Asus ROG Strix XG32VQR
A striking monitor that packs in plenty of features to appeal to gamers
SCORE
PRICE £429 (£515 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk
On paper, the Asus has obvious competition this month: the MSI Optix MPG341CQR is also a large VA gaming monitor with an 1800R curvature and 144Hz refresh rate. Placed side by side, though, these are very different screens.
Where the Strix uses a 31.5in panel with a 16:9 aspect ratio, the Optix stretches to a cinematic 21:9. Although the MSI has a wider 34in diagonal, the Asus actually has a larger area of panel and that results in a lower pixel density of 93ppi: it consequently lacks the sharpness of its rival.
Their performance in our technical tests was almost identical, although the Strix benefits from a dedicated sRGB mode. This locked our panel’s brightness to 169cd/m2 but provided 99.5% coverage with an average Delta E of 0.61. The downside was that it reduced the contrast ratio to 980:1, so you may prefer to switch to a more vibrant mode.
There are plenty to choose from, including Scenery, Cinema, RTS/RPG and FPS. Switching to the latter preset upped the top brightness to 555cd/m2 , and the contrast ratio to 2,756:1 – more like we’d expect from VA tech.
The OSD allows you to fine-tune colours to create your own profile, with an overly sensitive joystick for controlling the action. Asus provides large shortcut buttons on the rear of the screen, with the middle one bringing up game-friendly options such as crosshairs and an FPS counter.
Nor is that the end of Asus’ attempt to lure gamers, with the striking tripod stand housing a red LED: this shines downwards to project a pattern onto your desk, with rear-mounted lights for some extra bling.
The stand makes it easy to swivel through 100° while offering 100mm of height adjustment, but we wish the rear ports were equally practical: Asus chooses style over ease of inserting cables, which is a shame when there’s a two-port USB hub. Once everything is in place a cover and cable tidy makes this a neat setup, but you’ll want to hide the power brick.
Add numerous HDR options, AMD’s FreeSync 2 and DisplayHDR 400 certification, and it’s hard to argue with the value or flexibility here. Gamers take note.