The Asus ROG Strix XG27VQ is the latest monitor launched by Asus in its ROG line of products. This monitor was unveiled at CES 2017, along with two other Strix monitors, XG32V and the XG32GV
This monitor offers a proposition that only a few other brands do i.e. its 1800R curvature at a budget price range. A couple of months back we reviewed the BenQ EX3200R, another budget curved monitor. BenQ overdid its budgetness by providing a resolution of 1080p for a 32 inch sized monitor, which in our experience really killed the novelty of the monitor. Asus, with the ROG Strix XG27VQ doesn’t take it far, for it’s size is 27 inches. That size is still a fair bit larger for 1080p, but it’s still workable. Add to that, 144Hz refresh rate support, Extreme Low Motion Blur, and, well, Aura RGB lighting.
Design
The XG27VQ’s design is very similar to the designs of other ASUS ROG monitors. It tries to maintain a balance between aggressive gaming looks and minimalism, but still, fall in the gamer category. The rear has prominent artwork with a lot of patterns, adding to the ‘gamerness’ of the monitor. The clamp of the monitor is chunky, with a Republic of Gamers logo in red.
The stand is a three-point design that holds the actual monitor. The stand has support from tilt and height adjustment, but no swivel. No swivel makes sense, because this is a curved monitor. The aggressive angles on the stand are very evident, along with the red highlights. The monitor supports RGB lighting. The only RGB light is on the rear side of the monitor, which can be controlled using the Aura software. I don’t really get the point of having RGB lights on the rear of a monitor, because, they’ll permanently be hidden. This feature, more than a novelty, seems more like a marketing tact without offering any real benefit. I couldn’t help but feel that Asus added this only so they could use the RGB logo in their packaging.
Excluding the RGB light on the rear, Asus has included several other red highlights on the XG27VQ. This doesn’t make sense to me. Why use red highlights on an RGB monitor? Trying to sync Aura RGB with red highlights could result in a bizarre looking monitor.
Asus has included another more prominent LED light in the base of the monitor, in between the three legs the monitor stands on. This light projects the ROG logo onto your desk. It’s fun to look at this light, but it gets old very fast. Why didn’t Asus make this light RGB, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. This particular light in RGB could have opened up more possibilities. Thankfully, you can disable it.
There is an opening at the bottom rear base of the monitor which houses the ports. The XG27VQ comes with an HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2 and DVI-D port each. You also get an 3.5mm audio output jack so that you can hook your headphones or speakers. There are no built-in speakers on this monitor.
Features
Let us talk about the curvature of the monitor. The 1800R curve is aggressive. For a 16:9 aspect ratio monitor of 27 inches size, I don’t really see a real benefit of having a curved screen. It would have made more sense if this was an ultrawide monitor. The curve is slightly visible when viewing the monitor, but only slightly.
The refresh rate the XG27VQ provides is 144Hz, which is the other key highlight feature of this monitor. If you’re looking to upgrade your current monitor, then this is the feature you should be excited about the most. Gaming, or for that matter, even browsing through your desktop at 144Hz compared to the generic 60Hz is a much, much better and fluid experience.
Asus’ has included this monitor with its Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB) technology. This technology is similar to Nvidia’s Ultra Low Motion Blur, and they both work exactly the same way. What this does is that it strobes the backlight so that the blur of fast moving objects on the screen is minimised. This comes at the cost of brightness though, and it can’t be used alongside with FreeSync, as ELMB’s working range lies between 85 to 120Hz.
Performance
The ROG Strix XG27VQ uses a VA panel which is suitable for gamers and image quality enthusiasts alike. This panel in particular offers great contrast ratio, viewing angles, colour vibrance and response times. This monitor is rated at 300 nits for brightness, 3000:1 contrast ration and a 178-degree viewing angle. The response time is 4ms gray-to-gray. These are the claimed figures by Asus. Let’s see how it performs in real life.
Here is an overview of our results on default performance.
Out of the box, the XG27VQ runs with brightness set at 250 nits. The maximum it can go to is 267 nits, which means that it falls short of Asus’ claim of 300 nits. With the contrast ratio, it is the same story i.e. it manages only 2612:1 and not 3000:1 as advertised.
The monitor features a couple of display modes, including an sRGB mode. In the sRBG mode, the results were fairly OK. The gamma is near 2.2, which is alright again. The greyscale dE2000 value is 3.15. Saturation sweep is at 2.26 and ColorChecker is at 2.63. This puts the ROG Strix XG27VQ colour quality in the range of “very good.”
My only caveat was that the XG27VQ hit only 95.3 percent of the sRGB gamut. These days, even meagre mobile phones hit the full RGB spectrum. Funny thing is, the monitor surpasses the red spectrum, the numbers are pulled back because of the limitation of the blue spectrum.
Calibrating the ASUS ROG Strix XG27VQ
To calibrate the XG27VQ, we used the following values.
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The results of calibration were good, but not great. The greyscale performance is better. The same cannot be said for saturation. This monitor is not suitable for colour accurate work as the dE2000 values are still greater than 2.0.
Conclusion
The Asus ROG Strix XG27VQ is another neat addition to ROG’s already great monitor line up. The market has lately been populated by a string of good monitors, with the XG27VQ being one of them. This monitor is an overall good package for gamers looking for a feature filled yet inexpensive monitor.
It’s VA panel performs good, with good colour vibrance and excellent viewing angles. It supports 144Hz refresh rate and AMD’s FreeSync technology. Sorry, no GSYNC here though. For a 27-inch monitor, 1080p resolution is low, but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker because 1080p coupled with 144Hz fps makes for a solid and immersive gaming experience. Even Asus’ ELMB, the backlight strobing technology works pretty well.
The design choices are subjective really. The RGB LED is pointless as it is placed on the back of the monitor. The red LED at the base of the monitor is good addition, but nothing special.
The Asus ROG Strix XG27VQ is priced to be around Rs. 24,000. Most 27-inch 1080p monitors are priced in the same range. But the XG27VQ offers other features, like the 1800R curvature, 144Hz refresh rate and backlight strobing which makes this a good enough buy for gamers on a budget.
