- Table of Contents
- Intro
- Our Verdict
- Video
- Test Results
- Differences
- Compared to others
- Discussions
The Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is an excellent gaming monitor that's packed with unique features. It follows along the same lines as the Gigabyte Aorus AD27QD, with support for FreeSync variable refresh rate, and is certified to be compatible with NVIDIA's G-SYNC. Its 165Hz IPS panel has good viewing angles, impressive color accuracy right out of the box, and outstanding motion handling. There are some significant black uniformity issues that may disappoint some users, but its overall performance and feature set should satisfy even the most hardcore gamers.
Note: We tested the FI27Q, but there's also a minor variant known as the FI27Q-P. We expect our results to be valid for both models, but the -P variant has a DisplayPort 1.4 port, allowing for a higher refresh rate when playing back 10-bit HDR content.
Our Verdict
The Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is a great monitor for most uses. Despite its gamer-centric features and design, it works well in an office setting due to its IPS panel's wide viewing angles, great peak brightness, and decent reflection handling. Most gamers will appreciate the vast amount of features available, as well as the monitor's excellent motion handling and input lag. Its 1440p resolution delivers a sharp and detailed image, great for watching a movie or to immerse yourself in the latest RPG.
See our Mixed Usage recommendationsThe Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is a great monitor for office use. The 1440p resolution and the large 27 inch screen real estate makes multitasking a breeze. It can get bright enough to combat glare, and it has wide viewing angles to let you share your work easily. Furthermore, it has great ergonomics so you can position the monitor any way you want.
See our Office recommendationsThe Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is an excellent gaming monitor. It has virtually everything that gamers ask for: fast response time, low input lag, support for variable refresh rate, and more. It has a dizzying amount of extra features that might be useful for some, but unfortunately, its bad black uniformity and mediocre contrast ratio makes it less suitable for dark room gaming.
See our Gaming recommendationsThe Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is an impressive monitor for multimedia consumption. Movies and videos look amazing thanks to its resolution and excellent color reproduction. It's not the best choice for dark room viewing due to its low contrast ratio and bad black uniformity, but for bright rooms, it has decent reflection handling and great peak brightness to combat glare. Additionally, it has wide viewing angles so you can easily share content with friends and family.
See our Multimedia recommendationsThe Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is a great monitor for media creation. Its 1440p resolution delivers a picture that's crisp and clear, and its low input lag provides a responsive desktop experience. It's easy to adjust the monitor to your ideal viewing position thanks to its good ergonomics, and the IPS panel's good viewing angles ensures that the image stays accurate even if you're viewing from the side.
See our Media Creation recommendationsThe Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is a decent monitor for HDR gaming. Although it has an incredible amount of gaming features, this monitor's HDR performance is limited by its low contrast ratio and HDR peak brightness. On the bright side, it has a remarkably low input lag and an outstanding response time, providing you a smooth and responsive gaming experience.
See our HDR Gaming recommendations- 8.0 Mixed Usage
- 8.0 Office
- 8.4 Gaming
- 7.9 Multimedia
- 8.0 Media Creation
- 7.1 HDR Gaming
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Good ergonomics.
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Great color accuracy.
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Outstanding extra features.
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Bad black uniformity.
- Update 3/26/2020: Converted to Test Bench 1.1.
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Video
Test Results
The stand has wide-set feet, but due to their thinness, they don't take up a lot of space. There's a bit of wobble, but overall, the stand supports the monitor well.
The FI27Q has good ergonomics. It allows for all manner of adjustments, with good tilt and swivel range, and it can be rotated to portrait mode.
The back of the monitor has a gamer-centric aesthetic with some RGB lighting, and the hole in the stand can be used for cable management. There is a quick release feature if you choose to wall-mount the monitor.
The monitor is thick when mounted on the stand, but for those who want to wall-mount it, the display itself is thin.
The FI27Q has a great build quality. It's a mix of metal and plastic construction, and the monitor feels solid without any glaring flaws.
Like most IPS monitors, the FI27Q has a mediocre contrast ratio, resulting in blacks that look more like gray.
This monitor doesn't have a local dimming feature; the video above is for reference only.
The FI27Q has impressive SDR peak brightness. There's no noticeable variation in brightness when watching different content, and it's bright enough to overcome glare in a well-lit room. Brightness was measured with the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode.
HDR peak brightness is decent. Even with different content, there's very little variation in brightness; however, it's not bright enough to bring out specular highlights in HDR content. All of our tests were done in 'Custom 1' mode, at maximum brightness.
The Aorus FI27Q has good horizontal viewing angles. When viewed from the side, the first noticeable change is color shifting, followed by brightness, but thankfully, black level remains fairly stable. This is especially important if you like to share content or play co-op games.
Like most IPS panels, the FI27Q has very good vertical viewing angles. The image does degrade slightly faster than the horizontal axis, but overall, it should remain fairly accurate.
The FI27Q has remarkable gray uniformity. There's some vignetting around the top corners, but it's barely noticeable. The rest of the screen is very uniform, with no noticeable dirty screen effect.
The FI27Q has bad black uniformity. There's significant clouding throughout the screen, as well as some backlight bleed.
The FI27Q has impressive color accuracy right out of the box. There are inaccuracies with some colors, but grays are excellent. Gamma doesn't quite follow the target curve; as a result, most scenes aren't displayed at the correct brightness.
After calibration, color accuracy is superb, and any remaining inaccuracies are unlikely to be noticeable to the naked eye.
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.
sRGB Picture Mode: Custom
Adobe RGB Picture Mode: Custom
This monitor has outstanding SDR color gamut. It has almost full coverage of the sRGB space that is used in most content, and has excellent coverage of Adobe RGB color space, which is used for professional photo editing.
sRGB Picture Mode: Custom
Adobe RGB Picture Mode: Custom
This monitor has excellent SDR color volume. Its performance is nearly identical to the Gigabyte Aorus AD27QD, as it can't produce dark saturated colors due to its mediocre contrast ratio.
DCI P3 Picture Mode: Custom 1
Rec. 2020 Picture Mode: Custom 1
The FI27Q has a good HDR color gamut. Its coverage of the DCI P3 color space is great, which is used in most HDR content, while its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is decent.
DCI P3 Picture Mode: Custom 1
Rec. 2020 Picture Mode: Custom 1
The Aorus FI27Q has a decent HDR color volume. It can't produce dark colors well due to its low contrast ratio.
The Aorus FI27Q shows no signs of image retention and you shouldn't have any issues with permanent burn-in over time.
Outstanding gradient performance. There's virtually no noticeable banding in any shade.
Unfortunately, there's some vertical color bleed, but it shouldn't be noticeable in most content.
This monitor has decent reflection handling and you shouldn't have any issues in bright rooms. It's very similar to the LG 27GL850-B and the Gigabyte Aorus AD27QD.
| Mode | Response Time Chart | Motion Blur Photo |
| Picture Quality | Chart | Photo |
| Balance | Chart | Photo |
| Speed | Chart | Photo |
The FI27Q has outstanding response time, resulting in a clear picture with minimal blur trail. As most monitors' overdrive level can be adjusted, we recommend using the 'Balance' setting, as the 'Speed' setting caused significant overshoot with minimal gains.
The backlight is flicker-free and there's an optional black frame insertion (Aim Stabilizer) feature to help reduce motion blur, however, this feature can't be used while FreeSync is enabled.
This monitor has a remarkably fast refresh rate. It supports FreeSync and it's certified as compatible with NVIDIA's G-SYNC.
In order for G-SYNC to function properly, you must have NVIDIA GeForce driver version 436.30 or newer installed. With this update, FreeSync is automatically enabled when connected to a 10- or 20- series NVIDIA graphics card.
The FI27Q has outstanding input lag, even in 10-bit HDR mode, resulting in a responsive gaming experience.
The 1440p resolution is great for a 27 inch monitor, as it's usually considered the 'sweet spot'. It provides a detailed picture while leaving enough headroom on your graphics card to achieve high frame rates.
The FI27Q has a large number of inputs available. If you choose to use the 3.5mm audio port, the volume can be adjusted from the OSD. It has a separate microphone input, which is necessary if you want to use the ANC feature. There's a slightly different model of this monitor, the Aorus FI27Q-P, that has support for DisplayPort 1.4.
The Aorus FI27Q has a vast amount of extra features, it includes:
- LED bias lighting: RGB lighting on the back of the monitor, which can be controlled with the RGB Fusion 2.0 software.
- Dashboard: On-screen display to monitor your computer's status, such as temperature and fan speed.
- Timer: Sets an on-screen timer.
- Crosshair: Crosshair for shooter games.
- Frame rate counter: Frame rate overlay.
- Display Alignment: Shows alignment lines to help you adjust multi-monitor setups.
- ANC: Active noise cancelling to dampen background noise when you speak into the microphone, allowing your teammates to hear you clearly.
- PiP + PbP: Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture allows you to display an image from 2 sources at once.
- Black Stabilizer: Helps you see objects in dark scenes.
- OSD Sidekick: Allows you to change the monitor's settings using your mouse instead of the monitor's physical button.
Like the Gigabyte Aorus AD27QD, this monitor uses a joystick control to make navigating the menu easier.
Differences Between Sizes and Variants
We tested the Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q and it's the only size available. There is a slightly different model, the Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q-P, which supports DisplayPort 1.4. We expect our results to be valid for both models, for the most part.
| Model | Size | Resolution | Refresh rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aorus FI27Q | 27" | 1440p | 165Hz | FreeSync, G-SYNC compatible |
| Aorus FI27Q-P | 27" | 1440p | 165Hz | FreeSync, G-SYNC compatible |
If someone comes across a different type of panel or if their Aorus FI27Q doesn't correspond to our review, let us know and we'll update the review. Note that some tests, such as gray uniformity, may vary between individual units.
Our unit of the Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q was manufactured in September 2019 and you can see the label here.
Compared to other monitors
The Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q has one of the largest sets of features we've seen so far, and its performance is among the best as well. It stands out in the crowded market of 27 inch 1440p monitors, but its uniformity issues are also one of the worse we've seen. You can also see our recommendations for the best gaming monitor, the best 144Hz monitor, and the best 27 inch monitors.
The Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is marginally better than the LG 27GL850-B. The FI27Q has a much better build quality and ergonomics, as well as a better contrast ratio and color accuracy, but the LG has significantly better black uniformity. They perform similarly in terms of motion handling, but the LG has a faster response time, whereas the Aorus FI27Q has a higher refresh rate.
The ASUS TUF VG27AQ is slightly better than the Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q. The ASUS has better ergonomics, but its build quality isn't as good as the FI27Q. The ASUS also has a better contrast ratio and a significantly better black uniformity, but the Gigabyte has better color accuracy, can get brighter, and has much more extra features.
The Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is slightly better than the Gigabyte Aorus AD27QD in most uses. As these two monitors have a nearly identical design and feature set, their performance is also very similar. The main difference is that the FI27Q has a much wider HDR color gamut, but its response time is slower than the AD27QD. The FI27Q has bad black uniformity, but it's still an improvement over the AD27QD.
The Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q is better than the ViewSonic Elite XG270. Although the Gigabyte's refresh rate isn't as fast, it has a higher 1440p resolution and its out-of-the-box color accuracy is much better. The ViewSonic is a G-SYNC-only monitor, while the Gigabyte supports FreeSync, but it's certified to be compatible with NVIDIA graphics cards too.
The Acer Nitro XV273X has very similar performance to the Gigabyte Aorus FI27Q in mixed usage, but there are some notable differences. The Nitro XV273X has a 1080p resolution, while the FI27Q is 1440p. The Acer has a 240Hz refresh, a significantly better black uniformity, and a higher peak brightness, however, the FI27Q has much more extra features and a much better build quality.
