Review: ASUS PG27AQDM - 240Hz 1440p OLED monitor

#6133504 Posted on: 05/19/2023 03:53 PM

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winner winner chicken dinner

i almost have buyer's remorse... but the ROG 42" 4k i bought @ xmas still looks stunning.
weird thing is the prices are so damn close... but pg27aqdm has the next gen panel & mla that mine doesn't
for most folks the 27" is the one i'd recommend because it's easier to drive w/ older gpu so upgrade path for gpu is longer & less expensive.

#6133518 Posted on: 05/19/2023 04:31 PM

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Terrible for Gamma Accuracy, and not good for colour accuracy. It might be worth trying this monitor with other presets rather than Racing Mode (even though that was the default). It would be useful to know which Preset gave the most accurate results as you'd use that a starting point for tweaking the monitor to best settings, so that might be a useful thing to include in the reviews. Who knows if one of the other Presets was bang on accurate, would be good to know for the potential buyer. Expensive monitor and probably not worth it unless one of the other Presets is close to accurate.

#6133523 Posted on: 05/19/2023 04:39 PM

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out the box 96% dci-p3 is astonishing for a "gaming" monitor.
HH stated that the dci-p3 seems to be the default value so that's you starting point.
anyone spending in this price range should calibrate because of manufacturing differences (i.e. silicon lottery for panels)
but these values are very good. the gamma does seem a bit weird but well within the market range. the mla is a big plus
you don't have to buy a Spyder to calibrate (but it's the best) this is an area to see if brick & mortar dealers have a leg up. some used to do it for free w/purchase.

#6133608 Posted on: 05/19/2023 08:58 PM

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Hard pass at $999

#6133609 Posted on: 05/19/2023 09:02 PM

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out the box 96% dci-p3 is astonishing for a "gaming" monitor.
HH stated that the dci-p3 seems to be the default value so that's you starting point.
anyone spending in this price range should calibrate because of manufacturing differences (i.e. silicon lottery for panels)
but these values are very good. the gamma does seem a bit weird but well within the market range. the mla is a big plus
you don't have to buy a Spyder to calibrate (but it's the best) this is an area to see if brick & mortar dealers have a leg up. some used to do it for free w/purchase.
That gamma is totally off, no excuse for it. Still important to know which of the Presets are the closest to most accurate (Hilbert was using Racing preset), so would be valuable if that had been worked out within the review. Plenty of panels for a fraction of the price of this OLED come accurately calibrated from the factory, there's not really an excuse for poor calibration most particularly in an expensive monitor. Additionally, it's not reasonable to think that the customer does or should have a calibration meter to calibrate it (I mean I've got one, but that should not be relied on by the monitor manufacturers - and indeed they don't rely on it).

EDIT: in my mind a useful monitor review is one where the reviewer works out how to get the most accurate calibration without the customer implementing a software solution - so finding out which Preset is the most accurate (through measurements using Spyder or whatever colorimeter) and then tweaking monitor controls to calibrate it, and then reporting what those settings were to get the most accurate calibration without customers having to use a colorimeter. Of course it's also useful to measure the monitor at it's defaults as it comes from the factory too, which would be the first thing you show in the review.

EDIT#2: and for monitors that exceed sRGB but fall short of the wider gamut standards then the calibration can still be done as best as possible without shrinking the colour space to sRGB. Thinking accurate Grey Scale and Gamma, and I think you can do something to align the colours as optimally as possible towards the wider gamut standards albeit you won't reach the outer points of the colour space map (if that's the right term). And could be useful to do a seperate section on how to do a different calibration down to sRGB standards. It's all a lot more work for the reviewer but it makes it more useful to any purchasers of the panel and also gives people maximum information on the potential of the panel & if they think they want to buy it based on it's tweakability to accuracy.

The following is the best kind of monitor review in my eyes, that just happens to be the same panel (I was surprised to see it, was not my plan, I just remember I visited this site a few years ago)!
https://pcmonitors.info/reviews/asus-rog-swift-oled-pg27aqdm/
I remember using similar reviews to buy a previous monitor of mine, and I don't know if it's the same site or not, but also bought my TV on the basis of similar type of review way back in 2014, lol. Maybe Hilbert doesn't want to duplicate other sites reviews of monitors, but it's useful to the consumer (especially if that particular panel has not already been measured by another site). Dunno, just my angle on what I think are the best ways to get the most from the monitor purchase decision process & also once you then own that monitor (to get the best out of it).