ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQR  Monitor Review

The ASUS PG27UQR has a gamer-oriented design with a charcoal body that has some orange accents on the stand. It features large ROG branding on the back, which has RGB lighting.

The build quality is great, and there aren't any obvious issues. It's mainly plastic throughout, with some metal on the stand, and the materials feel solid. The stand is also well-made and holds the display well, even after you adjust it.

The ergonomics are very good, but some of the adjustments are limited in range, and you can only rotate it into portrait mode in a clockwise direction. Additionally, with the screen at its minimum height adjustment, the top of the screen is 16.3" (41.5 cm) from the desk. The stand also features a cutout for cable management.

The stand features a tripod stand that holds the display well, and the feet are wide enough that you can still place objects between them.

The ASUS PG27UQR features four buttons and a joystick to control the on-screen display.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-A to USB-B upstream cable
• Power cable and supply
• Color calibration report
• User guides
• ROG stickers

This monitor has a mediocre contrast ratio. Blacks look gray next to bright highlights, and while it has a local dimming feature, it fails to improve the contrast.

The edge-lit local dimming feature has eight zones, and it performs terribly. This is because whenever there's a bright object against a dark background, an entire zone lights up, resulting in distracting blooming. It's also slow to react to objects moving across the screen, which is distracting. That said, really small highlights don't trigger any of the zones, so there isn't any blooming, but that's only with really certain content that features such small highlights. However, most content causes all the zones to turn on, meaning the local dimming feature isn't doing anything to improve the picture quality. You can only disable Dynamic Dimming in SDR, as it's locked on in HDR.

The SDR brightness is great. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare and maintains the same brightness across different content, which is great. These results are from after calibration in the 'User Mode' GameVisual with the Brightness at its max and Dynamic Dimming disabled because it doesn't make the image brighter in SDR, and the local dimming feature performs terribly.

The ASUS PG27UQR has great HDR peak brightness. Most highlights get very bright, but because its local dimming feature doesn't turn on with really small highlights, they don't pop against the rest of the image. It also follows the PQ EOTF perfectly until there's a sharp roll-off at the peak brightness, allowing highlights to get the brightest they can. These results are with Dynamic Dimming locked on in the 'ASUS Gaming HDR' HDR mode. The only other HDR mode is 'ASUS Cinema HDR,' which has a slower roll-off with the EOTF. It's tone mapping before your source does, but this is good for watching movies anyway, as it preserves details.

The horizontal viewing angle is decent. It's fine if you need to share your screen with someone next to you as they'll see a consistent image, but it isn't as good as other IPS monitors because it gets darker at really wide angles.

The vertical viewing angle is decent, and it's fine if you're standing up and looking down at the monitor.

The ASUS PG27UQR has great gray uniformity. Although the edges are darker, there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center.

The black uniformity is alright. There's backlight bleed and clouding with local dimming disabled. While the local dimming feature doesn't turn on any of the zones with our test cross or any other really small object, the uniformity is much worse, and there's more blooming with larger objects, as you can see here.

The dedicated sRGB mode has excellent accuracy before calibration. Colors aren't oversaturated as most colors are accurate, and the white balance is also decent, but brighter shades of gray are a bit off. Gamma follows the sRGB curve almost perfectly, but the color temperature is on the cold side, giving the image a blue tint. Unfortunately, the sRGB mode locks a few settings, including Brightness, so you'll have to use another, less accurate mode if you want a brighter image, as you can see here.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic. Besides saturated blues, there aren't any obvious inaccuracies.

The ASUS PG27UQR has a fantastic SDR color gamut. It has near-perfect coverage of the common sRGB color space and great coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing. However, it undersaturates greens in that color space and oversaturates reds.

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

The HDR color gamut is great. It has excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used in most web content, but most colors are undersaturated, especially greens. Unfortunately, it has more limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, with worse tone mapping.

The ASUS PG27UQR has a great HDR color volume. While it's limited by its incomplete color gamut, it still displays bright and dark colors well.

The reflection handling is good. Although strong light sources create some distracting glare, the monitor's high peak brightness is useful if you want to place it in a well-lit room.

The text clarity is fantastic. Its high pixel density helps result in sharp text, and enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) improves the clarity. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

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

As this monitor supports Display Stream Compression (DSC), you can reach its max refresh rate over DisplayPort as long as your graphics card also supports DSC, which any NVIDIA 16 Series or AMD RX 5000 Series and newer graphics card supports.

Both FreeSync and G-SYNC work across a wide refresh rate range over HDMI and DisplayPort connections. It also supports Low Framerate Compensation (LFC) for VRR to continue working at lower refresh rates.

The ASUS PG27UQR has an amazing response time at its max refresh rate of 160Hz. There's minimal motion blur, so fast-moving objects look smooth and buttery. You can choose from different Variable OD settings, with 'Level 2' and 'Level 3' performing the best, but 'Level 2' has just a bit less overshoot. The lower settings have a slower response time, while the higher settings have more overshoot.

The response time at 120Hz is excellent. It's similar to its max refresh rate, as the 'Level 2' overdrive setting has minimal motion blur. Although 'Level 2' has a slightly slower total response time than 'Level 1', it still has a faster rise/fall time, and it has less overshoot than 'Level 3'.

The ASUS PG27UQR has an excellent response time at 60Hz. Like at higher refresh rates, the recommended 'Level 2' overdrive setting results in minimal blur, so it's a good set-and-forget mode with any game and refresh rate. It has a bit of overshoot, so if that bothers you, the 'Level 1' setting is a better choice.

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ELMB SYNC

The ASUS PG27UQR has an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur. The ELMB setting is for when you want to use it with VRR disabled, and you have access to the Clarity Level and Clarity Position settings to control the pulse width and phase. It only works as low as 120Hz with VRR disabled, though. If you want to use it with VRR, you need to enable the ELMB SYNC setting, which also lets the feature continue working at lower refresh rates, but you don't have access to the Clarity Level and Clarity Position settings.

The backlight remains flicker-free at all brightness levels, which helps reduce eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker.

The ASUS PG27UQR has low input lag at high refresh rates, but it increases more than expected at 60Hz. We tested it multiple times, even with different equipment, and got the same results at 60Hz. While it isn't high enough to be noticeable while browsing the web or going through menus, it presents a competitive disadvantage when gaming. If you want something with a lower input lag at 60Hz, check out the LG 27GR93U-B.

This monitor works without issues with the PS5 as it supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth and can take full advantage of the console.

The ASUS PG27UQR supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, letting you take full advantage of the Xbox Series X|S, and there aren't any issues.

This monitor has some limitations with macOS, depending on your device and connection type. With a DisplayPort to USB-C cable, it supports VRR but not HDR, and the max refresh rate is 150Hz.

Over HDMI with the 2021 M1 MacBook Pro, which supports HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, the max refresh rate is 60Hz, and HDR works, but not VRR. The 2023 M2 MacBook Pro supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, allowing you to reach a 144Hz refresh rate. However, while the system shows that it supports VRR, it doesn't actually work and results in a black screen.

The ASUS PG27UQR has a few extra features, including:

• Blue Light Filter: Reduces blue light to help reduce eye strain.
• GamePlus: Offers different gaming features, including crosshairs and a frame rate counter.
• Lighting Effect: The Aura Sync and Aura RGB settings control the RGB lighting in the back. You can even sync it to other devices with the downloadable Armoury Crate program.
• Shadow Boost: Changes the gamma so that it's easier to see opponents in dark areas of games.
• USB Hub: Lets you choose whether or not you want to deliver power to USB devices even with the monitor on standby.