ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG  Monitor Review

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG has a gamer-oriented aesthetic that also wouldn't look out of place at an office. It features some RGB lighting on the back of the monitor.

The build quality is excellent. It's well-made, and there aren't any significant construction issues, though there is a small amount of plastic creak in the monitor's housing. The stand is plastic but solid. There isn't any noticeable fan noise or coil whine either, even after long periods of use.

The ergonomics are excellent. It has amazing height adjustment, so it's easy to place in your preferred position for a long gaming session. It also has an excellent swivel range, so it's easy to share your screen with someone else. Additionally, you can route your cables through the stand for cable management.

The flat stand holds the screen well, and you can place objects on top of it. There's also a groove in the stand to hold smartphones. The monitor has minimal wobble when bumped and recovers quickly.

This monitor has a joystick and two buttons to control the on-screen display and power the display on and off, and they feel good to use.

• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable
• USB-B cable
• Power cable
• Power brick
• Documentation
• VESA mounting bracket
• Cleaning cloth
• Accessory bag
• Stickers

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG has a near-infinite contrast ratio, as its OLED panel can turn individual pixels on and off. This means it displays deep blacks next to bright highlights in dark rooms.

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG doesn't have a backlight, so it doesn't require a local dimming feature. However, with a near-infinite contrast ratio, there isn't any blooming around bright objects, and it's the equivalent of a perfect local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so you can see how the screen performs and compare it with a monitor that has local dimming.

Settings

• Game Visual: User Mode
• Uniform Brightness: Off
• Brightness: 100
• Auto Logo Detection: Off
• Power Setting: Standard

The SDR brightness is good. It gets bright enough to fight glare in most well-lit rooms. However, with Uniform Brightness 'Off,' the screen's brightness varies depending on how much of your screen has very bright content, which could be distracting. Turning it 'On' ensures the screen's brightness doesn't vary, and you can see the results below:

• Real Scene: 288 cd/m²

Settings

• HDR Setting: Console HDR
• Brightness Adjustable: On
• Uniform Brightness: Off
• Color Temp.: Default
• Brightness: 100

The HDR brightness is decent. It gets bright enough to make smaller highlights pop, but it can't sustain this brightness with larger highlights, so they don't stand out as much. It follows the PQ EOTF curve fairly well until there's a very sharp roll-off at peak brightness, letting highlights get the brightest they can.

While this monitor doesn't have a dedicated peak brightness setting, it gets much brighter with small highlights when you enable Brightness Adjustable, which is off by default, and set Brightness to '100'. Together, these settings significantly increase the maximum brightness of very small highlights, but not larger ones.

Starting with firmware MCM104, you can turn Uniform Brightness 'On' in HDR. When you do this, the brightness is reduced but more consistent, as you can see below:

Firmware MCM104 also fixes any black crush, as there isn't any like on previous firmware.

This monitor has excellent gray uniformity, and there aren't any noticeable issues. However, like any OLED, there are thin gray vertical lines in dark scenes, but you won't notice them unless you look for them.

The black uniformity is fantastic, with a uniform black level across the entire screen.

The accuracy before calibration is very good. It clamps colors to the sRGB color space well, and though it slightly oversaturates most colors it has good color accuracy. However, the color temperature is a bit warm, and the white balance is just decent. However, the gamma is off, as all parts of scenes are too dark.

Locked-Out Settings

• Shadow boost
• Uniform brightness
• Contrast
• Blue light filter
• All color category settings

If you want to access these settings which are locked out in the 'sRGB Cal Mode' you need to use another mode with worse color accuracy, like User.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic, and any inaccuracies are almost unnoticeable. These results are with Uniform Brightness 'On'. At maximum brightness, the monitor is less accurate, as you can see with Uniform Brightness 'On' and 'Off'.

The SDR color gamut is remarkable. It displays all colors in the common sRGB color space and a wide range of colors in the Adobe RGB color space. That said, green and red are quite inaccurate in Adobe RGB.

The HDR color gamut is fantastic. It displays nearly all colors in the common DCI-P3 color space and a wide range in the Rec. 2020 color space. However, not all colors are accurate, and white is particularly inaccurate in DCI-P3. As of firmware MCM104, there are calibration settings you can use in HDR, though these results are uncalibrated.

However, with firmware MCM104, there are some reported tone mapping issues with colors with Brightness at '100' compared to it at '90.' Increasing the setting to its max makes it the brightest possible, but the trade-off is that some colors are oversaturated. That said, it doesn't happen with all content. You can see example photos of this below:

• Brightness: 90
• Brightness: 100

• Red Luminance: 107 cd/m²
• Green Luminance: 323 cd/m²
• Blue Luminance: 35 cd/m²

The monitor has great HDR color volume. Colors look vivid, and the monitor displays dark and bright colors well.

The horizontal viewing angle is fantastic. Although it technically isn't perfect, you visually won't see any inconsistencies when viewing from the sides or if you sit close to the screen.

The text clarity is okay, though it's not as good as some other 27-inch 1440p monitors because of its RWBG subpixel layout. This results in some color fringing around text if ClearType is enabled. While it has a glossy screen coating, images aren't as clear as WOLEDs with a TrueBlack Glossy coating, like the ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG32UCWMG.

Though Pixel Edge is supposed to reduce fringing, it's still present when ClearType is enabled, and text looks less bold. You can see how enabling ClearType and Pixel Edge in both Windows 10 and Windows 11 affects text clarity below:

The direct reflection handling is poor. The glossy coating reflects a lot of mirror-like light, which can be distracting in a bright room. You can see what it looks like next to the LG 27GS95QE-B, which has a matte coating and much better reflection handling.

Although not perfect, this monitor maintains low black levels in bright rooms.

Although this monitor doesn't spread light out, glare can be distracting in really bright rooms, as light bounces off the screen like a mirror.

This monitor has excellent gradient handling. There's minimal banding with most shades of similar colors, but there are still some issues. At low brightness and low refresh rates, there's more banding in shades of gray. You can see an example of that with 5% gray at 50 cd/m², and this happens with 30Hz and 60Hz signals. You can also see it compared to the ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27ACDNG, and although this is a common issue with OLEDs, it's worse on the XG27AQDMG. That said, it isn't as noticeable at high brightness and higher refresh rates.

The issue gets worse when sending a limited chroma 4:4:4 signal compared to a full RGB signal, as there's noticeable black crush. You can see examples of that with a gradient circle and with a gradient pattern.

You can reach the monitor's max refresh rate over DisplayPort, but your graphics card needs to support Display Stream Compression (DSC) to reach the max refresh rate with 10-bit signals over DisplayPort. It also has a DSC Support setting to disable DSC if you prefer not to use it altogether. Because this monitor only has HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, the maximum refresh rate with HDMI is significantly slower.

On top of supporting FreeSync and G-SYNC compatibility, this monitor also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG has outstanding motion handling across its entire refresh rate range with VRR enabled. CAD remains low throughout, and there's minimal blur with fast-moving objects.

The refresh rate compliance is outstanding. With a near-instantaneous response time, it makes full-color transitions before drawing the next frame.

The CAD at the maximum refresh rate is outstanding. It displays fast-moving objects as intended, and motion is extremely sharp.

The CAD at 120Hz is outstanding. Pixels transition to their target RGB level almost instantly, so there isn't any blur trail or noticeable inverse ghosting.

The CAD at 60Hz is outstanding. Pixels transition colors almost perfectly, and any noticeable blur is persistence.

This monitor has an optional black frame insertion feature to reduce persistence blur, but it only works with fixed 120Hz signals. When it's on, you can adjust the brightness between 15.28 cd/m² and 131.5 cd/m². The following settings are locked out when it's enabled:

• Blue Light Filter
• Variable Refresh Rate
• HDR

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG has quite distracting VRR flicker with changing frame rates if OLED Anti-Flicker is off. It can be particularly distracting if the frame rate changes a lot, especially in darker parts of scenes. That said, this doesn't happen if your PC can maintain consistent frame rates.

OLED Anti-Flicker Setting

OLED Anti-Flicker minimizes VRR flicker by reducing the refresh rate range VRR operates at, as you can see below:

While this introduces some stuttering, it significantly reduces VRR flicker. While flicker is reduced significantly with 'Medium', and even more with 'Strong', random VRR flicker is still present. You can see this below, though random VRR flicker is slightly worse than the video indicates:

The backlight isn't technically flicker-free because it has a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the 240Hz refresh rate.

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG has low input lag, especially at its max refresh rate. While its input lag is a bit higher than some other monitors with 120Hz and 60Hz sources, it's still low enough for a responsive feel.

The Xbox doesn't support HDR with 1440p or 1080p signals, so this isn't a limitation of the monitor.

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG doesn't have any compatibility issues with macOS. If you're using a MacBook windows move to the monitor's screen when you close the laptop's lid, and they return to their original position when you reopen it again over any type of connection. VRR works well, and colors in HDR look good.

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG has several additional features, including:

• Dynamic Shadow Boost: Adjusts gamma so that you can see opponents better in dark scenes.
• GamePlus: Includes different gaming features like an FPS counter, crosshairs, sniper mode, stopwatch, and timer.
• Lighting Effect: Controls the RGB lighting on the back of the monitor and on the stand.
• Low Blue Light Filter: Reduces blue light to help with eye strain.

Like most OLED displays, there are also a few settings to help reduce the risk of burn-in, which you can find in the Screen Protection section of the OSD.

• Auto Logo Brightness: Dims static logos that are on the screen, like if you're watching TV.
• Pixel Cleaning: This feature calibrates any burn-in issues that may occur. It happens after you turn off the screen and takes about six minutes to finish. There's also a setting to remind you to turn off the monitor so it can perform the cycle.
• Screen Move: Moves the image by a few pixels to one side to help reduce the risk of burn-in.
• Screen Saver: Automatically dims the screen when there's inactivity.