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.

Display manufacturer BOE has started mass production at its new OLED plant, an 8.6-generation-panel-producing behemoth said to be the first of its kind in China.

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.

For PC hardware enthusiasts, the good news has been awfully slim pickings of late. What with the ongoing RAMpocalypse, new GPU generations apparently delayed indefinitely and the seeming inevitability of ever more expensive computer chips, it's nearly all gloom and doom.

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.

It's amazing the lengths to which advertisers will go to serve a juicy new pop-up ad on your screen. From Windows itself suggesting apps, to motherboards automatically installing software, now to monitors prompting users to download antivirus trials. No, they won't be covering the bill after the trial ends.

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.

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…

Viewsonic has taken the wraps off a new 24-inch 4K monitor in what is likely to be a world's first. We've seen plenty of 4K monitors before, of course, just not in this relatively compact form factor.

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.

It's rare that I review something that I would actually buy right at this moment in time. Even if it's a good product that I recommend, it's usually out of my own budget or just not quite at the top of my PC priority list compared to other upgrades. But with the Alienware AW2525HM, I can say that I would 100%, for reals, be considering hitting the purchase button right now if I didn't already have this review model in front of me.

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.

Here's a short tech support horror story for you: you're chatting with someone—maybe a not very tech-savvy relative—and they tell you, 'It's the darndest thing. I bought a whole new computer, and I just can't seem to log in.' Because you hate to see them struggle, you agree to take a look. But gazing upon their setup, that's when it hits you: they bought a cheap monitor thinking it was an all-in-one PC. Well, an exhibit at this year's Computex had me doing a double-triple take because it's actually an all-in-one PC and it boasts room for a graphics card.

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 OLED gaming monitor tech announcements are coming thick and fast at Computex this year. One intriguing new monitor has been outed by Asus featuring a new WOLED panel from LG that we've not seen before.

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.

Last year at Gamescom, I got to feast my greedy little eyes on a 540 Hz monitor from Asus ROG and was mighty impressed. That one is a 26.5-inch 1440p/720p dual-mode deal, though, so not necessarily for esports. As I've argued before, 720p is a bit low even for esports. And 26.5 inches and 1440p is too big on both counts. What's ideal then, you ask? 24–25 inches at 1080p, and it seems that's exactly what Asus ROG has teased and now announced in the form of a new 540 Hz OLED called the ROG Strix OLED XG259QWPG.

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.

Of course MSI was going to be talking AI when it comes to monitors at Computex this year. I mean, for the third straight year that's largely all everyone else is going to be talking about at the show, too. But still, "the world's first agentic AI monitor" probably wasn't top of my list for must-sees at the Taiwan tradeshow.

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.

According to reports, LG has flatly denied a report claiming that it plans to sell its TV business to China's Hisense, much as Sony recently sold its own TV division to TCL.

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.

Just the other day, I speculated that Samsung is closing in on perfection with its latest 4K, 32-inch QD-OLED panel for gaming monitors. Well, that perfection has quite possibly just arrived. Samsung has announced a new, upgraded panel with a higher 360 Hz refresh and true RGB-stripe subpixel structure. Oh, and it's the first consumer OLED monitor panel to get HDR True Black 600 certification.

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.

The march of OLED technology continues. According to market research outfit Trendforce, OLED monitor shipments are up by 78% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026. Trendforce reckons increased supply of Samsung's QD-OLED panels is a key factor, but it's actually Asus that is selling the most OLED monitors.

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.

I spent a lot of time trying out a 600 Hz esports panel recently, and I thought that it was about as good as you could get on the refresh rate front, at least for 1080p. But now, LG has announced the world's first 1,000 Hz FHD (1080p) gaming monitor.

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.

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.

End-to-end latency (ms)

Zowie XL2586X+ 144 Hz

7.5

Zowie XL2586X+ 600 Hz

6.81

Gigabyte MO27Q28GR OLED 280 Hz

6.22

02468

End-to-end latency (ms) Data

Product	Value
Zowie XL2586X+ 144 Hz	7.5
Zowie XL2586X+ 600 Hz	6.81
Gigabyte MO27Q28GR OLED 280 Hz	6.22

This is the time taken from click to on-screen muzzle flash, averaged over 100+ tests for each monitor/refresh rate.

I also tested latency with the monitor using an Nvidia LDAT (latency and display analysis tool) and found things to be incredibly snappy. With this Zowie monitor I had a near-instantaneous 6.8 ms of delay between input and on-screen effect. For overall system latency, that's fantastic and demonstrates the ultra-low response time of the XL2586X+. Zowie doesn't actually list that response time anywhere, but I'd have to assume it's under 1 ms, though it will almost certainly struggle to match an OLED's 0.03 ms given the inherent limitations of TN panels.

That bore out in my testing, too, as an OLED gave me an overall system latency of 6.2 ms, meaning the TN is about 0.5–0.6 ms slower. Saying that, with response times this low, you really will struggle to tell any difference at all; I certainly can't tell any difference in practice between the response time on the Zowie and on an OLED.

Overall, I really don't think I would ask for anything else out of a gaming monitor for competitive FPS gaming. Other, that is, than a cheaper price tag. However you look at it, $1,000 is an incredibly large amount of money for a monitor that's only anywhere near worth it for a single purpose. And to be honest, even for that single purpose of competitive FPS gaming, I'm not sure I'd think it was worth it over a cheaper 360 Hz monitor, unless I happened to be sitting on a pile of cash waiting to be spent.

What this Zowie monitor has done more than anything is make me want one of the cheaper DyAc 2 panels. As I write this review I'm also finding myself tabbing over to check out the prices of the lower refresh rate versions that come with DyAc 2. And as I spot the 240 Hz XL2746K on sale on Amazon UK for £380, I'm incredibly tempted to hit that purchase button. I won't, but if I was a little more liberal with my spending, I would. And I'll still be considering it for a potentially less impulsive purchase after actually calculating my budget.

If I had a bunch more money to spend, however, and given that I almost solely play Counter-Strike, I'd actually be tempted by this $1,000 competitive powerhouse. You just have to be all-in on competitive shooters and have an enormous budget for it to make sense.

It just so happens I've been daily driving an old school VA panel this week. It's a budget 34-inch ultrawide and, funnily enough, it provides the perfect foil for Alienware's new 27-inch QD-OLED monitor, the Alienware AW2726DM.

This, too, is a budget offering, albeit in the loftier context of OLED gaming monitors. Yours for $349.99 from Dell's website, this is one of the cheapest gaming OLEDs yet from a big brand. And it does a pretty definitive job of highlighting just how far gaming monitor tech has come in the last few years. Because this Alienware mostly blows that budget VA panel away.

Hold that thought while we cover off some speeds and feeds. This is a 27-inch QD-OLED 1440p panel with a native resolution of 2,560 by 1,440 pixels and 240 Hz refresh. Notably, it's also based on older QD-OLED panel tech from Samsung. That's part of how Alienware hits that low price point.

For the record, this isn't the very oldest QD-OLED monitor panel tech. Strictly speaking, it's Gen 3 QD-OLED circa 2024. There's a guide to all the QD-OLED generations here, but Gen 3 panels brought various refinements including improved lifespan and durability, reducing the risk of burn-in, and revised subpixel structure to improve font rendering. Just note, this generation of panel still has a triangular subpixel structure as opposed to the preferable true RGB-stripe setup of the very latest Gen 5 QD-OLEDs, such as the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36.

One area that wasn't really improved with Gen 3 is brightness. This is a slightly complicated subject, but most Gen 3 QD-OLED panels are rated at 250 nits full-screen, 1,000 nits peak in a small 2% window and have HDR 400 True Black certification. Somewhat surprisingly, Alienware rates this particular model at 200 nits full screen. We'll see how that translates into the viewing experience in a sec.

Apart from the older generation QD-OLED panel, there's further evidence of cost savings with the Alienware AW2726DM. The main chassis screws rather than clips into the stand (only really of significance during initial setup), there's no USB-C (not a big deal unless you were planning to, say, tag team with a work laptop), no USB-A hub (more of a pity given the added cable clutter it implies) and a less comprehensive OSD menu that's missing some features.

By implication, then, connectivity is limited to HDMI and DisplayPort. And for most of us, that's just fine, especially if it enables a lower price point and makes OLED thrills more more accessible. All that said, the Alienware AW2726DM doesn't look cheap. It has a slick, slim bezel look and a fully adjustable stand, including rotation into portrait mode.

Fire it up and, sure enough, it's that familiar QD-OLED experience. The downsides include an overly warm colour temp and the usual purple tint to the panel in bright ambient light that slightly undermines the whole per-pixel-lighting, infinite-contrast OLED thing. But only slightly.

The positives, on the other hand, well, there are plenty of those. This is a really punchy, pleasing panel, even with that notional 200 nits rating. The caveat to that is the need to set this monitor up correctly.

For starters, its default SDR mode isn't terribly well calibrated. I had to resort to an alternative colour profile in the Windows Color Management tool to get the SDR colours looking right, which is probably too much to ask of most casual PC users.

Still, it looks really super once you get it set up. What's more, the SDR calibration in HDR mode is actually pretty good. So, were this my display, I'd just enable HDR, tweak the SDR brightness in the Windows Display Properties menu, and leave it like that forever.

Running this display thusly also has the benefit of higher peak SDR brightness. There's a price to pay for that in terms of more brightness variability depending on how much of the screen you are lighting up. But if, like me, you end up using dark mode with as many apps and website as possible, it's a very nice solution.

Of course, that's all desktop larks. What about games? Really, there's not much to report and that's definitely good news. By that I mean this budget QD-OLED looks just like any other Gen 3 QD-OLED.

In other words, it's absolutely stellar when it comes to HDR performance compared to any LCD panel. The way this monitor can render, for instance, a searingly bright neon bar light on a totally black background totally confounds any LCD monitor, including that budget VA I've been running of late. In part thanks to a glossy panel coating that really accentuates the lighting control and contrast, it really is an eye-popping experience on a totally different level.

Then there's the speed. That old school VA panel I've been playing with of late looks blurry and smeary enough in isolation. But compared to the lightning fast 0.03 ms response of this QD-OLED, it's just hopelessly outclassed.

As I've mentioned in several recent monitor reviews, I've more or less hung up my Counter-Strike boots. But I'm still just about qualified to say the combination of 240 Hz refresh and 0.03 ms response offered here will be a revelation for most gamers used to LCD panels. Yes, there are much higher refresh OLEDs now available. But the benefits do diminish above 240 Hz unless you are an awfully capable esports type.

This monitor isn't perfect, of course. At this price point, you could have a 27-inch 4K IPS panel with a decent refresh rate and far better pixel density. It would probably be brighter in outdoor game scenes too. So, yeah, full screen brightness in games is still a bit of a weakness.

However, it's definitely worth understanding how this older QD-OLED panel compares with similar vintage WOLED panels made by LG. LG's WOLED tech includes a white subpixel that boosts full-screen brightness, which is measured with the display showing pure white.

The thing is, most of the stuff you look at in practice is coloured and, in that context, the extra white subpixel often isn't a help. Long story short, QD-OLED has better colour brightness. And that means the subjective experience with this QD-OLED rated at 200 nits is brighter and punchier and more vibrant than a WOLED panel rated at 250 nits or even 275 nits.

Put it this way. I would absolutely take this Alienware over the Gigabyte GO27Q24G I reviewed a few weeks ago with its early-gen WOLED panel. The Gigabyte is brighter on paper, but feels a bit dingy in reality.

Alienware has skimped a bit on the OSD menu and the OLED panel care features. The only option in the OLED panel maintenance sub menu is pixel refresh. But you still get a three-year warranty, so you have a pretty decent window before you have to worry about burn-in.

Anywho, the upshot of all this is that, were I in the market for a new monitor at roughly this price point, this panel would pose quite the conundrum. The HDR performance, the contrast, the light control, the speed, it's all so much better than any LCD monitor. I'd struggle to settle for even a good IPS panel.

On the other hand, the 1440p resolution on a 27-inch monitor does make for quite chunky pixels, though is easier on the GPU. For gaming, that's fine, there's plenty of detail on offer. But for daily driving, I'd prefer a bit more detail, sharper fonts, all that good stuff.

That's just me, of course. Thanks to our recent survey, however, we know that 27-inch 1440p is still the most popular monitor form factor among you lot. And if you are looking to stick with that setup but want a dramatically better gaming experience by several metrics and without spending absolute megabucks, well, the Alienware AW2726DM should absolutely be on your relatively affordable OLED shortlist. It's really very good.

PC enthusiasts might feel that Microsoft has been slowly stripping customisation control options out of Windows, but the truth of the matter is that they haven't actually gone. They've just been moved into a separate piece of software called PowerToys, and if you're the kind of PC user who uses lots of big monitors at the same time, the latest version is a must-have.

You can grab v0.99.1 PowerToys from its dedicated GitHub page, though it was v0.99 that added the extra features I'm about to mention (the update just fixes a bunch of bugs).

The two that stand out for me are Grab and Move, and Power Display, though there's an awful lot more on offer in the app. Starting with the former, when activated, you can grab hold of a window and then move or resize it, without ever having to 'select' the window (i.e. make it the focus).

For example, if the window you're after is partially hidden behind other windows, with Grab and Move active, you can get your mitts on it 'through' the ones in front. Sure, you can always alt-tab to a window you're after, but this is perhaps more convenient to do if you have multiple, large monitors.

Grab and Move doesn't bring a window to the front of the others: it stays where it is in the depth order of things, but I've found it a blessing for quickly sifting through things, without having to bring them to the front.

And then there's Power Display. To be brief, it brings up various controls for your monitors on the desktop when you fire it up. On my PC, it defaulted to just showing brightness, contrast, and volume, but after clicking on some options in PowerToys (and ignoring the advisory warning that this may mess things up), I can now switch inputs and even power it down.

You can also set up multiple profiles that you can quickly switch between, so you can have your monitors dimmed a bit for work, but then much brighter for gaming. All without having to delve into the monitor's own OSD.

Neither feature is what you'd call revolutionary, and I dare say that there will be some readers using a Linux distro who will be wondering why it's taken so long for Microsoft to catch up. But hey, at least PowerToys exists, and it's regularly updated with new gadgets to play around with.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a bunch of windows scattered around various screens that need wrangling.

When you're mashing that keeb out of pure frustration, I think we can all agree that low latency is laudable. Ideally, a big target is handy, too. Enter, therefore, the Keychron Q0 Mini 8K Action Key.

What we're dealing with here is a large single-key device with a mechanical switch and a full metal base. Oh, and an 8K polling rate for super-low latency.

It's basically a single, massive mechanical keyboard key which is said to offer "full-palm" comfort. Keychron says the mechanical switch inside the Q0 Mini 8K occupies 64 times more volume than a regular switch. Meanwhile, the RGB lighting system offers tuneable hue, saturation, and brightness.

Of course, the Q0 Mini 8K Action Key is compatible with Keychron's QMK and Launcher apps for full mapping configurability. It runs over USB-C and is said to be compatible with Windows, Linux and MacOS.

The whole shebang is yours for $65, which is either ludicrous for a single key, or not that bad when you consider the base is polished and sandblasted CNC 6063 aluminium, and the scaled up mechanical switch can't have been cheap to engineer.

For what it's worth, Keychron whimsically suggests the Q0 Mini 8K Action Key offers "endless possibilities," bringing "fun and stress relief while boosting your daily productivity."

I'm not sure quite how mappable the key is. But contrary to the "launcher" graphic on the key, I'd quite fancy mapping it to hard-force a shut down of whatever application was in focus, allowing me to instantly kill whatever game or other app was causing me grief or maybe had just hung. Hammering away at this massive key in order to murder a recalcitrant app would be quite satisfying, I reckon.

Samsung announced its "world's first" 6K gaming monitor back at CES. But now it's finally gone on sale, listed for pre-order on Samsung's German website for €1,499.

We'd expect a dollar price at around the same figure. So, what exactly would you be getting for your €1,500 from the Samsung Odyssey G8 (G80HS)? The basics involve a 32-inch 6K IPS panel. Yeah, IPS, not OLED or even VA, the latter being the usual choice for Samsung LCD monitors.

I'm not clear that Samsung Display even makes IPS panels, including the 32-inch 6K panel in question. So, it's possible that Samsung Electronics (the Samsung subsidiary that actually makes this monitor) could actually be buying in the panel from arch rival LG.

The 6,144 by 3,456 resolution maps to the LG panel, however the lowly quoted static contrast of 1,000:1 does not. The 6K LG IPS panel is rated at 2,000:1. The only other 32-inch 6K panel I know of is made by AU Optronics has a slightly different resolution of 6,016 by 3,384 pixels and a contrast rating of 1,500:1. Perhaps the contrast spec on the Samsung Germany site is wrong.

Anywho, refresh rate-wise we're talking 165 Hz, with a 330 Hz 3K alternate mode. The Odyssey G8 (G80HS) doesn't have full-array dimming and tops out at just 350 nits. So, HDR support is extremely limited.

In the end, the appeal here is the ultra-high 224 DPI pixel density. I've reviewed a couple of non-gaming 6K 32-inch panels and the image quality in terms of sharpness and font rendering is pretty sweet. But for gaming, I'm not sure I can see the point, especially given the limitations this display has in other areas.

Personally, I think a 32-inch 4K panel based on the very latest OLED tech would be a much better all-round compromise, with far better HDR and response, and a higher refresh rate, all while offering decent enough pixel density. Honestly, I'd rather have the last-gen QD-OLED version, which is currently going for just $679.99 on our monitor deals page.

Readers of a certain vintage, the sort that are covered in dust and need to be rotated every month to prevent sediment buildup, will remember 4:3 screens. They were the sort of thing that came with your 80286 DOS machine in the form of a 14-inch CRT monitor that had the outward curve of a goldfish bowl, made a sound like an A10 plinking tanks when you changed resolution, and came with a 15-pin VGA connector that was surprisingly fragile if you tried to plug it in carelessly. Somehow I discovered that a bent pin could be fixed by pulling it out, then sawing one of my mother's dressmaking pins in half and sticking it in the hole left behind. These were simpler times and we made the best of what we had.

Then came a revolution. Two, actually. The CRT screen was replaced with the LCD, and all-conquering 16:9 widescreen eventually led to 21:9 and 32:9 monitors cluttering up desks everywhere.

But now tallscreen is back, in the form of this LED-backlit IPS from BenQ, which uses a mighty 3:2 aspect ratio that's a tiny bit wider than 4:3 but noticeably different to 16:9. It's the same ratio as a frame of 35 mm film, so it's still a familiar sight as you'll see a lot of photos taken this way. Technically, this monitor is meant for programmers, and the company makes a big deal of how it cuts glare using a Nano Matte coating and a simulated e-ink display to immerse you in your code and reduce eyestrain. However, as it's also a 120 Hz panel with HDR and a resolution that's 4K-adjacent, someone's bound to try and play games on it.

And that person is me. Sitting in front of the RD280UG after years of looking at 16:9 screens is a strange experience. My CRT collection topped out at 17 inches, a Dell screen I remember having to carry home from the shop, stopping every now and then to get my breath back and take the strain off my arms thanks to its immense weight. This is a 28-incher, but the extra height supplied by this aspect ratio makes it feel much larger. Its screen height of 41 cm, not including the thick plastic bit at the bottom, is the same as that of a 32-inch widescreen display. The 3840 x 2560 pixel grid means that if you take a 16:9 slice across the middle, you're getting 3840x2160, though as if you were looking at it on a smaller monitor of about 24-inch diagonal.

Feeding the RD280UG a 16:9 signal is not the point, however: this thing was meant to display 3:2, and Windows 11 is perfectly happy to do that as it remains a moderately popular aspect ratio among productivity software types. Framework will sell you a laptop with a 13-inch 3:2 2880x1920 display, and Microsoft, HP and Huawei all have options too.

The issue can be to find games that support the aspect ratio, though, as it's bad enough finding native ultrawide support even on the triplest of A games let alone something 99% of gamers won't be using. Still, using it for games must be something somebody at BenQ foresaw. Why else would they advertise its AMD Freesync Pro compatibility on the box?

Of course Cyberpunk 2077 can handle 3840x2560, and honestly it looks great. I've been a recent 21:9 ultrawide convert, but the extra height of the image here definitely adds to a game, while the extra pixels give the GPU a bit of a workout too. There's something fresh about viewing games through a viewport that's a slightly different shape to what you're used to.

What's clear is the way games are made for widescreen aspect ratios, however, so the taller display might work even better in a game with a bit more verticality. I gave Assassin's Creed Shadows a go, and rooftops that would have required a flick of the right-hand thumbstick to bring into view were now clearly visible, though there remains a little too much at the bottom of the screen, the GPU rendering extra road surface or farmland that was never going to be particularly interesting. The aspect ratio works better for first-person games than third-person for this reason, the gun anchored at the bottom providing a baseline for everything going on above, and giving a nostalgic reminder of playing the original Doom on a CRT.

Where it really comes into its own is in something like Baldur's Gate III, where you're constantly pushing forward, up the screen. Having more of the path ahead visible, rather than areas to the side that are less crucial to your quest, can be an advantage. You can zoom in closer to areas such as the druid's grove without losing parts of the open central section to the limited vertical height of the screen. It's also amazing for emulators, as long as you're prepared to mess about and find the best scaling solution to bump it up to such a fearsome resolution, plus a shader for CRT sub-pixel effects. Those 4:3 console games can fill the screen without thick black bars.

The RD280UG is very nicely made, with video inputs that are easy to access rather than facing downwards. This is also true of the power connection, which is a three-pin lead rather than an external power brick. The monitor is capable of providing 90 W PD through its USB-C input, as well as 15 W from its downstream USB-C ports, one of which is on the back while the other nestles under the bottom edge of the screen alongside two USB-A ports, a headphone jack, and the controls for the OSD. It's all extremely convenient to use, especially if you use your PC for more than games. And there are HDMI and DP connections for those without USB-C on the back of their graphics cards. There's a light on the back of the screen that BenQ calls a MoonHalo: it's meant to tie in with the eyestrain-prevention theme but probably works best if you have the screen up against a wall, like Philips' Ambilight TVs.

The RD280UG has lots of features that BenQ thinks programmers will love, including the ability to display two input streams side by side with different colour modes applied. As such, it's a bit of a luxury purchase, the sort of thing you might plead with your boss to get you rather than shell out on for home use. If you read the big list of the best gaming monitors, you'll find that the 27in Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG can be picked up for a lot less than the BenQ. If you're programming they're probably not comparable, but for gaming, especially as games are often made with 16:9 in mind, a 4K widescreen display is going to be the better choice for most people.

5th-generation QD-OLED panels solve one of the biggest critiques levied at OLED monitors: Font fringing. With burn-in becoming less and less of an issue and prices steadily going down, blurry text is one of the biggest hurdles giving IPS any sort of an edge anymore. AOC and its sister company Philips both have 5th-generation QD-OLED gaming monitors launching in Q3 this year, and I got a little bit of time with both of them.

At a press event out in Croatia, we got a briefing on what the two companies are working on this year, and got hands-on with some of its best and brightest (literally) bits of tech.

First up is the AOC AGP346UCSD (catchy name). Coming in at 34 inches, this WQHD panel has a refresh rate of 360 Hz, uses HDMI 2.1 and DP 2.1, and comes with a 15 W USB Type-C port. I'm told the low power in the USB Type-C port is simply due to the restraints of this specific monitor, and other monitors with the same tech will get up to 90 W.

We also have the Philips Evnia 34M2C8600P (they ought to dock the pay the guy who does the names), which drops the connectors down to HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.4, but offers a 65 W USB Type-C, a white shell, and Ambiglow synchronised RGB for your troubles.

What both monitors have in common are the 5th generation QD-OLED screens, which, with their V-RGB pixel substructure, offer better HDR (HDR 500 TB), reduced font fringing, and higher brightness. Both panels get a peak of 1300 nits with a full brightness of 300 nits.

They will both be available in Q3 (July to September, though it seems like July is the target), with the AOC monitor coming in at €999 (roughly exchanges to $1,176) and the Philips selling for €899 ($1,050). I'm told that the AOC Agon Pro range (AOC AGP) is typically recommended for high-end gaming rigs, where the Philips Evnia is supposed to appeal to a slightly more casual market. Hence, the AOC option has a higher refresh rate and better DisplayPort support.

OLED gaming monitors look fantastic, and these two are no different. The higher brightness wasn’t immediately noticeable to me, but the deep contrasts were. They also both have an 1800R curve, which is certainly immersive but slight enough that it didn’t stand out to me like other curved monitors. At 34 inches, a light curve is a great way of getting a bit more out of the screen without forcing you to turn your head to see it all. If it’s possible for a big 'ole monitor to be so, I’d say its curve is tasteful.

For €100 less, a prettier all-white shell, and Ambilight support, my money would be on the Philips panel in this race. Philips is calling its new smart lighting ecosystem Ambiscape, and its monitors are Matter-compatible and support Philips' own AI lighting system, which is intended to connect to what you're playing and provide the right lighting.

If you have smart bulbs, you will be able to connect them all through software to set a tone in your room. Personally, I think I'd take a lower refresh rate for a better look and a cheaper price point. We don't yet have confirmation of if/when we will see either monitor in the US, but here's hoping we do eventually.

These two brands aren't the first to tackle font fringing. The likes of MSI's MPG 341 CQR uses the vertical RGB stripe pattern to help with rendering that relies on subpixel structure, like font smoothing and clarity. This comes in at $1,100 with a 34-inch 3440 x 1440p screen, 1300 nits peak brightness, and a 0.03 ms response time. It's a similar monitor with similar specs at a similar price. To me, this is no bad thing. The more monitors that get to the market, the less you are forced to rely on a single company.

And in this case, there are technically two new companies entering the ring—though they share an owner—and they both seem ready for the visual punch-up.

Monitors are kind of important. Like, you need them to see the games you play, man. But on a deeper level, picking the right one to see your games as intended actually is important—be that going up to 4K for those beautifully rendered textures or OLED for true blacks. Monitor manufacturer AOC seems to agree, and it has a whole new range for you to pick from.

In a press conference I attended in Croatia today, Cesar Reyes Acosta, European commercial leader for AOC, showed off said new monitors, and asked questions as 'food for thought'. These were a series of prodding inquiries intended to explain why one might want a new monitor right now (or, I suppose, in a few months, with some of them out in June and July).

The first and most important question was "Is it smart to buy an OLED monitor today?" Effectively, with the memory crisis continuing to rage, taking GPU prices up with it, Acosta argues that swapping to OLED will feel more monumental than paying all that cash for quicker memory or an upgraded GPU.

Following up, he pointed to how things have changed in five years, showing that the AOC 24G2SPU launched for €239 with a 23.8 HD 165 Hz screen and 4 ms response time. Inversely, the AOC 127G4ZR is a 27-inch 1440p 260 Hz panel, with a 1 ms response time and HDR 400, and it comes in at the same price.

After showing this comparison, Acosta asked: "Are monitors anti-inflation?"

When compared to what has happened to the price of memory? Monitors are certainly in a better situation. When we consider the normal passage of time and the development of tech? Absolutely not. But the point is taken, even if presented playfully. Monitors are getting better-priced and higher-specced with time, and it is becoming much easier to buy monitors for less money.

But not all of AOC's new monitor announcements are about getting more monitor for less money. On the OLED front, AOC is releasing the AGP346UCSD, which uses the 5th-generation QD-OLED tech (bye bye, font fringe) and offers a 34-inch HDR 500 TrueBlack panel with a 1440p resolution, for €999. It is also launching a 4th-generation W-OLED 1440p 27-inch 540 Hz monitor called the AGP277QCKD for €899 in June.

Its sister company Philips has also unveiled the Evnia 27M2K5901A, which is a €799 5K (165 Hz) monitor with a dual-mode to swap to 1440p (at 330 Hz).

I stand by the fact that swapping to OLED is arguably one of the most monumental changes I've made in my gaming setup, but it's definitely strange to think of a monitor as being a good buy for your rig because you can't afford memory or a graphics card. That's perhaps made a little weirder by the fact that it's coming from the company selling the monitor to you. Even if the monitors seem pretty great.

A few weeks ago, Philips announced the Evnia 27M2G5800, a poetically-named, 27-inch, 5K dual-mode gaming monitor for sale in China, and today, the company has announced a western counterpart—the 27M2D5901A (yeah, monitor names are like that). I managed to get hands-on experience with the screen at a press event in Croatia, and dual-mode works as well as I'd want it to.

The all-white panel is capable of swapping between 5120 x 2880 (165 Hz) and 2560 x 1440 (330 Hz). The use case here is putting one game on its highest possible resolution for those pretty, immersive games, and swapping to 1440p for competitive play in another. 330 Hz is certainly on the high-end in that regard, while 5K is more or less wasted on the likes of Counter-Strike 2.

Also, if your rig is a tad lacking and you plan on upgrading in the future, you can focus on 1440p for the time being, then swap when you finally have the power to justify 5K—though there's very little out there with the power to justify 5K at the moment.

Cesar Reyes Acosta, the European Commercial Leader for Philips' sister company AOC, tells me "ours is the same [as the 27M2G5800], but ours is more equipped."

The 27M2D5901A, as well as having that all-white look, has Philips Ambilight built in. That means it has lights on the back which you can sync up to your games. As part of this, Philips' new 5,000-8,000 series (the mid to top-end) all come with Philips' own AI lighting system and Matter compatibility. This means you can hook up your monitor to your smart lights and blast your entire room with light when you get a flashbang hurled at you… theoretically.

It also comes with a 65 W USB Type-C in the back, so you can charge your laptop from it while it's plugged in, or use it to power a USB hub in a pinch.

The 27M2D5901A will be available in July this year, and comes in at a recommended price of €799. Roughly exchanged, that works out to $940 at the time of writing, but I'm told there aren't yet any plans to launch the monitor in the US. Hopefully, that will change in the future.

On paper, it's rather similar to the Asus ROG Strix XG27JCG. Both monitors offer 5K dual-mode, and they're the same size. AOC's offering, if it launches in the US, will likely come in at north of $900, but Asus's is available for $849. Both are IPS, and AOC's comes in at 50 nits brighter. That means there's a slight upgrade in brightness, a neat look, and some flashy lights in exchange for the extra cash.

In testing, I managed to swap between the resolutions mostly easily (thanks to the new OSD), and it happened in just a few seconds. The little bit of gaming I managed to get on the monitor was certainly pretty , and that 5K resolution is killer. €799 is an eye-watering fee for an IPS panel, but not out of the norm for 5K, especially with dual-mode.

But my eyes have become so accustomed to OLED at this point that I'm not entirely convinced I can go back, and 5K is a budding field, so whether or not you want to get in on the ground floor is a tough decision. You are getting a relatively low brightness here, and 5K is likely only due to get better with time, but I can't say I wasn't impressed by the panel, the monitor, and the pretty lights nonetheless.

Monitors are a flashy 'ol business: If you want to shop for one, you have to consider your dream resolution, size, and panel technology. That's before mentioning refresh rate, response time, and a whole host of other specs. But manufacturer AOC's gaming monitors have caught flack for something more prosaic: Their on-screen display (OSD), the interface you have to mess with should you want to adjust the settings.

But the company's aware of this problem, and working on a solution. At a press event in Croatia today, Cesar Reyes Acosta, the European Commercial Leader for AOC, told us, "I've read your reviews", and that AOC's software is "one of the most highlighted cons in reviews."

To fix this, all of the latest and upcoming monitors from the brand will come with a new OSD. I've tested it out myself, and found it mostly pretty easy to understand.

When you first open it up, it shows you basic information like the game mode, resolution, shadows and brightness, allowing you to adjust these light settings without going into any new menus.

If you want more control, you can then open up a second wave of more in-depth options, which give you more granular control. The point here seems to be finding what settings work for you and mostly swapping between those on the fly, then getting more granular should you want that.

The OSD will also highlight the type of AOC monitor you have. AOC Gaming is the more value-oriented end of AOC's offerings, and it has an orange UI. The mid-range Agon has a red UI, and the Agon Pro has a purple UI. This unified UI will be brought across to any new AOC monitors.

Though a bad UI is not the end of the world, AOC is continuing to add new dual-mode monitors to its lineup, and that is something that benefits from a good OSD. Effectively, dual-mode monitors can swap between different resolutions (and refresh rates) on the go, so being able to navigate its software better is certainly a boon.

Still, I was a little surprised to hear that the OSD took such a beating from users prior to now. Other than maybe looking through OLED settings or swapping refresh rate, I almost never touch my settings. I certainly think I would more, if I had my hands on one of those tasty dual-mode monitors, though.

Despite the protest of some of my colleagues, dual monitors are just the best setup for a gaming rig. The distance between the two gives me clearly defined borders for a game to run on the better screen for pretty games, and on the worst screen for competitive ones. That's before mentioning a second screen gives room for extra information, a notepad app, or just a podcast when I'm bored.

If you agree dual monitors are the best and you're in need of a second screen, I'd recommend the Acer Nitro KG241Y P3bip now that it's a mere $90 at Newegg. A saving of $40 makes it a super solid choice, and what I'd be picking if I needed a new one.

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With this monitor, the price is mostly what sells it to me. 1080p resolution is a tad low, naturally, but 4K monitors will demand a few hundred dollars more. However, just because its resolution is the bare minimum you'd want for gaming doesn't mean its other stats lack too.

You are getting a 180 Hz refresh rate, which is solid, and a response time of 0.5 ms. This makes the Acer a solid competitive gaming pick.

1080p is far less tough for a GPU to deal with than 4K or 1440p, so this works as a decent main monitor for the likes of Counter-Strike 2 or Valorant, where frame rate really matters. I have the same setup myself: one lush OLED 1440p panel for single-player, pretty games, and one more budget-oriented 1080p monitor for competitive play.

It is a VA panel, which is typically better than IPS for its contrast, but worse for viewing angles and color accuracy. It's an older tech, too, though solid nonetheless.

This Acer screen isn't the absolute cheapest gaming monitor I'd recommend right now. MSI's G242L E14 is $5 cheaper, and it uses an IPS panel, but it has a higher response time and lower refresh rate. The Acer is a better competitive choice, while the MSI will handle color better.

Still, if you find yourself not quite satisfied with the amount of information you can cram into just a single screen, a second monitor will really make your gaming rig pop, and getting one for $90 makes it even pretty solid on a budget. I'd know, I've done the same myself.

With the gaming monitor market absolutely swamped with different makes, models, and specifications, it can be hard for manufacturers to stand out in the crowd. However, Sony reckons it has just the ticket, in the form of a dual-mode OLED display that's practically the same as what Asus and LG offer, except it's got the thumbs up from Fnatic.

If you're not a follower of professional esports, the name Fnatic won't mean anything to you, and truth be told, it didn't to me either, until I looked it up. It's not a pro gamer, though, it's a brand: "A global esports performance brand headquartered in London, laser-focused on levelling up every gamer."

Anyway, Sony's new Inzone M10S II OLED gaming monitor isn't the first time the Japanese company has teamed up with Fnatic: it did it for the first iteration of this display. So what's new? Well, the paper specifications essentially point to its being a near-direct clone of the Asus ROG Swift PG27AQWP-W and LG Ultragear 27GX790B-B.

All three are 27 inches in size and sport an OLED panel that has a native resolution of 2560 x 1440, with a maximum refresh rate of 540 Hz. They also boast a 'dual-mode' function where, at the click of a button, they switch to a correctly-scaled 1080p, but with a blistering 720 Hz refresh rate. Each monitor can also limit how much of the display is used in this mode, to give pro gamers that 24-inch feeling.

Competition is good for the consumer, of course, though I don't mean that from an esports sense. Having multiple manufacturers battling for the same customer usually results in at least one of them resorting to outdoing the others by undercutting them on price, and that's precisely the case with LG.

Right now, you can bag the LG Ultragear 27GX790B-B for $750 at Amazon, which is significantly cheaper than the $1,099 Asus wants for the ROG Swift PG27AQWP-W. It's a bit of a shame, then, that Sony has set the launch MSRP for the Inzone M10S II (or 2, if you prefer) at $1,099.99—that makes it the most expensive of the three.

Sony says its new monitor has been "refined with feedback from Fnatic", but until the all-singing, all-dancing gaming display has been independently tested and reviewed, there's no way of telling whether the collaboration is worth paying the extra.

Dual-mode monitors seem to be a bit of a 'thing' at the moment, and our Andy spotted this great deal on a 4K model from LG, but I do wonder if it's at such a great price because fewer gamers than expected are buying them.

Though the memory crisis threatens to raise the prices of half the components in a gaming rig, monitors have only come down in price. Alienware, a brand known for high-end and expensive gear, is putting out one of the most reasonably priced QD-OLED gaming monitors I've seen in some time, and the specs aren't too bad either.

Alienware is launching the AW2726DM on April 21. With that all-important OLED panel, it features a 240 Hz refresh rate, 0.03 response time, and 1440p resolution. Perfect for a mid-range rig.

Moreover, the AW2726DM is set to launch for $350.

I update our guide on the best gaming monitor deals guide every week, so I've developed a good sense of how much you can expect to pay for a monitor, and this Alienware significantly undercuts the competition. Our current pick for the cheapest OLED gaming monitor is the Acer Predator X27U Z1bmiiprx (yes, monitor names are really like that), and it offers pretty much identical specs for $400. Importantly, that's on sale. The Alienware pick is $50 less at MSRP.

If resolution is everything to you, you can get the likes of the MSI MAG 275UPD 4K IPS dual mode monitor for $100 less, but OLED is where it's at if you want lush colours and true blacks. Swapping to an OLED panel is arguably one of the best upgrades I've made to my gaming setup in years. (Though I do have a cheaper, higher refresh 1080p pick as my second monitor).

The AW2726DM's stand can be adjusted by up to 130 mm, pivot up to 90°, swivel all the way around, and has a graphite film heatsink to dissipate heat and reduce the risk of burn-in. Alienware says it combines that graphite sheet with an AI algorithm to further counter burn-in, and it comes with a 3-year burn-in warranty, just in case.

Another issue that pops up with OLED monitors is text fringing. Effectively, text fringing is an artifacting issue where a faint outline can appear around text. With a brightness of 200 nits—which is rather low—this Alienware monitor is likely on fairly old panel technology, so, at 1440p, you are likely to see some fringing. It won't impact gaming much, though.

Text fringing is still one of the biggest concerns with OLED (alongside burn-in and the price), and though the likes of LG's RGB Stripe panel and Samsung's latest QD-OLED tech deal with this problem, we likely won't see it in the budget OLED market for a while. At least the price is sorted here.

We'll have to see and feel the monitor in person to really assess its quality, but it's good news for the monitor market that even Alienware is trying to undercut the competition.

How much better are the very latest OLED panels and are they actually worth paying a premium? Handily, the Gigabyte GO27Q24G is here to answer that very question. Because it's pretty much identical to the Gigabyte MO27Q28GR I reviewed just recently. The difference is that it makes do with an older LG WOLED panel, not the fancy new 4th Gen LG Primary RGB Tandem OLED of the pricier M-series monitor model.

Speaking of expense, the Gigabyte GO27Q24G weighs in at precisely $100 cheaper than its higher-specified WOLED cousin. But in every other regard, it's virtually identical including exactly the same threads. And that's unambiguously a good thing.

In a market stuffed with slightly cheesy monitors saddled with adolescent styling details, the Gigabyte GO27Q24G is mature but slick and minimalist. It's also very nicely built, with the same metal base and stand as the MO27Q28GR, which offers a full range of adjustment including pivot into portrait mode.

Specs-wise, the older WOLED panel tech means 275 rather than 335 nits full-screen brightness and 1,300 peak HDR nits in a 1.5% window. The latest WOLED panel is rated at 1,500 nits peak HDR. The GO27Q24G also only has VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification and therefore doesn't get the upgrade to True Black 500.

Another differentiation point is the refresh rate, albeit not to a dramatic extent. Gigabyte has specced this monitor up to 240 Hz, where the MO27Q28GR is good for a few more frames per second, namely 280 Hz. That 40 Hz gap, however, isn't a convincing reason to favour the more expensive monitor.

Rounding the panel specs out are 0.03 ms response times and 99% coverage to the DCI-P3 colour gamut. The pricier MO27Q28GR panel is quoted at 99.5% of DCI-P3, but honestly that's a fairly academic distinction that probably exists primarily for market differentiation as opposed to being something you'd actually benefit from or notice in use.

For the record the GO27Q24G has a glossy panel coating, just like the MO27Q28GR. Given the "R" in MO27Q28G stands for "RealBlack Glossy" and the GO27Q24G, too, has that very same RealBlack Glossy anti-glare coating, you could say that's a bit odd. But then, since when did monitor model names make the slightest bit of sense?

Whatever, just as the stand and chassis are shared between the two models, connectivity is also largely carried over. That means you get two HDMI 2.1 ports, DisplayPort 1.4 and USB-C with 18 W of power delivery, plus a 45 W dynamic mode. You're not going to be running a beefy laptop with those kinds of power delivery specs, of course. But what that USB-C interface does allow for is, say, sharing this monitor between a gaming rig and a thin-and-light work laptop.

The only difference regarding connectivity is the absence on this model of a two-port USB-A hub, which is a bit of a pity and feels like penny pinching given the panel downgrade. Still, this is a great looking and mostly well-featured display. The really pressing question, however, is just how much you lose out on by settling for that older-gen WOLED panel.

Running it side-by-side with the newer MO27Q28GR is certainly instructive. The first thing to understand is that, in subjective or experiential terms, monitor brightness isn't linear. In other words, a 500 nit panel doesn't look twice as bright as a 250 nit monitor to the human eye. The subjective delta is significantly less. With that in mind, you might think that 275 nits versus 335 nits is a pretty incremental upgrade. And it is in some scenarios, but crucially not in all.

If you want the punchiest SDR experience out of any of these OLED panels, you need to ramp down or disable the automatic brightness limiter. That allows the display to hit higher peaks provided you're not lighting up too much of the panel. As you increase the proportion of the screen that's being driven hard, the overall brightness is attenuated. That's just how OLEDs currently work. They can hit really high peak brightness, but only in small portions of the display.

Anyway, so configured there are clear differences between the two displays. The toughest test is opening a large, mainly white application window. Both panels will dim noticeably. But the MO27Q28GR, with the newer LG WOLED panel not only dims less, it has a cleaner, whiter image compared to the dingier, slightly green-tinted GO27Q24G.

So, while the brightness gap isn't subjectively huge, the newer panel looks noticeably more punchy and vibrant, if anything beyond what the on-paper numbers might have you expect. Perhaps surprisingly, it's certain grey tones where the difference can be most clearly seen, with this older panel looking much darker. But the colours generally are also just that little bit duller.

That isn't to say that this monitor is a disaster, however. At its best, it can deliver a pretty eye-popping experience. As ever when it comes to OLEDs, it's the perfect per-pixel lighting thing in darker HDR scenes with bright details where this display excels. Think starfields or an urban setting like a basement nightclub with neon lights or a laser show.

In that scenario, there really isn't much to choose between this display and the MO27Q28GR, other than the latter having slightly richer colours and cleaner white-tone details. You don't really notice the 1,500 nits versus 1,300 nits peak brightness.

Then you fire up a brighter outdoor game scene, maybe the midday desert wastelands of Cyberpunk and that's when the full-screen limitations and ever so slightly muddy colours become more apparent. To be clear, the GO27Q24G is not a disaster, it's just a little bit dull and disappointing.

All that is despite the fact that Gigabyte has rolled out its so-called HyperNits tech for this panel, too. HyperNits is essentially the same as MSI's EOTF Boost mode as seen in many recent MSI monitors, including the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36.

The idea with both MSI EOTF Boost and Gigabyte HyperNits is to solve the problem where the VESA certified HDR mode gives the best results for bright scenes and the peak HDR mode calibrated for the panel's maximum HDR brightness is best for darker scenes.

Gigabyte's HyperNits feature therefore boosts the monitor's EOTF curve in HDR 1300 mode, bringing brighter scene performance level with the HDR True Black 500 mode while maintaining the really sizzling HDR 1300 highs for small details. And it works well enough, it just can't do anything to actually improve the full screen brightness. Really the HyperNits feature means that the HDR 1300 mode is the best all-round option for HDR games and video and saves you having to even think about switching modes depending on content brightness.

While we're on the subject of switching modes depending on content type, this monitor's SDR calibration in HDR mode is a bit of a mess, which is surprising given the MO27Q28GR is at least good by that measure in its default VESA HDR mode. With this monitor, the SDR colours are really off in the favoured HDR 1300 preset, which means you'll need to switch between SDR and HDR modes in Windows depending on content type to get the best experience. Annoying, given I'd hoped we were past that.

Another more universal limitation is pixel density. 1440p on a 27-inch monitor makes a lot of sense for gaming. There's decent image detail while not making the same huge demands on your graphics card as, say, 4K. The downside is that when you're not gaming, this is a slightly pixellated, blocky looking monitor. By that measure, it's actually a little worse than a 1440p LCD monitor thanks to the RGWB rather than RGB subpixel structure of the WOLED panel. That has a particular impact on fonts, which aren't terribly smooth or crisp.

How much of this matters probably depends on your gaming-to-general-computing mix. If you're all about gaming, it's probably a case of 'who cares?' But for all-round computing, the low-ish pixel density is a bit more of a bummer. That's especially true when you consider that Gigabyte itself will sell you a super-sharp 4K 27-inch OLED for about $150 more.

If things are sounding a little downbeat up to this point, I should mention that this is a very quick monitor with extremely rapid pixel response. Okay, 240 Hz is nothing special these days, but combined with 0.03 ms response, this is still a very fast panel with excellent motion clarity and minimal latency. My competitive Counter-Strike days are long behind me, but for some light to moderate online fragging, I'd be very happy with this panel.

In the end, this all comes down to whether the $100 saving that comes with the Gigabyte GO27Q24G makes for good value. You could well conclude $100 is a lot to pay for the slightly brighter experience from Gigabyte's MO27Q28GR sibling. But I'd argue the extra $100 is well worth spending. Where this monitor can feel pretty underwhelming at times, the MO27Q28GR is much more consistently satisfying.

Long story short, then, the critical question is whether you would rather spend $499 and be slightly disappointed a fair bit of the time or $599 and be mostly very pleased? $599 might be a lot to spend on a mere 1440p panel. But $499 somehow feels like a whole lot more to stump up for something that's often just a little underwhelming.

Okay, so you're in the market for an OLED monitor. You want the latest panel tech, but you're trying to keep the spending just on the sensible side of silly. If that's a scenario you can identify with, may I introduce the new Gigabyte MO27Q28GR.

It's a 27-inch 1440p model, which remains a very popular form factor for what you might call real-world gaming. What with GPU prices stubbornly refusing to normalise, never mind the memory market madness, 1440p is a manageable resolution for relatively modest graphics cards to drive, is the point.

The MO27Q28GR, meanwhile, runs at 280 Hz, which will be quick enough for all but die-hard esports addicts, offers plenty of connectivity and it's yours for around $599. Immediately, you'll note that there are cheaper 27-inch OLEDs on our monitor deals page. But hang on, because they don't have LG's new 4th Gen LG Primary RGB Tandem OLED panel.

If that sounds like a real mouthful, it is. But suffice to say for now that it brings very nearly all of LG's latest OLED tech to the table, with the notable exception, despite the confusing "RGB" branding, of RGB-stripe subpixel structure.

We'll come back to all that in a moment, but in the meantime—and especially if you're confused—I précised the baffling branding applied to OLED tech by LG and Samsung here. Just be warned, it's a bit of a mess. The branding, that is, not my post. Obviously.

Anywho, specs-wise, we're talking 335 nits full-screen brightness and HDR True Black 500 certification, both of which betray the new-gen panel tech, as does the 1,500 nits peak HDR brightness in a fairly teensy 1.5% window.

The 0.03 ms claimed pixel response time is essentially the same as previous generations of LG and indeed Samsung OLED panel tech. But then that's arguably fast enough to make pixel response a "fixed" problem.

Further features include HDMI, DisplayPort and USB-C connectivity, with the USB-C interface offering a modest 18 watts of power delivery. That's probably fine for keeping your phone or a thin-and-light laptop juiced up if you want to share this monitor between that kind of device and a proper desktop gaming PC.

Oh, and did I mention that the "R" suffix in Gigabyte MO27Q28GR indicates that this is a glossy OLED, which is branded "RealBlack Glossy" in Gigabyte land. There's also a Gigabyte MO27Q28G sans "R" with a matte anti-glare coating, if you prefer. Rounding out the speeds and feeds out is a three-year warranty. The question of OLED panel resistance to permanent burn-in rolls on, at least to some degree. But at least you know you're good for three years with that warranty backstop.

All of that is wrapped up in a pretty classy looking, minimalist chassis with a slick metal base and stand, the latter offering a full range of adjustment, including pivot into portrait mode, if that's your occasional web-viewing bag. Overall it's a slick but mature monitor and doesn't suffer from any obviously gamery styling pretensions. For me, personally, that's a positive.

But what about the general viewing and, more specifically, gaming experience? Right out of the box it's immediately obvious that this new panel is an improvement on previous generations of LG OLED.

I've not been much of a fan of LG OLED panels thus far, finding them dull and a bit disappointing compared to Samsung's competing QD-OLED tech, even allowing for the latter's shortcomings when it comes to ambient light and also an overly warm colour temperature. But this new LG panel tech, boy, it has a lot more punch. The caveat is that your mileage will depend on everything from your use case and preferences to properly dialling this monitor in.

If you prefer to run panels like this in SDR mode with the automatic brightness limiter ramped up (confusingly indicated as the APL "Low" setting in the OSD menu) in order to achieve the most consistent full-screen brightness levels regardless of what is being displayed, then the results are clearly better than previous panels, thanks to that improved metric of 335 nits versus the 250 nits and 275 nits of previous LG panels. But it's not a hugely dramatic upgrade, just a touch brighter and a bit more vibrant.

However, if you're willing to put up with more variability in brightness, you can wind down the APL and wind up the visual sizzle, in which configuration, this monitor pops so much more. Is it as punchy still as an LCD with mini-LED backlight? Nope. But if, for instance, you tend to run your apps in dark mode, which essentially means lighting up less of the panel, then this monitor has plenty of fizz and largely covers off the criticism that full-screen brightness is a major OLED weakness.

That said, there's also the comparison with the latest and brightest Samsung QD-OLED panels and here, in subjective terms, I'd still have to give edge to Samsung with the proviso that even the very latest QD-OLED tech, as seen in the likes of the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36, still has a slight issue with purple tint in strong ambient light and a colour temp skewed warm.

If all this sounds rather abstract, what it translates into when you're gaming is a seriously punchy HDR experience in some circumstances. Inevitably, that's most notably the case in darker scenes with some small, bright highlights, where the details absolutely zing. And, of course, as with all OLED panels, there's perfect per-pixel lighting where off actually means off and thus there's zero light bleed, no halos around brighter objects, no backlight zones clumsily pinging on and off. You get the idea.

Of course, in brighter scenes, even this improved LG OLED panel very slightly underwhelms. It just lacks a little pop as the brightness is attenuated more and more as a greater proportion of the screen is fired up. Again, that's something that the latest QD-OLED panels cope with just a little bit better.

That's true even with a feature Gigabyte calls HyperNits. It's essentially the same as MSI's EOTF Boost mode, as included with the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36 panel I mentioned previously, and what it aims to do is maintain broader scene brightness in the HDR 1500 mode. Typically, the maximum peak HDR brightness modes on OLED panels allow for really high peaks but tend to crush overall scene brightness; HyperNits addresses that by boosting the EOTF curve.

HyperNits works in the sense that it allows you to have a single HDR mode that maximises both peak HDR brightness and overall scene full-screen brightness. What it can't do is improve the panel's actual full-screen capabilities. And, indeed, in really bright gaming scenes, pretty much any mini-LED LCD monitor would blow all OLED panels away for outright full-screen punch, albeit they come with an extensive litany of shortcomings specific to that panel tech.

For the record, Gigabyte has calibrated this monitor pretty nicely for the most part. The SDR colours in default sRGB mode are pretty much bang on, as is the calibration of SDR content in HDR mode. The catch is that the excellent calibration of SDR content in HDR mode only applies to the HDR True Black 500 mode. In HDR 1500, the SDR colours are a mess.

That doesn't impact actual HDR content, including games and video. But what it does mean is that if HDR 1500 is your preferred mode—and you'll need to use it to reach the highest of HDR peaks for smaller details—then you're going to need to enable and disable HDR in Windows depending on content type and usage. Not a deal breaker, but a bit of a pain all the same.

One final detail to note regarding the panel tech used here is that it does not include LG's so-called RGB-stripe subpixel structure. It sticks with the RGWB or red, green, white and blue subpixels. I won't rehash the implications of that here in detail, but the short version is that font rendering slightly suffers and the subjective experience of the rated panel brightness can't quite deliver on the expectations raised by the specifications.

That's particularly the case thanks to the relatively low 1440p resolution, which amounts to 2,560 by 1,440 pixels. You can, of course, get a 32-inch 4K OLED for about $100 more and Gigabyte itself will do you a 27-inch 4K OLED for a mere $50 more, which really does deliver crispy, sharp visuals. But then with that comes so much more GPU load. That's the problem.

Actually, before we wrap up, in all this I'm forgetting what a seriously zippy display the Gigabyte MO27Q28GR is thanks to that 0.03 ms pixel response and 280 Hz refresh. In the interests of full disclosure, I hung my Counter-Strike Desert Eagle up some time ago. So, I have to confess my esports chops aren't what they used to be.

But I still maintain this monitor is plenty fast enough for the comfortable majority of gamers. If you're super serious about online shooters, well, you know who you are and lower latency is certainly available at this price point. That's obvious enough.

For everyone else, this monitor has to be close to where it's at if you're looking for a vaguely sensible money 1440p OLED gaming monitor with the latest panel tech. It's really pretty sweet.

The moment I hit publish on this poll I knew what the top result would be. I don't care what the Steam Hardware Survey has to say about the dominant resolution in its database, I knew that PC Gamers would be 1440p gamers in the majority.

And lo, it has come to pass. Most of you fine folk who responded to our last weekly poll have lined up behind the resplendent resolution of 2560 x 1440.

But, when I posited the question: What is your preferred gaming resolution (ignoring upscaling)? I was really not expecting there to be such a level of parity between the big boi 4K res, and the modern classic 1080p.

But you can see (if you squint or click the fullscreen button) that we've got a result from all of our respondees that corresponds to 22% each for 4K and 1080p gamers. I've got to admit, I was expecting the number of people gaming at 4K to be far lower than that.

If you get into the details, you can see that there are more people gaming at 1080p in terms of the raw numbers. We had 6,476 readers answer the poll, and of those 1,445 sided with 1080p and 1,416 with 4K. But that delta does not even add up to one percentage point.

I expect that, with the rise of upscaling, and DLSS and FSR both being actually really good at making an already good-looking 1440p image look great when upscaled to 3840 x 2160, it's far easier to get high frame rate 4K gaming than ever before. Because I doubt many of the 4K respondents are actually playing at a native 4K res.

You 1080p gamers, however, probably are playing at 1920 x 1080. So, I guess you win the moral victory there.

But if 4K users are upscaling from 1440p then you can probably bump up the 36% majority who game at 2560 x 1440 by a fair way.

The next biggest share went to all the ultrawide lovers out there. Cheers to you, my 21:9 droogs. The 3440 x 1440 res garnered 14% of the vote and, proving there are precious few laptoppers out there, only 2% clocked in at the modern gaming laptop res de jour of 2560 x 1600.

I chucked in the weirdo 1920 x 1440 resolution for our Jacob Fox and his strange Counter-Strike 2 stretchiness, but interestingly there are another 181 people who match his penchant for peculiar competitive pixel positions. While a solitary 1% of voters showed they were the elite esports pros, still gaming at 1280 x 960.

Gotta keep them frame rates high, amirite?

This week it's one of those divisive, contentious questions. One that could divide families, split up relationships... Where does your PC live? And maybe more importantly, if it's not on top of your desk, why not?

As I outlined recently, keeping track of all the various OLED panel generations from LG and Samsung is a Herculean, perhaps even Sisyphean, task. But one half of that seemingly ceaseless job just got a lot easier thanks to a couple of new cheat sheets released by TFT Central.

The first is basically a table that shows Samsung QD-OLED panel generations by year and lists the key features and specs for each. Samsung used to have a generational nomenclature, starting with Gen 1 panels in 2022. But with its latest panel tech, what might have been called Gen 5 or 5th Gen QD-OLED, the company has shifted to a system using the year of introduction to signify the panel generation.

As TFT Central says, this is all further confused by some monitor makers—as opposed to LG and Samsung, which produce the actual OLED panels that go into monitors—implementing their own generational marketing cues. Whatever, the table makes for an easy reference guide.

The website also has a graphic that provides a visual guide to the progression of QD-OLED technology. One issue that's worth noting if you're in the market for a QD-OLED panel is how the electroluminescent material used by Samsung, in other words, the actual light-emitting OLED material, has evolved over the years.

Samsung is now on its third generation of electroluminescent material, known as HyperEfficient EL 3.0. While much of the attention, when it comes to those materials and OLED performance, is around brightness, particularly full-screen brightness, Samsung has claimed a doubling in durability with each new generation.

That means the current 3.0 material is supposedly four times more durable than first-gen panels, including the Alienware AW3423DW, which was the first QD-OLED on the market and the first gaming OLED I ever reviewed, way back in the mists of 2022.

If you're worried about OLED burn-in, then that's definitely something to consider. Just to be clear, I'm not sure that one can assume four times the material durability means the latest QD-OLEDs will last four times longer before evidence of burn-in emerges.

However, the point is that the difference between generations isn't just about how bright the out-of-box experience is, as there are other factors at play. Anyway, for Samsung QD-OLED panels at least, and until Samsung introduces some more confusing generational upgrades, TFT Central's guides are a handy primer for anyone shopping OLED monitors.

LG has just two new gaming monitors, for PC gamers with a penny or two in their pocket: the 39-inch UltraGear Evo GX9 OLED at $1,800, and the IPS-based 27-inch UltraGear Evo GM9 at $1,200.

Starting with the GX9, LG notes it is the "World's First 39-inch 5K2K curved OLED" Gaming Monitor. We got a look at the similar Evo 39GX950B at CES this year, and our Jeremy reckons "it might just be the gaming panel I've been waiting for."

With the GX9, you're getting a 0.03 ms response time, a 21:9 ultrawide format for its 5120 x 2160 resolution, and a 1500R curve. That will be notable, especially on a screen that size, but it's certainly not the tightest curve that monitors can get. It also comes with 143 PPI pixel density, and the 4th Gen Primary RGB tandem technology gets a typical brightness of 335 nits.

An interesting feature, and one I'm happy to see even more monitor brands commit to, the GX9 has a dual mode functionality, which means it can swap between 5K2K at 165 Hz and 1440p at 330 Hz, in a similar manner to the very flat and 27-inch Asus ROG XG27JCG we reviewed recently. This, combined with that response time, should make for a competitive-level monitor in a pinch.

Moving over to the GM9, this 27-inch choice uses Hyper Mini LED technology and comes packed with a 5120 x 2880 resolution, like the Asus IPS above. Effectively, Mini LED uses its thousands of small LEDs in the backlight to get better brightness, HDR, and vibrant colours. It also doesn't suffer from burn-in, which has been a sticking point for OLED for a while. OLED, on the other hand, is fast and comes with true blacks, making its contrast superior.

The historical issue with Mini LED technology, however, is that it needs generally far more LED 'zones' than they ship with to actually get rid of the light-bleed issues that accompany the zonal backlighting design. When you think of an OLED of just a 4K resolution having effectively 8.3 million zones because of its self-emissive pixels, however many thousands of zones a Mini LED backlight has it's still not going to be able to compete in terms of raw contrast or HDR.

The strengths of the GM9, though, lie partly in its blazing 1,250 nits peak brightness and its use of VESA Display HDR 1000. It does lag behind the GX9 when it comes to competitive play, though. The GM9's 1 ms response time isn't as impressive as the OLED GX9's, though it does have the same dual mode system, and both monitors support G-Sync and FreeSync variable refresh rate. It's all perfectly acceptable, but you really have to want that pretty Hyper Mini LED tech to go for this one.

LG notes its AI features for both monitors. This includes AI upscaling to get up to that 5K resolution easier (how well it compares to FSR or DLSS is anyone's guess, though), plus AI Sound and AI Scene Optimisation to adjust audio and picture on the fly, without having to manually change settings.

Both are available to preorder, starting today (ending May 3), but you'll have to wait until May 7 to actually get your hands on these panels.

Personally, I've yet to see significant evidence of burn-in on any OLED panel I've used, be that desktop, laptop or phone. But I can't quite shift the notion that it's a long-term risk. But not enough of a risk, it seems, to stop the market for OLED monitors taking off last year, with sales nearly doubling over 2024.

Market analyst Trendforce has a new report out today putting the OLED PC monitor market at 2.735 million units in 2025. That's a 92% increase on 2024.

To put those figures into context, I reported earlier today on broader PC sales numbers that puts overall volumes in the 250 to 300 million units, annually, in recent years. However, roughly only 20% to 25% of that volume is accounted for by desktop PCs, the rest being predominantly laptops.

A very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation therefore puts the desktop market in recent years at about 50 million units or so annually. Not every desktop sale will come with a monitor, of course, and plenty of people buy monitors for existing desktops. But you get a rough idea of the scale of that 2.735 million unit figure for OLED compared to the overall size of the desktop PC market.

It's a decent chunk, in other words, but still very much in the minority. That perhaps isn't surprising, given that it's only recently that we've seen OLED PC monitors dip under $400, while various LCD options just keep getting cheaper.

High refresh 1440p LCD panels can now be had for under $130 and even high-refresh 4K is attainable for sub $250. Speaking of 1440p, of the burgeoning OLED market Trendforce says, "27-inch 240 Hz QHD models gained considerable popularity due to their excellent price-to-performance ratio, significantly increasing shipments."

In terms of which brands are doing best in the OLED market, according to Trendforce, Asus was in the top spot in 2025 with 21.6% share, Samsung second at 19.3%, followed by MSI at number three with 13.1%.

Of course, it's Samsung Display and LG Display, both somewhat distinct from their consumer product cousins, who utterly dominate the market for the actual OLED panels themselves, with the likes of Asus and MSI integrating them into chassis and cooking up the image-processing electronics.

As for the future, Trendforce is expecting more growth in 2026 for OLED, albeit not quite as explosive. "Total shipments are expected to grow by 51% YoY as brands continue to roll out new products and marketing strategies gain further traction," Trendforce said.

If Trendforce's forecast is correct, that will put the OLED monitor market at over four million units in 2026, a pretty hefty figure approaching 10% of annual desktop PC sales volumes. OLED, then, still has a long way to go before it becomes the predominant display tech for desktop PCs. But it's clearly becoming much more popular.

LG has announced a new LCD panel technology for laptops it claims is dramatically more efficient than existing panels. Known as "Oxide 1 Hz", LG Display says it, "automatically switches the refresh rate down to 1 Hz when the screen is static and up to 120 Hz when needed."

The result is, "dramatically improved battery efficiency, including 48% more use on a single charge compared to existing solutions." That is slightly odd language which begs the question of what, exactly, the "48% more use on a single charge" claim actually means.

If it's 48% more uptime for the laptop as a whole, that's stellar. But it may be a more narrow measure of just the LCD panel itself. And there are, of course, numerous other power draws in a laptop, beyond the display, including the CPU, memory, storage, I/O and so on.

LG doesn't get terribly forensic with the details, so equally it's not known exactly how the efficiency savings are made. The basic idea is to reduce the refresh rate as low as 1 Hz, or a single frame per second, when static content is being shown. That means less image processing is required and less energy to update all the panel's pixels.

However, LCD panels operate courtesy of a rear-firing backlight which shines through the LCD matrix. Regardless of how many times you update the pixels per second, that backlight has to stay on to maintain an image.

Moreover, LG also hasn't explained how the technology is implemented. LG says, "the panel’s core feature is its ability to intelligently detect the usage environment," allowing it to "automatically" adjust the refresh rate on the fly.

LG says this is a "world's first" enabled by the development of the company's "own circuit algorithms and panel design technology, discovering new materials and applying the oxide with the lowest power leakage during low-refresh-rate mode to the display’s thin-film transistor (TFT)."

That could imply circuitry integrated into the panel with image analysis capabilities. But LG doesn't explicitly state that's the case. So, it could be that the image analysis or "circuit algorithms" are actually processed by third-party display controllers.

Either way, Dell's new-for-2026 XPS line of laptops will be the first to be offered with the new Oxide 1 Hz tech. Looking at Dell's website, the base configurations of both the XPS 14 and XPS 16 do indeed list "2K 1-120Hz" displays, while the upgrade panel is a 20-120 Hz OLED. Still variable refresh, then, but only down to 20 Hz, not 1 Hz.

Dell claims both the XPS 14 and 16 are good for up to 31 hours of battery life, which is obviously pretty epic. How much of that is down to the LG Oxide 1 Hz panel as opposed to, say, the Intel Panther Lake CPU, is an open question.

Speaking of OLED, LG Display says it is, "preparing to begin mass production of a 1 Hz OLED panel incorporating the same technology from 2027." So fans of OLED looking for the added efficiency won't have too long to wait.

The last time I gamed on a 4K 27-inch display, what I really wanted was even more pixels. Over eight million obviously just ain't enough.

Actually, no I absolutely didn't. But the new Asus ROG Strix XG27JCG is giving them to me anyway, all 15 million of tiny RGB suckers thanks to a 5K native resolution of 5,120 by 2,880 pixels from its 27-inch IPS panel. The result is frankly epic pixel density, plus a whole raft of questions about what, exactly, the point of this kind of display is for gaming.

But before you dismiss the idea of a 5K gaming monitor out of hand on account of low refresh rates, know that the ROG Strix XG27JCG will do fully 180 Hz at the 5K native. Okay, that's pretty pedestrian by the standards of really quick gaming monitors, which clock in upwards of 500 Hz these days. But still, 180 Hz at 5K. Bananas, isn't it?

Actually, this monitor's high-refresh chops extend beyond that thanks to a 1440p dual-mode functionality that supports 330 Hz. The idea here is the same as 4K dual-mode monitors that offer an alternative 1080p "native" at a higher refresh, like Asus' own ROG Strix XG27UCG. But since this is a 5K rather than 4K panel, if you double up the pixels in both horizontal and the vertical—effectively using a square block of four pixels from the 5K grid to form a single pixel—you end up with an alternative 1440p "native" mode of 2,560 by 1440.

So, yeah, this monitor is basically four 1440p panels with a total of 14,745,600 pixels. That's how ridiculously high the resolution is with 5K. But with that dual-mode functionality, in theory you can have all the benefits of 5K—which we'll come to—plus a more realistic 1440p mode that promises to make this monitor usable with vaguely affordable GPUs and also a decent option for esports. After all, running at the full native 5K native in the latest games is a very big ask in terms of raw PC performance, not to mention largely pointless for online shooters where frame rate rather than image detail is king.

The 5K and dual-mode functionality aside, however, this is a fairly mainstream monitor by most other metrics. As I mentioned, it's an IPS panel rather than OLED and while it is HDR 600 certified and has local dimming, it's limited to 10 edge-lit zones and so HDR support is very basic indeed. That said, the HDR 600 certification at least means that the panel can hit 600 nits, which is plenty bright enough. The exception is the 0.3 ms GtG claimed pixel response time. That's quick for an IPS monitor.

Rounding out the feature set is good connectivity thanks to DisplayPort, HDMI and USB-C, the latter with basic 15 W power delivery which is probably good enough for sharing this screen between a gaming desktop and a thin-and-light work laptop, or similar. Just note that the full 180 Hz at 5K isn't available over USB-C, you'll need to use one of the other interfaces for that.

Anyway back to that 5K native res and the nearly 15 million pixels. What, you might ask, is the point? Surely 4K on a 27-inch panel is plenty, especially for gaming. And you'd definitely have a point. But, for the record, the increased pixel density on offer here, which comes in at 215 pixels per inch versus the 163 pixels per inch of a regular old 287-inch 4K monitor, is genuinely quite stunning at times.

Put it this way, you know those crisp, clean fonts that you're used to from your smartphone? Well, you get something approaching that on your desktop PC thanks to this monitor. Actually, it's not quite that good in Windows simply because that operating system's font rendering is a bit clunky. But plug this monitor into an Apple Mac and then you really do get that smartphone experience when it comes to text. A niche attraction, to be sure, but there you have it.

Whatever OS you use, there's huge image detail on offer. Indeed, you can view 4K content at full resolution in a window, leaving space for toolbars and controls. That's appealing for, say, 4K video editing. Actually, this screen reveals flaws in 4K video streams that you never noticed before; there's that much detail on offer.

As for the broader utility of 5K, well, in theory it gives huge desktop space. But in practice, running at 100% scaling would make everything ludicrously tiny. So your desktop elbow room will depend on your favoured scaling. In other words, there's no real advantage over a 4K monitor in that regard.

All of which leaves us with gaming. And that's actually quite a complicated proposition on this panel. The thing is, 5K isn't as preposterous a target resolution as it would have been a few years ago. Partly, that's thanks to more powerful GPUs, but mostly it's thanks to upscaling technologies such as Nvidia's DLSS.

The incredible thing is that, thanks to DLSS, you can get pretty playable results at 5K using something like an Nvidia RTX 4070 or RTX 5070. Those aren't budget GPUs, for sure, but they're also not $2,000 monsters. With Nvidia latest DLSS Transformer model upscaling, Performance mode looks remarkably good at 5K and gives you a base frame rate in something like Cyberpunk 2077 with most of the visual bells and whistles cranked up roughly in the low 30s with, say, an RTX 5070.

That's tolerable in latency terms, so you can then add some frame gen and end up with genuinely playable frame rates at 5K. Pretty impressive, right? Step up to, for instance, an RTX 5080 and that 5K native only gets more usable. Of course, you also have the 1440p alternative mode. I had high hopes for that given that 1440p on a 27-inch panel is still reasonably high resolution in gaming terms. But the results are a teensy bit disappointing.

As with basically every other dual-mode monitor I've tried, there's no mistaking it for an actual 1440p panel running at native. The image is somehow both softer and subjectively a bit more pixelated than that. Funnily enough, I think the 1440p alt mode actually looks better running some upscaling than it does running pure "native". Consequently, I think this panel probably doesn't use straight-up pixel doubling and instead has some kind of interpolation algorithm. Again, that seems to be the case for most if not all dual-mode monitors.

Of course, if you're using the 1440p mode for its higher refresh for esports as opposed to reduced GPU load for really demanding games, the finer detail of image quality probably doesn't matter. The only thing I'd say in that context is that if online shooters are your priority, the problem is that you can get a higher refresh and faster responding 1440p OLED at this price point, and that's got to be a better fit.

In the end, it's hard to draw a really clear conclusion about the whole 5K-with-dual-mode thing. On the one hand, the 5K native resolution is actually more usable than you might think thanks to modern upscaling technologies. On the other, the 1440p alternative mode isn't quite as crisp and sharp as you'd ideally want. Still, you can't argue that this monitor doesn't give you plenty of options.

It's also a really nice monitor is most other regards. The calibration is basically bob-on in every mode, be that sRGB and DCI-P3 SDR modes or with HDR enabled. As I said, this monitor doesn't have proper local dimming. So, the actual HDR capability is essentially negligible. But at least SDR content calibration in HDR mode is also really nicely judged. So, there's no real downside to enabling HDR.

So, this is a really nice IPS monitor with fantastic colours, plus that epic pixel density for razor-sharp image detail. The problem is that at this price point, there are also plenty of OLED options, and in that context the limited contrast is all too obvious. As with basically any IPS monitor, there's a lot of backlight bleed through the panel, leading to poor black levels. That's LCD tech for you.

Personally, I think that's less of an issue on a relatively compact monitor like this. When you have a really massive ultrawide monitor, backlight bleed and indeed the variability in how visible that can be across different parts of the panel, again thanks to the inherent viewing angle limitations of LCD tech, can be quite distracting. On a 27 incher, it's not quite as annoying.

And yet this is a very expensive display that ends up competing, as I said, with plenty of OLED options on price. Strictly speaking, none of those OLEDs can match this LCD when it comes to pixel density. But as I write these words, you can grab a 27-inch 4K OLED for about $200 less or a 144 Hz 27-inch 4K IPS panel for less than one-third the money. Either way, the alternatives end up making this 5K monitor, as impressive as it is in many ways, seem like a problematic value proposition.

I like a 4K 32-inch OLED, I do. And MSI's models have offered one of the most affordable options to achieve that 4K OLED experience. So, the good news is that MSI has updated its 32-inch 4K OLED offering with Samsung's latest panel tech. So, it's brighter and mostly fixes at least one weakness of Samsung QD-OLED tech versus the LG alternative.

The new MSI MPG 322UR X24 is essentially an update to the MSI MPG 322URX I reviewed last summer, which in turn was a revised version of the MSI MPG 321URX, which I sampled in 2024.

But where the previous revisions had been basically fiddling around the edges using essentially the same generation of Samsung QD-OLED panel tech, the latest model looks like a much more substantial revision, offering Samsung's latest technology.

At this stage, the various generations of OLED panel tech from Samsung and LG have become completely baffling. I've rounded it all up here, if you dare to read up on the details. But for this new MSI, I'll try to keep things tolerably brief.

Highlights of Samsung's latest QD-OLED revision are based around a new five-layer Tandem OLED panel. It's a fair bit brighter than previous QD-OLED generations, albeit the specs are a bit confusing. MSI is quoting peak HDR performance at 1,000 nits, which is no change from previous panels, though full-screen brightness jumps from 250 nits to 300 nits.

The HDR rating is odd because I've seen this panel tech before, at least a very close relation to it in the MSI MPG 341CQR, where it's rated at 1,300 nits HDR and 300 nits full screen. Just to confuse things further, MSI has revealed that the new MSI MPG 322UR X24 has been awarded VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification, an upgrade from the True Black 400 of previous 4K 32-inch models.

Whatever, I'm pretty confident that this new 32-inch 4K model will feel punchier. That will be helped by what MSI calls "DarkArmor Film", but I believe it is actually a Samsung technology. Again, I've seen it on the MSI MPG 341CQR, and it's claimed to "eliminate the purple tint common on previous QD-OLEDs, enhancing light absorption to boost black levels by 40% for superior contrast in well-lit rooms."

It didn't totally eliminate the issue from the 341CQR, and I expect it won't from the new 322UR X24, either. But it does reduce the problem sufficiently that it's only now present in really extreme ambient light conditions that I really can't see being relevant for most gamers. For the record, LG OLED panels don't have this problem at all.

Oh, this monitor is also getting MSI's improved HDR handling, which, to cut a long story short, means a single mode is good for both dark scenes with bright highlights and really bright outdoor game scenes. I really liked it on the 341CQR, so it's great to see it applied here, too. Huzzah.

One thing this new model doesn't have, as far as I can tell, is the so-called RGB-stripe subpixel structure that debuted on the 341CQR. That's a pity, but perhaps not a major omission. For the 341CQR, it really helped because that's a low pixel density monitor with a 1440p-class panel.

This 32 incher is 4K with elevated pixel density and, in subjective viewing terms at least, suffers from fewer of the issues that RGB stripe sets out to fix in the first place, like fuzzy text.

MSI hasn't priced up the MPG 322UR X24 just yet, and this particular variant with USB-C and 98 W power delivery and 240 Hz refresh will probably be a bit spendy. However, MSI has always offered slightly cut-down variants using the same base panel tech for less money, and when that is very likely released, I expect we'll see something down around the $800 / £800 or even lower soon enough. And that really will be pretty tempting.

Ye olde 27-inch 1440p gaming monitor form factor is proving remarkably resilient, isn't it? Despite the onslaught of countless larger and wider options, it remains perhaps the most popular choice among PC gamers. So, if you love 1440p panels, how about a super-fast OLED model from LG with a decent IPS extra thrown in for free?

LG in the UK is currently offering its latest super-zippy 540Hz OLED 27 incher at its normal £899 price. The deal here, from LG's own website, is that you also get a 27-inch 1440p 200 Hz IPS panel, thrown in for free.

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The OLED model is the LG UltraGear 27GX790B-B. As above, the basics are 27 inches and 1440p, the details include 540 Hz refresh at 1440p, with a 720 Hz alt mode running at 720p. Factor in OLED's characteristically zippy 0.03 ms pixel response and let's just say this monitor gets a shift on. And then some.

Notably, it sports LG's latest and brightest panel tech. That means a full-screen rating of 335 nits, well up on the 250 nits and 275 nits of earlier LG OLEDs. The HDR certification also gets a bump from True Black 400 to True Black 500, again reflecting the punchier panel tech.

As for the IPS panel, it's the LG UltraGear 27G610A-B. That's a 1440p IPS model with 200 Hz refresh that sells for £199 on its own. It's rated at 1 ms for pixel response, 400 nits for brightness and has DisplayHDR 400 certification. A few years ago, that would have been a very, very nice little gaming panel in its own right. Now you're getting one thrown in, gratis.

As for how good a deal this, the devil is in the detail. You can find, for instance, the LG UltraGear 27GX790A-B on sale in the UK for about £699, which suggests this combo might not exactly be a steal. But note the all critical 'A' in that alpha-numeric jumble.

That's the older-gen 27-inch UltraGear OLED that runs at 480 Hz, not 540 Hz, and also lacks the 720p dual model. It's also less bright at 275 nits full screen and only gets True Black HDR 400 certification.

Those are pretty significant upgrades that you'd think would merit a bit more than the upgrade from 'A' to 'B' at the end of an indecipherable sequence of numbers and letters. But that's monitor branding for you these days. Confusing, but not enough to detract from the core deal here, which basically sees you pay normal price for LG's latest super-fast and brighter 27-inch OLED and get a decent IPS panel thrown in for free.

In the world of gaming monitors, it's quite hard to stand out in the crowd if you're trying to tempt gamers to part with their money. But if you're Samsung, then the solution seems to be 'go big'—not in size, but in terms of refresh rate and pixels, with one new model running at 1040 Hz and the other sporting a ludicrous 6K resolution.

The monitors in question are Samsung's Odyssey G6 G60H and Odyssey G8 G80HS. Simple names, not so simple specs.

In the case of the former, you get a 27-inch IPS panel that defaults to 1440p with a staggering 600 Hz refresh rate. But if that's not speedy enough for you, the G60H sports a 'dual mode' where it correctly scales to 1080p and hits a heady 1,040 Hz. A 'world's first' according to Samsung.

It's obvious that this monitor is aimed at the esports crowd, particularly those involved with competitive shooters, but even so, getting a game to run at 600 fps at 1440p is no easy feat. Fortunately, the G60H supports FreeSync Premium Pro, as well as being G-Sync compatible, so even if your GPU can't hit that speed, the monitor should still be able to run at 600 or 1,040 Hz.

Whether or not anyone can really tell the difference between 600 and 1,040 screen refresh per second is another matter entirely, but if it matters to you, then I guess this is a must-buy monitor. Or maybe not, because at this point in time, the G60H's price tag is still an unknown. I'm guessing somewhere between 'oooh, that's pricey' and a noise that suggests you've swallowed your food down the wrong hole.

Should your panel preference be pixels, rather than outrageous speed, then Samsung's got you covered with the new G8 G80HS. It also sports an IPS panel, and it's pretty big at 32 inches, but the resolution is something else: 6,144 x 3,456 (or 6K). That's 156% more pixels than 4K, which is just mind-boggling.

The fact that the monitor has a 165 Hz refresh rate is just as remarkable, but if all these numbers just seem impossibly high for your graphics card, then don't worry, because it has a 330 Hz 3K dual mode. There's no official monitor format for 3K, but I'm guessing that this is probably going to be a resolution of 3072 x 1728, though it could be 2880 x 1620.

Either way, that's hardly the kind of 'easy' resolution you see with most 4K dual mode monitors, which flip from 3840 x 2160 down to 1920 x 1080. If one assumes that the G80HS's dual mode is 1728p, then you're looking at 44% more pixels than 1440p, or 36% fewer pixels than 4K.

So, regardless of whatever mode you use, you're going to need a seriously beefy GPU to run that monitor, and probably a whole heap of upscaling to boot. Oh, and a wallet of infinite holding, I bet.

Static images of a monitor don't really tell you anything about how they actually look in real life, but if you happen to be attending this year's GDC event in San Francisco, you might be able to blag your way in for a peek.

We've been tracking various long-term OLED monitor burn-in tests in our own mini meta series of reviews over the last two years. Until now, the message has been pretty consitent. OLED burn-in is real but barely a problem. Now, at the two-year mark, there's arguably a subtle shift in the narrative that needs to be recorded. Burn-in does appear to eventually become more problematic. How problematic? That's a subjective call.

The latest data point comes from YouTube channel Monitors Unboxed, which has uploaded its latest 24-month update. As before, Monitors Unboxed's testing represents something of a worse-case scenario for OLED wear thanks to primary usage that majors on static productivity apps for around 60 hours a week with Windows in Light mode, but with a dark taskbar.

The idea is that few measures have been taken to reduce burn in, instead the monitor has been used much as any LCD display might be. Again, all the testing is based on the MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED, which I reviewed way back in early 2024 and uses a Samsung QD-OLED 32-inch 4K panel. All told, Monitors Unboxed's testing is now at the two-year mark with over 6,000 hours of uptime.

For the most part, the Samsung panel continues to show progressive but very gradual degradation over the six-month, 12-month, 18-month and 24-month assessment periods. Most obviously, there's a faint line down the centre of the panel due to multitasking with two application windows, plus some burn-in along the bottom due to the taskbar.

But there are some nuances. At 24 months, Monitors Unboxed found the beginnings of icon-specific burn-in along the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. It's only slight and the details of the icons can't be made out. But they are just visible against some backgrounds.

When it comes to the mechanics of how this all works, it turns out that it's the green subpixels that take the biggest hammering, with the least wear visible from the red subpixels. This causes a very slight colour temperature shift over time from 6,441K when new to 6,341K at 18 months.

However, at 24 months, the colour temperature had somewhat reverted to 6,386K. This could be the pixel compensation cycles doing their thing. But, whatever, this is only a small drift in colour temperature that is unlikely to be subjectively noticeable.

Similarly, some regression in visible burn-in when viewing certain colours was actually found. In other words, in some scenarios, it's less visible. Monitors Unboxed reckons this is probably down to overall panel wear causing the contrast across areas of the screen to reduce.

Speaking of overall wear, the channel measured maximum full screen brightness over the test period. For the first 18 months it remained at 243 nits. At 24 months, it fell very slightly to 238 nits. Again, that's not enough to be visible, but it does indicate a long-term trend.

At this stage, the main remaining question is whether panel wear might accelerate in future. Well, that and the extent to which any given user might be bothered by the burn-in exhibited thus far.

While this test is being presented as a worst-case scenario, I suspect most of us would at least find that our typical usage would make for pretty harsh conditions when it comes to, say, taskbar burn-in. So the reality would likely be some light burn-in that's just about visible in certain conditions.

Personally, I think that's a marginal result. It's not a definite deal-breaker for long-term OLED ownership. But if you'd paid $1,000-plus, let's say, for your OLED screen, I don't think being a little disappointed at noticing ever more visible burn-in at the two-year mark would be unreasonable.

In the end, this is a subjective call. Burn-in is real, it's noticeable, but it's not catastrophic. The point at which it becomes unacceptable will ultimately be down to personal preference. But that in itself is arguably a bit of a result compared to where we were five-plus years ago where the assumption was that OLED almost certainly wasn't suitable for daily computing. Today, well, the verdict is rather more nuanced than that.

Yes, I've checked the headline several times, and no, I'm still not sure it's right. Reddit user notthatredfield posted an image in the Resident Evil subreddit two days ago showing their BenQ gaming monitor displaying an image of what looks to be its identical digital twin, found within Resident Evil Requiem.

Depending on your tastes, that's either mildly interesting or not particularly newsworthy. What's far more fun, however, is that notthatredfield has since discovered that another redditor, HaloHead, has created an image of that image inside that image... inside the original image—creating a fractal of gaming monitors in games you didn't expect to see them in.

for the guy who found his exact monitor in the game from r/residentevil

The post has been marked with spoiler tags, and as a non-player of the new Resident Evil game, I'm not entirely sure why. Is the monitor in question located in a particularly special save game room? Is it the fact that Grace Ashcroft (who I believe is supposed to be something of a stealth specialist) is *shock horror* holding a gun? I have no idea.

Questions upon questions, riddles upon riddles. Anyway, notthatredfield has now acknowledged the post, remarking: "I'm the guy who has the monitor."

Stirring stuff. Still, another commenter in the thread has suggested it would be more fun if other people posted pictures of their monitor showing pictures of this picture of monitors, so the whole loop can keep on spiralling.

I dread this potential development, as it means I'd have to write a headline more confusing than this one—and if I'm honest, I haven't had nearly enough caffeine to make such a herculean task possible.

Resident Evil fans, ey? Who knew such japery was to be had out of such a short, but apparently excellent, horror game. A BenQ sponsorship in the next Resident Evil entry, perhaps? Watch this space.

Apparently jealous of AMD and Intel's god-awful CPU branding, Samsung has cooked up a doozy for its latest QD-OLED panel tech for PC gaming monitors. We give you Samsung QD-OLED Penta Tandem, a brighter, more durable panel tech with a baffling brand name.

Samsung says the new panel is 1.3 times brighter and twice as long lasting as previous QD-OLED generations used in PC monitors. Helpfully, Samsung explains that, "'Penta' comes from the Greek word for the number five." Uh huh.

The longevity claim is particularly interesting given long-term tests based on much earlier generations of Samsung QD-OLED monitors have revealed pretty decent resistance to burn-in. If this new generation really is twice as good, that may render the whole question of screen degradation essentially moot.

Anywho, the context here, and likely part of the reason for the "Penta Tandem" thing, is actually LG's competing Tandem WOLED panels, also known as Primary RGB Tandem OLED.

There's also just plain old Tandem OLED, which is another very recent LG panel tech that forgoes the white subpixel implied by the "W" in "WOLED". But, actually, the "W" in WOLED no longer refers to white subpixels. Yeah, I know, get comfortable, I've barely started.

With reference to LG's OLED panels, in theory, the "Tandem" denotes a dual-layer or "stacked" construction. In practice, it's more complicated than that. Tandem WOLEDs now actually have four emissive OLED layers, two blue, one red and one green. These OLED stacks combine to emit white light, which is passed through filters for each of the primary coloured subpixels, red, green and blue.

LG Tandem OLEDs, on the other hand, have two layers, but each composed of red, green and blue organic LEDs. Thus, each subpixel only uses unfiltered OLED light sources of a matching colour. Got that?

Oh, and you can have Tandem WOLED with both standard RGB or red, green and blue subpixel structure or a RGWB structure (previously RWGB but updated to improve font rendering) with an added white subpixel. In both cases, the "W" in WOLED no longer refers to the white subpixel, but the fact that the OLED stack beneath each subpixel emits white light. At which point the very idea of "Tandem" seems pretty tangential. Still with me?

Into this barely comprehensible landscape comes Samsung's new QD-OLED Penta Tandem. Now, Samsung already has four-layer panel tech, but it does things a little differently from LG. Instead of shining light through filters for each subpixel, it shines blue light onto an emissive quantum dot layer.

Toward the top of each subpixel, there are red, green or blue emissive quantum dot layers (which aren't counted in the whole four or five layer thing) which absorb the blue light, convert it and emit it as red, green or blue. Well, as I understand it, the blue subpixel is actually just a passthrough of the base blue QD-OLED emission, but you get the idea. Possibly.

Now, for this new "Penta Tandem" panel, Samsung is using three layers of blue OLED emissive material and two layers of green, which all somehow combine to emit blue light. If you're wondering what the layers are in last year's four-layer Tandem QD-OLED tech, you've got me on that one solitary point. I'm not sure. But, again, together they emit blue light.

So, here's the punchline. Samsung's latest QD-OLED panel has five light-emitting layers. LG's only have four. Everyone has already beaten the "Tandem" thing to death. It would seem that Samsung has apparently added the "Penta" thing to denote the five layers and throw shade on LG's now presumably pathetic and laggardly four-layer panels.

Of course, the truth is that Samsung and LG appear to be in lockstep, releasing incremental annual panel tech upgrades that keep the competition very close. At last count, LG's best panels for gaming monitors are good for about 350 nits full screen and 1,500 nits peak HDR in a 3% window, where the best Samsung QD-OLEDs are more like 300 nits and 1,300 nits, respectively.

However, because Samsung doesn't rely on white subpixels to boost peak luminance, QD-OLED is in practice as bright or sometimes brighter for full-colour as opposed to white images.

Finally, if you're wondering when this new Samsung Penta-Tandem-Messiah-Whatever panel is out, and maybe this is actually the punchline, well, it already is—I reviewed it recently, somewhat unwittingly. Yup, it's the MSI MPG 272URX.

At the time, I knew (and indeed mentioned) it was a new five-layer panel. It's just Samsung wasn't using the "Penta Tandem" label. It was referred to as "five-layer Tandem OLED with EL 3.0 technology" then. I guess in that context, Penta Tandem is an improvement, even if it implies both five layers and two layers and ultimately makes no sense at all.

And just squeeze in a bonus confusion, because why not, the new Penta Tandem panel, as we must now retrospectively call it, in that particular MSI isn't quite as bright as the 1.3x claim mentioned up top would have you expect, because it's a 4K 27-inch model with very tiny pixels. The 1.3x boost will come with other panel types, like 27-inch 1440p and 34-inch ultrawide, with larger pixels.

And with that bombshell, I'm sure we've all had enough OLED panel tech, tandem or otherwise, for a few lifetimes. If you've absorbed it all, nice job, but I need a lie down.