ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR Monitor Review

The ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR has a unique design with thick bezels that give it a somewhat retro look. However, it has a modern gamer aesthetic on the back, which also includes RGB lighting.

The build quality is great. It's mainly made of solid plastic that feels sturdy, and the stand's feet are metal. There isn't any noticeable flex or issues with the plastic, and the stand holds the screen in place well when you adjust it.

The ergonomics are okay. It swivels using the base of the stand, as you can see here. While it doesn't offer rotation, you can adjust the screen a few degrees in each direction if you feel it isn't level. The back features designs and etched lines, and there's also a cutout in the stand for cable management.

The tripod stand takes up space, but you can still place a keyboard or other peripherals in the middle because the legs are far apart. The stand also supports the screen well.

There are four buttons and a joystick to control the on-screen menu.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Power cable and adapter
• User guides
• Republic of Gamers stickers

The ASUS XG27UQR has a mediocre contrast ratio that fails to make blacks look deep and inky next to bright highlights, especially when viewed in a dark environment. Enabling the local dimming feature doesn't improve the contrast either. Contrast With Local Dimming results with the screen at 450 cd/m² of brightness instead of the 100 cd/m² that we target for testing because local dimming locks the brightness to its max. This means that local dimming raises the brightness of the entire image, including the black levels.

The local dimming feature is terrible. It's edge-lit with 16 zones, and most content causes all the zones to turn on, effectively making the local dimming feature useless. The black level is elevated, which means there isn't any black crush, but you lose a lot of details in darker scenes. Because all the zones are on most of the time, there isn't much blooming unless there's a small object against a dark background that causes only a few zones to light up. This happens with subtitles sometimes, which could get distracting. The setting for local dimming is called Dynamic Dimming, which you can turn on or off in SDR, but it's locked on in HDR.

The SDR brightness is excellent. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare, and you won't have issues using it in a bright room. It also maintains the brightness consistent across different scenes. However, the minimum brightness may be a bit too high if you want to use your monitor in a dark environment and are sensitive to light. The results are from after calibration with the following settings:

• Game Visual: User Mode
• Brightness: 100
• Contrast: 80
• Dynamic Dimming: Off

The HDR brightness is good, but because of the low contrast and terrible local dimming feature, highlights don't pop against the rest of the image. Besides some raised blacks in really dark scenes, it displays content at its intended brightness until there's a sharp cut-off at its peak brightness, meaning it lets your PC or source do any tone mapping. These results are with ASUS Gaming HDR enabled, which locks all other settings, and keeps local dimming on.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR has a decent horizontal viewing angle. While the image fades and colors wash out at wide angles, using it for co-op gaming with someone else sitting next to you is still fine.

The ASUS XG27UQR has a decent vertical viewing angle. Unless you're standing up and looking directly down at it, you won't have any issues with it.

The ASUS XG27UQR has great gray uniformity. While the edges of the screen are darker, there isn't any dirty screen effect in the center, which is great for opening full-screen documents or any other content with large areas of the same color.

The black uniformity is okay. There's clouding throughout, and blacks look blue due to the low contrast. As you can see, the local dimming feature doesn't actually improve the black levels, and because it forces the brightness to its max, the image appears brighter.

The accuracy before calibration is impressive. The dedicated sRGB mode locks colors well to the sRGB color space, so they aren't oversaturated, but there are still some inaccurate colors, particularly reds and yellows. The white balance is also off with brighter shades, but it isn't terrible. Luckily, the color temperature is very close to the 6500K target, and gamma follows the sRGB curve almost perfectly.

Unfortunately, using the sRGB mode locks the brightness, causing the screen to be dim. Other settings are locked, too, including Aspect Control. If you want to change those settings, you need to use another mode that's less accurate with a warmer color temperature and oversaturated colors, as you can see here.

The accuracy after calibration is remarkable, and you won't notice any inaccuracies. The main advantage of calibrating it, besides the better accuracy, is that you can change any setting, including the brightness.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR has a fantastic SDR color gamut. It has near-perfect coverage of the commonly-used sRGB color space. Still, it has more limited coverage of the Adobe RGB color gamut used in professional publishing, and colors are more inaccurate with it.

The SDR color volume is fantastic. It displays most bright colors without any issues, but due to its low contrast, it struggles with darker colors.

The HDR color gamut is excellent. It displays a wide range of colors with good tone mapping in the DCI-P3 color space used in most HDR content, but it has worse coverage in the wider Rec. 2020 color space, where the tone mapping is a bit worse too.

The ASUS XG27UQR has an excellent HDR color volume. It displays many colors as bright as pure white, but it's limited by its incomplete color gamut and low contrast ratio, meaning it doesn't display dark colors well.

The reflection handling is decent. While it struggles to handle glare from strong light sources well, it at least gets very bright, and you won't have issues using it in a bright room.

The text clarity is fantastic, thanks to its 4k resolution and high pixel density. Text also looks clearer when using Windows ClearType (top photo). These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see what they look like in Windows 11 with ClearType on and ClearType off.

The gradient handling is incredible. You won't see any banding in scenes with shades of similar colors.

The max refresh rate at the monitor's native 4k resolution is limited over HDMI due to its HDMI 2.0 bandwidth. However, you can reach the max refresh rate at 4k over DisplayPort if your graphics card also supports Display Stream Compression (DSC), which any NVIDIA 16 Series or AMD RX 5000 Series and newer graphics card supports.

The VRR supports works without issues over DisplayPort as both FreeSync and G-SYNC work. However, only FreeSync works over HDMI and within a narrow range between 45 to 60Hz.

The response time at the max refresh rate of 144Hz is good. There's a bit of a blur trail behind fast-moving objects caused by the slow response time in some transitions, but there isn't any noticeable overshoot. The recommended overdrive setting of 'Level 3' has the quickest total response time without introducing any overshoot.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR has a good response time at 120Hz, and it performs similarly to 144Hz. Once again, the recommended overdrive setting is 'Level 3' because it has a faster response time than the lower settings and less overshoot than the higher settings.

The response time at 60Hz is alright, but there's more noticeable blur trail with fast-moving objects than at higher refresh rates. The 'Level 1' overdrive setting is the best because the higher settings have too much overshoot. This means you may need to change the overdrive setting if the frame rate of your game drops or if you change sources.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR has an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur, but it isn't that effective. It only works within a narrow refresh rate range and locks you out of overdrive settings. The timing is also off, causing image duplication with fast-moving objects. The photo is at 144Hz, and you can also see it at 120Hz here.

The backlight remains flicker-free with the brightness at its max, but then it uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight with the brightness setting at anything below the max. However, you likely won't notice it because it's such a high flicker frequency of around 26,000Hz. The backlight is also flicker-free in HDR as the brightness is locked to its max.

The ASUS XG27UQR has low input lag for a responsive feel, and it remains low even with the backlight strobing feature enabled, which is great.

As this monitor doesn't support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, it can't take full advantage of the PS5 because it doesn't support 4k @ 120Hz signals. VRR doesn't work either, but other than that, everything works without issue.

The ASUS XG27UQR works well with the Xbox Series X|S but doesn't support 4k @ 120Hz signals as it lacks HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. Even though the monitor supports FreeSync, it doesn't work with the console.

This monitor is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, but if you want something with HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, consider the ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQR.

You need to connect the USB-B cable to your computer for the USB ports on this monitor to work.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR works well with macOS, but there are some limitations. The maximum refresh rate with a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter is 80Hz, but VRR works well. As this monitor supports HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, you're limited to 4k @ 60Hz signals over HDMI, even on newer Mac computers that support HDMI 2.1. If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their original position when waking it up from sleep or reopening the lid.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR has a few extra features, including:

• Aspect Control: Changes the aspect ratio of the image between 16:9 and 4:3.
• Blue Light Filter: Reduces blue light to help reduce eye strain.
• Crosshair: Displays a virtual crosshair that your games' anti-cheat tools won't detect, giving you a competitive advantage.
• Lighting Effect: Controls the RGB lighting in the back. You can choose from presets with Aura RGB and even sync the colors to the content on screen with the downloadable Armoury Crate program.
• Shadow Boost: Changes the gamma so that it's easier to see opponents in dark areas of games.