ASUS TUF Gaming VG258QM Monitor Review

The ASUS VG258QM looks almost identical in design to the ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM. It's simple and boxy, with a square stand and red accents that are typical of ASUS gaming monitors.

The square stand is fairly small but sturdy, and it supports the monitor well. It shouldn't take up too much desk space.

The ASUS TUF VG258QM has fantastic ergonomics. It has a wide swivel range that's great for sharing content, and it can rotate into portrait mode in either direction.

The back of the ASUS VG258QM is plastic with gamer-oriented etchings. Otherwise, it's quite simple, and it includes a cutout in the stand for cable management.

The ASUS VG258QM has thin borders, which is great for multi-monitor setups.

The monitor itself is fairly thin, so it shouldn't stick out much if you're VESA-mounting it. With the stand, it's thicker but should still leave plenty of desk space.

The ASUS TUF VG258QM feels well-built, with the same great quality that you get with other TUF monitors. There's not too much wobble, adjustments feel solid, and there are no obvious gaps or issues.

The ASUS VG258QM has a mediocre contrast ratio, although this may vary a bit between units. Blacks tend to look grayish in the dark, which is typical of a TN panel.

The ASUS VG258QM doesn't have a local dimming feature. The above video is provided for reference only.

The ASUS VG258QM has great SDR peak brightness. It's above the advertised 400 nits and stays consistent with different content. It should be enough to overcome glare in most lighting conditions.

We measured peak brightness after calibration using the 'Racing' Picture Mode with Brightness set to max.

The HDR peak brightness is okay. As with SDR brightness, it stays consistent when displaying different scenes, and it meets the advertised DisplayHDR 400 specification. It delivers a fair HDR experience, especially when viewing in the dark, although it may not be enough to make the brightest highlights pop as they should.

We measured the HDR brightness using the 'ASUS Gaming HDR' Picture Mode, in which the brightness setting is locked.

The ASUS VG258QM has mediocre horizontal viewing angles, but this is expected of a TN panel. The image loses accuracy as soon as you move off-center, which isn't ideal for co-op gaming. For a monitor with wide viewing angles, check out the LG 27GN800-B.

The ASUS VG258QM has poor vertical viewing angles, so the image looks inaccurate if you mount it above or below eye level. As with other TN monitors, it looks especially bad from below.

The ASUS VG258QM has decent gray uniformity, but this can vary between individual units. The upper section of the screen looks noticeably darker than the bottom, which is normal for TN panels. Thankfully, there isn't much dirty screen effect and uniformity is better in near-dark scenes.

The ASUS TUF VG258QM has mediocre black uniformity. There's noticeable clouding throughout and blooming around bright objects. Keep in mind that black uniformity can vary between units.

The ASUS VG258QM has passable out-of-the-box color accuracy, though this can vary between units. There's an 'sRGB' Picture Mode, but it looks even worse, so we recommend the 'Racing' mode. Most colors are very off the mark, and while white balance is fairly accurate, there are still a lot of inaccuracies. Gamma doesn't follow the curve at all, so most scenes appear much brighter than they should, and the color temperature is colder than our target, resulting in a blue-tinted image.

After calibration, accuracy is fantastic. Any remaining inaccuracies with color and white balance shouldn't be noticeable without a colorimeter. Gamma is much improved, following the curve almost perfectly, except that very dark and very bright scenes may still be a tad over-brightened. The color temperature is almost exactly at our 6500K target.

You can download our ICC profile calibration here. This is provided for reference only and shouldn't be used, as the calibration values vary per individual unit due to manufacturing tolerances, even for the same model.

The ASUS VG258QM has an excellent SDR color gamut with near-full coverage of the sRGB color space and good coverage of the wider Adobe RGB used in photo editing.

SDR color volume is amazing, although it has some trouble displaying dark colors due to its low contrast ratio. Like other LCDs, it also struggles a bit with very bright blues.

The ASUS VG258QM can't display a wide color gamut for HDR content. Its effective coverage of the common DCI P3 color space is worse than its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020. Given its Rec. 2020 coverage, it should be capable of showing approximately 70 percent of the DCI P3 color space, but the tone mapping is wildly inaccurate, so the effective color gamut ends up being much smaller. This means that if you're trying to play content that's sending a DCI P3 signal, the monitor has trouble interpreting the color signal correctly, resulting in an image that looks far from accurate. The mapping is a little better for Rec. 2020, but if you're playing a game in HDR that's sending a Rec. 2020 signal, it will still look pretty bad.

Because of its sub-par HDR color gamut, the ASUS VG258QM has poor HDR color volume. It struggles with both dark and bright colors.

There are no signs of temporary image retention, although this can vary between units.

The ASUS VG258QM has superb gradient handling. Banding is hardly noticeable, except maybe a bit in the reds and greens.

There's a bit of color bleed in vertical columns, but it shouldn't be noticeable in regular content.

The ASUS VG258QM has great reflection handling. Its matte coating does an excellent job of diffusing direct light, so you shouldn't have issues with glare in bright rooms.

Text clarity is decent. With ClearType enabled (top photo), diagonal and curved lines look a little clearer, as in the R, N, G, and S.

The response time at the ASUS VG258QM's max refresh rate is outstanding, resulting in minimal motion blur. We recommend the 'Level 3' overdrive setting because it's the fastest without too much overshoot.

At 60Hz, the ASUS VG258QM's response time is significantly worse than at its max refresh rate. It has a strange issue where it can't hit the target brightness within one refresh cycle, so the pixels stabilize too early, and then finally hit the target after two refreshes. It's especially apparent in the 0-40, 0-60, 0-80, and 0-100 transitions. For instance, you can see this happening here in the 0-60 transition, where it doesn't hit the target threshold within one refresh (about 16ms). Practically speaking, this results in noticeable smearing and duplications, as you can see behind our logo in the photo above. If you want a similar monitor with better response times at 60Hz, check out the ASUS TUF Gaming VG249Q1A.

The backlight is flicker-free, which can help reduce eye strain.

The ASUS VG258QM has an optional Black Frame Insertion (BFI) feature, also known as backlight strobing, which can help reduce motion blur. On ASUS monitors, the BFI feature is called Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB), and it has five different 'Clarity' levels, which adjust the duration of the backlight strobing. Higher clarity levels hold black frames for longer, resulting in a darker image overall, meaning there's a trade-off between clarity and brightness. This monitor also lets you choose the 'Clarity Position', which changes whether the top, middle, or bottom part of the screen has more clarity by shifting the timing of the flicker pattern. Our photo and graph above are from 'Clarity' level 5, but you should adjust the BFI settings to whatever looks best to you. Note that our BFI score is based on the minimum and maximum frequency at which it operates, not the BFI's performance.

You can see the difference between 'Clarity' levels in the chart below.

The ASUS TUF VG258QM has a native refresh rate of 240Hz that can be overclocked to 280Hz in the OSD 'Overclock' menu, although it can only be overclocked over DisplayPort. It's compatible with FreeSync VRR and is NVIDIA-certified as G-SYNC compatible, but the latter doesn't work over HDMI.

The ASUS VG258QM has an incredibly low input lag at its max refresh rate. Like the ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM, it's significantly worse at 60Hz, so it's less suitable for console games running at 60fps. The max refresh rate you can get with 10 bit HDR over both DisplayPort and HDMI is 144Hz. We measured the HDR input lag with a 12 bit signal over HDMI at 144Hz because we had an issue getting 10 bit to work over HDMI, as it kept running at 30Hz even though Windows showed the refresh rate as 144Hz. For some reason, it also showed the resolution as 3840x1080 when it clearly wasn't. These issues only occurred over HDMI and weren't present with either 8 bit or 12 bit.

The size and resolution are decent, although 1080p may not be high enough for those who prefer to have a sharper image. The size is great for gaming, but may not be big enough for productivity.

There's a USB port; however, it's a service port that doesn't support upstream and is only meant for firmware updates.

The ASUS VG258QM supports HDR10 and has built-in speakers. It also has a ton of additional features, including:

• Crosshair: Puts a virtual crosshair on the display for first-person shooter games.
• Timer: Puts a timer on the screen.
• FPS counter: Overlay that shows the current frame rate.
• Display alignment: Helps align monitors in a multi-monitor setup.
• Zoom: Zooms in to enlarge a section of the image.
• Shadow Boost: Helps make objects more visible in dark scenes.
• Blue light filter: Helps reduce eye strain.

The controls are on the back of the right side, and they include four buttons and a joystick to navigate the on-screen display.

• User guide
• Power supply
• Power cord
• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable