LG 27GL83A-B Monitor Review

The 27GL83A-B looks like every other monitor in LG's UltraGear lineup. It's mainly black with a red circle on the back and the stand has wide-set feet. It's designed as a gaming monitor, but fits nicely into any office environment.

The stand supports the 27GL83A-B well with only minimal wobble. It has a wide footprint and you can place small objects in front of the monitor.

Update 01/20/2021: For consistency, we've changed the swivel adjustment from N/A to 'No'. The score remains unchanged.

Disappointing ergonomics. This is mainly because the stand prevents swiveling, making it difficult to share your work with a colleague.

The back of the monitor has a red circle like other UltraGear monitors. There's a quick release button and cable management is done through a clip in the stand.

The borders are thin and not very distracting. The bottom bezel is slightly thicker, just like on the 27GL850.

The screen is very thin, and won't stand out when VESA-mounted. However, the stand makes the entire setup look thicker.

The 27GL83A-B has okay overall build quality. It's mostly made of plastic but there are no gaps or loose ends.

The 27GL83A-B has a disappointing native contrast ratio, as expected for an IPS monitor. Unfortunately, blacks in a dark room look more like gray. If you want a monitor with a higher contrast ratio, check out the Gigabyte G32QC.

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

Good peak brightness in SDR. This monitor can easily overcome glare in a bright room and the brightness level remains unchanged with different content, which is great.

The 27GL83A-B has decent HDR peak brightness. Highlights don't stand out as much as they should in HDR.

Excellent horizontal viewing angle, which is expected from an IPS panel. You won't lose image accuracy when viewing from the side, which is great if you need to share your screen with a coworker or for co-op gaming.

The 27GL83A-B has an okay vertical viewing angle. If you sit up close, the edges of the screen might appear darker, but this shouldn't be a problem for most people.

Excellent gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are a bit darker, but this isn't noticeable with most content. This is great for content with large areas of uniform color, such as a web page or document.

The 27GL83A-B has poor black uniformity. There's visible clouding throughout and very noticeable backlight bleed near the top left corner. This may be distracting when watching dark scenes.

Good out-of-the-box color accuracy. Most colors are fairly accurate and the color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K target. Unfortunately, the gamma curve doesn't follow the target curve well, so dark scenes are darker than they should, and bright scenes are brighter.

The 27GL83A-B has excellent post-calibration color accuracy. Any remaining errors can only be observed with the aid of a colorimeter and aren't noticeable in normal content. Gamma follows the target curve almost perfectly, and the color temperature is almost spot on the 6500K target.

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.

Fantastic SDR color gamut. It covers nearly all of the sRGB color space used in most content and has good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing.

Excellent SDR color volume. The monitor can display its color gamut well at most brightness levels, but it's mainly limited by its poor contrast ratio.

Good HDR color gamut. The LG 27GL83A-B has great coverage of the DCI P3 color space used in most HDR content. The coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is only decent.

Decent HDR color volume. This monitor is limited by its low contrast ratio and it can't display dark, saturated colors very well.

There are no signs of temporary image retention on the LG 27GL83A-B, even immediately after displaying our high-contrast, static test image for 10 minutes.

Outstanding gradient handling. There's some very minor banding in darker shades, but this shouldn't be at all noticeable in normal content.

The monitor displays an extremely minor vertical color bleed, but it's not noticeable at all in most content.

The 27GL83A-B has good reflection handling. If you place it in a very bright room, glare might become distracting.

Text clarity is okay. It can be improved by using ClearType (top photo), which makes the diagonal lines on the letters R and N clearer.

Outstanding response time, similar to the 27GL850. The recommended Overdrive setting is 'Fast' as motion looks very clear on it. There's some overshoot in darker transitions, and if that bothers you, the 'Normal' setting has a lot less overshoot, but there's more motion blur.

The 27GL83A-B has an amazing response time at 60Hz, which is great for console gaming. Unlike at its max refresh rate, the recommended Overdrive setting is 'Normal', so you might have to change your setting while gaming. This setting has less overshoot and motion blur than the 'Fast' setting, but both perform very similarly.

The monitor uses a completely flicker-free backlight at all brightness levels.

The 27GL83A-B doesn't have a black frame insertion feature.

The 27GL83A-B has a remarkable 144Hz refresh rate. It supports AMD's FreeSync variable refresh rate and it's certified by NVIDIA as G-SYNC compatible. You shouldn't have any issues using it with a recent NVIDIA graphics card.

Over HDMI, the 27GL83A-B only supports FreeSync up to 100Hz.

The monitor has an outstanding low input lag, even with VRR or HDR enabled. The 60Hz input lag, although still low, is slightly higher than most monitors, which isn't ideal for console gaming.