Aorus FV43U budget 43 inch 4k 144hz HDR1000 impression review

[e22big]

I have been looking for a 32 inch and above 4k 144hz monitor since last year and while I know that there will be several of them debuting this year, the FV43U from Aorus caught my eyes because of its low price. A 43 inch with proper full 4k, 144hz and top of the line HDR is very rare in this price range in both the TV and monitor market. So despite the lack of a proper technical review, I've decided to bite the bullet and purchase one for myself just to see if it's live up to what Gigabyte said it could.

 

I've only got a few hours to play with it since I just bought it today but would like to share what little I've learnt today (spoiler alert - it's pretty good, a lot better than my expectation)

 

Recap of the monitor spec for those who've never heard of it before: Aorus FV43U is a 4k VA (QLED) 43inch monitor with adaptive sync and DisplayHDR1000 certificate and 144hz refresh rate. It has some unspecified local dimming system (which's probably edge-lit), a full SRGB coverage and great Wild Colour Gamut performance. It comes with DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 cable right in out of the box unlike some TV - but also a remote controller (very much like a TV.) It doesn't has any form of RGB lighting and overall the display aesthetic is not too gamery. 

 

Overall Impression:

 

Pro:

 

- HDR is awesome, it definitely live up to the HDR1000 certification. The object shadow and highlight have so much more detail over the HDR400 or 600 yet the overall picture isn't eyes staining at all due to local dimming, when you're looking at the sun, it will shine right through your eyes but otherwise, the general brightness feels even more comfortable than SDR picture at 20 percent brightness. The halo effect is next to none-existed even at full 1000 nit brightness with local dimming turned on, at least not from what I've seen so far.

 

- Ghosting and Smearing are very minimum (if at all), although keep in mind that I am not a big fan of FPS shooter so your mileage may vary - I did test fast motion movement though in both bright (Cyberpunk) and dark (Subnautica Below Zero) it's pretty damn fast in both games.

 

- It can do 4k 144hz with full 10-bit colour bandwith over DisplayPort thanks to DSC (but limited to 120hz over HDMI 2.1)

 

- Its built-in speakers are pretty loud and can deliver the audio over the same DisplayPort you use to connect to your PC (it also come with an internal power brick and plenty of USB port to charge and connect your device)

 

- Adaptive Sync works with G-Sync for all of the advertised VRR range (40-144)

 

Con:

 

- It definitely has a BGR subpixel layout, texts have red colour bleed out everywhere and looks pretty awful, especially the black text over white background. The good news is Windows ClearType can fix most of these (even in my very unusual text editor apps that don't even have official Windows 10 support.) However, for the most part, ClearType does not fix all the issue. Some icon or UI text in some apps remains jagged and blurry but thankfully most of the content itself looks fine (i.e. the Youtube video title and Chrome tabs look jagged but the video details and the content in the webpage itself looks fine). The only exception to this is the app Line (a rather popular message app in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand) where both the UI and the message are completely messed up.

 

- Coming from a 4k 32inch, the drop in pixel density is very noticeable.

 

-  It doesn't feel very comfortable as a PC monitor even with almost a full meter deep desk that I've made. It messes up the centre of my attention, causing me to look down unconsciously and giving me a neck and shoulder pain over just a few hours of usage (probably can be fixed with a proper monitor arm) 

 

- VRR range is rather limited, from my experiences, screen tearing tends to occur more often when you are down to 30 fps rather than when you went over 60. 

 

- Black uniformity isn't great, cloudy corners are clearly visible in a dark room (but a lot better than most VA I've seen)

 

- It's anti-glow coating isn't great either, I literally see my keyboard backlight reflecting on the screen and even my whole room in dark scene

 

Overall, I have a lot more positives to say about this monitor than the negatives. If I have to pick the greatest pro of this monitor is probably the HDR and contrast, it looks almost OLED even in a dimmly lit room (but nowhere near if the room is completely void of light.) The greatest cons is definitely text clarity, both the BGR subpixel and relatively low pixel density compared to a typical 27-32inch 4k display cause a noticeable drop in text performance but you should be able to deal with it for the most part.

 

 

 

 

[shadow85]

Thanks for the review. You say the HDR and contrast is close to OLED quality.

 

Mind I ask, have you got an OLED currently that you use, and have directly compared this monitor to, or just viewed an OLED somewhere etc? Just curious because I have a CX48 for gaming but really desire a smaller screen. So I was eyeing out this FV43U. But I don't want to take a big hit in picture quality at the same time.

[e22big]

1 hour ago, shadow85 said:

Thanks for the review. You say the HDR and contrast is close to OLED quality.

 

Mind I ask, have you got an OLED currently that you use, and have directly compared this monitor to, or just viewed an OLED somewhere etc? Just curious because I have a CX48 for gaming but really desire a smaller screen. So I was eyeing out this FV43U. But I don't want to take a big hit in picture quality at the same time.

I don't personally own an OLED but my friend whom I vist regularly have the LG CX48, I've tried his out a few times. He also own Samsung Q-series QLED TV (not the top of the line Q90 though) and we share the same opinion that outside of some spesific use case, high brightness LCD tends to be better in most scene.

 

When I've said that it's near OLED level though, I mean in term of black contrast, the black bar you've seen when watching the scene for example, looks very close to true black in dimly lit room. It looks black not grey like in IPS and the corner's glow due to the lack of uniformity is practically invisible. In a very dark room or when you turn all the light off though, the fact that this this is an LCD and not OLED became very clear. 

 

In HDR however, the contrast and shadow detail is good enough that unless you have been trying to pick it out scene by scene, you won't noticed a tons of different from OLED or FALD tv (keep in mind that I am not that big fan of TV too so my opinion may be somewhat clounded by it.

[shadow85]

Interesting, ok thanks.

Yeah I am still debating on this, I guess I might have to just get it and try it out. I am sure I won't be disappointed from all the raving reviews on this monitor.

[e22big]

56 minutes ago, shadow85 said:

Interesting, ok thanks.

Yeah I am still debating on this, I guess I might have to just get it and try it out. I am sure I won't be disappointed from all the raving reviews on this monitor.

Actually, after trying this in a few more games, I think I am starting to see so.e ghosting - probably an inverse ghosting too and no overdrive setting seem to fix it (but it seem to be quite game spesific, I have seen it a lot in Horison and Subnautica but not AC Odys and Cyberpunk)

 

Horizon seem to have serious flickering, especially in the menu but it's all fixed after I set the FPS to 144hz. Not sure if it's hardware or software related. I'll probably write more about this as I have more time to test and  getting to know it better

[shadow85]

Yeah I hate overshoot and Black smearing with a passion!

[wrkgstiff]

Decided to pull the trigger and get one from Newegg. So very glad I did. I echo the OP assessment after playing around with the settings. Having come from a monitor with brightness and contrast and not much else to adjust. All the options make for some tweaking. I was seeing really severe overshoot and was thinking I made a really bad mistake. Fortunately I continued to tweak and came across the overshoot setting. Setting it to balanced basically removed it. So, play with the setting before making any judgements. I was this close to sending it back. Now, no way. Text is fuzzy in some places, not so much or not at all in others. It’s a great monitor for my use case. 
 

There is one issue I’m having and I’m not sure if it’s my graphics card (EVGA RTX 2080 Super KO) or the monitor. I simply can’t display 4K at 120hz. My computer reboots when I try this. Anyone have this issue 

[rushboarduk]

I was very surprised they had this model Quantum Dot at 144Hz, but their larger 48" model instead uses OLED at 120Hz.

 

They could've easily offered both with QD, just with size being the difference.

[e22big]

15 hours ago, wrkgstiff said:

Decided to pull the trigger and get one from Newegg. So very glad I did. I echo the OP assessment after playing around with the settings. Having come from a monitor with brightness and contrast and not much else to adjust. All the options make for some tweaking. I was seeing really severe overshoot and was thinking I made a really bad mistake. Fortunately I continued to tweak and came across the overshoot setting. Setting it to balanced basically removed it. So, play with the setting before making any judgements. I was this close to sending it back. Now, no way. Text is fuzzy in some places, not so much or not at all in others. It’s a great monitor for my use case. 
 

There is one issue I’m having and I’m not sure if it’s my graphics card (EVGA RTX 2080 Super KO) or the monitor. I simply can’t display 4K at 120hz. My computer reboots when I try this. Anyone have this issue 

Did you use DP? It display 4k 144hz right out of the box in my case but with HDMI you will probably not even hit 120hz with 2080 Super (it doesn't has HDMI 2.1)

[e22big]

9 hours ago, rushboarduk said:

I was very surprised they had this model Quantum Dot at 144Hz, but their larger 48" model instead uses OLED at 120Hz.

 

They could've easily offered both with QD, just with size being the difference.

To be fair I think OLED would have a lot more appeal to a lot of people, the QD model is great but at 48 inch they would have been directly compete with LG CX (in which it's very most likely to be sharing the exact panel) anything short of OLED would be destroyed by that at the same price (or even slightly cheaper)

[ShitEggs]

So I'm seeing great reviews about this monitor literally everywhere, but no one, including Gigabyte themselves, can give the number of the local dimming zones that the monitor has. Do you have an estimate of about how many there are? Of course I don't expect you to count every single one but is it really on par with mini led?

[e22big]

20 hours ago, ShitEggs said:

So I'm seeing great reviews about this monitor literally everywhere, but no one, including Gigabyte themselves, can give the number of the local dimming zones that the monitor has. Do you have an estimate of about how many there are? Of course I don't expect you to count every single one but is it really on par with mini led?

it's probably not, one hand hand halo effect is very rare if any at all (which is a characteristic of FALD or better locally lit panel) but on the other hand the dimming mechanism is very edge-like (full screen dimming or very large dimming zone)

 

My guess is that it's a typical edge-lit with 8 zones or so local dimming, it seem to share a lot of characteristic with Asus PG43UQ (same performance, same power draw) and I would assume that they use the same local dimming system to save cost

 

*edit after doing some test, I am still not sure how many zones it has (probably around 4-8) but it doesn't use edge-lit dimming, the local dimmng zones are small but center around the center of the monitor rathe than the edge

[Morg81]

Hi there!

 

Could you please give me some insights on how the Side by Side image works (not the Picture In Picture)? Also if you had the opportunity to use the included switch for mouse and keyboard?

I would like to use this monitor for both gaming and working, and for the later I would like to be able to plug 2 computers, display both together on the screen, and switch the mouse & keyboard from one to the other easily.

 

Thanks

[e22big]

5 hours ago, Morg81 said:

Hi there!

 

Could you please give me some insights on how the Side by Side image works (not the Picture In Picture)? Also if you had the opportunity to use the included switch for mouse and keyboard?

I would like to use this monitor for both gaming and working, and for the later I would like to be able to plug 2 computers, display both together on the screen, and switch the mouse & keyboard from one to the other easily.

 

Thanks

 

sorry can't help with that I don't have any other device I can plug-in to this monitor right now, keybaord and mouse should work, I tried plug in my G903 mouse USB on it and it works without any issue

[wrkgstiff]

On 6/8/2021 at 2:00 AM, e22big said:

Did you use DP? It display 4k 144hz right out of the box in my case but with HDMI you will probably not even hit 120hz with 2080 Super (it doesn't has HDMI 2.1)

Yep, using DP. It’s weird, I would expect to be able to use this refresh rate. Otherwise, this is a great monitor. Not a single pixel is bad and it’s working great. 

[e22big]

13 hours ago, wrkgstiff said:

Yep, using DP. It’s weird, I would expect to be able to use this refresh rate. Otherwise, this is a great monitor. Not a single pixel is bad and it’s working great. 

that is indeed wierd, it definitely come with 4k 144hz right out of the box for me   

[Boggoff]

On 6/7/2021 at 4:06 PM, wrkgstiff said:

Decided to pull the trigger and get one from Newegg. So very glad I did. I echo the OP assessment after playing around with the settings. Having come from a monitor with brightness and contrast and not much else to adjust. All the options make for some tweaking. I was seeing really severe overshoot and was thinking I made a really bad mistake. Fortunately I continued to tweak and came across the overshoot setting. Setting it to balanced basically removed it. So, play with the setting before making any judgements. I was this close to sending it back. Now, no way. Text is fuzzy in some places, not so much or not at all in others. It’s a great monitor for my use case. 
 

There is one issue I’m having and I’m not sure if it’s my graphics card (EVGA RTX 2080 Super KO) or the monitor. I simply can’t display 4K at 120hz. My computer reboots when I try this. Anyone have this issue 

Had mine for about a month now Had no issues with the  display port from my 3080 doing 4k and 144hz. Is your DP cable 1.4? the xbox picked up 4k at 120hz as I expected through hdmi 2.1

[Nondisclosure]

Sorry.  Wrong area.  Moved to -> AORUS FV43U - Blurry Text - Troubleshooting - Linus Tech Tips