Yes, an OLED gaming monitor will make you the envy of your keyboard mashing pals—but with its often premium price point, it's definitely not the only option. If you're on a budget, there are a wealth of gaming monitor deals this Black Friday, and I've just spotted a deal on a compact IPS panel that would fit right in as a primary or even secondary monitor.
The Asus ROG Strix XG27ACS is a nippy little 27-inch screen. Offering gaming at 1440p resolution, it's definitely not an all singing, all dancing OLED—but for only $189 from Amazon, it really doesn't need to be.
In his Asus ROG Strix XG27ACS review, our Jeremy really rated its responsiveness. Avoiding alliteration, he writes, "The Strix XG27ACS can hit 180Hz instead of the 144Hz of the [often similarly priced] Gigabyte G27Q, which is one of if not the cheapest 1440p IPS gaming panels currently available. Asus also delivers 1 ms response by the more demanding GtG (grey-to-grey) measure, where the Gigabyte is 1 ms MPRT, which usually translates into 2 ms+ GtG."
Basically, if you're serious about competitive play, this Asus ROG Strix screen doesn't miss a trick. Even better, Jeremy writes that the SDR colours pack plenty of punch straight out of the box and, there's very little in dire need of calibration straight out of the box; if you just want to get straight into the game, this screen won't demand you spend an age fiddling with settings first.
HDR support here is fairly standard, offering HDR400 for 400 nits of brightness and no local dimming. Granted, many an OLED would eat this screen's lunch but this featureset really isn't terrible considering the sub-$200 price.
As Jeremy says, even though the Asus ROG Strix XG27ACS isn't really offering full HDR experience, "games that major on HDR sizzle, like Cyberpunk 2077, do look that little bit more vibrant and immersive. While it's not a huge difference compared to playing the same game in SDR mode, it is just about worth enabling HDR for the improvements."
For those who want a responsive IPS panel on a budget, the Asus ROG Strix XG27ACS is the one to beat. For those with a little extra budget to burn, there's always our best gaming monitors guide and our best OLED gaming monitors guide instead.
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