ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG32UCWMG  Monitor Review

The ASUS XG32UCWMG has a simple, yet gaming-focused design. It's mainly black and dark gray, with some branding and RGB lighting on the back. The panel itself is thin, which is typical of OLED monitors, but the housing for the inputs is thicker.

The build quality is excellent. It's well-made with premium materials, without any noticeable issues. The base of the stand and the housing for the panel are metal, while everything else is plastic that doesn't bend easily, but still flexes a bit when you put pressure on it. There's no audible fan noise or coil whine either, even after long periods of use.

The ergonomics are decent. Besides not being able to rotate it into portrait mode, you can adjust the screen in a number of ways, which helps if you have someone sitting next to you. The ergonomic adjustments feel smooth on the stand, too. The stand also has a cutout for basic cable management.

The stand holds the screen well with minimal wobble, and it quickly stabilizes itself even if it shakes a bit. Since the stand has a tilt, the total thickness from the screen to the back of the stand depends on the height you set it at. The measurement in the review is with the screen at its minimum height, but the total thickness at its max height is 5.7" (14.5 cm).

The housing height includes the sensor below the bottom bezel, which measures 0.9" (2.2 cm). The bottom bezel is also a bit thicker than the others, measuring 0.6" (1.3 cm).

The controls include two buttons and a joystick, and they're easy to use.

• HDMI cable
• USB-A to USB-B cable
• Power cable and brick
• VESA mounting bracket
• ROG stickers
• Cleaning cloth
• Accessories bag
• User guides

Settings

• GameVisual: User Mode (after calibration)
• Brightness: 100
• Uniform Brightness: Off
• OLED Care: All settings off

The SDR brightness is decent. It fights some glare well, but it struggles if you have it in a really bright environment. There are also some changes in brightness that you might notice when minimizing and maximizing windows, but it isn't overly distracting either. If it bothers you, you can enable the Uniform Brightness setting to get more consistent brightness, as it's around 245 cd/m² across different content. Using this setting also results in the dimmest image, as the minimum brightness with Uniform Brightness off is 57 cd/m².

If SDR brightness is important to you, check out a monitor with the newer RGB Tandem OLED panel, like the LG 27GX700A-B, as it gets brighter.

Settings

• HDR Setting: Console HDR
• Adjustable HDR: On
• Brightness: 100
• Uniform Brightness: Off
• OLED Care: All settings off

The HDR brightness is decent. It gets bright for the most part and small highlights stand out, but it can't maintain this high brightness with larger bright areas. It has inaccurate PQ EOTF tracking, though, as most content is brighter than intended. It at least has a sharp cut-off at its peak brightness, letting highlights get the brightest possible before your source tone maps. You can disable Adjustable HDR if you want more accurate PQ EOTF tracking, but that limits the brightness, so there are trade-offs.

Interestingly, using the 'DisplayHDR 400 True Black' HDR Setting with Adjustable HDR enabled results in a brighter and more accurate colors. However, this is unexpected behavior, as the 'DisplayHDR 400 True Black' setting isn't meant to get this bright. Disabling Adjustable HDR lowers the brightness of 'DisplayHDR 400 True Black' back to what's expected, and the PQ EOTF is most accurate like this. You can see the results for this in the 'DisplayHDR 400 True Black' mode below.

The gray uniformity is excellent. There's minimal dirty screen effect in the center, but the corners are slightly darker. Unfortunately, the uniformity is worse in dark scenes, with thin, vertical lines. However, these are hard to see with most content.

The black uniformity is perfect as it maintains a uniform black level across the screen.

The ASUS XG32UCWMG has great accuracy before calibration. While it has a dedicated 'sRGB Cal Mode' GameVisual, it has bad gamma tracking, and using the 'User Mode' GameVisual with Display Color Space set to 'sRGB' results in better accuracy and gives you access to all picture settings. It locks colors well to the sRGB color space and has an accurate color temperature. The white balance is also good, but it's far from perfect, and most scenes are a bit too dark.

The accuracy after calibration is remarkable. Calibrating it fixes most issues, and any remaining inaccuracies are hard to see. We calibrated it with Display Color Space set to 'Wide Gamut.'

The monitor includes a Six-axis Saturation setting to adjust RGBCMY during calibration.

The SDR color gamut is incredible. It covers the sRGB color space used in most web content, but it slightly oversaturates some colors. It also has wide coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, but greens are undersaturated and reds and magentas are oversaturated.

The HDR color gamut is fantastic. It has good coverage of the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces, but there are some inaccuracies in each, particularly with whites. Colors are more accurate in the 'DisplayHDR 400 True Black' HDR Setting mode, as you can see in DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020, but that mode isn't as bright.

The ASUS XG32UCWMG has very good color volume. It displays dark colors very well, but bright colors aren't as vivid as on a QD-OLED.

The horizontal viewing angle is outstanding. 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 in the 4k mode is fantastic. Thanks to the glossy coating, text looks sharper, and images are clearer than on matte 32-inch, 4k WOLEDs. That said, there's more fringing than an LCD monitor with the same pixel density, but it's hard to see unless you're looking for it or sit close.

These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

The text clarity is a lot worse in the 1080p mode, as the monitor needs to scale the resolution. It looks similar to other 32-inch, 4k dual-mode OLEDs, like the LG 32GS95UE-B, and it's not suggested to use the 1080p mode when browsing the web or reading text. Text is even more blurry when you change the Aspect Ratio setting to '27" Simulation' or '24.5" Simulation.'

The direct reflection handling is disappointing. Light reflects back like a mirror due to the glossy coating. As the screen isn't perfectly flat, some reflections can look warped. Whether or not you notice this depends on the positioning of the light source, though.

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG32UCWMG does an excellent job at maintaining low black levels in a bright room. The glossy coating is better for this than matte counterparts, like the ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDP, too. This also gives the monitor an advantage over glossy QD-OLEDs, whose black levels rise and look purple in bright rooms.

There isn't too much distracting light reflecting off this monitor's screen. The glossy coating doesn't spread light out, but reflections can still be distracting if you place it opposite a sunny window. That said, it's fine if you have it in a room with a few lights around.

The gradient handling is remarkable. There's minimal banding between shades of different colors. It performs the same between different refresh rates, as you can see at 240Hz, 120Hz, and 60Hz.

Your graphics card needs to use Display Stream Compression (DSC) to reach 4k @ 240Hz over both DisplayPort and HDMI. There's a DSC Support setting to turn off DSC if you prefer not using it, but that limits the refresh rate.

The Frame Rate Boost setting changes the refresh rate to 480Hz with a lower 1080p resolution. As the monitor's actual DisplayPort bandwidth is 32.4Gbps, your graphics card doesn't need to use DSC to reach 1080p @ 480Hz with 8-bit signals, but it does with 10-bit signals.

The ASUS XG32UCWMG also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The ASUS XG32UCWMG has remarkable motion handling across its refresh rate range. It has a near-instantaneous response time at any refresh rate in both the 4k @ 240Hz and 1080p @ 480Hz modes. Because of this, we only took measurements and photos of the Frame Rate Boost mode at 480Hz and 360Hz, whereas the results from 240Hz and lower are in the 4k mode.

Low Framerate Compensation starts at different points in the 4k and 1080p modes. In 4k, it kicks in at around 59 fps, whereas it starts at around 64 fps in the 1080p mode.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG32UCWMG has superb refresh rate compliance. Thanks to its near-instantaneous response time, it makes full-color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame at most frame rates.

The CAD at 240Hz is remarkable. Motion looks incredibly sharp thanks to its near-instantaneous response time. It looks even smoother at 480Hz when you enable Frame Rate Boost, but it performs the same in either mode at 240Hz.

The CAD at 120Hz is remarkable. Motion is crisp both in and out of the Frame Rate Boost mode, but there's more persistence blur than at higher refresh rates.

The CAD at 60Hz is fantastic with Frame Rate Boost mode both enabled and disabled. However, there's more persistence blur than at higher refresh rates, which is normal.

The ASUS XG32UCWMG has an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature that you can enable with the ELMB setting. You can only use it at 120Hz in the 4k mode, or 240Hz in the 1080p mode, and it disables many features, like VRR and HDR.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG32UCWMG has distracting VRR flicker with changing frame rates. It happens in the 240Hz and 480Hz modes, and it occurs in any content, including bright scenes.

There's an OLED Anti-Flicker setting that's meant to reduce the flicker, but it just limits the refresh rate range you can use. In the 240Hz mode, the minimum refresh rate is 100Hz with the 'Middle' setting and 170Hz on 'High.' In the 480Hz mode, the 'Middle' setting limits the minimum refresh rate to 200Hz, and 'High' limits it to 250Hz.

You can see the results of the OLED Anti-Flicker setting below, with Frame Rate Boost on.

The ASUS XG32UCWMG has very low input lag at any refresh rate for a responsive feel. These results are with Frame Rate Boost off, and you can see them with it on below:

• 1080p @ 480Hz: 1.7 ms
• 1080p @ 120Hz: 8.0 ms
• 1080p @ 60Hz: 16.2 ms

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG32UCWMG supports any signal from a PS5, as long as you have Frame Rate Boost disabled.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG32UCWMG works for the most part with an Xbox Series X|S, as long as you have Frame Rate Boost disabled. You need to enable the console's HDMI override setting to get 1440p @ 60Hz, though, which disables VRR. As the Xbox only supports HDR with 4k signals, this isn't a limitation of the monitor.

The DisplayPort port supports 32.4Gbps of bandwidth.

As the USB-C port is limited to 15W of power delivery, you'll need a separate charging cable for your laptop.

Tested with: M2 MacBook Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pro (Sequoia 15.7.1)

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG32UCWMG works well with macOS, and there aren't any obvious issues. If you're using a MacBook, the 'DisplayHDR 400 True Black' mode looks the most accurate compared to the laptop's screen. If you close the laptop's lid without having it plugged into power, it goes to sleep. However, you can continue working on the monitor if you have the laptop plugged into power. When you reopen the lid or wake the laptop up from sleep, windows return to their original positions.

The ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG32UCWMG has a ton of additional features, including a KVM switch that you can set to automatically switch when you change inputs. Other perks include:

• Aspect Control: You can change the displayable screen area to simulate 24.5 and 27-inch screen sizes.
• Blue Light Filter: Reduces blue light to help with eye strain.
• GamePlus: Has gaming features, like FPS Counter, Crosshair, Sniper, and Timer modes.
• Frame Rate Boost: Increases the refresh rate to 480Hz with a lower 1080p resolution.
• Lighting Effect: Includes Aura Sync and Aura RGB settings to control the RGB lighting.
• Shadow Boost: Elevates the black levels so that it's easier to see opponents in dark scenes.
• Type-C Bandwidth: You can choose between USB 2.0 and 3.2 USB speeds to prioritize faster USB transfer speeds or higher video bandwidth.

It also has features meant to reduce the risk of OLED burn-in in the OLED Care section of the OSD:

• Screen Saver: Decreases the screen brightness when there's a static image displayed for too long.
• Pixel Cleaning: Performs a pixel cleaning cycle that runs for about six minutes and starts when you turn the screen off. There's also a Pixel Cleaning Reminder setting for you to run it.
• Screen Move: Slowly shifts the image by a few pixels so that the same pixels aren't always displaying the same thing. You can turn it off completely if you prefer.
• Auto Logo Brightness: Dims static logos on-screen, like when watching broadcast TV.
• Neo Proximity Sensor: Turns the screen off when you step away from it, and turns it back on when you're in front of it again. We didn't have any issues with it during testing.

You can learn more about the OSD in the user manual.