ASUS PG27AQDM user review after 1 month - save your money and get the LG 27GR95QE-B

[Tanaz]

I purchased the ASUS PG27AQDM around a month ago for it to become my new main gaming monitor. I play OW,Fortnite and League as my main games but I also fire up the occasional AAA game.

 

So I will be concise in my explanation as to why you're much better off saving your money and going with the LG variant that is 300EUR cheaper in Europe and a few hundred dollars cheaper in the USA:

 

1.) The brightness - this is the main reason people consider this monitor an upgrade to its LG variant. Oh, it has a heatsink and it's much brighter, well as someone who has an LG C2 TV right above it I can tell you that the brightness difference isn't nearly as big as people make it out to be. The thing about OLEDs is that they're either bright enough for you or they are simply not. It's a perception issue more than it is an actual brightness issue as nits don't tell the whole story, seeing the display in person does. So  if you're going for the ASUS because of brightness , just don't.

 

2. HDR is broken. As in horrendously, almost unusably broken. There is a serious problem with the colors in HDR mode, everything is orange/red and it's actually almost decent when watching HDR content in HDR mode but the minute you play SDR content in HDR mode everything is bright orange/red like you're on the planet Mars. This is the 4th firmware revision, ASUS are aware of it and they still have not managed to find a person that possesses the gift of sight to properly calibrate the display.

 

3. The OSD/firmware itself. Speaking of firmware revisions, you can not touch the color sliders when the monitor is in HDR mode so you can't manually calibrate it even if you want to and you are stuck with the horrible orange color accuracy. Another issue with the firwmare is the fact that the "pixel move" function that's available in most OLED displays to protect them from burn-in is by far the worst I've seen on any display ever. It's so agressive even in it's light mode that it cuts off half the Windows clock, so you can imagine just how many columns of pixels you're losing. In normal OLED displays it's usually 2-3 rows and here it's more like 10. Another firmware issue is the bright red borders on every menu, which definitely can not be healthy for the display.

 

4. The stupid RGB Lighting. You can control the RGB only on the back of the monitor and not on the front. The bright red ROG logo in the middle of the display base can not be turned off and it turns orange when the display is in stand-by. That's right, you can't turn it off and you can't change its color. The base of the stand as well as the "projection ROG logo" also glows bright red but at least it can be turned off. So in essence the only "RGB" in the whole monitor is the logo on the back that YOU CAN NOT SEE, and everything that's facing you is this bright red garbage.

 

5. The ROG legendary warranty is no longer a thing (dead pixel).

5-6 years ago I bought a top of the line ROG laptop and my warranty was such that if the laptop exhibits any defects during its warranty period ASUS would not only fix it and return it to me but give me a full refund as well. That is how  legendary ROG warranty used to be. Nowadays?.. not so much. My monitor came with a dead subpixel but ROG warranty is pretty much the same as LG or most manufacturers (except Dell who actually have a 0 dead pixel policy on a lot of models) and requires >=5 dead pixels.

I could've returned the monitor to the retailer as I am in Europe and I have 14 days to do so so but that's not a "warranty" return,it's an online purchase law return. But point still stands that the warranty is the absolute bare minimum AND it does NOT cover burn-in either. Paying the ROG premium just doesn't give you anything other than a logo anymore.

 

So yeah, get the LG and save your money, the ASUS has worse firmware,worse HDR, bad RGB lighting, absolute bare minimum warranty and is not bright enough to justify the price premium.

[Shimejii]

They all have the Bare minimum warranty except the corsair one, and that one from HUBs testing was the worst of the bunch. 

 

Overall It sounds like Gen 1 OLEDS have a bit to go before most people should buy them. Its why i was looking forward to a 27" OLED Monitor but hesitant for Gens 1-2 because of these types of issues.

[Tanaz]

  

1 minute ago, Shimejii said:

They all have the Bare minimum warranty except the corsair one, and that one from HUBs testing was the worst of the bunch. 

 

Overall It sounds like Gen 1 OLEDS have a bit to go before most people should buy them. Its why i was looking forward to a 27" OLED Monitor but hesitant for Gens 1-2 because of these types of issues.

These are not gen 1 OLEDs tho. They're using the same MLA WOLED tech that LG's been perfecting for 10 years. But to your point they are gen 1 "products" and that's why most of what could go wrong outside of the display itself has gone wrong - firmware, warranty, color calibration etc.

[Shimejii]

7 minutes ago, Tanaz said:

  

These are not gen 1 OLEDs tho. They're using the same MLA WOLED tech that LG's been perfecting for 10 years. But to your point they are gen 1 "products" and that's why most of what could go wrong outside of the display itself has gone wrong - firmware, warranty, color calibration etc.

They are Gen 1 OLEDS for the 27" Screen and for computer monitors specifically. Yes they have had TVs and such for a while so the actual screen itself should be fairly reliable, but with the issues and such you mentioned thats why i said it  

[Stahlmann]

While i'm normally not one for brand loyalty, all my LG displays have had basically NO firmware issues. Meanwhile every other brand needs to release multiple firmware updates and then still have some issues that will never get fixed.

 

I agree that nits don't tell the whole story on OLED. A 600 nit display isn't that much dimmer than a 1000 nit display to the eye. Even 600-700 nits (basically what most OLED's reach) are bright enough to deliver an eye searing HDR experience in a darker room.

 

Due to how our eyes perceive brightness and adjust to different levels of brightness, 1.000 nits is not double the perceived brightness of 500 nits, not even close. I can't find the source right now but i read somewhere that you'd need to go all the way up to 10.000 nits to roughly double the perceived brightness of 1.000 nits.

[Tanaz]

39 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

While i'm normally not one for brand loyalty, all my LG displays have had basically NO firmware issues. Meanwhile every other brand needs to release multiple firmware updates and then still have some issues that will never get fixed.

 

I agree that nits don't tell the whole story on OLED. A 600 nit display isn't that much dimmer than a 1000 nit display to the eye. Even 600-700 nits (basically what most OLED's reach) are bright enough to deliver an eye searing HDR experience in a darker room.

 

Due to how our eyes perceive brightness and adjust to different levels of brightness, 1.000 nits is not double the perceived brightness of 500 nits, not even close. I can't find the source right now but i read somewhere that you'd need to go all the way up to 10.000 nits to roughly double the perceived brightness of 1.000 nits.

LG firmwares start out good and then get even better with time. Great example is my C2, firmware was good and color accuracy was fine but there were some issues with auto dimming in certain movies, and they fixed it in the latest firmware. Meanwhile ASUS somehow have managed to mess up firmwares on multiple monitors and it's not even an OLED thing, they mess up VA  and IPS monitors too. Their forums are full with enraged users, it's just so sad to see how far they've fallen from grace.

[Stahlmann]

5 minutes ago, Tanaz said:

LG firmwares start out good and then get even better with time. Great example is my C2, firmware was good and color accuracy was fine but there were some issues with auto dimming in certain movies, and they fixed it in the latest firmware. Meanwhile ASUS somehow have managed to mess up firmwares on multiple monitors and it's not even an OLED thing, they mess up VA  and IPS monitors too. Their forums are full with enraged users, it's just so sad to see how far they've fallen from grace.

I currently own a C2, C9 and also owned multiple 27GN850-B's and a 27GN950-B in the past. They all work like a charm. The C9 also received multiple new features after it's release, for example HDMI 2.1 support. They just indluded the hardware and updated the software once the first HDMI 2.1 products were available.

[Andrewtst]

On 9/9/2023 at 12:47 PM, Tanaz said:

HDR is broken

This is the same issue as my previous Asus PG42UQ, after many firmware updates, it still not 100% good, I am wonder why Asus cannot make a proper HDR output from it monitor but Asus make a superb brilliant HDR output from the laptop OLED screen. Lucky I had sold out my Asus PG42UQ after a month used, the sad part is this the most lost I ever encounter as I need to lower down a lot selling cost before I manage to let it go. It is not only HDR issue but also others minor and irritating issue.

 

On 9/9/2023 at 12:47 PM, Tanaz said:

It's so agressive even in it's light mode that it cuts off half the Windows clock, so you can imagine just how many columns of pixels you're losing. In normal OLED displays it's usually 2-3 rows and here it's more like 10.

It wasn't the aggressive issue, the problem here is Asus never provided extra pixel for the screen to shift but instead they are cutting the screen area when screen shift. I wonder why Asus make such decision on the way screen pixel shift, it is very dumb way by cutting the screen instead of given extra pixel for pixel shift.

 

Thanks for the sharing and sorry for your issue, I will 100% avoid Asus OLED monitor or maybe all Asus monitors in future until Asus manage to know what to do on HDR performance and also the way screen pixel shift in OLED.

[Andrewtst]

On 9/9/2023 at 1:08 PM, Shimejii said:

They are Gen 1 OLEDS for the 27" Screen and for computer monitors specifically. Yes they have had TVs and such for a while so the actual screen itself should be fairly reliable, but with the issues and such you mentioned thats why i said it  

This issue only apply to Asus OLED monitor, they are no issue on LG WOLED and Samsung QD-OLED monitor. Another brand to avoid is Acer as Acer never provide way to disable ABL.

[Tanaz]

Update: Decided to update you all on the state of this monitor. ASUS actually listened (after months of complaining) and released Firmware version 105 (their fourth attempt of trying to fix the HDR color issue) and it WORKED! The colors in HDR are much closer to natural and now rival my LG C2 in terms of accuracy. I still consider more than half a year of waiting for a flagship monitor to be fixed unacceptable and would strongly consider waiting for a few months if you're looking to buy a monitor from  ASUS' new QD OLED line-up because if their team is still incompetent at color calibrating and take months to fix simple issues it doesn't matter if it's WOLED or QD OLED, it would still make for a bad product experience.