Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 Monitor Review

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has simple, clean look with a very unique stand design and great build quality. It has one of the best cable management systems we've ever seen. Surprisingly, other than the stand, it has a fairly simple design, with a smooth finish on the back and no RGB lighting or other gamer aesthetic.

The stand has a very unique design, but it takes up a lot of space. The two-tiered stand blocks the front of the monitor, so you can't easily place other objects in front of the display. It's very solid and supports the monitor well.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has mediocre ergonomics. It has a good swivel range and great tilt range, but the height adjustment is a bit narrow. The ergonomic adjustments feel smooth, and it's easy to adjust it to a comfortable viewing position.

The back of the monitor is plain, with a smooth finish and an overall clean design. This monitor has one of the best cable management systems we've ever seen, with four adjustable clips that slide up and down the back of the stand. There's also a 1/4" mounting point on the top of the stand that allows you to mount a camera or other accessory to the top of the monitor using an Elgato Flex Arm.

The Corsair XENEON has very thin bezels on three sides, but even the bottom bezel isn't very distracting.

Due to the size of the stand, this is a pretty thick monitor overall. The stand leans back a bit, so the distance between the viewer and the screen changes as you adjust the height.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has great build quality. The aluminum stand has a premium feel to it. It's very solid, and it supports the monitor well with very little wobble. Unfortunately, the stand's premium build quality doesn't extend to the display itself, which appears to be entirely plastic. There's a bit of flex to it, and the bottom bezel is slightly uneven. The display isn't bad, really, but it's noticeably less premium than the stand, which is disappointing if you're planning on VESA-mounting it.

Unfortunately, as expected for an IPS monitor, the Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has mediocre contrast, so blacks look gray if you're in a dark room. There's no local dimming feature to improve contrast, either. Contrast can vary between individual units, but these results are a bit higher than usual for an IPS display, and they're higher than Corsair's advertised typical contrast ratio of 1000:1.

Unfortunately, the Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the display so you can compare the backlight performance with a monitor that has local dimming.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has great peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome glare in most rooms, so visibility shouldn't be an issue. There's no variation in brightness with different content, which is great. These results are slightly lower than Corsair's advertised numbers, but it's not a noticeable difference.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Standard' Picture Mode with Brightness set to '100', and Gamma set to '2.2'.

Unfortunately, the Corsair 32QHD165 has just okay peak brightness in HDR. It's not bright enough to deliver a true HDR experience, and small highlights don't stand out at all. There's only one HDR mode on this monitor, and enabling locks out all other picture settings.

As expected for an IPS display, the Corsair Xeneon 32QHD165 has a great horizontal viewing angle. There's some brightness loss at wide angles, but most people won't notice it.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has just alright vertical viewing angles. Colors and gamma shift at moderate angles, causing the image to appear washed out to anyone looking at it from above or below.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has excellent gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are darker than the center, but it's not very noticeable with real content. There's almost no dirty screen effect, and near-dark scenes look almost perfect. Gray uniformity can vary between individual units, but it's rarely an issue on modern monitors.

Unfortunately, the Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 we bought has just acceptable black uniformity, but this can vary between units. The screen is cloudy throughout, and the backlight is bleeding through the edges a bit. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve black uniformity.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 we bought has amazing accuracy out of the box. The white balance is excellent, and there are no noticeable issues with color accuracy. The color temperature is slightly cool, but it's not noticeable. Gamma is closer to a flat 2.2 instead of the sRGB curve, which is a bit disappointing, as dark scenes are a bit too dark and brighter scenes are too bright

Unfortunately, the sRGB mode is almost a necessity with this monitor, as the other picture modes are oversaturated, as you can see in the CIE 1931 xy graph of the 'Standard' Picture Mode. This isn't a perfect solution, either, as all picture settings except 'Brightness' are locked in the sRGB mode. If you enjoy oversaturated content, the other picture modes are fine, but if you prefer accurate colors, it's best to either calibrate the monitor or use the sRGB mode.

After calibration, the Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has superb accuracy. There are no noticeable issues with the white balance or colors, and gamma is much closer to the sRGB target curve. Visually, the difference between the out-of-the-box settings and the calibrated settings isn't very noticeable. Calibrating this monitor can still be advantageous, as it stops colors from being oversaturated outside of the sRGB mode, so you don't have to deal with the limits of the sRGB mode.

You can download our ICC profile calibration here. It's 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 Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has an incredible SDR color gamut, with perfect coverage of the sRGB and Adobe RGB color spaces. Unfortunately, it's a bit oversaturated in Adobe RGB, which may disappoint some users.

Thanks to the incredible SDR color gamut, this monitor has fantastic color volume in SDR. Colors are just as bright as pure white, but like most IPS monitors, it can't display dark saturated colors due to the low contrast ratio.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has an excellent HDR color gamut. It can display most of the DCI P3 color space used by most current HDR content. It also has one of the widest Rec. 2020 color gamuts we've measured on any display.

The Corsair 32QHD165 has good color volume in HDR. It's limited a bit by the incomplete color gamut, and like with SDR, it can't display dark saturated colors.

There are no signs of temporary image retention on our unit, which is great.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has superb gradient handling when sent a 10-bit signal, which, unfortunately, is only supported up to 120Hz. Above 120Hz, it can only display an 8-bit signal, and there's noticeable 8-bit banding.

Unfortunately, there's some vertical color bleed on our unit, but this can vary between individual units. It's rarely noticeable with real content, though, even on monitors that perform poorly on this test.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has decent reflection handling. Glare from bright lights or windows is still distracting, but the matte coating does a decent job reducing the intensity. Combined with the great peak brightness of this display, visibility won't be an issue indoors.

Unfortunately, due to the relatively low pixel density of the Corsair 32QHD165, it has just decent text clarity. The bottom photo with ClearType off shows some fringing around text, especially on curved or diagonal lines. Enabling ClearType vastly improves this (top photo), but it's still not great. If text clarity is important, a smaller 1440p monitor or a 32 inch 4k model would be a better choice.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has a superb response time at the max refresh rate. Like most gaming monitors, you can adjust the level of overdrive. We recommend the 'Fast' Response Time setting, as it delivers the best overall results, with a very fast rise/fall time, no overshoot, and no noticeable ghosting behind fast-moving objects.

At the max refresh rate, the 'Normal' mode is pointless, as 'Fast' is faster without adding any noticeable overshoot. The highest mode, 'Fastest', delivers a slightly faster response time, with all rise/fall times coming in under 3ms. That's fantastic, but there's significantly more overshoot and a noticeable inverse ghosting trail behind fast-moving objects.

The Corsair 32QHD165 has a fantastic response time at 60Hz. We recommend the 'Normal' Response Time mode this time, as it delivers the best overall results. The 'Fast' setting we recommend at the max refresh rate has more overshoot at lower refresh rates, so there's some inverse ghosting, but it's not too noticeable.

As this monitor lacks a variable overdrive feature, for the best results we recommend switching the overdrive setting to 'Normal' when changing to a lower refresh rate source. If you're looking for a "set and forget" mode, though, 'Fast' is the safest choice. Unfortunately, the 'Fastest' mode is pretty bad, with severe inverse ghosting behind fast-moving objects.

The backlight is completely flicker-free at all backlight levels, which is great as it can help reduce eye strain.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. Like most monitors, it's not available if FreeSync is enabled. Unfortunately, this feature is only available in a narrow refresh rate range, so it's not that useful. The team at Hardware Unboxed mentioned that they were able to get it working as low as 100Hz, which is a bit better, but that's most likely using a custom refresh rate signal. Keep in mind that our scoring is based on the flicker range and not the actual performance.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has a very fast refresh rate that most gamers will appreciate. It supports FreeSync variable refresh rate technology over both HDMI and DisplayPort, but over HDMI, the max refresh rate is 144Hz. Although advertised by Corsair as G-SYNC Compatible as well, it's not currently certified by NVIDIA. G-SYNC can still be enabled manually, though, and it appears to be working properly, but only over DisplayPort.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has exceptional low input lag, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience. Unlike most monitors, it even has slightly lower input lag with the variable refresh rate feature enabled.

Unfortunately, we couldn't measure the 10-bit HDR input lag because the highest refresh rate for 10-bit HDR over HDMI on this monitor is 60Hz, and we don't have the necessary tools to measure it at its max refresh rate over a DisplayPort connection. We don't expect HDR to increase the input lag. Strangely, this monitor is also limited to 120Hz with a 10-bit signal over DisplayPort. This is unexpected, as DisplayPort has enough bandwidth to support a 10-bit 1440p signal at 165Hz.

The Corsair 32QHD165 has a great amount of screen space to work with. The relatively low pixel density only delivers decent text clarity, though, but it's still great for multitasking.

There are two USB-C ports on the Corsair 32QHD165. One of them is the upstream port that goes to your PC, and the other is an input that supports DisplayPort Alt Mode and 15W of power delivery, which is, unfortunately, too low to charge any laptop.

The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 isn't as well-equipped as most comparable monitors, but there are a few nice gaming extras:

• Refresh Overlay: Adds an overlay that displays the monitor's current refresh rate.
• Console Mode: More a feature of the device than an actual mode, it'll accept a 4k @ 60Hz signal from a supported console, and downscale the image to 1440p.
• Corsair iCue Integration: This monitor is fully compatible with Corsair's iCue software. This software can be used to adjust any setting on the display.
• Elgato Stream Deck Integration: Similar to the iCue integration, settings and inputs can also be assigned to Stream Deck buttons, so you can adjust your settings or change inputs with the push of a button.
• Warranty: Given that this is Corsair's first monitor, we feel it's worth mentioning that it comes with a 3 year warranty, which is uncommon.

The on-screen display is very well-organized and easy to use.

There's a five-way joystick on the back that you can use to navigate the OSD. You can also use Corsair's iCUE software to adjust any setting on the monitor.

• Power supply
• Power cable
• DisplayPort cable
• USB-C cable
• HDMI cable
• User guides