Gigabyte M27Q (rev. 1.0)  Monitor Review

This monitor has a relatively simple design. It has thin borders on three sides, a slightly thicker bottom bezel, and a flat V-shaped stand.

The build quality is good. Although the monitor is made entirely of plastic, it feels sturdy and has no obvious issues. The back has very little flex, and the stand supports the monitor well.

The ergonomics are decent. You can easily adjust it for yourself, but without swivel adjustment it's harder to share your screen with someone next to you. If you'd prefer a gaming monitor with better ergonomics, check out the Dell Alienware AW2721D.

The back has a clean design, with a mix of matte and glossy plastic. The stand has a small cutout for cable management. Unfortunately, there's no quick-release feature to remove the stand for VESA mounting.

The stand doesn't take up much desk space. It feels sturdy, and the screen doesn't wobble much when nudged.

A single joystick is on the right backside of the screen, which powers the monitor on and off and navigates the on-screen menu. There's also a KVM switch above the joystick control.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-A to USB-B upstream cable
• 3x power cords (NA, EU, and Australia)
• Power supply
• User guide

The contrast ratio is mediocre, so blacks appear gray in darker environments. This monitor has no local dimming feature to improve the contrast further. If you want a similar monitor with better contrast, check out the LG 32GN600-B.

This monitor doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so you can compare the backlight performance with a monitor that has local dimming.

The SDR brightness is great. There's almost no variation in brightness across different content, and it's bright enough to fight glare.

These results are from after calibration in the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode with Brightness set to max.

The HDR peak brightness is okay. It's not much brighter than in SDR, and highlights don't pop. While it follows the PQ EOTF curve reasonably well throughout much of its range, it over brightens dark scenes and begins tone mapping too early, causing highlights to be less bright than they could be.

These results are from the the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode with Brightness set to max.

The horizontal viewing angle is great. Images remain consistent when viewed from the side, so it's a great choice if you need to share your screen with someone sitting next to you.

The vertical viewing angle is great. The image remains consistent if you stand up and look down at the monitor.

The gray uniformity is very good. The left and right edges of the screen are darker; however, there's very little dirty screen effect.

Black uniformity is sub-par, and there's no local dimming feature to improve it further. The screen looks cloudy, and there's visible backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges.

This monitor has excellent accuracy in the sRGB mode. Colors are fairly accurate, and the white balance is good. Gamma follows the target sRGB curve fairly well, but dark scenes are too dark. The color temperature is also cool, giving the image a slightly blue tint.

Unfortunately, using the 'sRGB' Picture Mode locks other settings, including Overdrive and Aim Stabilizer. So, if you want to use those settings, you need to change Picture Mode to something else, like 'Custom 1,' which is still fairly accurate, but colors are more saturated, as you can see here.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic, and you won't notice any issues with the image. You can use any of the settings that are locked out in sRGB mode.

The SDR color gamut is superb. It covers the entire sRGB color space used in most content and has nearly full coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, but some colors are oversaturated in this color space.

The HDR color gamut is great. It has excellent coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space and acceptable coverage of the wider Rec. 2020. It tone maps well in DCI-P3, but it's worse with Rec. 2020, as white is considerably off.

The HDR color volume is decent. It's mainly limited by its incomplete color gamut, and it can't display bright and dark colors very well.

This monitor has decent text clarity. Windows ClearType (top photo) makes diagonal lines look better, like on the R and N. It uses a BGR subpixel layout, which causes text to look worse in programs that aren't designed to render text in the BGR subpixel layout. That said, the difference between this BGR layout and text from RGB panels on most other monitors isn't very noticeable for some at native scaling unless you're actively looking for it.

If text looks blurry due to the BGR subpixel layout, you can mount the screen upside down, which gives it a proper RGB layout. However, this workaround seems to increase input lag at the maximum refresh rate to 15.1 ms from the standard 3.2 ms, and G-SYNC doesn't work properly.

A second version of this monitor, the Gigabyte M27Q (rev. 2.0), uses an RGB subpixel layout, so you won't have any of the same text clarity issues with that monitor.

Here are some photos taken at 100% and 125% scaling, with ClearType on and off, as well as with the screen turned upside down:

Here are some photos of text from a MacBook running on Big Sur. It appears that macOS doesn't use subpixel dimming in any of the apps we tested, which includes Safari, TextEdit, Notes, Finder, and Chrome, so the BGR subpixel layout doesn't cause blurry text.

The Gigabyte M27Q 27 has decent reflection handling. While it handles glare effectively in most environments, it struggles with direct sunlight, though the screen gets bright enough to compensate. If reflection handling is important to you, look into the Razer Raptor 27 165Hz.

The gradient handling is fantastic. There's almost no banding in areas of similar color.

Due to bandwidth limitations, this monitor can only reach 170Hz over a DisplayPort connection with 8-bit color. If you want a monitor with an even higher refresh rate, consider the Acer Predator X25 bmiiprzx.

The Giabyte M27Q has decent motion handling across its refresh rate range, but there's still some motion blur with fast-moving objects. The 'Picture Quality' Overdrive setting performs consistently the best, while the other settings get much worse at lower refresh rates. The 'Smart OD' setting acts as a variable overdrive where it's meant to change the overdrive based on the refresh rate, but it performs like 'Balance'.

The refresh rate compliance is decent. Its response time isn't fast enough to make full color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame at high refresh rates, but it's better at lower refresh rates.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 170Hz is good. The 'Balance' overdrive has a fast total response time, leading to minimal motion blur, but there's still some inverse ghosting. If that bothers you, the 'Picture Quality' setting is better, but it has more blur.

The CAD at 120Hz is decent. There's noticeable blur with fast-moving objects, but there isn't any noticeable inverse ghosting with the 'Picture Quality' setting. That said, the other settings have too much overshoot, leading to inverse ghosting.

The CAD at 60Hz is decent. The 'Picture Quality' overdrive setting performs similarly at 120Hz, and the other settings have too much inverse ghosting.

This monitor has a backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur. However, when enabled, it produces notable amounts of image duplication and locks the Overdrive setting to 'Smart OD,' which results in a lot of inverse ghosting. You can use the feature as low as 80 fps with VRR enabled, but below that it stops working and doesn't turn back on until it reaches the max refresh rate again.

The Gigabyte M27Q gaming monitor has no visible VRR flicker with changing frame rates, which is fantastic for gaming.

The backlight remains flicker-free at all brightness levels, which helps reduce eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker.

The input lag is low, so you won't notice any delay, and you'll get a responsive feel.

The monitor supports 4k signals by downscaling them, which is convenient because the Xbox Series X|S only supports HDR in 4k.

The Gigabyte M27Q Gaming Monitor has a KVM feature, allowing you to use the same mouse and keyboard to control two devices. To use it, plug the mouse and keyboard into the USB 3.0 ports, the primary device into the USB-B port, and the secondary device into the USB-C port. Then, press the KVM button (above the monitor's main control joystick) to switch between the two devices.

The USB-C port supports DisplayPort Alt Mode, which lets you display an image from a compatible device and charge it simultaneously with a single cable. However, this port only delivers 10W of power, which isn't enough to charge or sustain a standard laptop while it's in use.

This Gigabyte M27Q 27 has issues working with macOS in certain picture modes. The 'FPS,' 'RTS/RPG,' and 'Movie' modes cause the screen to flicker, even with a fixed refresh rate. Additionally, enabling VRR while in 'FPS,' 'RTS/RPG,' or 'Movie' mode in HDR causes an aggressive visual effect (Note: The preceding video shows flickering and/or rapid distortion effects).

It appears that macOS doesn't use subpixel dimming in any of the apps we tested. For more information on this, see the text clarity section.

The Gigabyte M27Q has a few extra features, including:

• Game Assist: Adds virtual crosshair, timer, or counter on the screen.
• OSD Sidekick: Lets you control the monitor's settings with keyboard and mouse.
• Dashboard: Overlay that displays system information like CPU temperature, usage, frame rate, etc.
• Black Equalizer: Makes objects more visible in dark scenes.
• Low Blue Light mode: Blue light filter to reduce eye strain.
• Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture: Displays two input signals simultaneously.
• KVM: Lets you control two devices with the same mouse and keyboard.