ASUS ROG Swift 360Hz PG27AQN Monitor Review

The ASUS PG27AQN has a gamer-oriented design with a mainly gray body and orange accents throughout. The ROG logo on the back features RGB lighting, and when the lighting is off, it has a metallic finish instead.

The build quality is great. It has a sturdy stand with a solid metal base and doesn't wobble much. Adjusting the monitor on the stand also feels good as the screen stays in position. Most of the monitor is made with good-quality plastic that doesn't flex much and feels premium. However, the bottom bezel isn't evenly attached to the screen throughout, but this isn't a problem unless you're pressing the screen or the bezel.

The ergonomics are very good. While its height and tilt range isn't the best, the stand lets you adjust the screen in a few different ways, making it easy to place in an ideal position. There's also a cut-out in the stand for cable management to keep your setup clean.

The stand is fairly large and requires a deep desk to place it on, but there's enough space between the feet to put your peripherals like a keyboard and mouse. Also, the stand is very solid and supports the screen well.

The ASUS PG27AQN features a joystick and four controls on the back right side to control the on-screen display.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• Power supply and cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Calibration report
• User manuals
• ROG stickers

The ASUS PG27AQN has a disappointing native contrast ratio. Blacks look gray in dark rooms, and while it has a local dimming feature, it doesn't improve the picture quality in dark scenes. If you prefer a monitor with a perfect contrast ratio, look into the ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM, which has an OLED panel.

The ASUS ROG Swift PG27AQN has an edge-lit local dimming feature with 32 vertical zones. It performs poorly but isn't as bad as other monitors with edge-lit local dimming. With dark scenes, there isn't any black crush, but there's still a bit of blooming around bright objects, especially when there are zones that are on next to zones that are off. It's especially noticeable in content with black bars on the top and bottom, as you can see when the zones turn on and off, and it becomes distracting. Subtitles cause the zones to light up, but there isn't as much blooming around those. Bright content causes all the zones to turn on, rendering the local dimming ineffective. The algorithm keeps up with fast-moving objects well, though.

The setting to enable the local dimming is called Variable Backlight, and you can enable it or disable it in both SDR and HDR. The 'Level 3' setting performs the best. The lower settings perform similarly, but the zones are slower to turn on and off with those.

The SDR brightness is great. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare and maintains its brightness consistently across different scenes. These results are from after calibration in the 'Racing Mode' picture mode, which is called the GameVisual setting, with the Brightness at its max and Variable Backlight on 'Level 3'.

The HDR brightness is good. It gets bright enough to make some highlights look bright, but small highlights still don't stand out against the rest of the image. These results are in the 'Scenery Mode' picture mode, with Color Temp set to '6500K', Brightness at its max, and Variable Backlight on 'Level 3'.

The EOTF follows the target curve well enough, but it has raised blacks in dark scenes due to it slow contrast. It has a fairly smooth roll-off at its peak brightness, meaning most bright details are preserved well. The EOTF was measured for content mastered at 10,000 nits, and we also measured it for content mastered at different brightness levels, which you can see below. The performance is similar, but content mastered at 600 and 1,000 nits, which is the majority of content, has a sharper cut-off at the peak brightness.

• 600 nits
• 1,000 nits
• 4,000 nits

Unfortunately, the EOTF is even worse when you disable Variable Backlight as you can see here, because there's an even sharper cut-off at the peak brightness.

The ASUS PG27AQN has an okay horizontal viewing angle. It's fine if you need to share your screen for co-op gaming, but the image gets darker at a quicker angle than other IPS displays.

The vertical viewing angle is decent. While the image gets darker at wide angles, it's still good enough if you have the screen mounted a bit above eye level or if you're standing up and looking down at it.

The gray uniformity is good. The edges are darker than the rest of the screen, which can be noticeable with full-screen webpages or documents, but there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center.

The black uniformity is disappointing. Without the local dimming, there's a lot of clouding and some backlight bleed, so the screen doesn't look good in dark rooms. While the local dimming feature helps improve the contrast in zones that are off, there's more blooming around bright objects in dark scenes.

The accuracy before calibration is excellent. Most colors and the white balance are accurate enough that you won't notice many issues. Saturated blue is the most inaccurate color, but that's a common problem with LCDs. The color temperature is close to the 6500K target, and gamma follows the target sRGB curve fairly well, but most scenes are too bright.

There are two separate settings to lock the colors to the sRGB color space. You can use the 'sRGB Mode' picture mode, which locks most settings, including Brightness. However, there's a separate sRGB clamp available in the Display Color Space setting, which you can use with any picture mode, and it only locks the Six-axis Saturation setting. We used this for testing, and the 'sRGB Mode' picture mode performs similarly. If you don't use either sRGB mode, the colors are oversaturated.

The accuracy after calibration is remarkable. You won't notice any inaccuracies with most colors, and both the color temperature and gamma are nearly spot-on with their targets. However, saturated blue is still a bit off, which is a common problem with LCD monitors.

The SDR color gamut is incredible. It has full coverage of the commonly-used sRGB color space used in most content. It also has great coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used mainly in professional publishing, but some saturated colors are off.

The SDR color volume is fantastic. It displays bright colors well but struggles with darker colors due to its low contrast.

The HDR color gamut is great. It has fantastic coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used in most content, and the tone mapping is also good. However, it has limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, and the tone mapping is a bit worse than with DCI-P3.

The HDR color volume is great. Its wide color gamut helps it display a wide range of colors at different luminance levels, but it doesn't display all shades as intended.

The reflection handling is decent. It struggles a bit in rooms with really bright lights, like if you place it opposite a window with direct sunlight, but it at least gets bright enough to fight glare in rooms with some ambient lighting.

The text clarity is decent, but it's a bit worse than other 27-inch, 1440p monitors because diagonal lines are harder to see. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) helps improve the clarity a bit, but not much. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

The gradient handling is remarkable. Besides some slight banding in darker colors, you won't have any issues.

Your graphics card needs to support Display Stream Compression (DSC) for you to reach the monitor's 360Hz refresh rate over a DisplayPort connection. NVIDIA's GTX 16 and RTX 20 Series cards and newer support DSC, but if you have an older graphics card that doesn't support it, you'll be limited to a max refresh rate of 240Hz with 1440p, 8-bit signals.

The native G-SYNC support is great if you have an NVIDIA graphics card and want to take full advantage of it. It also works with FreeSync, and both VRR formats work over HDMI and DisplayPort.

The ASUS PG27AQN has a remarkable response time at its max refresh rate of 360Hz. Motion looks extremely smooth without any blur with fast-moving objects, and the recommended overdrive setting of 'Off' results in no overshoot. The 'Normal' overdrive setting has a quicker rise/fall time and a similar response time with a bit less blur behind fast-moving objects, but there's also a bit more overshoot. You can also see the response time tables and charts with a 240Hz refresh rate below. The response time performs similarly to its max refresh rate.

The response time at 120Hz is once again fantastic. Like at 360Hz, it's best to leave the overdrive setting off as it still has a quick response time without any overshoot.

The response time at 60Hz is excellent. While it has a slower response time than with higher-frame-rate signals, there still isn't any overshoot when you turn the overdrive setting off, and motion looks smooth.

BFI Setting	100	50	10
360Hz
240Hz
120Hz

The ASUS PG27AQN received a firmware update in May 2023 to support NVIDIA's ULMB 2, which is their implementation of a backlight strobing feature. It only works with fixed 120Hz, 144Hz, 240Hz, and 360Hz signals, and you can't use VRR at the same time. You can adjust the flicker somewhat to your liking, but using the lowest setting of '10' makes the screen really dim.

The backlight remains flicker-free at all times, which helps reduce eye strain during long gaming sessions.

The ASUS PG27AQN has low input lag for a responsive feel.

The ASUS PG27AQN has limited compatibility with the PS5 because it can't downscale a 4k signal. Other than that, everything works well, including the VRR support.

This monitor doesn't support 4k signals from the Xbox Series X|S, and because the Xbox requires a 4k signal for HDR, it doesn't support HDR either.

The red USB port is the port you need to connect your mouse to if you want to use the NVIDIA Reflex Latency Analyzer feature. Otherwise, you can also use it as a regular USB port.

The ASUS PG27AQN works well with macOS, although the refresh rate is limited to 240Hz. There aren't any issues with the VRR support, and HDR looks good, but the screen's brightness is locked to its max when in HDR. If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their original position when waking the laptop up from sleep or when reopening the lid. You can also close the laptop's lid and continue working on the monitor.

The ASUS ROG Swift PG27AQN has a few extra gaming features to improve the user experience, including:

• Aspect Control: There are settings to change the aspect ratio, including a '25" Mode' that simulates a 25-inch, 1080p screen to be like other 360Hz monitors, but you'll see black bars along the edges.
• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair on the screen that your system won't detect, giving you a competitive advantage.
• Dark Boost: Adjusts gamma to make it easier to spot other players in the shadows.
• FPS Counter: Displays the current frame rate of your source.
• Lighting Effect: You can download the Aura Sync program to customize the RGB lighting on the back of the monitor, or you can select some presets from the on-screen display.
• NVIDIA Reflex Latency Analyzer: This feature measures the latency of your entire setup, letting you see which sources have the highest latency. You need an NVIDIA 900 Series or newer graphics card and a compatible mouse for it to work. You also have to connect your mouse to the red USB port to use the feature.