Gigabyte G27Q Gaming Monitor review

On paper, the Gigabyte G27Q is rather plain Jane. It's a flat, 27-inch display with a relatively pedestrian 144Hz refresh rate and a design that wouldn't stand out in an office environment. But it's actually one of the best gaming monitors I've had the pleasure of using this year. Not only does it have a gorgeous, vibrant panel, but it's also HDR capable and packs plenty of useful features designed to enhance your gaming pleasure.

The Gigabyte G27Q has a native resolution of 2560x1440 at the standard 16:9 aspect ratio. Tiny bezels allow the panel to shine and it's big enough for multitasking without overwhelming your desk. The stand is simple, with a cable management slot, and it offers height and tilt adjustment but no swivel. You can VESA mount the G27Q if you prefer to mount it on a wall or custom arm. The back is plain except for the OSD joystick and the various I/O ports. 

The G27Q uses an IPS panel with 144Hz refresh and a 1ms response time. As someone who loves visual fidelity, I appreciate this resolution for clarity and performance. Even the humble GTX 1660 Super in my desktop is comfortably driving games at 60FPS at high settings. If you spend all your time playing CS:GO or Valorant, then the 144Hz refresh could hold you back a bit, but for the rest of us plebs, it's great. 

Whatever the case, the G27Q handles gaming with aplomb thanks to adaptive sync via AMD FreeSync Premium. It's also G-SYNC Compatible so whether you are team Green or Red, the G27Q plays nice. I didn't have an AMD GPU to test but I did use an NVIDIA powered desktop and laptop. Neither had any problems running games with G-SYNC enabled. 

And whatever game you are playing, the G27Q looks phenomenal. The IPS panel has 8-bit color with 92% DCI-P3 coverage. I've looked at a lot of monitors recently, and I was immediately struck by the rich colors and contrast of the G27Q. It has a dynamic contrast ratio of 12M : 1 and it shows. Colors are punchy and vibrant with excellent definition from dark to bright areas. There's also plenty of controls to calibrate the monitor to your liking.

The panel also gets eye-searingly bright—a feat that's necessary for its VESA Display HDR 400 Certification. And while HDR gaming on Windows is still pretty crappy, when it does work, it's gorgeous. From the Division 2 to Marvels Avengers, the colors pop with a visceral impact and there's plenty of separation between dark and brights. However sunny skies and other bright spots tend to blow out and lose definition at max brightness. Dark areas also sometimes get crushed.  

Movies and video on Netflix and YouTube fair a lot better though. Sadly, my Xbox One X wouldn't recognize the G27Q as HDR-capable. But even the SDR mode on the G27Q is excellent, so I didn't miss much. The Xbox does play games at either 1080p/120Hz or 1440p/60Hz though, which is cool. I like that the G27Q has two HDMI 2.0 ports and a DisplayPort 1.2 so you can connect two consoles and a PC—something streamers and multi-platform gamers will appreciate.

The G27Q also has a pair of USB 3.0 Type-A downstream ports and one USB 3.0 Type-B upstream so you can easily attach your peripherals. There's also a pair of 2W speakers integrated into the monitor, but they don't sound great—in fact they sound worse than average laptop speakers. Thankfully there's a headphone jack. 

The OSD on the G27Q opens you up to a ton of profiles and monitor settings. You navigate with the little joystick on the back and I love that you don't need to press the joystick to activate menu options. Flicking the joystick over a menu immediately activates after a second. It's a little thing that can save you tons of time overall. There's also the OSD Sidekick, a handy Windows app that gives you the same menu access but you navigate with your mouse instead of the joystick. 

Once in the menu, you get things like picture profiles, Black Equalization, Aim Assist, Blue Light filtering and more. The Dashboard feature is one of my favorites. It's a built-in hardware monitor that displays framerates, temps, voltages and more — all without extraneous software. Perfect for you overclockers. I also love the Reader mode which activates Low Blue Light and Flicker-free tech that makes it easy for my aging eyes to go through long days of reading and writing.

Image 1 of 5

The G27Q isn't perfect but there's not too much to fault here, beyond it's rather boring looks. Whether you use it for work or play, the G27Q excels with a sharp, vibrant and smooth picture. The additional features are genuinely useful and you get a lot for $330. It's certainly one of the best 27-inch gaming monitors around right now, and is easy recommend.