Review: Viewsonic Elite XG270Q
Viewsonic meets LG in this pristine gaming monitor
A quick glance over the specs list suggests there’s not actually a lot of new tech here; we’ve had 165Hz, QHD, IPS gaming monitors with G-Sync for some time now. But there’s more to the Elite XG270QG than that. It’s a combination of design aesthetics and some new tweaks to the technology that makes it truly impressive.
It all comes down to the panel at its heart. Viewsonic’s taking advantage of LG’s pioneering IPS Nano Color tech. It’s actually a relatively new panel type, first debuting in about 2018, and we’ve seen very few manufacturers actually take it up in the gaming monitor space. The reason for this is that it adds a fair amount of cost to a screen, but improves colour accuracy quite remarkably. With most IPS panels, the biggest issue when it comes to colour reproduction in the RGB spectrum is the white backlight that sits behind the pixels. Because this light is entirely white, it emits a considerable amount of additional light wavelengths through the pixel itself (i.e. noise), which in turn can warp certain colours from showing accurately.
To get around this, LG developed Nano IPS. It’s a thin layer of light-absorbing material that’s coated directly onto the backlight itself. In fact each particle is just below the 2nm mark, which is what gives it its name. These particles absorb those particular wavelengths of light that can otherwise distort a colour, which in turn increases both the spectrum of colours you can represent, and how accurately those colours can be displayed. LG states that, with its Nano IPS panels it can achieve a colour accuracy of 98% of the DCI-P3 spectrum (or 135% of the sRGB space). That’s the spectrum HDR itself relies on.
The monitor itself looks fantastic – the company is clearly straddling that fine line between gaming and professional. There’s no ostentatious displays of gaming styling, nor is it so slick you’d mislabel it as an Apple product.
It’s also stupidly well-equipped. It features a 1ms G2G response time, a 165Hz refresh rate, and G-Sync as standard. Combine that with the impeccable colour response, and what you’re looking at is an exceptionally adept gaming monitor. In fact we’d go so far as to say this is genuinely the first time we’ve seen a mid-range to high-end gaming monitor that didn’t suck for people who enjoyed or worked with colour.
That actually makes a lot of sense– in the past we’d easily let go the foibles of a gaming monitor because they provided us with the super-snappy response times or the ridiculous refresh rates, in exchange for colour and viewing angles. Vice versa, 60Hz and a 9ms G2G was fine when looking at a bezelless, classy artworker screen. In the case of the XG270QG, it happily straddles both of those, with little concern on either front. On top of that, ghosting is minimal, even under the most intense firefights, G-Sync works well, and 165fps is about as fast as this journalist’s eye can tell the difference. Yes, it does come with one heck of a price tag (if you can manage to find it in stock), but for what you’re getting, there really aren’t any alternatives out there. If you’re after the best 27-inch 1440p gaming monitor today that money can buy, the Viewsonic Elite XG270QG is the king.
Impeccable colour accuracy; massive feature set; clean design; strong ergonomics.