The Gigabyte M27U is a 27-inch, 4k gaming monitor. Part of Gigabyte's M Series lineup, it's a smaller option compared to the Gigabyte M28U and the Gigabyte M32U, and it has many of the same features. Designed as a gaming monitor, it has 24 Gbps of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, which lets you play games at a high frame rate from consoles or gaming PCs. It also has native FreeSync variable refresh rate (VRR) support to reduce screen tearing, and G-SYNC works with NVIDIA graphics cards. Besides its gaming features, it has productivity perks like a KVM switch, so you can switch between two devices and use the same keyboard and mouse. It also has a USB-C port with DisplayPort Alt Mode, but it's limited to 15W of power delivery.
The Gigabyte M27U is great for most uses. It's an excellent gaming monitor with HDMI 2.1 bandwidth and VRR support, making it great for consoles and PCs. It also delivers a smooth and responsive gaming experience thanks to its quick response time and low input lag. It's great for work due to its incredible text clarity, high peak brightness, and wide viewing angles, but it has limited ergonomics. It also displays accurate colors if you use it for content creation. It's good if you want to watch videos in bright rooms, but it has limited performance in dark rooms, as it has a low contrast ratio and a terrible local dimming feature.
The Gigabyte M27U is great for office use. The 4k resolution and high pixel density deliver incredibly sharp text, and its 27-inch screen is big enough to open two windows next to each other. It's also great to use in a well-lit office as it gets bright enough to fight glare, and the reflection handling is decent. It has wide viewing angles if you want to share the screen with a coworker, but it has limited ergonomics, and you can't swivel it. Luckily, it has some extra productivity features, like a KVM switch.
The Gigabyte M27U is excellent for gaming. It supports 24 Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, which means it supports 4k @ 120Hz from current-gen consoles and high-end graphics cards. It has a fast response time that results in minimal motion blur, and gaming feels responsive thanks to its low input lag. Unfortunately, it's a bad choice for dark room gaming as it has a low contrast ratio, and its local dimming feature is terrible.
The Gigabyte M27U is good for media consumption. The 4k resolution allows you to watch the latest 4k content with sharp detail. The 27-inch screen is big enough for watching something with a friend and has wide viewing angles, but the stand is hard to adjust because it has limited ergonomics. While it gets bright enough to fight glare if you want to use it in a well-lit room, blacks look gray in the dark. It also has a local dimming feature, but you can only enable it in HDR, and it performs terribly.
The Gigabyte M27U is great for content creators. It delivers sharp images, and its screen is big enough to multitask. It also has wide viewing angles, which is important if you often need to share the screen with others, but the stand is hard to adjust as it has limited ergonomics. It has an accurate sRGB mode, which is great if you work in that color space, but most picture settings are limited with it on.
The Gigabyte M27U is okay for HDR. It displays a wide range of colors but doesn't tone map well, meaning colors are inaccurate, and some images aren't life-like. It also has good HDR peak brightness, making most highlights pop. However, it has a low contrast ratio that makes blacks look gray, and its local dimming feature performs terribly, as it doesn't improve the picture quality in dark scenes.
We tested the 27-inch Gigabyte M27U, the only size available for this monitor. There are similar 4k monitors available from Gigabyte, too, like the Gigabyte M28U and the Gigabyte M32U, but those are different models.
Model | Size | Panel Type | Resolution | Native Refresh Rate | Overclock |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
M27U | 27" | IPS | 4k | 150Hz | 160Hz |
Our unit was manufactured in February 2023; you can see the label here.
The Gigabyte M27U is an excellent gaming monitor that provides versatility for work and play thanks to its various features. It has a fast response time and low input lag, and it supports 24 Gbps of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, which lets you play games at a high frame rate from the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, or your gaming PC. The 4k resolution and productivity features are also great if you need something for your at-home work setup. It's essentially a smaller version of the Gigabyte M32U, and it's a better display than the Gigabyte M28U, thanks to its higher peak brightness.
See our recommendations for the best 27-inch gaming monitors, the best 4k gaming monitors, and the best monitors for Xbox Series S.
The Gigabyte M27U and the Gigabyte M28U are very similar monitors in terms of features, but the M27U edges out in a few areas. The M27U gets much brighter, making it better for bright rooms and delivering a better HDR experience. The M27U also has an overclock feature to 160Hz for a slightly smoother feel than the 144Hz on the M28U.
The LG 27GP950-B and the Gigabyte M27U are both excellent 4k, 27-inch gaming monitors. They offer similar performance overall, but the LG has a better HDR color volume, and it gets brighter in HDR for a slightly improved HDR experience. The LG also supports the full 48 Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, so your graphics card doesn't need to use compression. However, the Gigabyte has extra productivity features like a KVM switch and USB-C port.
The Gigabyte M32U and the Gigabyte M27U are very similar monitors with many of the same features, but the M27U has an overclock that can go to 160Hz. The M32U is essentially a larger version with better ergonomics, but the M27U gets brighter. Choosing one over the other comes down to which size you prefer.
The Sony INZONE M9 and the Gigabyte M27U are both excellent 27-inch, 4k gaming monitors. However, there are a few differences between them, as the Sony has a better local dimming feature and gets brighter in HDR for an improved HDR experience. The Sony also has features made for the PS5, like Auto HDR Tone Mapping. On the other hand, the Gigabyte has an overclock feature to reach a higher 160Hz refresh rate, and it has some extra productivity features like a KVM switch.
The Gigabyte M27U and the INNOCN 27M2V are excellent gaming monitors, but there are a few differences. The INNOCN delivers better picture quality thanks to its improved local dimming feature, as it displays deeper blacks and brighter highlights than the Gigabyte. However, motion looks better on the Gigabyte thanks to its quicker response time, and it has lower input lag with 60 fps signals.
The build quality is good. The plastic body feels sturdy as there aren't any obvious issues, and the plastic doesn't flex easily. The screen is stable on the stand, but it wobbles more when you adjust the height to more than halfway up. The controls on the back, including the KVM switch, also feel easy to use and register the inputs well. The main issue with this monitor is that when you enable the Backlight Strobing feature, there's an audible coil whine noise that's very distracting, but it stops once you disable the feature. We don't know if this is a problem with our unit only or a widespread issue, so if you have this monitor and experience the same thing, let us know.
The Gigabyte M27U has okay ergonomics. You can easily move the screen up and down but can't turn it to show something to someone next to you. It also features basic cable management through the stand.
The V-shaped stand takes up some space, and there isn't enough room between the legs to put your peripherals, so your mouse and keyboard need to be in front of it. Other than that, it holds the screen well, but there's some wobble when you set the height past the halfway point.
The native contrast isn't bad, but it isn't anything special. While its local dimming helps improve the contrast, blacks still look gray next to bright highlights in dark rooms. Because you can only enable local dimming in HDR, the contrast with local dimming measurement is done in HDR.
This monitor has an edge-lit local dimming feature with only eight zones, and it performs terribly. You can only turn it on in HDR, and while leaving it off results in less blooming, setting it to 'High' delivers the best results with it on. Like most edge-lit local dimming features, it doesn't do much to improve the picture quality in dark scenes because most content causes all the zones to turn on. Because of this, there isn't any visible black crush, but you also lose details in scenes with small bright highlights, like a star field. The zones are quick to turn on but slower to turn off, which is noticeable when fast-moving objects transition between zones. There's also some color shift in the process.
Unfortunately, the biggest downside to an edge-lit local dimming feature is the blooming between zones that are on and off. This is distracting when there are small bright objects in dark scenes or when there are subtitles. However, because brighter content causes all the zones to turn on, this isn't as much of an issue with most things you watch.
The Gigabyte M27U has great SDR peak brightness. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare, and there isn't any distracting change in brightness between different scenes. These results are from after calibration in the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode with the Brightness at its max.
The HDR brightness is good. It gets bright enough to make highlights stand out, but larger highlights are dimmer due to its Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL). The EOTF follows the target PQ curve well, with a slow roll-off at the peak brightness. This means it's tone-mapping games, even if your PC already tone maps them, meaning highlights roll off earlier than needed. These results are with HDR enabled and Local Dimming on 'High'.
During testing, we did notice an issue with a full-screen white window, where brightness oscillates every few minutes at a consistent rate, as you can see in this graph. This is noticeable when it happens, but it only happens with Local Dimming enabled. While you won't experience this with most content as it's only when you leave a full-screen white window open, disabling Local Dimming eliminates this issue and results in similar HDR brightness, as you can see below:
The Gigabyte M27U has a decent horizontal viewing angle. While the image gets darker at wide viewing angles, it's still good enough to share the screen with someone next to you.
The vertical viewing angle is good. The image looks consistent if you stand up and look down on it or mount it above eye level.
The black uniformity is poor. The screen is blue due to its low contrast with local dimming disabled, and there's some backlight bleed in the corners. While the local dimming improves the black levels in zones that are off, there's a lot of blooming around bright objects. As you can only enable local dimming in HDR, the results and the picture with local dimming are done in HDR.
The accuracy before calibration in the 'sRGB' Picture Mode is excellent. The sRGB mode locks colors to the sRGB color space well, as most colors aren't oversaturated, but blues are a bit off. The white balance and color temperature are also good. Gamma follows the sRGB curve well enough, but most scenes are darker than intended.
Unfortunately, using the sRGB mode locks most settings, including Overdrive and Black Equalizer. It's better to use the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode if you want to enable those settings, but the image is less accurate, as you can see with these results.
The accuracy after calibration is incredible, and you won't notice any inaccuracies in the image. It still doesn't display saturated blues perfectly, but that's a common issue with LCD panels.
The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It has perfect coverage of the commonly-used sRGB color space, and it also has great coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in professional content creation. However, it doesn't display the full range of greens, and reds are oversaturated in Adobe RGB.
The Gigabyte M27U has an impressive HDR color gamut. It displays a wide range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space used in most HDR content, but it doesn't tone map well, as most colors are inaccurate. It has the same tone mapping issues as with the wider Rec. 2020 color space.
These results are with local dimming enabled, and both the gamut coverage and tone mapping are slightly worse with local dimming disabled, as you can see with the results below:
The HDR color volume is alright. It displays bright colors well, but it's limited by its incomplete color gamut and low contrast. The color volume is better with local dimming enabled than with it disabled, too, as you can see from the results below:
The text clarity is incredible, thanks to its high pixel density. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) helps improve the clarity of letters, but it isn't necessary. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can see it in Windows 11 with ClearType off here, and with ClearType on here. It also uses a different panel than the Gigabyte M28U and doesn't have the same issue with stretched pixels.
The Gigabyte M27U has an overclock feature that you can use over DisplayPort.
Both the FreeSync support and G-SYNC compatibility work with HDMI and DisplayPort connections.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
Off | Chart | Table | Photo |
Picture Quality | Chart | Table | Photo |
Smart OD | Chart | Table | Photo |
Balance | Chart | Table | Photo |
Speed | Chart | Table | Photo |
The Gigabyte M27U has a fantastic response time at its max refresh rate, resulting in smooth motion. The recommended Overdrive setting is 'Picture Quality' because it has a faster response time than with it off, and there's less overshoot than the other settings. 'Smart OD' is supposed to adjust the overdrive setting based on the frame rate, and it performs like 'Speed' at its max refresh rate.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
Off | Chart | Table | Photo |
Picture Quality | Chart | Table | Photo |
Smart OD | Chart | Table | Photo |
Balance | Chart | Table | Photo |
Speed | Chart | Table | Photo |
The response time at 120Hz is excellent. There's minimal blur trail with fast-moving objects with Overdrive set to 'Picture Quality', and the other settings have more overshoot. Unlike at its max refresh rate, 'Smart OD' now performs similarly to 'Balance'.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
Off | Chart | Table | Photo |
Picture Quality | Chart | Table | Photo |
Smart OD | Chart | Table | Photo |
Balance | Chart | Table | Photo |
Speed | Chart | Table | Photo |
The response time at 60Hz is great. Although there's some blur trail, it's better to leave the Overdrive setting disabled, as even 'Picture Quality', which performs like 'Smart OD', has overshoot leading to some inverse ghosting. This means you might have to turn Overdrive off if the frame rate game of your game drops and overshoot bothers you.
Refresh Rate | VRR - On | VRR - Off |
160Hz | ![]() | ![]() |
120Hz | ![]() | ![]() |
The Gigabyte M27U has an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur, which is commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). There are some quirks about it, though, as there's audible coil whine noise with BFI enabled. It's loud and gets distracting, but it stops when you disable BFI. We don't know if this is a problem with our unit only or a widespread issue, so if you have this monitor and experience the same thing, let us know.
You can only enable it in the OSD with the refresh rate between 100 to 160Hz. If the frame rate drops below 100, the Aim Stabilizer toggle in the OSD is unavailable. This doesn't make the backlight stop flickering as it continues to work down to 60Hz, but it's inconsistent, as it would stop working at 75Hz at times. BFI and VRR work as expected between 100 to 160Hz, and while it continues working down to 60Hz, you may run into some issues.
The Gigabyte M27U has very low input lag for a responsive feel, even if you enable BFI.
The Gigabyte M27U supports all common formats from the PS5, but there are some issues. With VRR enabled at a 60Hz refresh rate and HDR on, there's distracting flickering, but it stops if you disable VRR.
As the Gigabyte M27U doesn't support the full 48 Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, your graphics card needs to use compression to reach demanding signals.
The USB-C port supports DisplayPort Alt Mode to display an image from a compatible device. Still, because it's limited to only 15W of power delivery, it isn't enough to charge laptops. It also works with the KVM switch, which you can use to control two devices with the same keyboard and mouse.
This monitor works well with macOS, including the KVM switch. The default resolution is 1080p, but you can change it to 4k. VRR works well in games, but there are some flicker issues on the desktop, so if that bothers you, it's better to disable VRR. HDR also works well and looks fine. If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their original position when waking the laptop from sleep or reopening the lid.
The Gigabyte M27U has a few extra features, including: