ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ
This feature-packed gaming monitor is perhaps a bit too ahead of its time.
ASUS definitely isn’t a company that’s afraid to slap extremely high prices on premium gaming products, and the new ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ is a prime example of this approach. But can the company justify the whopping price tag of $3,499 for a monitor that is only 27 inches across? Apparently they think they can, but we think that’s a bit of a stretch, even considering the impressive features included.
There are two primary reasons for this high price. Firstly, it’s a High Dynamic Range (HDR) display, which displays a much wider colour gamut than a standard monitor. There are multiple variants of HDR standards on the market, and the PG27UQ uses the most common, HDR10. This uses the Rec. 2020 colour space with 10-bits of colour information. It’s not quite as good as HDR10+ though, which allows for the brightness of the screen to change per frame, whereas HDR10 only adjusts brightness of overall scenes. This is why HD10+ is now starting to become the dominant standard on premium TV sets.
Behind the LED screen are 384 different lighting zones, allowing for impressive light control compared to traditional edge-lit LED screens. While most HDR screens use OLED technology, ASUS has had to use an LED screen to deliver the super-fast refresh rate of 144Hz. We noticed very little light bleed as a result, and impressive contrast performance, with excellent detail in darker areas. It also uses Samsung’s Quantum Dot technology to deliver its HDR capabilities and a claimed 97% of the DCI-P3 and 99% of the Adobe RGB colour spectrums. Unfortunately our X-Rite colorimeter measured much lower DCI-P3 performance, but it’s not the fault of the display — our affordable colorimeter simply isn’t accurate enough to deliver accurate results. According to ASUS’ comments to www.pcper. com during their review, it requires a much more expensive industry-level colorimeter, such as the Klein K-10A, which retails for around $9,000.
With a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160, you’re going to need some serious GPU hardware to power games at this resolution at the available refresh rates — we’re talking triple SLI setups, even though Nvidia doesn’t officially support these anymore. We were limited to testing with an ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, which struggled to hit anything over 90fps when HDR was enabled in games that supported it, such as Battlefield 1, and even then we had to use medium settings. Thankfully the inclusion of G-Sync support means it’s possible to run games at lower refresh rates while retaining a smooth sensation of gameplay, but that then negates the benefit of the 144Hz refresh rate.
If money is no obstacle, the PG27UQ is undoubtedly the king of all gaming monitors. However, we think it’s a product that is ahead of its time; there are only 50 or so HDR-enable games available now or coming in the near future, and the GPU power required to make the most of the high resolution combined with high refresh rates simply doesn’t exist in anything less than multiple GPU setups. Still, if you want the best of the best, the PG27UQ is it.