Gigabyte AORUS FO48U OLED  Monitor Review

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has a simple design, and it looks more like most TVs than a monitor. The simple v-shaped metal feet support the display well, with minimal wobble. The feet are small but wide-set, so you'll need a larger table if you're not planning on VESA mounting it.

The Gigabyte FO48U has outstanding build quality. It has the same glass panel as the LG OLED TVs, with a metal backing and a plastic housing around the electronics on the back. The metal feet support the monitor well, allowing for very little wobble.

We took a few additional photos to showcase some of the extra details on the monitor:

• Back assembly
• Slogan in the middle of the screen
• Logo/vent
• Space Audio speakers

Unfortunately, the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has a fixed stand with no ergonomic adjustments. The back of the display looks a bit like the LG 48 C1 OLED, but with an AORUS logo etched in the back. Unfortunately, there's nothing on the back to help with cable management. The inputs face to the side and are easy to access, which is nice.

The v-shaped feet support the monitor well, but they're wide-set, so it requires a large table if you're not planning on VESA mounting it. The feet themselves are very small and don't take up much space, so you could still place a soundbar or other objects in front of the display.

You can control the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U's OSD using the joystick button at the back of the monitor, similar to most LG monitors. It also comes with a very basic remote that you can use to navigate the menus, change inputs, or power on/off the display.

• 3 different power cables
• Remote (closeup)
• 2x AAA batteries
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-B upstream cable
• User manuals

The Gigabyte FO48U's OLED panel can turn off individual pixels, resulting in a nearly infinite contrast ratio. This results in deep, inky blacks if you're in a dark room.

Since OLED panels are self-emissive, the Gigabyte FO48U has no backlight and no local dimming feature. We still film the local dimming video on the monitor, so you can see how it compares to other monitors with a local dimming feature and traditional LED backlight.

Unfortunately, the Gigabyte FO48U has mediocre peak brightness in SDR. Small highlights are significantly brighter than the LG 48 C1 OLED and the LG 48GQ900-B, but in real scenes, they're about the same. Unfortunately, although small highlights in dark scenes are very bright, the peak brightness decreases with larger bright areas on-screen. It can sustain bright highlights well, but there's a slight decrease in peak brightness over time.

It also dims the screen after a few minutes of relative inactivity, which is a burn-in prevention measure known as Automatic Static Brightness Limiter, or ASBL. On the AORUS FO48U, the activity threshold appears to be quite high, and even if you're just composing an email or reading a webpage for a few minutes, the screen dims considerably. Decreasing the contrast or brightness can trick the TV and stop this from happening, but unlike the LG OLED TVs, there doesn't appear to be any way to fully disable this.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode with Brightness set to 100. If you want a brighter image and don't care as much about accuracy, the 'Vivid' mode produces brighter highlights, but real scenes are about the same brightness as our calibrated settings.

Vivid Mode:
Real Scene: 202 cd/m²
Peak 2% Window: 624 cd/m²
Peak 10% Window: 520 cd/m²
Peak 25% Window: 371 cd/m²
Peak 50% Window: 206 cd/m²
Peak 100% Window: 112 cd/m²
Sustained 2% Window: 589 cd/m²
Sustained 10% Window: 495 cd/m²
Sustained 25% Window: 353 cd/m²
Sustained 50% Window: 196 cd/m²
Sustained 100% Window: 109 cd/m²

Unfortunately, the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has unremarkable peak brightness in HDR, and it's significantly dimmer in real scenes than the LG 48 C1 OLED. It's not bright enough for most HDR movies but still delivers an impactful experience when gaming in HDR. Small highlights can get really bright, but fade a bit when held over time. This shouldn't be too noticeable with most real content. It tracks the EOTF well, but near-black scenes are over brightened a bit. Unfortunately, the EOTF cuts off sharply at the monitor's peak brightness, causing a loss of fine details in bright scenes.

We measured the HDR peak brightness in the 'HDR' Picture Mode and Brightness set to '100'. If you prefer brightness over image accuracy, the 'Vivid' mode delivers significantly brighter highlights, but the real scene peak brightness is much lower, and it doesn't track the EOTF accurately, as almost all scenes are way too bright, and it rolls off sharply at its peak brightness, resulting in a loss of fine details in bright scenes.

HDR Vivid Mode:
Real Scene: 300 cd/m²
Peak 2% Window: 856 cd/m²
Peak 10% Window: 702 cd/m²
Peak 25% Window: 441 cd/m²
Peak 50% Window: 242 cd/m²
Peak 100% Window: 132 cd/m²
Sustained 2% Window: 798 cd/m²
Sustained 10% Window: 665 cd/m²
Sustained 25% Window: 418 cd/m²
Sustained 50% Window: 231 cd/m²
Sustained 100% Window: 127 cd/m²

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has a superb horizontal viewing angle. Colors wash out a bit at a wide angle, but it's not noticeable under most normal viewing conditions.

The Gigabyte FO48U has a fantastic vertical viewing angle. Colors shift at a slightly narrower angle than they do horizontally, but again, this isn't noticeable under most normal viewing conditions.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has exceptional gray uniformity. There's almost no dirty screen effect in the center, but the sides are slightly darker. Like all OLEDs, there are some faint vertical lines when displaying large uniform colors and in near-dark scenes, but they're really hard to see.

Thanks to the OLED panel, the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has perfect black uniformity. There's no blooming around bright objects and no cloudiness. With LED monitors, this can vary between units, but all OLEDs have perfect black uniformity.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U we bought has decent accuracy out of the box. There are some noticeable issues with brighter shades of gray, but most colors are displayed accurately. Unfortunately, even in the 'sRGB' Picture Mode, gamma doesn't track the sRGB gamma curve at all, as darker scenes are too dark, and bright scenes are significantly over brightened. The color temperature is also a bit warm, giving everything a slightly reddish tint.

After calibration, the Gigabyte FO48U has much better accuracy. Gamma follows the sRGB target curve almost perfectly, and the color temperature is almost perfect. The white balance and colors still have some inaccuracies, but other than a minor inaccuracy with pure cyan, it's not really noticeable.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has an incredible SDR color gamut. It can display the entire sRGB color space used by most current desktop content and games. Coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space is also excellent, but it can't display the full range of greens or cyans. It's still a great choice for professional content creators.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has outstanding SDR color volume. Thanks to the near-infinite contrast ratio, it can display dark saturated colors well, and bright colors are nearly as bright as pure white.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has a very good HDR color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by most current HDR content. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is decent, and it can display a wide color gamut.

We also took measurements of the HDR color gamut in the 'HDR Vivid' Picture Mode with a 50% stimulus, and we checked the tone mapping with CalMAN and a 75% stimulus:

DCI P3 Color Gamut
DCI P3 tone mapping
Rec. 2020 Color Gamut
Rec. 2020 tone mapping

Coverage of Rec. 2020 is about the same in 'HDR Vivid', but coverage of DCI P3 is much better, mainly due to a difference in tone mapping. The bad coverage of higher stimulus levels in 'HDR Vivid' reduces the color volume for both Rec. 2020 and DCI P3. Unfortunately, the tone mapping is terrible in this mode, so we really don't recommend it unless you only care about peak brightness.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has decent HDR color volume. Thanks to the OLED panel and nearly infinite contrast, it can display dark colors well, but bright colors in HDR aren't as bright as pure white.

We also took measurements of the HDR color volume in the 'HDR Vivid' Picture Mode:

DCI P3:
IPT Picture
Normalized volume: 78.8%
Rec. 2020:
IPT Picture
Normalized volume: 59.2%

Unfortunately, the terrible tone mapping in 'HDR Vivid' results in noticeably worse color volume.

The Gigabyte FO48U has superb reflection handling. The glossy finish reduces the intensity of direct reflections without spreading the glare around a larger area of the screen. Even glare from bright sources shouldn't be very distracting. If you prefer something with a matte finish to reduce the amount of distracting reflections, look into the ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ.

Update 01/07/2022: We checked to see if there was color fringing issues like on other OLEDs. Due to the subpixel layout, there's fringing when displaying solid colors. On a yellow square, there's red fringing to the left and green fringing to the right. On non-primary green squares, there's the same issue to the left and right. You likely won't notice this with most content, but it can be more noticeable during desktop use with solid colors.

Unfortunately, due to the WBGR subpixel structure, the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has just okay text clarity. Despite the similarities and nearly identical panel to the LG 48 C1 OLED, the FO48U has slightly worse text clarity, as the color fringing on the outsides of text is noticeably worse on this monitor.

Windows recommends a scaling factor of 150% for the AORUS FO48U, but this results in rather large UI elements. The photos in the review were taken at 100% scaling (no scaling), but we took a few additional photos to show you the difference between 100%, 125%, and 150%:

• 125% with ClearType
• 150% with ClearType
• 125% without ClearType
• 150% without ClearType

Like most OLED panels, this monitor uses four sub-pixels, but all four are never used at the same time. This image shows the red, white, and blue sub-pixels, but we also took photos of a few different colors to show how it displays them at a subpixel level:

• Blue
• Cyan
• Gray
• Green
• Magenta
• Red
• Yellow

The Gigabyte FO48U has fantastic gradient handling. There's very little banding in areas of similar color. Unlike the LG 48 C1 OLED, there are no options to smooth gradients and reduce banding.

Update 01/07/2022: We updated the firmware to version F05 and checked to see if G-SYNC works over DisplayPort. It now works without any issues over its entire refresh rate range, and G-SYNC also works over HDMI. Before the update, the screen would go black when we tried to use G-SYNC over a DisplayPort connection.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has a very fast refresh rate, and it supports FreeSync variable refresh rate technology. We also tested it with NVIDIA's G-SYNC Compatible mode and found that although it's not certified, it works properly with G-SYNC, and you need to make sure it's updated to the latest firmware for G-SYNC to work over DP. It has the same wide refresh rate range with any supported source, including support for low framerate compensation (LFC).

Like all OLED displays, the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has a near-instantaneous response time at the max refresh rate, resulting in crystal-clear motion with no noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects. There aren't any settings to adjust the overdrive.

Originally, we encountered some strange results during the response time testing that was caused by the monitor's Automatic Brightness Limiter and not the actual response time of the display. We initially used results from the LG 48 C1 OLED review, but we've since changed our testing exceptionally for OLED monitors to use a smaller window size that won't trigger the ABL and affect the results. The current results in all three response time boxes are from this monitor and not another.

As its max refresh rate is 120Hz, the response time at 120Hz is the same as its max refresh rate.

Like all OLED displays, the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has a near-instantaneous response time at 60Hz, resulting in crystal-clear motion with no noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects, but more persistence blur due to the slower refresh rate.

The Gigabyte FO48U has an optional black frame insertion feature to improve the appearance of motion. While you can enable it at 60Hz with firmware version F06 and later, the backlight still flickers at 120Hz, creating image duplication as you can see here.

The Gigabyte FO48U is nearly flicker-free, but like all OLEDs, there's a slight dip that coincides with the display's 120Hz refresh rate. This isn't at all noticeable.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has fantastic low input lag, as long as the Adaptive Sync setting is enabled. Strangely, disabling this setting causes the input lag to increase to 12.8ms at the native resolution and maximum refresh rate. Enabling this setting reduces input lag considerably, even if VRR is disabled on the source device. At 60Hz, the input lag increases to 21.0ms with this setting disabled. Since the black frame insertion (BFI) feature can't be enabled if Adaptive Sync is on, the input lag with BFI is higher.

The large, high-resolution screen of the Gigabyte FO48U is great for multitasking and delivers a more immersive gaming experience, depending on how close you're sitting.

The total inputs are one of the biggest differences between this monitor and the LG 48 C1 OLED, as the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U has a DisplayPort connection and it has a built-in USB hub. Like the C1, it also has HDMI 2.1 support but only two HDMI ports. Unfortunately, it doesn't support the full bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, unlike the LG 48GQ900-B, it's limited to 24Gbps. It isn't an issue with most sources, as it supports Display Stream Compression for higher bandwidth formats.

It also has a USB-C port that supports DisplayPort Alt Mode and USB-C Power Delivery, but it's advertised to only deliver 15W of power, which isn't enough to charge a laptop while using it. One of the audio out ports is also a mini Toslink optical out port.

Unfortunately, there are some issues when using this monitor with a MacBook. The max refresh rate is 60Hz when using a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter. VRR doesn't work at all, as it causes the screen to flash on and off repeatedly.

The Gigabyte AORUS FO48U comes with a few extra features, including:

• Virtual Crosshair: There are four virtual crosshairs to choose from. Unlike software virtual crosshairs, these can't be detected by your games.
• FPS Counter: Displays the current number of frames per second received from the source.
• Black Equalizer: Adjusts gamma to make it easier to spot other players/enemies in shadows.
• KVM: Like Gigabyte's M Series monitors, the FO48U also features a built-in keyboard, video, and mouse switch, but there's no dedicated button at the back. This feature allows you to switch between two sources and work on both with a single keyboard, mouse, and monitor. For it to work, one of the two displays must be connected over USB-C, and the other has to have the USB upstream cable connected.
• Dashboard: This feature allows you to display vital statistics from your computer, including CPU and GPU temps, fan speeds, memory usage, etc..., directly on the monitor as an overlay.
• Space Audio: There are different EQ modes for the built-in speakers, including 'FPS', 'Movie', and 'Live Concert'.

The Gigabyte FO48U has the same on-screen display as the other Gigabyte monitors we've tested recently.