ASUS Announces ROG SWIFT PG278Q Premium Gaming Monitor

I'm four months in on mine and it's still working like a champ. Not sure if I will eventually run into issues, but I'll be sure to post an update if anything happens.
 
I'm four months in on mine and it's still working like a champ. Not sure if I will eventually run into issues, but I'll be sure to post an update if anything happens.

ditto. i'm 5 months in and mine works perfectly. i'm still in awe of g-sync, probably my favorite technology developed over the last decade.
 
@bigbluefe I'm on month 5 with mine was well. Zero issues and I love love love it.

Don't understand who you could have pissed off to get 3 bad copies in a row.....maybe it's a config issue on your side?
 
I just got a second PG278Q and got a flawless panel! I was worried since my other one has several dead pixels. This one's gamma is also perfect out of the box. The first one was like 1.6.
 
I just got a second PG278Q and got a flawless panel! I was worried since my other one has several dead pixels. This one's gamma is also perfect out of the box. The first one was like 1.6.

You almost make me want to buy a second one :D But I can't exactly return mine as besides the gamma it's absolutely flawless, even the inversion is completely invisible outside of the specific tests. Bought it in early December, July build, still haven't had the slightest hiccup.

Really suspicious how some people keep getting several "bad" monitors one after the other. Sure there are QC issues but it can't be just that.
 
Starting to get pissed off. I'm on my third ROG Swift. All of them have developed the blurry text problem eventually. It's simply a defective product. It does not work to spec. This monitor should be pulled from the market. It doesn't work!

$800 to have to go through a 1 month RMA process every 3 months. Worst monitor I've ever bought. This will be my last Asus product.

Oh, and their fucking RMA site isn't working right now. What a great customer experience (geezus).

That sucks. That's 1 rma for every 3 months you've been subbed on hardforum.

Mine is still going strong like I said before, since just before halloween 2014. Hope it stays solid. Did you consider using some kind of line conditioner on your system in case you are having some kind of dirty electric issue? Just throwing that out there, not as an apologetic to asus but trying to help you out. Hopefully you'll get a solid one this time, please continue to report back.
 
Well fuck... here we go I got the dreaded blurry text, flickering screen issue...
Just started tonight. Bought mine around Jan. 10 so par for the course of fail around 3 months

I haven't really checked the forums since I bought so I'm assuming my option(s) are RMA and pray?

edit 1: seems to go away (or at least lessened) when I switch to 60hz
 
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Sorry to hear it. From what I've heard since they are not oos immediately anymore the RMA turnaround is about a week, and they have a 3 year warranty.

I don't think it would be in asus' insterest to replace monitors 4, 6, or up to 9 - 12 times worst case over the warranty period so hopefully they will get a handle on what is happening to some of them and fix it.

Knock on wood mine has been solid since october 28th 2014 - but posts like these make me hope I'm not on a ticking time bomb.
 
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Same here, I got mine in December and has not yet exhibited any of the said problems.

The only minor quirk of mine is that sometimes when I switch the monitor on, it would not display anything, not even a no-signal box when the computer is switched on. I have not yet determined why that happens (perhaps it has to do with the order I turn them on), but a quick switch off and back on solves the issue without further hiccups.
 
It makes me laugh that some people are so naive that they honestly think their monitor isn't going to die on them. The design is flawed. They overheat. Every one of these monitors is a ticking time bomb and will fail. Do not buy this monitor. Go with the Acer IPS.
 
I'm not buying a line conditioner when I've never had problems like this with any other electronics. In fact, I have multiple monitors connected to that PC, and everything else has been as solid as a rock. It's just this brand. Go to the Asus forums. Basically everyone gets hit with the blurry text problem eventually. The monitor sucks.
 
Sorry to hear it. From what I've heard since they are not oos immediately anymore the RMA turnaround is about a week, and they have a 3 year warranty.

I don't think it would be in asus' insterest to replace monitors 4, 6, or up to 9 - 12 times worst case over the warranty period so hopefully they will get a handle on what is happening to some of them and fix it.

Knock on wood mine has been solid since october 28th 2014 - but posts like these make me hope I'm not on a ticking time bomb.

Yeah that's pretty much what I decided to roll the dice on when I bought it and well....
If I bought it on Amazon the RMA still works right?

and one more question. I'm giving this one more chance but if the replacement fails also I would like (expect?) a refund and just buy a different monitor. Would ASUS offer this or will they tell me to GTFO?
In which case maybe I should try and return it through Amazon so I have a refund option down the line?
 
You'll have to "escalate" your complaint if you want to try to get a refund. They won't just give you one. I'm trying that right now. I'll let you know how it goes. If they don't do it, I think I'm just going to take them to small claims court to get my money back.
 
It makes me laugh that some people are so naive that they honestly think their monitor isn't going to die on them. The design is flawed. They overheat. Every one of these monitors is a ticking time bomb and will fail. Do not buy this monitor. Go with the Acer IPS.

making broad-stroke statements like these... now that's naive.
 
The acer seems to have it's own QC issues as well. A lot of people are getting smudge blotches and dust inside the screen coating, and/or an orange glow in the bottom right corner, (and of course the typical dead pixel lotteries). Also talk about the housing/build being cheap/flimsy.

It's response time is also tied to the refresh rate. It already starts out at 5.9ms and goes up to 8.x at 60fps-hz, and probably higher are lower fps-hz.
Still seems like a good monitor though if you get a good one and can configure your games to suit your gpu power in order to have high frame rates (playing rate around 100fps, +/- w/ g-sync).
 
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Both monitors are very good and each has its own QC related issues. For example even a perfect Acer will have some IPS glow and slower response times at lower hz values while even a perfect Asus will have a bit more agressive AG, some vertical gamma shift and some overdrive artefacts. This is not an exhaustive list but my point is both monitors have pros and cons, neither is perfect (very far from it!) and the QC issues are abysmal and unacceptable on either of them considering the price.

If you're in Europe don't forget that EU law is very protective of customers, don't hesitate to ask for compensation, refund etc. Make yourself heard, the law is on your side :)
 
You'll have to "escalate" your complaint if you want to try to get a refund. They won't just give you one. I'm trying that right now. I'll let you know how it goes. If they don't do it, I think I'm just going to take them to small claims court to get my money back.

My concern even if I try to escalate is that I'm sure they'll tell me I bought it on Amazon and so they can't issue a refund.

Edit: just got off the phone with Amazon and they are sending me a replacement free of charge with free return label. Did I mention I love this company?
 
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It makes me laugh that some people are so naive that they honestly think their monitor isn't going to die on them. The design is flawed. They overheat. Every one of these monitors is a ticking time bomb and will fail. Do not buy this monitor. Go with the Acer IPS.

no wonder when you try to add a 3 year extended warranty on this monitor on Newegg it doesn't want to apply to it, lol.

maybe it was a glitch, who knows.


Anyway, is the AG Coating really that bad on this monitor or its overblown?
 
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Just sent my Swift out today for RMA due to the OSD being messed up.. hope they get it back soon, I can't stand using a regular 60hz monitor anymore. It's like looking through a flip book, lol
 
Its going to be either this RoG Swift G-Sync with 2 Way SLI 980 Ti 6GB... or 2x Crossfire 390X with a RoG Dominator Free-Sync this summer for me.
I want the Swift really badly tbh, but I'm just very concerned with the overwhelmingly negative user reviews. I completely chickened out from purchasing what looks like a potential favourite of all time monitor for me personally.

I guess its nice that the Dominator will have IPS, but I'm not a fan of IPS bleed and blacks looks rather weird with possible black crush on some IPS. Colours for me are not that important, but responsiveness and how smooth it feels definitely does affect me, thats why I had my eye on the Swift. But who knows the Dominator can pull off a less negative quality control.

If I lose patience and get one next month, I guess I'l find out if they are indeed ''ticking time bombs'' with ''diabolical'' quality assurance. Its rather odd that out of 100% of all Swift Youtube reviews I've seen, there is not even 1 person giving the slightest mention of a thing called ''pixel inversion artifacts''. Or perhaps I must have missed it...

I can imagine though, it would bother the fuck out of me if I bought a 1440p brand new screen for nice picture quality, and it to be plagued by visual artifacts and vertical stripes or whatever. Whats the point of 1440p if the picture quality is pissed all over. Same reason I don't want a 4K screen when the nice picture quality will be blurry as fuck and make me look crosseyed with its lack of motion clarity.

Oh boy, its going to be one long ass year if I try to hold off any purchase for the time being. And no I don't want the Acer, don't care about Acer never did. I would consider a monitor from Dell if they made a 1440p 144Hz G-Sync panel though. Why does Dell not jump into the gamers market and demonstrate these incompetent fools how its done? :D
 
I have two. It's safe to buy. The only real "problems" are dead pixels and gamma, and the gamma is by design I presume. They have a zero bright pixel policy.
 
I have two. It's safe to buy. The only real "problems" are dead pixels and gamma, and the gamma is by design I presume. They have a zero bright pixel policy.
At this price margin, I will purchase an extra pixel warranty anyway, any dead pixel and I can send it away and get a new one no qeustions asked. Its the other things that concern me.
And really, do these panels differ so much in their gamma? I did not even know that was a thing with panels having gamma lottery. I guess thats how they roll then these days, send some really fine samples to reviewers, sell lottery productions to mass consumers, lol. :p
 
The funny thing is when I measure the gamma with my Spyder it's spot on 2.2, but when I look at it it looks like 1.6. It's as if the coating or viewing angles are not optimised for perpendicular viewing. If you raise the stand to max and look "up" at it it looks fine.
 
I have two. It's safe to buy. The only real "problems" are dead pixels and gamma, and the gamma is by design I presume. They have a zero bright pixel policy.

That is not the "only" problem at all.
Maybe when you first get it and even then some people have had DP cable issues but the real problem is that even if it's perfect when you get it (mine was) it may all turn to crap within 3 months.
 
Anyone know the measurements from the back of the ''foot/stand'' up till the front where the screen is? I need to know this so I can determine how far I can sit from this screen's 27'' size, and how far I can place the monitor to the back untill the stand blocks the wall on my desk.
 
Anyone know the measurements from the back of the ''foot/stand'' up till the front where the screen is? I need to know this so I can determine how far I can sit from this screen's 27'' size, and how far I can place the monitor to the back untill the stand blocks the wall on my desk.

Around 9.5 inches. The ports are very high up, so you can even remove the stand completely and rest the screen against the wall with the bottom touching the table top.
 
Around 9.5 inches. The ports are very high up, so you can even remove the stand completely and rest the screen against the wall with the bottom touching the table top.
The stand of my BenQ XL2420G seems to be around the same I think, but I have it leaning slightly over my desk to the back of the wall by 1.5 inches or so, and my desk has a reach of around 27 inches. Not sure how accurate I measured, but I converted it from centimeters wich I normally use. I think if I sit with my regular posture with my back to the chair, from my chest to the screen its anywhere from 28 - 29 max 30 inches depending on posture give or take.
Eventhough I'm interested in a 27'' screen, I'm not sure yet wheter the distance I sit from qualifies for upgrading from a 24'' I currently have at 1080p. I was using a temporary 19 inch because my monitor went kaput, when I got a 24'', it seemed very large, too large. Now it seems so damn small, LOL! :D
 
The stand of my BenQ XL2420G seems to be around the same I think, but I have it leaning slightly over my desk to the back of the wall by 1.5 inches or so, and my desk has a reach of around 27 inches. Not sure how accurate I measured, but I converted it from centimeters wich I normally use. I think if I sit with my regular posture with my back to the chair, from my chest to the screen its anywhere from 28 - 29 max 30 inches depending on posture give or take.
Eventhough I'm interested in a 27'' screen, I'm not sure yet wheter the distance I sit from qualifies for upgrading from a 24'' I currently have at 1080p. I was using a temporary 19 inch because my monitor went kaput, when I got a 24'', it seemed very large, too large. Now it seems so damn small, LOL! :D

It needs to be closer not farther. I upgraded from a XL2420T which was at arm's length away from me. With the PG278Q's higher PPI text is too small to read without straining on many websites. A 27" 1440p monitor needs to be significantly closer to maintain the same text size as a 24" 1080p.

The productivity increase from the massive desktop space increase alone is worth it. Everything right from applications to websites are far easier to use and not cramped like on 1080p.
 
It needs to be closer not farther. I upgraded from a XL2420T which was at arm's length away from me. With the PG278Q's higher PPI text is too small to read without straining on many websites. A 27" 1440p monitor needs to be significantly closer to maintain the same text size as a 24" 1080p.

The productivity increase from the massive desktop space increase alone is worth it. Everything right from applications to websites are far easier to use and not cramped like on 1080p.
Using DSR to 1440p on my current 24'' makes text extremely small, but I'm assuming that is not representative of how it actually looks?

With your old XL2420T, how would you compare 1440p 2xAA with 1080p 4xAA? The higher resolution and perfomance loss should compensate for allowing less AA yes?
Seems weird as hell how a few months ago I was swearing 1080p to be more then enough, but then in Far Cry 4 1080p now looks incredibly crappy without a shit ton of AA. Well tbh, 1080p still does look good, but things such as vegetation looks really ugly and pixelated.
 
Using DSR to 1440p on my current 24'' makes text extremely small, but I'm assuming that is not representative of how it actually looks?

With your old XL2420T, how would you compare 1440p 2xAA with 1080p 4xAA? The higher resolution and perfomance loss should compensate for allowing less AA yes?
Seems weird as hell how a few months ago I was swearing 1080p to be more then enough, but then in Far Cry 4 1080p now looks incredibly crappy without a shit ton of AA. Well tbh, 1080p still does look good, but things such as vegetation looks really ugly and pixelated.

2x MSAA looks like crap even on 1440p. 4x MSAA is the minimum. Games that ran at 70 fps on 1080p with 4x MSAA now run at 45 fps with no AA on 1440p. I have a 780 Ti.

However I've recently discovered the gem that TXAA is. 2x MSAA + TXAA is the sweet spot. Even 4x MSAA looks bad when things are in motion. See how the flickering is completely gone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2vm-Hm5dP0
 
Using DSR to 1440p on my current 24'' makes text extremely small, but I'm assuming that is not representative of how it actually looks?

With your old XL2420T, how would you compare 1440p 2xAA with 1080p 4xAA? The higher resolution and perfomance loss should compensate for allowing less AA yes?
Seems weird as hell how a few months ago I was swearing 1080p to be more then enough, but then in Far Cry 4 1080p now looks incredibly crappy without a shit ton of AA. Well tbh, 1080p still does look good, but things such as vegetation looks really ugly and pixelated.

24" is a little too small for 1440p IMO, as some of the older games do not scale UI and text with respect to resolution (this is one of the, if not *the*, biggest reason why I didn't go 4k).

Almost all of modern games do not have that problem, however some of the older ones have, and they are rather erratic. For example, Mass Effect 2 UI and text scales without issue, but 3 does not scale, making everything obscenely small at higher resolutions. DA:O and Civ V also have text size issues. Unlike Desktop text size (most browsers and the desktop lets you scale text, games either have scaling or don't, and it's SoL if it is the latter.
 
It's funny how differently people view different tradeoffs.

For me,
4k is out from the get go because it's 60hz not because of the ppi. Someday it will have dp 1.3 - 1.4a inputs and we will someday have dp 1.3 - 1.4a gpu outputs, and someone will prob make a 120hz input 4k at some point after that with variable hz. Until then, for gaming - no way.

Making minimum AA statements with a single card and driving your frame rate down sub 90 - 100 - 110 common playing rate toward 50 - 60 - 70 fps (or lower) and you are basically running a low hz monitor with all the low hz tradeoffs -> Low motion definition, path articulation, and bad smear blur. Even with dual beefy cards you usually have to turn demanding games down to 'very high' settings in order to get 100+ common playing frame rate. Scenarios where enabling greater amounts of AA, and perhaps higher texture detail even, drive this monitor back to 60hz low motion def and bad blur land are not an option for me.

4k screenshots, 1440p massively downsampled from 4k or even 8k, extreme AA and lighting mods, etc are often used in screenshots forums but that's all they are good for - screenshots not motion considering the fps-hz vs gpu power available imo, especially in 1st/3rd person games where you are continually moving the world around relative to you in the viewport.

Oh and also imo, the 108.8 ppi is not too small at all at around 2' away. I have two 27" 2560x1440 monitors. Even the sig's on this forum aren't too small for me on them. My 17" 1080p laptop's screen sits a bit closer but it's even higher ppi of around 130ppi and it's no problem, and can play some games off steam on it as it has a 5870m gpu in it. No problems with reading interfaces and text on it.
You could always use something like nosquint addon for firefox though if you needed, but it wouldn't apply to games of course. Some of the better rpgs and mod-able games allow you to change interface stuff and fonts though. I also use a 3rd party file manager that has way better font and layout options.

nosquint_ff-addon.png


Back to the 4k statement, I'd also say that hopefully by the time we are all on dp 1.3 - 1.4a gpus and monitors and a 120 and variable hz 4k comes out, the gpu power would be more adequate for 4k. However I realize that the graphics ceiling is completely arbitrary and can blow up way higher easily, as even the small bump that mods and supersampling or massive downsampling can do shows. The challenge of devs is whittling game complexity down to 'fit' real time performance more or less, not the other way around. Without a massive leap frog ahead in graphics performance, successive years of gaming's arbitrary graphics ceilings being lifted ('opened up') higher will probably always run 4k into the mud without finding a sweet spot on the arbitrary gfx slider. Actually the more I think about it - no matter what the gpu power is, people will likely try to push the gfx settings higher and many will continue to trade off motion excellence out of balance with it, going for pretty stills and molasses motion (and smearing blur in the case of lcds at low hz). Which sort of goes back to the hypothetical graphics settings menu I made. :p
 
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Well Elvn, I myself am big user of backlight strobe effects such as lightboost, and currently ULMB. At 1080p its definitely viable to run all games at 120+ fps even in AAA games assuming one has a beefy SLI setup for it. With 1440p on the other hand you do trade a little motion clarity and use G-Sync instead.
I have quite high perfomance requirements myself, anything below 80 fps sucks for me. I'm kinda happy with my current BenQ 1080p. Some games still look fantastic on that resolution, but then on others I can definitely see why higher res might be attractive option, however not at the cost of losing motion clarity for me.

I think eventually I will still upgrade though. Either 2x Crossfire 390X RoG Dominator or 2x 980 TI RoG Swift. I suppose I feel 1440p might be a nice medium for some time to come.

I don't even want to think of 4k. With its current motion clarity it will make me look crosseyed with all the blur.
 
I got my replacement Swift from Amazon. No dead pixel I could notice, all good.
Now to hope I don't blurry text and flashes in 3 months.

Where were TFTCentral's recommended settings again? I'm having trouble finding them on their test.
 
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