The ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM is an excellent IPS monitor that delivers a smooth and responsive gaming experience. It shares many similarities with its bigger brother, the ASUS VG279QM, as it also has a 1080p resolution and a 280Hz refresh rate. It has great visibility in bright environments thanks to its impressive peak brightness, but to the contrary, it isn't as well-suited for dark rooms due to its low contrast ratio. It has exceptionally fast response time, a Black Frame Insertion feature, as well as native FreeSync support and G-SYNC compatibility. It supports HDR10; however, HDR content doesn't look significantly better than in SDR because it lacks a wide color gamut and local dimming. On the upside, it has a great build quality, wide viewing angles, and outstanding ergonomics.
Overall, the ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM is a great monitor. It provides a responsive and smooth gaming experience with its low input lag and high refresh rate. Its wide viewing angles and outstanding ergonomics make it easier to share work or content, and its impressive peak brightness makes it suitable for brightly-lit settings. Sadly, while it does support HDR, it can't display a wide color gamut and lacks local dimming.
The ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM is a good monitor for office use. The screen may be too small for some, especially for multitasking; however, it keeps the pixel density high, so text and images look sharper. It gets bright enough to overcome glare, and it handles reflections well. It has outstanding ergonomics and wide viewing angles, making it easy to share your work with coworkers.
The ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM is an excellent gaming monitor. It has low input lag, and its motion handling is superb thanks to its fast response time, high refresh rate, and Black Frame Insertion feature. It supports FreeSync natively and is compatible with NVIDIA's G-SYNC. Unfortunately, it has a low contrast ratio that makes it less ideal for gaming in the dark, and its compact size may be too small for some.
The ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM is a good monitor for media consumption. It has a decent screen size with wide viewing angles so you can share content with others, and its outstanding ergonomics allow you to adjust the screen to your optimal viewing position with ease. It has an impressive peak brightness and good reflection handling to combat glare in bright rooms, but its dark room performance isn't that great due to its low contrast ratio.
The ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM is a good monitor for media creation. Its 24.5 inch screen provides a decent amount of space to work with, and its outstanding ergonomics allow you to position it however you like. It has near full coverage of the sRGB color space, but its coverage of Adobe RGB is much more limited. Unfortunately, it has a low contrast ratio, and it can't display a wide color gamut.
The ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM is a decent monitor for gaming in HDR. It has fast response time, high refresh rate, and low input lag for a responsive gaming experience. However, its low contrast ratio, as well as the lack of a wide color gamut and local dimming, limits its HDR performance. Also, it doesn't get bright enough to make highlights pop.
The ASUS VG259QM looks almost identical to its bigger brother, the ASUS VG279QM, just in a smaller, more compact size. It has thin bezels on three sides and a slightly thicker bottom bezel. It isn't too flashy and won't look out of place in an office setting.
The back of the monitor is plastic and relatively plain. It can be VESA-mounted, but there's no quick-release feature. There's a small cutout at the bottom of the stand that serves as cable management.
The ASUS TUF VG259QM doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video above is provided for reference only.
Great SDR peak brightness. It's bright enough to combat glare in most lighting conditions and very consistent across different content.
We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration, using the 'Racing' Picture Mode and with Brightness set to maximum.
The HDR peak brightness is okay. The brightness is very consistent when displaying different scenes. It's bright enough to deliver an alright HDR experience in games, but not in HDR movies. It's also significantly dimmer than the ASUS VG279QM, which is expected.
We measured the HDR peak brightness before calibration, using the 'ASUS Gaming HDR' Picture Mode. The screen's brightness is locked in this picture mode.
Like most IPS panels, the ASUS VG259QM has good horizontal viewing angles, but it isn't as good as the ASUS VG279QM. Colors appear washed out when you reach moderate viewing angles, and brightness decreases as well.
The vertical viewing angles are okay. The top and bottom of the screen remain accurate even if you sit up close due to the smaller screen size. It's more important if you have a multi-monitor setup where it's mounted above eye level.
Before calibration, the ASUS VG259QM has decent color accuracy. It has an sRGB mode that's more accurate than the Racing Mode that we used on the ASUS VG279QM, but using it locks the screen's brightness. There are some minor inaccuracies with a few colors, and white balance is off. Gamma doesn't follow the curve all that well, making dark scenes too dark and bright scenes brighter than they should be. The color temperature is very close to our 6500K target.
Note that the pre-calibration color accuracy can vary between units.
After calibration, color accuracy is superb. Any remaining color inaccuracies shouldn't be visible to the naked eye. White balance and gamma are nearly perfect. The color temperature is a bit warmer than what we initially started with, but still close to our target.
You can download our ICC profile calibration here.
There are no signs of temporary image retention on this monitor.
Note that temporary image retention can vary between units.
Great gradient handling. There's a small amount of banding in all colors, particularly in the grays, greens, and reds.
Unlike the ASUS VG279QM, it can only receive an 8-bit input signal.
The ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM's reflection handling is good. The matte anti-reflective coating does a great job of reducing the intensity of direct reflections but doesn't do as well when it comes to bright ambient lighting.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
0 | Chart | Table | Photo |
20 | Chart | Table | Photo |
40 | Chart | Table | Photo |
60 | Chart | Table | Photo |
80 | Chart | Table | Photo |
100 | Chart | Table | Photo |
120 | Chart | Table | Photo |
Update 08/28/2020: There's a hidden overdrive setting of '120'. It can be accessed through the service menu, as described here. Despite the name, it's actually between the 60 and 80 settings, but we don't recommend it, as there's too much overshoot.
The ASUS VG259QM has exceptional response time when playing at its maximum refresh rate, resulting in minimal motion blur in fast-moving scenes. There are many overdrive settings available. We recommend using '60', as it provides the best performance with virtually no overshoot.
Note that we found almost no difference between the '0' and '20', or the '40' and '60' overdrive settings. We suspect that the current firmware may be causing some bugs with these settings at the maximum refresh rate. We'll retest it once a firmware update is available.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
0 | Chart | Table | Photo |
20 | Chart | Table | Photo |
40 | Chart | Table | Photo |
60 | Chart | Table | Photo |
80 | Chart | Table | Photo |
100 | Chart | Table | Photo |
120 | Chart | Table | Photo |
Update 08/28/2020: There's a hidden overdrive setting of '120'. It can be accessed through the service menu, as described here. Despite the name, it's actually between the 60 and 80 settings, but we don't recommend it, as there's too much overshoot.
The response time at 60Hz is excellent, although not as good as its bigger brother, the ASUS VG279QM. The best overdrive setting is '40,' as there's only a small amount of overshoot in the darker transitions and when transitioning from dark to bright scenes.
The ASUS TUF Gaming VG259QM has an optional Black Frame Insertion feature to help improve motion clarity called 'ELMB,' and it can be used at the same time as variable refresh rate (VRR). The standard ELMB setting (without VRR) works between 120Hz and 280Hz, while the ELMB Sync setting (with VRR) works between 50Hz and 280Hz. That said, we found that it doesn't work at all between 50Hz and 85Hz. These results are consistent with our findings on the ASUS VG279QM.
The ASUS VG259QM's native 240Hz refresh rate can be overclocked to 280Hz using the OSD menu setting called 'Overclock,' but only over a DisplayPort connection, as the refresh rate over an HDMI connection is 240Hz. It supports FreeSync and is compatible with NVIDIA's G-SYNC; the latter only works over a DisplayPort connection.