Note to buyers: This monitor only has a single Display Port output. No HDMI or DVI-D etc, so plan accordingly. Also if you plan to use the USB 3.0 hub feature on the monitor you may want a longer cable. It ships with a very short 4 foot cable.
I chose this over the ROG Swift as I'm only running a single GTX 770. I didn't want the frame-rate drop of a higher resolution and wasn't wanting to have to buy two new video cards. I'm guessing in a year or so 4k will be the name of the game and the prices will be dropping like flies as the technology becomes mainstream. For now I'd rate this monitor as an excellent value.
I couldn't be happier with the result.
The monitor is very well made with a sturdy and well designed base and stand. Everything feels nice and solid and you can position and tilt it any way you want to. No screws or tools are needed as everything snaps together easily for assembly.
Hookup was simple, no special cable needed for G-Sync beyond the Display Port cable that comes in the box which hooked right into my EVGA GTX 770. The drivers automatically detected and set G-Sync to be the global setting. The only thing I had to do was set the monitor's refresh rate to something higher than 60hz.
I did experience some foreground label hiccups when using 144hz in Diablo3. Switching to 120hz fixed the issue, but be aware that some games may not be optimized or work well for the 144hz refresh rate.
You can really crank up the brightness of the monitor by turning off ULMB. Which seems rather necessary as the default brightness with ULMB is a touch dimmer than an average monitor. You can also rotate the screen to work in portrait mode if you desire. Nice for viewing web-pages but probably not something many will do often as this is really a gaming unit.
After seeing this in action, without a doubt a high 120hz+ monitor with g-sync is the single largest upgrade you can make to your gaming rig today. Most graphics cards are limited by the monitor they run through and usually are capable of outputting far more than 60fps. Getting one of these monitors removes the bottleneck and lets you see the performance you've been paying for all this time.
Screen tears are absolutely gone, with or without the ULMB turned on. This monitor is fluid and just screams speed-wise. Frame-rate drops are hard to detect due to the lack of screen tearing. Everything just looks smooth and flawless. Just an amazing upgrade from the 60hz panel i was using previously.
Gaming detail is great due to the large monitor size, colors look rich and vibrant, it's an eye candy experience for sure. The only thing to complain about is that viewing angles affect the brightness of the image. This isn't really a concern for me though as I don't make a habit of jumping up and down while playing games. Once again, this is just par for the course when you want a super-fast TN panel. Contrast feels great in games and the size of the monitor makes the experience feel very immersive.
The settings interface is quite different than other monitors but fairly easy to use once you get how it works. Once I got used to it I find it faster to quickly edit common settings than I have on other monitors. This monitor also snaps to attention quickly when you wake it up. I've had other monitors that have a bit of a slow warm up time. This one just pops on and is ready to go.
No blown pixels on this unit and I haven't seen any reports of that in other reviews over at Newegg. The quality controls seems to be excellent.
This is definitely a keeper of a monitor while waiting for the 4k market to arrive.
| Standing screen display size | 27 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels |
