ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ Monitor Review

The ASUS PG42UQ is a large display with a gamer-oriented tripod stand. It has metal feet, and the panel has a black back with ROG branding. It even features a slot to attach something like a tripod on top, like for a webcam.

The ASUS PG42UQ has fantastic build quality. The metal stand holds the display well, and the feet are grippy, so they don't slide around. There isn't any wobble from side to side, but there's a bit from front to back because the stand tilts. The bezels are uniformly attached to the screen and the plastic housing in the back feels good.

The stand offers limited ergonomics as you can only tilt it, but at least it's better than stands on other large monitors. The back features covers for the inputs, and you can guide the cables through the stand for cable management.

The tripod stand is metal, and it holds the display well. It takes up a lot of space on the desk, which is normal for such a large display, and at least there's space between the feet to put your mouse and keyboard.

You can control the monitor's settings with the included remote, which is rather basic but has the necessary buttons. We received the remote with a typo on the side that says 'For Those Eho Dare', and this isn't a problem only with our remote. There's also a joystick underneath the center branding to navigate the on-screen menu.

• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Power cable
• Accessory bag
• User manuals, documentation, and stickers

Thanks to its OLED panel, the ASUS PG42UQ has a near-infinite contrast ratio that displays perfect blacks next to bright highlights. It's ideal for watching content in dark rooms.

The ASUS PG42UQ 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 it performs and compare it with a monitor that has local dimming.

The ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ has okay SDR peak brightness, which is typical of OLED monitors as they don't get bright enough to combat glare. However, there isn't much variation in brightness between different scenes when you enable Uniform Brightness, which is meant to reduce the Automatic Brightness Limiter, similar to the Peak Brightness setting on LG TVs. It's important when maximizing and minimizing windows as you don't want any distracting changes in brightness.

These results are from after calibration in the 'User Mode' Game Visual with the Uniform Brightness enabled, Brightness at its max and all Screen Protection settings disabled. If you want the brightest image possible and don't care about the ABL, you can disable Uniform Brightness, and the screen gets much brighter:

• Real Scene: 235 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 365 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 371 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 372 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 202 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 114 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 360 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 362 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 364 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 202 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 113 cd/m²

The HDR brightness is very good, and it's much brighter than other similarly-sized OLEDs like the LG 42 C2 OLED and the LG 48GQ900-B. It means that highlights pop for a satisfying HDR experience. The EOTF doesn't follow the target PQ curve perfectly as most scenes are too dark, but with a smooth roll-off at the peak brightness, there isn't too much of a loss in details in bright scenes.

These results are in the 'ASUS Gaming HDR' HDR Setting, which automatically maxes out the brightness and disables Uniform Brightness.

Note: HDR looks severely washed out with some sources while using firmware V032 or V033, so highlights and colors don't pop as they should. You can read more about it in the Color Gamut section.

The ASUS PG42UQ has an excellent horizontal viewing angle. The image remains consistent if you're viewing it from the side. However, if you sit too close to the screen, the edges of the screen start to shift colors and look inaccurate, so you need to sit far enough from the screen to see an accurate image.

The vertical viewing angle is once again fantastic. If you're standing up and looking down at the monitor, you'll see the same thing as if you were sitting down.

The ASUS PG42UQ has amazing gray uniformity. There's hardly any dirty screen effect or dark areas throughout, which is great when viewing full-screen webpages or documents. There's a bit of a pink tint in the center, which is typical of OLEDs. Also, like any OLED, there are faint vertical lines in near-dark scenes. However, you'll only notice them if you look for them.

Although some people have reported issues with severe image retention while using firmware V032, we didn't notice any image retention on ours during testing.

The black uniformity is perfect because OLEDs can display bright highlights next to blacks without any blooming.

The ASUS PG42UQ has great accuracy in SDR before calibration. It has an sRGB mode that aims to lock the colors to the sRGB color space, but it isn't perfect, as some colors are still oversaturated. Still, most colors and the white balance are only slightly off, and the color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K target. Unfortunately, gamma doesn't follow the sRGB target at all, as most scenes are too dark, while bright scenes are over-brightened.

The sRGB mode locks you out of a few settings including the Uniform Brightness. If you don't like that, you can use any picture mode with a separate sRGB clamp setting that performs the same as the sRGB mode, but the settings aren't locked out.

The accuracy after calibration to the 6500K white point is fantastic. It isn't perfect, but any inaccuracies are nearly impossible to spot by the naked eye.

The sRGB color gamut is incredible. It has perfect coverage of the sRGB color space used in most web content and has good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in some print publishing. However, like most monitors, reds and greens are off in this color space.

The ASUS PG42UQ has an outstanding SDR color gamut. It displays nearly all colors in bright and dark shades really well.

Update 12/09/2022: ASUS released a firmware update, V033, that's advertised to fix the 'ConsoleHDR' mode, power, and overclock issues. We didn't experience the power and overclock issues in our original testing with a Windows PC (read more about the overclock with macOS here), so we looked at the HDR performance with this new firmware. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything to significantly improve the HDR performance as colors still look washed out. While playing Destiny 2 and Borderlands on the PC, colors are washed out with HDR enabled in Windows and in the game. The same thing happens even when disabling Windows HDR but keeping the HDR enabled in-game. It looks the same with the Xbox Series X while playing Destiny 2 as well, and external sources still look washed out in HDR. Enabling the overclock or VRR in HDR doesn't change anything either, so the HDR performance is still disappointing.

The ASUS PG42UQ has an excellent color gamut, but there are some issues depending on the source you're using. Our testing is done with an HDFury Vertex linker via HDMI, and with that, the monitor displays a wide color gamut with good tone mapping, which is what you see in the test results. However, when sent an HDR signal from other sources Windows HDR, the performance is significantly different as colors are more washed out. External sources like Apple TV also result in an undersaturated and washed out image, similar to Windows HDR, meaning it's the monitor that can't display proper HDR from most sources. It's because the tone mapping is terrible, which you can see here, and the monitor severely limits the color gamut. This was done with firmware version V032, which has since been pulled from ASUS' website.

We also compared images from Murideo in SDR vs. HDR to see if this source has any issues. Like with the Vertex, HDR looks as it should, but when you play games from the PC, HDR looks washed out. You can see examples of it below of SDR vs. HDR using the Murideo and also Destiny 2 on the PC:

As you can see from the photos above, HDR looks fine with the Murideo, but with a PC, as HDR looks under-saturated and colors are washed out compared to SDR. However, these pictures don't tell the whole story, and the difference is more noticeable in person.

The ASUS PG42UQ has great HDR color volume when tested with an HDFury Vertex Linker, but as explained in Color Gamut, HDR is severely washed out in Windows HDR, meaning it has a worse color volume.

The reflection handling is amazing. It's different from the LG 42 C2 OLED because it uses a matte finish instead of glossy, which is more typical of monitors. It helps reduce reflections very well, but also introduces a haziness to the image.

The ASUS PG42UQ has okay text clarity. It's worse than most monitors because it has low pixel density due to its increased size, so it can't display text as sharp as smaller displays. Also, not all programs support the RWBG (also known as WBGR) subpixel layout, as they're designed for RGB monitors. The default scaling is 300%, which is way too big, and you'll have to decrease it to around 100% or 125%, depending on your preference. The photos above are with the scaling at 100%, and enabling Windows ClearType helps improve the text clarity but also introduces some color fringing. You can also see it at 125% with ClearType on and ClearType off.

As this uses a RWBG subpixel layout, all four pixels are never on at the same time, but you can see different pixel combinations below:

• Blue only
• Green only
• Green and blue
• Red only
• Red and blue
• Red and green

The ASUS PG42UQ has fantastic gradient handling. There's a bit of banding in darker colors, but it's minor.

You can achieve its max refresh rate via overclock, similar to the LG 48QG900-B. We didn't experience any issues with the overclock with a Windows PC, but there are some problems with macOS, even after firmware V033.

The ASUS PG42UQ supports both FreeSync and G-SYNC variable refresh rate (VRR) technologies to reduce screen tearing. Both work over the entire refresh rate range over HDMI and DisplayPort, and it supports Low Framerate Compensation to continue working when the frame rate drops too low.

The ASUS PG42UQ has a near-instantaneous response time that results in almost no motion blur with fast-moving objects. However, due to the sample-and-hold method of OLEDs, there's still some persistence blur. Unlike other gaming monitors, it doesn't have any overdrive settings to further improve the response time.

Like at the max refresh rate, the response time at 120Hz is extremely fast, and you won't notice any motion blur with fast-moving objects.

The ASUS PG42UQ has a fast refresh rate at 60Hz. When sending a fixed 60Hz signal, the screen is actually refreshing at 120Hz, so the results are nearly identical to the response time at 120Hz. However, the screen properly refreshes at 60Hz with VRR enabled, so the results are with VRR enabled. You can still see the results with a fixed 60Hz refresh rate here:

• Charts
• Tables

Unfortunately, the ASUS PG42UQ doesn't have a backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

The ASUS PG42UQ doesn't use pulse width modulation like on LED-backlit monitors, but it isn't flicker-free either. There's a slight dip in brightness that coincides with the 138Hz refresh rate. However, this isn't visible and isn't a full on and off flicker like on LED-backlit monitors that use PWM.

The ASUS PG42UQ has low input lag with high-frame-rate signals for a responsive gaming experience. However, the input lag increases a lot with 60 fps content, likely because of the 120Hz refresh rate with fixed 60Hz signals. It's a bit inconsistent, going from 21.8 ms to the max 28.6 ms, so it isn't ideal for competitive, reaction-based gaming, but it's fine for casual gamers.

Due to its larger screen compared to smaller 4k displays, it has the same pixel density as a 27-inch, 1440p monitor.

Thanks to its HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, the ASUS PG42UQ can take full advantage of the PS5, including its VRR support.

The ASUS PG42UQ works without issue with the Xbox Series X, and unlike other displays, VRR also works with 1440p @ 60Hz signals.

The power input is located on the left side.

Unlike many monitors, it has an Optical Digital Audio Output, which is something most TVs have to connect to a soundbar. The two HDMI ports that support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth are HDMI 3 and 4, which are side-facing.

Two of the USB ports are located on the side with the rest of the inputs, while there's another on top and one located on the bottom next to the headphone jack.

Update 12/09/2022: ASUS released a firmware update, V033, that's advertised to fix the wake-up issue while using the overclock issue. Unfortunately, the update doesn't change anything about the wake-up issue with macOS.

The ASUS PG42UQ works properly with recent M1 MacBooks. There aren't any issues with VRR, and Windows return to their position when sleeping but not when closing the lid, which is a common issue with monitors. However, with the overclock feature enabled, you need to use the remote to turn it back on when waking up from sleep. There's a bit of brightness flicker with the overclock enabled and VRR on, but it's only in certain situations, and it's hard to notice.

The ASUS PG42UQ has Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture modes, but there are a few limitations. You need to disable the overclock and VRR, and enabling PBP/PIP also disables the Display Stream Compression, aspect control, and HDR, so you're limited to the signals you use with it, and you can't use the monitor the same way you normally would on its own. There are also a bunch of extra features, including:

• Aspect Control: Lets you change the aspect control of the display, including to a 21:9 ultrawide format.
• Blue Light Filter: Reduces the blue light to help reduce eye strain.
• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair that your system won't detect, giving you a competitive advantage with FPS games.
• Shadow Boost: Adjusts the gamma so that you can see opponents better in dark areas of a game.
• Timer and Stopwatch: Displays a timer and stopwatch on the screen.

There are also a few settings to help reduce the risk of permanent burn-in and temporary image retention associated with OLEDs like Pixel Cleaning, Screen Move, Screen Saver, and Adjust Logo Brightness. Even though it's likely less prone to burn-in than older OLED panels, there's still a risk, and temporary image retention can be a problem if you leave a high-contrast static image on the screen for a long time. It's best to leave these settings enabled to reduce these risks. OLED panel technology has significantly advanced since our real-world burn-in test, which used 2017 models, but we've started a new longevity test to determine how effective each of these new panel technologies are at reducing the risk of burn-in.