't expect. This essentially boosts darker areas, which can help you spot enemies more easily in shadowy parts of the map. I now only play CS2 when this is enabled, although I do turn it off when I play casual games, to make sure I'm getting the fully contrasted experience.

Given all this, I'd say this monitor is aimed at, and is ideal for, competitive FPS gamers looking to upgrade from a 144 Hz or 165 Hz monitor on a budget. Assuming their PCs can churn out the 300+ fps needed to make the most of the Alienware AW2525HM, it will be well worth it.

If this doesn't describe you, it might still be worth it if you're setting your sights on 1080p gaming. Setting aside the main 320 Hz appeal, the monitor itself looks lovely, with nice thin bezels and an understated but nevertheless distinctly Alien-like adjustable stand. It also has two USB ports with pass-through and a handy shoot-out headphone hook on the left side.

From a casual gaming perspective, one thing I'm pleasantly surprised by is the HDR experience. I didn't expect much, but actually, after calibrating everything, playing Doom Eternal with HDR on is wonderful. Everything just feels that much more immersive and realistic with it enabled, thanks to the improved colour space and contrast. It's not advertised as being full-blown HDR, and it doesn't even seem to have a VESA certification for it, but the colour gamut seems to be wide enough to make for a very eye-pleasing experience.

In fact, the panel is pretty nice in general, too, even without HDR enabled. Brightness seems very uniform to my eyes, and colours seem accurate enough once greens are toned down ever so slightly. But I suppose the question is whether all this is enough in the face of 1440p monitors, which definitely do look sharper thanks to increased pixel density. Given the monitor isn't bad in respect to colour and brightness, if you think you can crank out the frames to make the most of the refresh rate at 1080p, I'd certainly not rule it out even for casual gaming.

That being said, for casual gaming, I'd still lean towards a 1440p panel. My 1440p BenQ monitor, which is now pretty old, looks better in terms of clarity and vibrancy than this Alienware, and I'd prefer using it for non-HDR games that I can't hit 200+ fps on—which will presumably be a lot of games for a lot of people.

So, that brings me back to the primary use case: competitive FPS gaming. If that's your jam and you're on a budget, the Alienware AW2525HM is ideal. It even works fine for some casual gaming and movie watching on the side. But if the latter are your primary use cases, I'd say steer clear.

First, a confession. I'm not much of a mini-LED fan. You might even call me a dimming-zone snob. I've never found LCD panels with full-array local dimming terribly convincing, and of late it's been hard to argue with the latest OLED gaming monitors. So, it's definitely a surprise to discover that one of, if not the best mini-LED monitors I've yet seen is this new budget-priced model, the KTC M27T6S.

Am I giving away too much, too soon? Perhaps. But the fact that I came into this review pretty sceptical of LCD monitors with local dimming hopefully means that when I say I was impressed by the KTC M27T6S, it carries a bit more weight. This monitor does the local dimming thing remarkably well. Does it do it well enough to convert me to mini-LED technology? Now there's a question.

We'll answer that momentarily, but first let's cover the basics. This is a 27-inch model with a 2,560 by 1,440 native resolution. For gaming, that's just great. 4K is dandy in theory, but at just $290, this is not a premium-priced monitor and it's implausible to think the KTC M27T6S will be paired with the kind of $1,000 GPU you need to really make the most of 4K.

As for refresh, we're talking 200 Hz with an optional, and rather pointless ability to "overclock" to 210 Hz, plus pixel response of 1 ms (by the MPRT metric). The panel type is, as you would expect, IPS.

Of course, the whole point of LCD panels with full-array local dimming is to enable improved HDR performance. The KTC M27T6S duly has VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification and can do fully 1,000 nits courtesy of 1,152 dimming zones. Youch.

Then again, so can plenty of other LCDs with local dimming, and I haven't liked many of those.

Rounding out the details are a stand that adjusts every which way, including pivot into portrait mode, plus DisplayPort and HDMI connectivity. The HDMI ports will only hit 144 Hz, for the record, and there's no USB-C for single-cable connectivity, nor a USB hub. That's probably not a surprise given the competitive price point.

Still, it's pretty nicely put together monitor, albeit largely from plastic, and the design is certainly slick with slim bezels and a mix of black and pale grey plastics from which many more expensive gaming monitors could learn quite a bit. It doesn't look or feel cheap.

Perhaps more importantly, they could learn a lot from its image quality, too. As an SDR monitor, the KTC M27T6S is impressive enough. It's awfully bright, cranked right up, and the basic calibration is pretty nice in sRGB or DCI-P3 modes, although for those who are particular about such things, the calibration of SDR content in HDR mode is a bit off with clearly over-saturated SDR colours.

It's fast, too, subjectively on a par with any remotely comparable IPS monitor. You'll need to be running something with ultra-high refresh and black-frame insertion, or similar, to experience a substantially better experience in terms of pixel response from an LCD monitor.

But where the KTC M27T6S really delivers is with HDR content. There are all kinds of drawbacks to local dimming technology applied to LCD panels. You get blooming around bright objects, dimming zones visibly popping on and off, the inability to light up smaller bright objects on a dark background, weird brightness gradients across the screen, and so on.

The KTC M27T6S doesn't solve or avoid all of those issues. But the algorithm KTC has come up with to control the zones does it as well, or better than any other monitor with a full-array mini-LED backlight that I've yet seen. At this price point, that's remarkable.

First off, there's no "zone popping" at all. That's a term I just made up and it concerns the really obvious switching on and off of individual backlight zones. You can induce it in many full-array dimming monitors by displaying a star field panning across the screen. And it can look absolutely awful as you track the zones popping on and off as stars pass across the screen.

The KTC M27T6S doesn't do that at all. It also handles a particular 4K HDR video of fireworks on a night sky—which I use as a mini-LED torture test—better than I've seen before on this class of display. It's not perfect. There's still some light bleed and some blooming. But the brighter explosions really light up your retinas. It's very impressive.

In-game is where I was really blown away, however. The brighter desert scenes in CyberPunk 2077 tend to find the weaknesses of OLED monitors; they simply can't handle how much of the panel needs to be driven hard to render the desert sun really well and so tend to look a bit dull.

But this dirt cheap KTC monitor absolutely smashes it. The sun is so bright, it almost hurts your eyes. This is a genuine HDR experience and a level of realism that's completely different from your usual entry-level HDR 400 monitor.

That said, if brighter scenes are where this monitor both literally and figuratively shines, it's after dark in Night City where things don't work quite so well. This is ultimately a backlit IPS panel and there's no avoiding light bleed and a bit of glow behind darker scenes and textures that also have some small, bright objects.

The dimming zones are handled deftly, but you can still ultimately see where the zones are firing hard and where they are not. The subjective black levels also aren't helped by the fairly coarse matte anti-glare coating, which tends to make everything look just a little grey.

There's actually an interesting comparison to be made here between this remarkably affordable mini-LED monitor and Alienware's budget QD-OLED offering, the AW2726DM. Okay, at $350 the Alienware is still more expensive, but it's not a huge chasm, price-wise, to this $290-ish monitor. So, it's plausible to think people might cross-shop. But which should they buy?

The full-screen brightness from this KTC is on another planet, and one awfully near its host star. But then the black levels from the OLED and the lighting precision and overall sense of balance and naturalness are far superior, there's none of the slight weirdness where you can see the backlight working harder in some areas of the panel than others.

That said, speed-wise, the subjective difference is remarkably small versus that cheap OLED. It's definitely lighting precision, not pixel response, that is the most telling difference. You also have to factor in superior font rendering on this LCD panel. There are now OLED monitors with conventional RGB-stripe subpixel structure that will render text as well as any LCD, but they are new and more expensive models, for now.

Ultimately, I'd still go with the OLED option; it does the things I care about most better. But I can absolutely understand why someone else might prefer this mini-LED option. It's really very good. It also solves a conundrum that's been bothering me for a while.

I have never understood why local dimming has historically added so much to the price of a monitor. This KTC confirms that not only that it needn't, but also there's no reason why affordable local dimming can't also be very good local dimming. At the price point KTC has hit, this is a pretty incredible monitor.

When it comes to gaming monitors, it feels like 2026 has been all about lording it with a long list of OLED displays. So, it's nice to be back among the proletariat with a mere LCD panel. I give you the Koorui 34E6UC.

Of course, this is a 34-inch ultrawide model, which is one of my favourite form factors and pretty generously proportioned. So, the Koorui 34E6UC isn't a truly poverty-spec display. It's just the panel tech is pretty pedestrian and the price positively punchy. There's no mini-LED backlight, no full-array dimming. Just plain old VA running at 165 Hz.

So the appeal here is that, at the time of writing, you can snag this 34 incher on Amazon for just $264 in the US or £199 in the UK. That's far less than you'd pay for an equivalent OLED monitor and, frankly, looks downright reasonable compared to many PC components of late, the prices of which are spiralling out of reach thanks to the AI bubble.

The other issue of interest here is Koorui itself. It's very much a lesser known brand, but part of a large Chinese corporation known as HKC that specialises in display semiconductor tech. So, the question is, can you add Koorui to your list of monitor brands that generally make decent displays?

Hold that thought while we cover off the main speeds and feeds. Aside from the 34-inch ultrawide proportions based on a VA-type LCD panel, you're getting the familiar 3,440 by 1,440 resolution, 165 Hz refresh, and claimed 1 ms pixel response performance. For the record, brightness is pegged at 400 nits and there's basic VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification.

Perhaps ill-advisedly, Koorui actually calls out esports as a primary remit for this panel. But here in 2026, 165 Hz isn't really the stuff of online domination. And, in any case, if you're really into esports, you're probably not going to be gaming with an ultrawide monitor.

Elsewhere, you get DisplayPort, plus two HDMI inputs. Just note the latter two top out at 100 Hz, so you'll need to use DisplayPort to get the full 165 Hz. Unsurprisingly given the value positioning, there's no USB-C and no USB-A hub.

Oh, and the stand offers height, tilt and swivel adjustments, plus the chassis is actually as well made as more expensive brands. So, at least no corners have been cut there.

That 34-inch panel, meanwhile, sports a fairly gentle 1000R curve and a matte anti-glare panel coating. So, it's all pretty conventional. Which is no bad thing. Ultimately, this monitor looks pretty sweet, on paper, for the money. But is it actually any good in practice?

Initial impressions are indeed thoroughly conventional, which is mostly for the better. This is a VA panel with 3,000:1 static contrast, so it blocks a bit more light and offers better black levels than a similar IPS screen.

The slight catch is that VA has worse viewing angles than IPS, so there's a bit of glow at the top and bottom of the panel when viewing dark backgrounds or gaming scenes. It's not a major problem, but it is one of many reminders that you're not looking at an OLED panel.

Still, it's certainly pretty punchy and also well calibrated in both sRGB and DCI-P3 modes, presets for which, incidentally, are provided in the OSD menu. Again, so far, so reassuringly similar to more familiar brands.

Where things are less impressive involves pixel response. VA panels obviously have a reputation for offering the worst pixel response of the major LCD panel types, which also include TN and IPS. Unfortunately, the Koorui 34E6U does little to dispel that notion.

You do get the option of three different levels of pixel overdrive in the OSD menu. But even set to the most aggressive mode, there's a fair amount of blur and smear visible in certain situations.

Exactly how much of an issue that is, well, that's a subjective call. It'll depend to a some degree on your frame of reference. Personally, coming from a series of OLED reviews, the in-game blurriness as you whip your mouse around was all too obvious.

That's especially true, actually, when playing more demanding games at lower refresh rates. Darker game scenes are the worst, suffering quite a bit of visible smear. However in, say, a brighter Counter-Strike 2 map like Dust 2 at native resolution, you can reach the panel's 165 Hz refresh with a fairly modest GPU and the clarity in that scenario is reasonable.

More to the point, none of this is out of the ordinary for this type of display. By way of example, it's about the same as the ASRock Phantom PG34WQ15R2B, which I rated pretty highly. Of course, I rated that screen pretty highly back in early 2023. So, what you're getting is pretty much the same experience, just for $100 less.

In the end, then, this screen is all about context and value. Put it up next to the latest OLED panels, and the shortcomings in terms of contrast, black levels, lighting control, viewing angles, pixel response, and more are pretty stark. But they're also pretty irrelevant if your budget is $250, or thereabouts.

At that price point, the Koorui 34E6UC is a decent effort and definitely buyable. Long story short, this kind of VA panel has weaknesses. But they're not specific to this particular monitor, which is generally well executed. All I would say is that if you can find a good 34-inch ultrawide with an IPS panel for not too huge a premium and you can afford the step up, that would be clearly preferable just for the pixel response.

I can't help but point out that you can also get a 27-inch high-refresh 4K IPS monitor for about $300 these days, too. But if $264 is already a stretch, and it's 34-inch ultrawide you want—and it certainly is a compelling form factor and a good fit with a reasonably attainable graphics card—this Koorui offering ain't half bad.

Indeed, in the current context, what with RAM prices going into orbit and GPUs increasingly costing more than their weight in unobtainium, gaming monitors are one of the few vaguely affordable PC component categories. So, it's great that you can get a decent 34-inch ultrawide experience for this kind of money, it really is.

Finally, on the broader question of Koorui as a monitor brand, the signs are positive from this first viewing. They're backed by a large Chinese corporate and this monitor is covered by a three-year warranty, much like the more familiar competition.

I'd also go so far as to say the simple fact the Koorui reached out to us seeking a review is a sign of a company that wants to engage with western markets, as is the fact that the company runs both US and UK websites with ecommerce facilities where you can order their monitors. Obviously I'd want to see a decent range of Koorui monitor models first hand to give a really authoritative recommendation in that regard. But I like what I've seen so far.

The LP-3201 from Loop is a nostalgically chunky 32-inch WQHD monitor with a slot in the back that can accommodate graphics cards measuring up to 330mm in length. A sales representative told Hermitage Akihabara that the slot is best suited to Nvidia's SFF standard geared towards small form factor PCs.

What's especially neat about the LP-3201 is that it should be way more upgradeable than your average all-in-one PC. Typical AIO systems use laptop components in order to cram all of their hardware into a small space (such as the back of a monitor) and keep it cool.

As such, the average AIO only lets you upgrade maybe the DRAM or SSD, at most. The LP-3201 isn't so typical in this regard, in that it looks like a mostly normal PC that's been clown car-ed into the back of a monitor. As such, all of its guts should be just as upgradeable as a regular tower PC.

On the show floor, Loop exhibited the LP-3201 all-in-one PC with what appeared to be the Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5070 OC Edition. The sizeable Asus ROG Astral 50-series graphics cards are slightly too long to fit, and you'll definitely fail to crowbar in the even beefier ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20 that was also announced during Computex.

Beyond the GPU, the showpiece's guts include a Micro ATX motherboard and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU (an Arrow Lake chip). Somehow, Loop has also found room for a liquid cooling system and an 800W PSU, too. To keep everything cool, there are pretty sizable air vents lining the back side of the monitor.

As for, you know, the monitor part of the LP-3201, you're getting 32 inches with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440. The screen also enjoys a decent refresh rate of 180Hz to boot. It even comes in a gamer goo shade of bright green. You can class up the green version with wooden panelling across the air vents at the back, but a more traditional black colourway is available too.

Though currently sold as a bare-bones product (i.e., bring your own 330mm GPU, SSD, OS, etc) for the Chinese market, Loop is apparently interested in expanding into the Japanese market, so there's potential for it to travel further around the world.

Loop already offers a curved monitor with a similar all-in-one system (GPU included) called the LP 3200 AIO. That said, I'm a little unclear on whether you can pick this up in the US currently, or whether its successor, the LP-3201, will ever come Stateside.

The big news is that the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM features RGB-stripe technology. In other words, the panel's subpixel structure is composed of conventional red, green and blue vertical subpixels in that order.

Until recently, all OLED gaming monitors had panels with various weird and wonderful subpixel structures. LG's panels had an extra white subpixel to boost peak brightness. Samsung used a triangular layout, albeit with the standard RGB colours.

These non-standard subpixel layouts cause various issues. So, the ideal solution is an absolutely standard RGB-stripe structure. And that's what the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM's new LG WOLED panel offers.

Note that the "W" in LG's WOLED branding doesn't refer to a white subpixel, but the white colour of the base emissive OLED material, which is then passed through red, green and blue filters for each subpixel, respectively.

Anywho, the ROG Swift PG32UCWM is, as I said, a 32-inch 4K model. It runs at 240 Hz at 4K and offers an alternative 1080p mode at 480 Hz. It also sports VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification. And that's where things get a bit tricky.

You can already buy 32-inch 4K Samsung QD-OLED based monitors, including the MSI MPG 322UR X24 I reviewed recently, that offer brighter True Black 500 certification. And Samsung has announced yet another 32-inch 4K panel with True Black 600 certification, 360 Hz refresh and RGB-stripe subpixels for later this year.

That latter panel in particular makes the new LG WOLED in the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM look a bit behind the curve, even as it launches. It'll do 350 nits full screen and 1,500 peak HDR.

The LG WOLED in the Asus, meanwhile, tops out at 1,000 nits peak HDR. Asus hasn't quoted as fullscreen figure. But it will likely be in the 250 to 275 nits range. These brightness figures are despite the panel using LG's latest Tandem OLED tech. And that's likely because of the removal of the white subpixel, which LG has thus far used to increase the brightness rating of its OLEDs.

Still, the good news here is that OLED technology is really kicking on this year. We're getting brighter panels seemingly by the week and RGB-stripe is being ever more widely adopted.

I wouldn't be surprised if most OLED gaming monitors are RGB-stripe by this time next year. Add in increased brightness and we're surely approaching a situation where the art of OLED gaming monitors is pretty much perfected.

Well, maybe with one final caveat around burn-in remaining. But the evidence continues to mount around existing panels that burn-in isn't a massive issue. And these newer panels are meant to be yet more robust.

It's a 1080p monitor, of course. The CS2 pro's fave, which I tested recently, the Zowie XL2586X+, is 24.5 inches on the diagonal and has a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080, and that seems to be what most high refresh rate esports monitors go for.

Most of those are TN or IPS, though, not OLED. Previously, the choice for 'casual' esports at home was between one such TN/IPS or a bigger 27-inch OLED. I've tried both of these options and definitely prefer the 24-inch form factor for competitive shooters, but there's no denying how nice OLED looks, nor its super-snappy response time and motion clarity.

When testing the Zowie, I also found I could tell the difference between 360 Hz and 600 Hz, so if your rig's powerful enough to churn out the frames, I don't think 540 Hz is overkill. It's not as noticeable a difference as moving up from 144 Hz to 240 Hz, or from the latter up to 360 Hz, but it's not nothing, either. And for competitive shooters at a high level, every little can indeed help.

The whole 24/25-inch thing confuses some who aren't used to it for esports, too. But essentially, this size can be better for allowing you to soak in the entire game scene—not missing a movement at the periphery, for instance—without having to move your eyes too much. After trying both 24.5-inch and 27-inch monitors extensively, I do prefer the former for playing a tactical FPS like CS2.

And with the panel being OLED, hopefully other games and content (movies, etc) won't feel too diminutive on it either—maybe that vibrancy can help make up for it. At any rate, for those of you like me who perpetually debate between a fast esports IPS/TN or an OLED, it seems the ROG Strix OLED XG259QWPG will have us covered.

I'm way out west in Taipei, at MSI's HQ—which was originally MSI Factory 3—and I'm spending my Sunday prodding and poking a bunch of its new toys. I've had my hands on the new MSI Claw 9 EX AI+, with its fancy new Intel G3 Extreme processor, and I've had my eyeballs on a range of MSI's new monitors as well.

The $1599 MEG X was definitely one that stood out, though not necessarily for all the right reasons. This is the screen billed as that first agentic AI monitor, and it comes with a bunch of new AI-powered features. I would say most of them are of the sort that makes you wonder if someone told the designers they had to find a way to integrate as many features as possible into the screen that they could hang an 'AI' badge.

But there is one that anyone who has struggled with monitor on-screen displays (OSDs) will maybe appreciate: The MEG X has a feature which means you can just ask it to change a setting and it will do it for you.

• 34-inch / 5th-Gen QD-OLED / 3440x1440 (UWQHD@360Hz) / 0.03ms (GtG)
• Built in AI Processor delivers AI Super Resolution, AI Gauge, AI Scene, AI Audio Scene, AI Crosshair, and AI Vision+ to assist in gameplay practice.
• MSI's exclusive AI Care Sensor detects user presence to automatically adjust OLED Care settings.
• 5th-gen QD-OLED with Penta Tandem, 5-layer structure boosts light efficiency by up to 30%. RGB Stripe minimizes color fringing.
• DarkArmor Film delivers 40% deeper blacks and offers 2.5x better scratch resistance.
• Connectivity: 2x HDMI 2.1 input (UWQHD@360Hz), 1x DisplayPort 2.1a (UHBR20) input, 1x Type-C (DP alt.) w/ 98 W PD, 2x USB 5 Gbps Type-A, 1x USB 5 Gbps Type-B, 1x Headphone-out

Now, I'll grant you that's not a feature that would have me dropping $1599 on a new ultrawide 1440p OLED monitor, but it is still a feature I wouldn't mind seeing being used across the board. Mostly because I have a very rational hatred of monitor OSDs and the fiddly controls you're forced to use to access them.

The advent of the nubbin/joystick control was a game-changer, taking us past the days of trying to figure out what the unlabelled buttons under the bottom bezel actually did, but it doesn't change the fact that the settings menus for monitors are borderline impenetrable to the average user.

The MEG X and its LuckyClaw feature, however, means you can talk to a cartoon dragon with crab claws—which has the personality of an over-enthusiastic toddler/bro—and simply ask it to alter the brightness or enable the on-screen crosshair feature. I don't want to actually engage with the wee red guy, but the system seems sound.

It's all thanks to the micro-controller inside MSI's modern monitors which allows you to alter the monitor's settings from within Windows rather than the traditional OSD. It is simply linking up its AI software to that functionality to perform the adjustments on the fly, if you're in a game, for example.

Unfortunately, despite the MEG X reportedly being on sale from August 5 this year, this specific feature was not yet available for demo. But I did see a non-shouty-dragon version, just using an OpenClaw interface running on the already released MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36. That's a monitor which uses the same Samsung 5th Gen Penta Tandem panel with the striped RGB pixel layout, and is actually awesome.

There are a bunch of other, far less useful features, such as AI Super Resolution, which by MSI's own admission doesn't perform as well as either FSR or DLSS as it's just running on the monitors scaler, and a specific version of that which just upscales the area where your scope might be in the middle of the screen, and there's a light bar which can tell you which channel (left or right) music might be coming from, but shouldn't be used for games as that might be considered cheating.

BUT give me the AI settings feature in a less obnoxious-dragon kinda way, and I could potentially be convinced that an AI monitor isn't such a bad thing after all.

The original report was posted on South Korean website EBN and titled, "LG Electronics to shut down its 'problematic' TV business? Discusses sale with China's Hisense." The story has since been taken down, while reports of a denial by LG of the entire story have emerged.

However, at this stage, it does not seem that LG has made an official statement of its own or spoken with a major news outlet. So, what to make of this mess?

First, the part of LG that sells TVs is quite separate from that which produces display panels, such as LCD or OLED panels. So, any purported sale of its TV business would not directly impact LG's WOLED tech as used in PC gaming monitors.

Speaking of which, LG's PC monitor division is part of the same overall group as the TV business, but so are a lot of other digital product types, such as laptops, and it's unlikely the deal with Hisense would include all that. So, even if it's true, it probably only applies to TVs.

But what's arguably more interesting is what this all says about the TV and broader display panel market. The original, now removed, EBN report pointed out that China-based TCL already owns 14% of the TV market in 2025, with Hisense close behind on 12.5%.

Others have noted that TCL, Hisense and Xiaomi together now have more TV market share than LG and Samsung combined, with the broader narrative that the arrival of the Chinese is squeezing margins heavily. Certainly, LG Electronics, which makes TVs, has been struggling of late, reporting a net loss for the last quarter of 2025.

Exactly what the implications are of any of this for PC monitors and, indeed, the LCD and increasingly OLED panels that go into them is complicated.

Arguably, China has already won when it comes to manufacturing LCD panels. LG sold its last LCD panel factory to TCL about a year ago, and China now reportedly owns over 70% of the LCD panel manufacturing market.

So, ironically, LG and Samsung's LCD TVs now largely use Chinese rather than South Korean-made panels. For now, LG and Samsung still dominate in the large form factor OLED panel segment as used for TVs and monitors, as opposed to smaller OLEDs for smartphones.

However, TCL's panel-making subsidiary, CSOT, has revealed plans to make its own inkjet-printed RGB-OLED panels with a view to taking on LG and Samsung. The good news is that it should mean plenty of competition.

OLED monitors have been getting steadily cheaper, with the Alienware AW2726DM recently launching for just $350. Presumably, competition from China would make OLED monitors even cheaper. Monitors are already pretty much the most interesting part of the PC hardware market right now, what with chip prices spiralling.

Of course, "cheap" isn't the only concern. OLED technology has been improving fast of late. We've seen some impressive new QD-OLED panels from Samsung this year, and the company has just announced a yet better QD-OLED panel that's due to go into production later in 2026.

Put another way, LG and Samsung are both at the cutting edge of OLED innovation right now, and it's not clear a price war would encourage further innovation as opposed to a race to the bottom. I guess we'll just have to watch this space.

Until now, OLED monitor panels, be they from Samsung or its main competitor LG, have topped out at a maximum of 240 Hz. So, the 360 Hz refresh is a clear upgrade. Notably, that panel also supports 680 Hz at 1080p via dual-mode functionality. So, this thing promises to be both great for high-end single-player graphics-led gaming and esports, too.

Next up is true RGB-stripe subpixel structure. Samsung introduced that earlier this year on its new 34-inch 1440p panel, a version of which I reviewed in the MSI MPG 341CQR X36, but somewhat oddly, it wasn't in the mix with the new 4K panel introduced at around the same time. We had a look at that new panel, incidentally, in the MSI MPG 322UR X24.

Until that 34-inch ultrawide, all QD-OLEDs had used some variation of a triangular subpixel structure. They were still RGB, rather than relying on an additional white subpixel to boost brightness as per LG's WOLED panels.

But the triangular arrangement is essentially non-standard from a PC computing perspective. For example, Windows assumes a vertical RGB-stripe subpixel structure to achieve subpixel addressing for features like ClearType font smoothing. Anywho, the text and fonts on this new panel should be pretty sweet thanks to a combination of 4K pixel density and the RGB-stripe structure.

The final major new feature is the HDR certification. "The new monitor panel is certified with VESA’s DisplayHDR True Black 600, achieving higher brightness than existing premium self-emissive monitors," Samsung says, adding that, "this exceeds True Black 500, which has been regarded as the highest grade in the existing premium monitor market."

Samsung hasn't actually quoted panel brightness. However, to meet the VESA True Black 600 certification level, it must reach 350 nits full-screen, a step up from the 300 nits of the latest currently available 32-inch 4K QD-OLED panel, again as seen in the MSI MPG 322UR X24.

So, this is surely an even brighter panel than that, which itself has only been fairly recently introduced. Long story short, this panel looks like it addresses two of the three remaining minor flaws of QD-OLED tech, full-screen brightness and subpixel structure.

The remaining niggle is the purple tint in bright ambient light conditions. The new-ish panels in the two MSI monitors I mentioned introduced a new film that reduced the purple hue a fair bit, but did not entirely eradicate it.

As I understand it, the problem is related to the use of quantum dot material, which is agitated by incoming ambient light and, in turn, then emits some unintended light of its own, leading the panel to turn slightly purple.

Presumably, the idea with the new film is to block ambient light from outside of the panel while allowing the actual generated light from the emissive OLED material to pass through. Samsung hasn't commented on whether this new panel gets that film or perhaps a further improved solution.

Speaking of emissive material, Samsung hasn't commented on whether the increased brightness of this upgraded 32-inch 4K panel is achieved courtesy of yet another generation of that. Again, the panels in those two MSIs both use Samsung's latest 3rd-gen emissive material.

It's possible this panel gets yet another new generation of material. Or perhaps, the brightness is achieved courtesy of something like subpixel aperture tweaks.

Whatever, I have to confess the specs of this new panel look absolutely killer. The only real issue is that it immediately makes the panel that's only just appeared in monitors earlier this year look redundant.

And that's a problem, if for no other reason than the fact that Samsung doesn't expect to begin mass producing this impressive new QD-OLED panel until the second half of this year. So, we probably won't see monitors with this until the end of 2026 at the earliest.

All told, this is an unexpected announcement from Samsung. I certainly didn't think it would announce another upgrade to its 32-inch 4K QD-OLED offering so soon. But I like the look of it. A lot.

Q1 2026's figures are actually down 11% on Q4 2025. But given tech products have distinct annual cycles driven by things like school schedules and holiday periods, the most representative comparisons are with the same quarter the previous year. In that context, OLED's continuing progress is clear enough.

Apart from the broader trend toward OLED, Trendforce reckons Samsung ramping up supply is a key factor. "The key growth driver was the increasingly abundant supply of QD-OLED panels, which enabled new market entrants to ramp up volumes and effectively fill gaps in the market," Trendforce says.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly given its premium pricing, it's actually Asus that is selling the most OLED monitors, with 24% market share. "Its leadership was underpinned by a comprehensive OLED product lineup," Trendforce says, noting how broad Asus's OLED monitor range is.

Samsung (Samsung Electronics that makes monitors, as opposed to Samsung Displays that makes the actual QD-OLED panels) came second with a 16.4% share, while MSI clocked third with 12.2%.

This time around, Trendforce isn't quoting overall volumes of OLED monitor shipments. But to put all this into context, it previously said that the overall OLED monitor market amounted to 2.735 million units in 2025, a 92% increase on 2024.

While it's a somewhat subjective call, I'd say Samsung driving volumes of OLED monitors is a good thing. Samsung's QD-OLED panels tend to be more vibrant than LG's competing WOLED panels thanks to utilising a pure RGB subpixel structure where LG relies on an additional white subpixel to boost measured brightness in a way that doesn't always translate well into the real-world experience.

Put another way, Samsung's latest QD-OLED panel tech, as seen in the MSI MPG 341CQR X36 in 34-inch ultrawide form and the MSI MPG 322UR X24 in 32-inch 4K configuration, is pretty darn stellar.

The new LG UltraGear 25G590B is a 24.5-inch IPS panel that's expected to launch in "select markets" in the second half of this year. The company claims it delivers "ultra-fast visual response, motion clarity and consistent performance, enabling players to react more quickly and maintain precision in high-speed gameplay."

There's been a spate of 1,000 Hz monitors announced within the last few months, but these are dual-mode ones that can only achieve the full 1,000 Hz if you drop things down to 720p. Even for competitive gamers, that resolution is a little low.

1080p is a much better shout for the kinds of competitive games that will benefit from the high refresh rate here—games like CS2, Valorant, and PUBG. Most pro gamers in CS2, for instance, play at either 1080p at 16:9 or 1280x960 (4:3, stretched), and either way they'll be out of luck with 720p.

During my time testing the 600 Hz Zowie monitor (a TN panel, not IPS), I was surprised to find that, for competitive gaming at least, the benefit to using this refresh rate is definitely noticeable, even if only slightly so once you get above 360 Hz. That panel also has Zowie's DyAc 2 anti-motion blur tech, and here LG is claiming its own anti-blur tech called Motion Blur Reduction Pro. It also has a matte film to prevent reflections, which can be important for competitive gaming, depending on your environment.

Saying all this, I can't help but wonder just what kind of a rig you'll need to actually make the most of this monitor, even in less graphically intensive esports games. I, for instance, can 'only' hit about 500–600 fps in CS2 using an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT. Given this, presumably 1,000 fps would only be possible when using a tippity-top tier CPU like the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, and even then I'm not too sure.

Assuming you can get the frame rates to make the most of 1,000 Hz, it'll be a great choice for those who are very serious about competitive FPS gaming and have a bunch of money spare (presumably it'll be an expensive monitor), but apart from that niche it might be a hard sell. Unless you really like that stand and bezel, I suppose—and I wouldn't blame you, it's certainly more refined than the chunky Zowie design.

Agon PRO AGP346UCSD: was $829.99 now $829.99
Samsung's latest 5th Gen QD-OLED tech really rocks in the MSI MPG 341CQR X36. It's brighter and faster, the purple tint thing is reduced and you get true RGB-stripe pixels, too. The only problem is the price. But this new AOC monitor offers exactly the same Samsung panel, just cheaper. Nice.

Key specs: 5th Gen QD-OLED | 34-inch ultrawide | 3440 x 1440 | 360 Hz | 300 nits SDR / 1300 nits HDR | DP 2.1 and USB-CView Deal

The new MSI MPG 341CQR X36 is one of our very favourite gaming monitors. There's just one problem. It's hella expensive with an MSRP of $1,099. Well, now there's a new AOC monitor with the very same, sizzling 5th Gen Samsung QD-OLED panel, but it's significantly cheaper.

Actually, price isn't the only problem with the MSI MPG 341CQR X36. Availability is, too. Seems like we're not the only ones who like it and the thing keeps selling out, despite the painful price. It's currently sold out on Amazon, Newegg, BestBuy and Walmart. Yikes.

So, the good news is that the new AOC Agon PRO AGP346UCSD is now out and you can actually buy it right now on Amazon for $829. Indeed, the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG34WCDN also uses the same 5th Gen panel but is even more expensive than the MSI at $1,299.

The caveat here is that we have yet to review this AOC offering. However, the key attraction is that very same 5th Gen Samsung QD-OLED panel. And that means several really significant upgrades over previous QD-OLED panels.

For starters, it's brighter with a 300 nit full-screen rating. In practice, it's even brighter than that rating implies because QD-OLED doesn't rely on a white subpixel like LG's WOLED panels, so colour brightness as opposed to white brightness really pops.

Samsung has also reduced the purple tint of the panel in bright ambient light to the extent that I reckon it'll be a non issue for most use cases. Oh, and the panel is now good for 360 Hz refresh, up from the 240 Hz of earlier 34-inch QD-OLEDs.

The final flourish is a true RGB-stripe subpixel structure, which helps with stuff like crisp font rendering. Really, the only objection you could have bar price with the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36—and so by implication this new AOC, too—is the basic form factor. If you don't like 34-inch ultrawide 1440p monitors, then it's not going to be for you.

The merit of the AOC Agon PRO AGP346UCSD specifically is really going to come down to fine tuning and calibration. But AOC generally gets that stuff right (and has also recently improved its OSD), so it all bodes pretty well.

One final minor note involves connectivity. The MSI monitor has a USB-C interface with 98 W of power delivery. This AOC also has USB-C, but only with 15 W of power delivery. So, the MSI is probably the better pick if you're planning to share a monitor between a gaming desktop and a work laptop, or similar.

If that sounds like you, it may be worth waiting for the MSI to come back into stock. Despite its lofty MSRP, it's been selling for as low as $899. That's arguably not a huge premium for a more usable USB-C port when it comes to keeping a laptop charged.

DisplayPort 2.1 GPU connected to DisplayPort 2.1 monitor. Result? DisplayPort 2.1 connect. Right? Apparently not, according to Monitors Unboxed. At least, not always.

Now, without getting bogged down in the details, the main attraction of DisplayPort 2.1 is bandwidth and lots of it. That means not only higher resolutions, refresh rates and colour depths, but also those higher resolutions, refresh rates and colour depths without using compression.

DisplayPort, of course, optionally uses a form of image compression known as Display Stream Compression or DSC. While it's meant to be visually lossless, there's some debate over the possible downsides of running a monitor with DSC enabled.

There have been reports, for instance, of black screen problems with Nvidia GPUs when enabling DSC and also the loss of DLDSR functionality. Anywho, Monitors Unboxed says that, unless you are using the correct cable type, it's "very unlikely" that a DP 2.1 display and GPU combo will actually run with DP 2.1 enabled.

Monitors Unboxed demonstrates this with a 32-inch 4K Asus QD-OLED monitor with DP 2.1 support and an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU. The full 10-bit colour 4K 240 Hz signal required to drive the display at its native capability uses 68.6 Gbps of bandwidth.

Sure enough, courtesy of the short DP80 cable (more on that cable in a moment, but the maximum length for a passive DP 2.1 cable is currently two metres, though many bundled cables are shorter) supplied with the Asus monitor, the channel confirms that DisplayPort 2.1 interface is running at the full UHBR20 rate. So, that's 20 Gbps per channel, with four active channels for a total of 80 Gbps, enough to drive the Asus monitor without enabling DSC.

But what if you use another cable, perhaps a longer DP Cable that you already have? The monitor still works and still allows the full 4K 10-bit 240 Hz configuration. Everything seems normal at first.

But Monitors Unboxed found on closer inspection that the link speed had dropped to 10 Gbps per channel, and thus 40 Gbps total, forcing the use of DSC. This all happens automatically.

In some ways, this is desirable behaviour. Many users aren't familiar with the intricacies of DisplayPort and DSC, so a system that works automatically and with full backwards compatibility is preferable to something that requires user intervention. Thus, a DP 2.1 monitor works seamlessly with a DP 1.4 GPU, for instance.

Many monitors also allow the user to choose whether DSC is available. In the scenario above, if DSC is disabled using the lower quality cable, the monitor deprecates down to a lower chroma subsampling of 4:2:2 and runs at a maximum of 144 Hz. So, that's lower colour fidelity and lower refresh.

Depending on how hands-on with this stuff you are, you may or may not notice or care. But the bottom line is that if you want to get the full 80 Gbps of bandwidth from DisplayPort 2.1, it looks like it's essential to use a DP 2.1-certified and tested cable, which is branded "DP80", with the "80" signifying the 80 Gbps of bandwidth.

The DisplayPort.org website has a database of certified cables for anyone who wants to check that their cable is fully DP 2.1 capable. For the record, AMD RDNA 3 (Radeon RX 7000) and RDNA 4 (RX 9000) are DP 2.1 capable, as are Nvidia RTX 50 GPUs and Intel Arc B500 GPUs. So, now you know. Over and out.

Is this it? Does this 32-inch 4K OLED panel represent the end game in 2D displays, the challenge of PC gaming monitor tech basically solved? Not quite, but with the new MSI MPG 322UR X24 you do get a sense of the monitor industry closing in on something resembling the ultimate flat-panel display tech.

Okay, Okay, 10 years from now or whatever, when we've all got seared retinas from our fancy new microLED monitors, I'm going to regret those words. But what this MSI monitor definitely does, in close co-operation with Samsung it has to be said, is directly address the key weaknesses of existing QD-OLED gaming monitors and leave me struggling to land a really telling critique.

While the MSI MPG 322UR X24 doesn't entirely solve all of those QD-OLED issues, it does deliver an experience that comes with perhaps just one significant caveat. Forgive me for being a tease, but I'll leave that distracting thought dangling tantalisingly out of reach while we dig into the details.

At first glance, this new model looks just like all of MSI's previous 32-inch 4K OLED monitors. It's got exactly the same design, the same chassis. So, it's the QD-OLED panel itself that's changed. Indeed, it's the first actual upgrade that Samsung Display—the arm of the sprawling South Korean ultra-corp that actually makes QD-OLED panels—has released in this form factor since the first 32-inch 4K QD-OLEDs appeared almost exactly two years ago.

As it happens, MSI's own MPG 321URX was our first taste of a 4K OLED of any kind, so it's fitting that MSI is also first to this updated panel. But what, exactly, has changed? Let's start with brightness. This panel is rated at 300 nits full screen, up from 250 nits on the previous generation.

Peak HDR brightness in a small window (probably 2%, but MSI isn't quoting specifics) remains at 1,000 nits, albeit the VESA certification has had a bump from HDR True Black 400 to HDR True Black 500. But as we'll see, arguably none of those metrics map terribly well to the subjective experience.

Next up is a new filtering layer that reduces the characteristic purple tint of QD-OLED panels in bright ambient light, a problem that has afflicted all QD-OLED panels from day one. Underneath it all is a new version of the electroluminescent material that actually generates the light in QD-OLED panels, known as HyperEfficient EL 3.0.

It's what enables the increased brightness, but Samsung also claims it's twice as durable as the previous generation, which in turn is said to be twice as durable as the original EL material from around 2022. It's basically impossible to test those claims in short order, but the bottom line is this display ought to be even more resistant to burn-in than previous 4K QD-OLED monitors, and those have thus far proven pretty good.

If this all sounds familiar, it's because it's almost the same set of panel upgrades we saw in 34-inch ultrawide format with another recent MSI monitor, the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36. However, that 34-inch ultrawide panel has one feature that this 4K model lacks, namely true vertical RGB-stripe subpixel structure. This 32-inch panel sticks with Samsung's previous triangular RGB subpixel structure.

The vertical stripe setup is better in particular for font rendering. However, at the pixel density of a 32-inch 4K panel like this, having true RGB-stripe subpixels is not terribly critical. Put it this way: This triangular RGB 4K panel produces much nicer fonts thanks to its greater pixel density than the vertical RGB-stripe but lower density 34-inch ultrawide.

Those upgrades aside, we're talking 3,840 by 2,160 pixels and 240 Hz refresh, both of which are unchanged, as are the colour coverage ratings including 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut and the 0.03 ms pixel response. Similarly, connectivity is largely carried over. Detail changes include an upgrade to DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR20, but a very slight downgrade for the USB-C power delivery from 98 W to 90 W. But, essentially, we're talking two HDMI ports, DisplayPort, USB-C and a two-port USB-A hub, just as before.

All of which brings us to what really matters, the viewing experience. Out of the box, the immediate impression is that the characteristic overly warm colour temperature of QD-OLED panels has largely been fixed. It looks significantly more neutral.

In reality, if you run this display next to a well calibrated IPS panel, it's still apparent that the panel tilts a little warm, but in isolation, the white tones look pretty clean. Related to this is the general purple tint to black tones in bright ambient light of QD-OLED panels. As with the aforementioned MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36, which also uses the latest gen panel tech, that's reduced here but not quite eradicated.

Personally, I think it's been reduced to a point where it's not going to be an issue in most scenarios, but that is a somewhat subjective call. As for brightness, with this new MSI MPG 322UR X24 and its latest-gen QD-OLED panel, it's a problem very, very nearly solved. On the desktop, this thing really is very punchy when maxed out. In fact, it's questionable if you'd want to have it at full brightness to look at mainly white apps or web pages.

There are caveats. Light up the whole panel in mostly white and there is some noticeable brightness fall off. But at worst, you're getting 300 nits-plus, which isn't too shabby. In practice, of course, you are rarely, if ever, driving the entire panel at full white. Indeed, if like me, you use dark mode for as many apps and websites as possible, this panel is, if anything, too bright for daily comfort at maximum brightness. It's got some serious visual fizz.

So far, I've been talking about the desktop experience. In game, this panel absolutely sizzles. As I've mentioned in some previous reviews, the outright brightness ratings for QD-OLED panels are a little misleading, particularly in comparison to equivalent monitors using LG's WOLED technology.

That's because LG's WOLED tech has an additional white subpixel for boosting outright brightness. The thing is, most content is a mix of colours as opposed to pure white and, in that context, the extra white subpixel doesn't always help. It either won't boost colour brightness at all, or can wash colours out. Either way, QD-OLED simply has better true colour brightness. And, in practice, that means the subjective experience with this latest QD-OLED panel is pretty eye-popping.

For SDR content, this monitor subjectively feels like at least equivalent to a 400 nit IPS panel, for instance. And for HDR? It's pretty stupendous. There's a particular scene I discovered in CyberPunk 2077, which is my go-to for testing HDR performance, where you're in a basement nightclub scene full of neon lights and lasers and stuff.

That looks awesome enough as it is thanks to the perfect per-pixel lighting control. No LCD monitor, even one with fully-array dimming comes close. But then, off at the end of a room, a door opens revealing a sunny daytime street vista, flooding a corner of the nightclub with warm, outdoor light. It's a real wow moment and perfectly demonstrates both what HDR is all about and how OLED does it so much better than any LCD panel.

Incidentally, for this monitor MSI has once again implemented its EOTF boost mode. I've covered this in multiple previous reviews, but the short version is that it aims to combine the best aspects of both the VESA HDR 400 mode with the Peak 1000 nits mode and give the highest brightness for both darker and brighter gaming scenes. And it works pretty well. In short, you can use EOTF boost mode for all HDR content and be confident you're getting a good experience.

What else can I say? Well, all of the above is mostly enhanced by the glossy screen coating, albeit some don't like the increased reflectivity that comes with it. The basic colour calibration, meanwhile, is pretty good for both SDR and HDR content and, of course, the speed is darn nifty, what with QD-OLED's fairly bananas 0.03 ms response times. Okay, 240 Hz is nothing terribly special these days, but in a 4K context, good luck hitting more than 240 fps in most modern games.

Of course, as a reviewer looking at these kinds of screens, it's all too easy to be blase about how fast QD-OLED is, how precise the lighting and contrast is, how good the viewing angles are, and on and on. But make absolutely no mistake, this monitor is dramatically better than any LCD by so many metrics.

More to the point, where OLED panels used to have a clear weakness, most obviously full-screen brightness, this latest QD-OLED generation essentially solves that problem. It also mostly fixes the purple-tint thing in bright ambient light, too.

And that, folks, brings us to the one remaining caveat I mentioned up front. It is, entirely predictably, OLED burn-in. My previous OLED reviews are testament to the fact that I'm far from a catastrophist when it comes to OLED burn-in. It's a real problem, but something the evidence shows takes a long time to become really apparent.

What's more, this latest panel generation ought to be even more durable. The independent test I linked above of the previous-gen QD-OLED 4K panel showed that burn-in was only just becoming an issue after two years of the most brutal, worst case usage. So, you'd expect to get longer than that from this new panel. And for more gaming-centric use, which is less likely to cause burn-in, you might expect four, five or even more years of essentially burn-in free viewing. MSI's warranty at the very least gives you a three-year backstop.

But a sliver of doubt remains and, ironically, it's the fact that this monitor is so good that makes any chance of burn-in that much more problematic. Earlier generations of OLED monitor had some pretty obvious shortcomings such that the assumption, arguably, was that most gamers who could afford this class of display would probably want to upgrade to something better after a few years. But this monitor is so good, I'm not sure the next generation or two is going to offer a compelling enough upgrade. That means you want to be sure that it really lasts. And you can't be, not entirely.

So, that's it. That's my caveat. Would it stop me buying the MSI MPG 322UR X24? Ultimately, no. But it is the one issue that prevents me from screaming, "buy, buy, buy." Well, that and the very likely fact that MSI will be doing a cheaper, very slightly de-featured, version of this monitor, maybe with reduced USB-C power delivery, that kind of thing.

It wouldn't surprise me if that model could be had for $800 or less within six months or so. In other words, I like the new MSI MPG 322UR X24 an awful lot for $1,099. But I'd love essentially the same monitor, with the same panel but fewer features for several hundred dollars less, even more.

The Zowie XL2586X+ is by far the product I've most wanted to keep hold of and have been the most reluctant to hand back. It's also one I'm certain I won't be buying any time soon. And that just about sums up this monitor, because it's fantastic for competitive shooters but it's very much only fantastic for those games and, more importantly, comes with a great stonking price tag.

Whether I actually fit the monitor's use case is a question I found myself returning to over the three weeks that I put it through its paces. It is, of course, a monitor aimed solely at competitive FPS gaming, and I do consider myself to be a competitive FPS gamer. But am I enough of a competitive gamer to justify spending $1,000 to eliminate every sliver of pixel persistence and max out on motion clarity?

It's a tough call. To give some context, I'm a lifelong competitive gamer who sometimes goes through stints without playing such games but who always inevitably returns to them. After maining Starcraft 2 and Quake during my teenage years, for a long time my main game was Counter-Strike. As of this week, I've amassed over 1,800 hours in it (most of these being back in CS:GO rather than CS2, when I was around LEM/Supreme) and have recently returned to CS2. I've shaken off the rust but I still consider myself very much returning to form rather than at form.

I explain all this because in many ways I think I sit in the exact same spot as many others who are debating buying a monitor like this. I'm not a pro or anywhere near one, and if I was and if I had the money to spare then getting this monitor would be a no-brainer because it's simply the best on the market for tactical shooters like CS2 and Valorant. The XL2586X+, or a similar but lower refresh rate Zowie panel, is what the majority of CS2 and other FPS pros use for good reason. But I'm not, and never will be, in that echelon.

On the other hand, I'm better than the statistical majority of CS2 players and would be happy if I could stay in the top, say, 3–5% of players. Players like me who are not pro but are aiming somewhat realistically at the top of the ranking distribution are exactly who will be debating buying this monitor.

With that in mind, I can tell you that yes, after dozens of hours using the XL2586X+ to play CS2 and some other games, it can improve your gaming performance, even compared to fast-but-not-quite-so-fast OLED and IPS panels. I'm not sure to what extent that comes down to the absurdly high 600 Hz refresh rate or Zowie's DyAc 2 anti-motion blur tech—I'd hazard a guess that it's more the former—but either way it's impressive.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Let's go over what this thing is. At base, it's a 24-inch TN panel, and I'm sure that's where I'll have already lost most readers. Yes, it's small by today's standards, and yes, it's a TN panel. But I was surprised to find that this particular screen is far from the washed-out TNs of yore. It lacks some of the detail and accuracy of an IPS or well-calibrated OLED, but it's not bred for that purpose.

It's bred for competitive gaming alone—especially for CS2, Valorant, and to a lesser extent Apex Legends (lesser because Apex caps frame rates and the former two arguably require more pixel-perfect accuracy and twitch reactions as opposed to, say, tracking ability). And in those games, things look just as you'd want them to. The monitor even has three pre-set FPS modes for these games, and I must say, for actually spotting enemies and playing well, I prefer how CS2 looks on that FPS1 preset to how it looks on any IPS or OLED I've used.

The presets in general are pretty great compared to most monitors that, in my experience, are better when you calibrate them yourself. Zowie has a 'Settings to Share' app that I found to work well, which lets you download colour profiles tailored to different games, and even lets you try out pro player settings if they've shared them.

The FPS1 mode I spent most of my time in made CS2 look fantastic to my eyes, with enemies staying incredibly visible. FreeSync was kept off given that tearing at 600 Hz is a non-issue, DyAc 2 anti-ghosting was on Premium, and AMA (overdrive) set to high, the second-highest setting. Vibrancy was bumped up ever so slightly, and of course you're not getting any HDR with this monitor at all.

Despite how great FPS1 mode is for CS2, for pretty much everything that isn't competitive gaming, whether that's browsing, watching videos, or playing more cinematic games, I'd prefer any half-decent VA, IPS, or OLED to this Zowie TN, not because the latter isn't vibrant enough (it is) but because it misses a lot of colour detail and nuance. It's something I noticed day-to-day as it sat next to my second monitor, an IPS panel, and it's definitely something I noticed when I swapped to an OLED with a well-calibrated sRGB mode for comparison.

The 24-inch screen size is also a little diminutive these days for anything other than competitive gaming. When it comes to getting in-game in CS2 or Valorant, though, and despite what I expected coming from a 27-inch panel, I'm sold on the whole 24-inch thing. For those who aren't aware, pros often stick to 24-inch monitors because they can take up a good amount of your vision when at a normal distance from your face, without having to move your head or eyes much.

You could get the same thing by moving a bigger monitor further away, but having the monitor closer is easier for your eyes to focus on. Or so the argument goes, and I must say I've found it to be true in my own experience. By far the best time I've had gaming in CS2 has been when I've stuck a 24-inch monitor pretty close to my retinas, which is of course saying nothing about how much good that will do my eyes over the long term.

So, we've got ideal colour profiles and a perfect screen size for these competitive FPS games. But that's only half of the equation; the other half is refresh rate and DyAc 2. 600 Hz is, of course, a ridiculously high refresh rate, but I was surprised to find that I can actually tell the difference between 600 Hz and 360 Hz. It's not as big of a difference as I saw when switching from 240 Hz to 360 Hz, and it's even further from the 144 Hz to 240 Hz jump, but it is noticeable.

The best I can describe it is to say that it felt like the monitor simply got out of my way. Gaming at 360 Hz didn't feel like there was any perceptible choppiness at all, but somehow 600 Hz still managed to feel even more like I was directly perceiving the game world without any pesky frame changes to process, which made it slightly more enjoyable than gaming at an already very enjoyable 360 Hz.

That being said, I didn't feel like using 600 Hz actually improved my gaming performance significantly more than using 360 Hz, even if the higher refresh rate did feel a little nicer to play at.

The main benefit to an ultra-high refresh rate is that it gives you a baseline level of confidence in your shots. I find I have more confidence making more reactive, faster plays at 360 Hz than I do at 144 Hz, even if we're just talking the difference between gripping my mouse a little tighter and relaxing to make the same shot that I'll probably hit either way.

Stepping up to 600 Hz, however, only improves that confidence marginally compared to at 360 Hz. It does improve it, but it's so slight that I seriously doubt it gives me any actual improvement in gaming performance. Again, though, the 'not a pro' caveat applies.

I personally wouldn't pay loads extra for 600 Hz compared to 360 Hz. And unfortunately you are paying a lot extra here, even compared to Zowie's own 360 Hz and 400 Hz monitors which also have DyAc 2.

You're really paying the premium for that refresh rate, and in other respects it's pretty basic, including design. Though you do get some side-wings to block out distractions, which I didn't feel the need to use, three HDMI ports, one DisplayPort, a headphone port, and even a couple of extra tidbits in the form of an external control puck and a back-side headphone stand that flips down.

It's also worth noting that of course a 600 Hz monitor isn't really worth buying if you can't hit above 360 fps in-game. It's not completely pointless, because a higher refresh rate can align with your lower frame rates a little better, but it's pretty close to pointless, if you ask me. For reference, with an RX 9070 XT and Ryzen 7 7800X3D, I achieve between 450–600 fps in CPU-bound CS2 on average.

DyAc 2 is often cited as a reason to opt for a Zowie panel rather than a similarly fast IPS or even an OLED. This tech, Dynamic Accuracy 2, is Zowie's proprietary variable backlight strobing solution that reduces ghosting and improves the perceived clarity of fast-moving objects such as in-game enemies.

However, as with the jump from 360 Hz to 600 Hz, I didn't notice a massive difference when I enabled it. It's just a best guess, but I think that's probably because frames already refresh incredibly quickly at 600 Hz so perceived clarity is high to begin with and any between-frame strobing lasts for less time and has less of an effect on your eyes and brain.

I did try it out briefly at 240 Hz and 360 Hz, and even there I didn't notice a big difference between having it off and having it on, even when eyeballing UFO test. But there was a difference, small though it may have been, and on the occasion I did actually notice it, it made me realise why a pro might pick this over even an OLED which doesn't hit that level of clarity.