LG 27GR95QE-B Monitor Review

The LG 27GR95QE-B has a gamer-oriented aesthetic with a stylish design. It features some RGB lighting on the back and vents above the inputs.

The build quality is excellent. It's well-put together without any obvious issues, and the materials feel premium. It has a metal stand, and everything else is solid plastic, as it doesn't flex much. The stand is also sturdy, and there's minimal wobble.

The LG 27GR95QE has decent ergonomics. You can adjust it in any way, but the swivel range is limited, and you can only rotate it into portrait mode counterclockwise, meaning the inputs will always be on the right side of the monitor. Luckily, there's a clip on the stand for cable management to keep your setup clean.

The monitor's stand is solid, as there's minimal wobble, but it's big and takes up space. However, the V-shaped feet allow you to still place stuff like your keyboard and mouse between them.

The LG 27GR95QE-B has a remote to control the on-screen display, which is easier to use than traditional joysticks or buttons on monitors. There's a power button underneath the center of the monitor that also features RGB lighting next to it.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• Power supply and cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Remote control
• User documentation, including:
• Quality assurance report
• Quick start guides
• Warranty
• Product registration

The LG 27GR95QE-B has a near-infinite contrast ratio thanks to its OLED panel. That means it displays deep blacks next to bright highlights for a remarkable dark room experience.

OLED panels like this one don't have a backlight, so they don't require a local dimming feature. However, with a near-infinite contrast ratio, there isn't any blooming around bright objects, and it's the equivalent of a perfect local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so you can see how the screen performs and compare it with a monitor that has local dimming.

The LG 27GR95QE has disappointing SDR peak brightness. It doesn't get bright enough to fight glare, and large areas like full-screen webpages are dim. These results are from after calibration in the 'Gamer 2' Game Mode, which is the name of the picture mode setting, with the Brightness at its max and Smart Energy Saving disabled. If you want something that gets brighter in SDR, consider the Acer Predator X27U bmiipruzx.

The SDR brightness is a bit brighter in picture modes that aren't optimized for gaming, like 'Vivid', 'Reader', 'HDR Effect', 'sRGB', 'Color Weakness', 'Calibration 1', and 'Calibration 2'. Using any of these modes also disables the DAS feature, which increases the Input Lag too. You can see some results in the 'Vivid' mode below:

• Peak 2% Window: 365 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 373 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 372 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 218 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 135 cd/m²

The HDR brightness is okay. It gets brightest with small highlights, making them stand out against the rest of the screen, but it still isn't bright enough overall for a vivid HDR experience. It also has an aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) that makes large areas considerably dimmer. The changes in brightness can be noticeable in some scenes when playing games, but it isn't too distracting. The EOTF also follows the target PQ curve perfectly until there's a sharp roll-off at the peak brightness, causing a loss of fine details with bright scenes. If you're looking for a monitor with better HDR brightness, check out the LG 27GS95QE-B.

These results are in the 'Gamer 1' Game Mode with the Brightness at its max and Smart Energy Saving disabled. The 'Vivid' Game Mode gets much brighter, but the overall picture quality is worse because colors are inaccurate and the white balance is off. You can see the results in 'Vivid' below:

• Peak 2% Window: 854 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 701cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 419 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 236 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 138 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 839 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 684 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 416 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 236 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 138 cd/m²
• ABL: 0.034
• EOTF

The horizontal viewing angle is remarkable. The image remains the same no matter where you view the screen from, which is great for co-op gaming.

The vertical viewing angle is once again incredible. While colors start to shift earlier from below than from on top, you won't notice any difference and the image remains consistent when looking down on it or if you have it mounted above eye level.

The gray uniformity is great. The edges are a bit darker than the rest of the screen, but there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center. Like any OLED screen, there are thin vertical lines in near-dark scenes, but they're hard to notice unless you're looking for them.

Thanks to its OLED panel, the LG 27GR95QE has perfect black uniformity without any blooming around bright objects.

The accuracy before calibration is incredible. The sRGB mode locks the colors well to the sRGB color space, and there are minimal inaccuracies with colors and the white balance. The color temperature is also close to the 6500K target. However, gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve well, as most scenes are brighter than they should be. Unfortunately, using this accurate sRGB mode locks most picture settings, including Black Stabilizer and Gamma. If you want to adjust those settings, the 'Gamer 2' Game Mode is less accurate with oversaturated colors and a brighter gamma.

The accuracy after calibration is great, but it's worse overall than before calibration because colors are more oversaturated. However, everything else is nearly perfect, including the gamma and color temperature, and you won't easily notice any inaccuracies in the image. By default, the Black Stabilizer setting is '60' when you use the 'Gamer 2' Game Mode, but set it to '50' for better black levels.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It has fantastic coverage of the sRGB and Adobe RGB color spaces, but it, unfortunately, does this by oversaturating colors, so primary colors are still off.

The LG 27GR95QE-B has an incredible SDR color volume. Thanks to its near-infinite contrast ratio, it displays colors at a wide range of luminance levels without issues.

The LG 27GR95QE has a remarkable HDR color gamut. It has incredible coverage of the commonly-used DCI-P3 color space, but it's more limited with the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

Using the 'Gamer 1' Game Mode results in better tone mapping than 'Vivid', meaning colors look more realistic and life-like. You can see the results using that mode below:

DCI-P3

• DCI-P3 Coverage: 98.0%
• Tone-Mapped DCI-P3 Coverage: 98.0%

Rec. 2020

• Rec. 2020 Coverage: 72.9%

The HDR color volume is good. It displays dark colors well thanks to its near-infinite contrast ratio, but it doesn't display bright colors as bright as QD-OLEDs like the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8/G85SB S34BG85.

While using the 'Vivid' Game Mode results in brighter highlights than 'Gamer 1', the color volume is better with 'Gamer 1'. You can see the results with 'Vivid' below:

DCI-P3

• DCI-P3 In ICtCp: 76.2%

Rec. 2020

• Rec. 2020 In ICtCp: 61.1%

The LG 27GR95QE-B has fantastic reflection handling. Its matte coating is very different from the glossy coatings on other OLEDs like the LG 42 C2 OLED or the Dell Alienware AW3423DWF. It does a good job of reducing strong reflections, but placing it opposite a bright light source can still be distracting. The main downside to this type of screen coating is that the image doesn't look as clear as glossy monitors, and some text can look hazy.

The LG 27GR95QE-B has okay text clarity, but it's worse than other 27-inch, 1440p monitors. This is because of its RWBG subpixel layout, as computer programs don't render text properly with this layout. This results in some color fringing around text, and while it isn't the worst case of color fringing, it can be distracting if you're sitting close and notice text clarity issues easily. The matte screen finish also makes text look a bit hazy. If you prefer a 4k QD-OLED monitor with better text clarity and a glossy screen, look into the Dell Alienware AW3225QF.

Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) can help improve the text clarity, but it can introduce some of the color fringing. This means you either have to choose between sharper text with color fringing or worse text clarity without the fringing. These photos are with Windows 10, and you can see what it looks like in Windows 11 with ClearType on here, and with ClearType off here.

Due to the RWBG subpixel layout, all four pixels are never on at the same time. You can see additional photos of the pixels below:

• Blue
• Green
• Red
• Red and blue
• Green and red

The LG 27GR95QE-B has incredible gradient handling, and besides some banding with darker shades, you won't have any issues.

You can reach the monitor's max refresh rate over any connection, but your graphics card needs to support Display Stream Compression (DSC) for 10-bit signals over DisplayPort.

When setting a fixed refresh rate of 120Hz in the NVIDIA Control Panel, the monitor displays a non-native resolution of 3840x2160, which is downscaled to 1440p. With a DisplayPort connection, you can fix this by setting Perform Scaling On to 'Display' instead of 'GPU' in the NVIDIA Control Panel. After making this change, the monitor properly displays 1440p @ 120Hz. However, you can't use the same solution over HDMI as it's still downscaled 4k, even after changing the scaling mode to 'Full Screen' instead of 'No Scaling'. However, we didn't experience any of these issues with a console, and we don't expect it to be a big problem for most people as it only occurs when sending a fixed 120Hz refresh rate and not with VRR enabled. If you want a monitor with an even higher refresh rate, take a look at the Dell Alienware AW2725DF.

The native FreeSync support and G-SYNC compatibility work over the entire refresh rate range with DisplayPort and HDMI connections. Thanks to the Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), it continues working at low frame rates. As is the case with some other displays, there's some flicker in dark areas with VRR enabled, as you can see in this video. It can be distracting if it appears, but it only happens in really dark areas of the screen.

The LG 27GR95QE has a remarkable response time at its max refresh rate. Motion looks exceptionally clear thanks to its near-instantaneous response time, but there's some overshoot in dark transitions, leading to some inverse ghosting. Even after an update to firmware 3.08, there's still the same overshoot. Unlike LED-backlit monitors, there's no setting to adjust the pixel overdrive.

The response time at 120Hz is once again fantastic, but there's more overshoot than at its max refresh rate. You can see the inverse ghosting behind fast-moving objects.

The response time at 60Hz is great, but it has a lot more overshoot and inverse ghosting than most OLED displays. You'll see the inverse ghosting when playing games at 60 fps, like on consoles.

The LG 27GR95QE-B doesn't have a black frame insertion feature to reduce persistence blur.

The LG 27GR95QE technically isn't flicker-free because there's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the 240Hz refresh rate. However, it isn't the same as pulse-width modulation because it isn't a full screen on and off, and you won't notice this flicker.

The LG UltraGear 27GR95QE-B has low input lag resulting in a responsive gaming experience. It remains low no matter the frame rate you're gaming at as long as you're using a picture mode that enables DAS. Testing was done with a DisplayPort connection with VRR disabled, and the input lag doesn't change even over HDMI. Enabling VRR can cause the input lag to slightly increase, but it isn't enough to be noticeable.

The input lag increases in picture modes that aren't optimized for gaming, like 'Vivid', 'Reader', 'HDR Effect', 'sRGB', 'Color Weakness', 'Calibration 1', and 'Calibration 2'. Using any of these modes disables the DAS feature, which is why the input lag increases. You can see the input lag in the 'sRGB' and 'Calibration 1' modes, which are the same:

• Native Resolution @ Max Refresh Rate: 7.1 ms
• Native Resolution @ 120Hz: 13.5 ms
• Native Resolution @ 60Hz: 26.1 ms

The LG 27GR95QE works perfectly with the PS5 thanks to its HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. It even downscales 4k games, which results in a sharper image than a native 1440p signal. The console works without issue when playing lower frame-rate games, like at 60 or even 30 fps.

This monitor doesn't have any compatibility issues with the Xbox Series X|S, thanks to its HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. It even downscales 4k games, which results in a sharper image than a native 1440p signal. The console works without issue when playing lower frame-rate games, like at 60 or even 30 fps.

The 3.5mm audio output serves as a combo jack with both audio out and mic in, but you need to have the USB-B cable connected to your computer to make full use of it. It also supports DTS and DTS:X audio passthrough for headphones that support it. Unlike many monitors, it has an Optical Audio output to connect to soundbars or speakers with this connection, but it doesn't support DTS/DTS:X audio passthrough.

You need to connect the USB-B to USB-A cable to your computer for the USB ports to work. It doesn't have a USB-C port, but if you want a similar monitor that has one, you can also check out the Corsair XENEON 27QHD240.

The LG 27GR95QE-B works well with macOS. VRR works well, and there isn't any obvious flickering on the desktop or in games. However, there's a thin gray line on top of the screen with some games, and disabling VRR removes it. Unfortunately, HDR looks washed out, which is a limitation of macOS with some monitors. If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their original position after waking the laptop up from sleep, but not after you reopen the lid.

The text clarity seems to be a bit better in macOS than Windows, but the difference is minor. You can see what the text clarity looks like with font size 11 here and with font size 13 here.

The LG 27GR95QE has a few extra additional features, including:

• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair that your system won't detect.
• DTS Headphones:X: Supports DTS and DTS:X audio passthrough for your headphones. It only works with the 3.5mm audio output and not the Optical Audio output. There are three modes for this: Sports, Entertainment, and Game.
• Dynamic Action Sync: Mode that's automatically enabled and aims to lower the input lag.
• FPS Counter: Displays the frame rate of your source.
• LG Calibration Studio: This is a downloadable software that aims to automatically calibrate the monitor. We didn't use it for calibration.
• Optical Audio Out: Lets you connect a soundbar or speakers that support this connection.

Like most OLED displays, there are also a few settings to help reduce the risk of burn-in:

• Pixel Cleaning: Corrects individual pixels. Occurs after 500 hours of use and only starts once you turn the monitor off or enter the power-saving mode. It only lasts about a minute.
• Image Cleaning: Runs a complete image refresh cycle after four hours of use and only starts when you turn the monitor off or enter the power saving mode. It takes about 10 minutes to finish.
• Screen Move: Moves the image by a few pixels to one side to help reduce the risk of burn-in.
• Screen Saver: Automatically turns the screen off when there's inactivity.

Burn-in can occur with constant exposure to the same static elements over time, so the best ways to reduce the risk of burn-in is by watching varied content, hiding the taskbar, using a black background, and taking advantage of these features in the OLED Care settings. Unfortunately, LG's warranty doesn't cover burn-in. You can learn about our current longevity and burn-in test here.