ASUS TUF VG27VQ Monitor Review

The VG27VQ has a simple design, similar to other ASUS monitors. It's made entirely out of a solid black plastic. The curved screen has thin bezels, although the bottom bezel is a bit thicker. The stand supports the monitor well.

The stand has a square base on an incline and it holds the monitor well with minimal wobble.

The VG27VQ has decent ergonomics. There's height, swivel, and tilt adjustments, but like most curved screen monitors, you can't place it in portrait mode.

The back of the TUF Gaming VG27VQ has a gamer-friendly look similar to other TUF Gaming monitors, including the ASUS TUF VG279Q. It can be VESA mounted, but there's no quick release on it. Most people will appreciate the cable management through the stand.

The thin bezels are great for multi-monitor setups.

This monitor is fairly thick because of the curved screen, but not as thick as the MSI Optix G27C4.

Great build quality on the VG27VQ. It's made out of a solid plastic and feels well-built, similar to other ASUS monitors.

Like most VA panels, the VG27VQ has a great contrast ratio, resulting in deep blacks when viewed in the dark.

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

Good SDR peak brightness. There's no variation between the brightness when viewing different types of content and it should be bright enough for most rooms.

This monitor doesn't support HDR. If you want a monitor that supports HDR, check out the LG 32GN50T-B.

Like most VA panels, the VG27VQ has poor horizontal viewing angles. The image accuracy will start to decrease when viewed from the side.

Like most VA panels, the vertical viewing angles are bad. If you sit close to the monitor, you'll notice the image lose color accuracy and brightness at the top and bottom of the screen.

Good gray uniformity on the VG27VQ. There are some dark spots close to the center and along the sides, but most people won't see any dirty screen effect, which is noticeable during sports viewing.

Bad black uniformity. There's visible backlight bleed along the top and bottom of the screen and blooming around the center cross, which will be noticeable when watching dark scenes.

The VG27VQ has great out-of-box color accuracy. Most colors are accurate, although the gamma curve is slightly below the target, resulting in images looking brighter than they should. The color temperature is slightly colder than the target of 6500K, so most colors will appear closer to blue, but most people won't notice it.

Post calibration the colors are accurate, except for blue, which is normal for LED monitors. The gamma curve follows the target really well, so scenes appear at the correct brightness.

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 even for the same model, due to manufacturing tolerances.

The VG27VQ has a great color gamut. It covers the sRGB color space used in most content well, but not as good as most monitors. The coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing might be too limiting for some. If you want a bigger monitor with a wider SDR color gamut, check out the Samsung T55.

Excellent SDR color volume. The great contrast ratio on this monitor helps produce dark, saturated colors.

This monitor doesn't support HDR.

This monitor doesn't support HDR.

As with most VA panels, there are no issues with temporary image retention or permanent burn-in.

The color gradient is okay on this monitor. There's visible banding when displaying black, dark red, dark green, green, and dark blue. This affects the way shadows are displayed.

The monitor couldn't properly display the 10-bit color gradient, although it's advertised as being 8bit+FRC to display 10-bit content. See the results here.

There's no visible sign of color bleed on this monitor.

The TUF Gaming VG27VQ has decent reflection handling. The matte coating diffuses light well enough in an average-lit room, but it doesn't perform as well in a really bright room. If you want a monitor with better reflection handling, check out the Samsung Odyssey G5.

Text clarity is decent, though it can be improved by enabling ClearType (top photo), as it significantly improves the appearance of diagonal lines, as seen in the letters R and N.

The VG27VQ has a decent response time at its max refresh rate. There's visible blur trail behind fast-moving objects and motion doesn't look clear. You can adjust the Trace Free setting and the '80' setting provides the best performance, although there's overshoot on bright objects. If response time is important to you, the MSI Optix G27C5 is a similar monitor with a much quicker response time.

The response time at 60Hz on the VG27VQ is decent and it's better than the response time at its max refresh rate. There's obvious blur trail behind fast-moving objects, and the setting that performs best is '60.' Even on that setting motion isn't clear. If you prefer something with a better response time at 60Hz, check out the ASUS TUF Gaming VG27WQ1B.

The VG27VQ has a flicker-free backlight.

There's a black frame insertion feature to help reduce motion blur, but it doesn't go below 100Hz. Unlike the ASUS TUF VG27AQ, this monitor doesn't support ELMB-SYNC, so BFI can only be enabled if FreeSync is disabled.

Amazing refresh rate. The TUF Gaming VG27VQ supports FreeSync and has a wide VRR range with a HDMI connection. Additionally, it's G-SYNC compatible, but it's not NVIDIA certified.

The VG27VQ has an incredibly low input lag. It's nearly as quick with VRR enabled as it is at the native resolution, but it slows down a bit at 60Hz.