Gigabyte G32QC Monitor Review

The Gigabyte G32QC has a simple design that doesn't stand out much. It has a curved screen with thin bezels on three sides and a slightly thicker bottom bezel. The V-shaped stand takes up a fair amount of desk space but supports the monitor very well.

The stand's base is large; however, its V shape leaves a bit of usable desk space between the feet for smaller items. It supports the monitor well and there's very little wobble.

Unfortunately, the ergonomics are bad, as it lacks swivel adjustments and can't rotate to portrait mode.

The back of the monitor is fairly plain and mostly plastic. The stand has a small cutout that serves as cable management.

The top and side bezels are thin and aren't distracting, but the bottom bezel is thicker.

The Gigabyte G32QC is very thick due to its curvature and takes up a lot of desk space when it's mounted on the stand.

The Gigabyte G32QC's build quality is good. The top portion of the back feels well-built, but the bottom portion feels hollow and exhibits a lot of flex, although it could just be for cooling purposes. The stand and the plastic covering the tilt hinge feel pretty cheap; however, the hinge itself feels sturdy and the stand supports the monitor well.

Like most VA monitors, the Gigabyte G32QC has a good contrast ratio that makes blacks look deep, which is great for gaming in the dark. Note that although some other reviewers have measured a much higher contrast, our measurement is more in-line with Gigabyte's advertised 3000:1 contrast.

The Gigabyte G32QC doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video above is provided for reference only.

Great SDR peak brightness. The brightness is very consistent when displaying different scenes and it's bright enough for use in most lighting conditions. The calibration decreased the peak brightness slightly, as we were able to achieve 406.5 nits in the 10% window before calibration.

We measured the SDR peak after calibration, using the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode and with brightness set to max.

The Gigabyte G32QC has a decent HDR peak brightness. It's very consistent across different content. It's bright enough to deliver an okay experience in games, especially if you're in a dark room, but it isn't enough for HDR movies.

We measured the HDR peak brightness after calibration, using the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode and with brightness set to max.

Horizontal viewing angles are sub-par, which is typical for VA panels. This makes the image look washed out from the side, which isn't ideal for sharing content or for playing co-op games.

Sub-par vertical viewing angles. This makes images look inaccurate at the top and bottom of the screen if you sit very close to the screen or have the monitor mounted above eye level.

Gray uniformity on our Gigabyte G32QC is excellent. The edges of the screen are a bit darker and there's a very tiny amount of dirty screen effect in the center, which shouldn't be noticeable in most content. Uniformity is better in dark scenes.

Black uniformity is bad. There's visible backlight bleed along the top and bottom of the screen.

Out-of-the-box, the Gigabyte G32QC has good color accuracy. There are inaccuracies with a few colors and white balance is off due to the warm color temperature. Gamma doesn't follow the target all that well, making most scenes look brighter than they should. The monitor has an sRGB mode; however, it isn't as accurate as the 'Movie' mode. It has a higher average color dE of 3.88, a white balance dE of 3.72, and the color temperature is much cooler at 6729K.

After calibration, the color accuracy is outstanding. The remaining inaccuracies shouldn't be visible to the naked eye. There are still inaccuracies with the color blue, which is typical for LCD screens.

You can download our ICC profile calibration here.

The Gigabyte G32QC has an outstanding SDR color gamut. It has near full coverage of the sRGB color space used in most content, and impressive coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, which is mainly used for professional photography.

Outstanding SDR color volume. It only has a bit of trouble displaying rich, dark shades, and bright blues.

The Gigabyte G32QC's HDR color gamut is okay. Its coverage of the widely-used DCI P3 is decent, but the wider Rec. 2020 coverage is much more limited.

Decent HDR color volume, it's mostly limited by the HDR color gamut.

There are no signs of temporary image retention on the Gigabyte G32QC.

Great gradient handling. There's a bit of banding in all colors, but it's most visible in the grays and the greens.

There's no color bleed on this monitor.

Decent reflection handling. Visibility shouldn't be an issue unless you're in a very bright setting or in direct sunlight.

Text clarity is good. It can be improved slightly with Windows' ClearType (top photo), as it makes the letters look more even and the diagonal lines more visible. The pixels in the photo are blurry due to the matte anti-reflective coating.

The Gigabyte G32QC's response time at max refresh rate is great; however, dark-scene transitions are quite slow, causing the appearance of black trails behind fast-moving objects. That being said, our test pattern emphasizes the issue and the artifacts aren't present in all content. The best overdrive setting is 'Balance', which provides the best performance with the least amount of overshoot.

The response time at 60Hz is decent. It's slower than at max refresh rate, so there's more motion blur. The best overdrive setting is again 'Balance'; however, there's significantly more overshoot than when playing at max refresh rate.

The Gigabyte G32QC's backlight is flicker-free, which is great for reducing eye strain.

This monitor has an optional Black Frame Insertion feature called 'Aim Stabilizer' to help improve motion clarity. Unfortunately, there's a lot of strobe crosstalk causing image duplication.

The Gigabyte G32QC supports FreeSync natively and is also compatible with NVIDIA's G-SYNC; however, the latter only works over a DisplayPort connection. Over an HDMI connection, the maximum refresh rate is 144Hz, with a VRR range that also starts below 20Hz. Over a DisplayPort connection, only three refresh rate settings are available at 1440p: 60Hz, 120Hz, and 165Hz.

Input lag is exceptionally low and only rises a little bit with VRR enabled, which shouldn't be noticeable for most people. Since this monitor has an 8-bit panel, we weren't able to measure the input lag with 10-bit HDR. We were only able to achieve an 8-bit HDR @ 60Hz signal with an input lag of 8.5ms.