Asus VG27AQL1A - thoughts? (27" 170Hz IPS 1440p)

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sphinx99

[H]ard|Gawd
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I've been looking for a 27" high refresh rate display to try the experience (never done gaming past 60 Hz) while having a good gamut and viewing angles in case it doesn't work out and my wife wants to use it as a work display. This display just showed up in quantity at a local store and I was wondering if anyone had opinions. There is little in the way of review content out there.

27" 170Hz IPS 1440p
 
The specs look very good. It's amazing how many monitor choices there are (especially some with no reviews).
 
Well, I decided to buy it today, something of an impulse purchase. I do not have a broad perspective against which to evaluate it, other than to say that it seems like a fantastic display. Contrast ratio (by eye) isn't superb but looks better than average for IPS. Color gamut is excellent and the display is rock-steady at 144Hz. I have not tried any of the overdrive features. It's fairly high quality with height, tilt and rotation adjustment and it either lacks RGB or has it hidden and off by default--much to my liking.

This is my first taste of high refresh rate and also variable refresh rate (in this case gsync) and it really is quite amazing. I played some Doom and it was so smooth...
 
A little more information after a couple of days' ownership and continuous use:

I don't have equipment to measure contrast ratio, but I have roughly a dozen different IPS displays of ~known contrast ratios from really crappy 700:1 monitors to a couple of Surface Books at 1800:1. I'd peg this one north of 1200:1 aka seems dang solid. I'll be curious to see if a review shows up and how my eyeballed contrast ratio fares :)

It runs very cool - this is pleasing. If my wife takes it, it'll be a huge improvement over the Dell U2711 space heater that's on her desk.

There are various "scene" modes that seem to make enormous adjustments to gamma, brightness, contrast and overall color temp / color mapping. The changes are dramatic--so dramatic that I'm not sure if there is a setting that's supposed to approximate any kind of color accuracy. In HDR mode the scenes are disabled, along with brightness, contrast and most other settings, but you have to select either 'Asus Gaming HDR' or 'Asus Cinema HDR' and it's unclear what they do or how they differ.

The stand is solid but the neck has some patterning I think is a bit ugly and visually distracting. I prefer displays whose stands blend into the background. This one has too many edges and bevels.

Interfacing has been entirely glitch free and rock solid on WIndows 10 with a GTX1080 using GSync. Refresh rates are problem free to set, the display is fairly quick to sync to signal, and I have not seen the slightest hint of glitchiness. I'm using it side-by-side with my 40" Samsung JU7100, and it's amazing how well Windows handles multiple displays with different resolutions, refresh rates and scaling factors... and even display-specific HDR capabilities. Microsoft's come a long way in this regard.

Overall this display seems to tick all the boxes other than HDR600/HDR1000, and those two features push the price point substantially higher such that this feels like a good middle ground. It seems like a good compromise if, like me, you can afford to spend more but are not willing to put down $1,000+ unless you get OLED/HDMI 2.1, and still want a well-rounded display.

Edit: I was surprised to discover this thing includes a couple of speakers. They're tiny. Just fine for backup sound though.
 
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A couple of reviews have turned up:
https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/monitors/144382-asus-tuf-vg27aql1a/
https://www.monitornerds.com/asus-vg27aql1a-review/

Both mirror my experience, which is that this is an excellent work/productivity/content display that adds gaming features (high refresh rate, adaptive frame rate, fast response time and a very basic HDR capability) in a way that doesn't compromise its utility as a get-work-done display. Since that is exactly what I was looking for, I'm satisfied. The contrast ratio is spot-on to the advertised 1000:1 which is a bit lower than my eyeballed guess, so I guess my eyes need some work :)
 
I would take that in a glossy screen version. Does anyone even bother making glossy monitors anymore?
 
celwin said:
I would take that in a glossy screen version. Does anyone even bother making glossy monitors anymore?
Click to expand...
Sadly, no. At least not anything bearing modern specs.

If there was indeed a silent war, matte won.
 
just ordered one of these to replace my existing pg278q.... lets see how it goes
 
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