LG 27GR95UM-B  Monitor Review

The LG 27GR95UM has a simple design with a mainly gray body, and it’s made entirely of plastic. It has a few branding elements, and some RGB lighting on the back.

The build quality is good. The plastic materials feel solid, and the back panel doesn’t flex much either. However, the stand feels a bit cheap for a premium monitor, but it still holds the monitor well, including when you adjust it.

The ergonomics are decent. You can adjust it in a number of ways, including vertically, but without any swivel adjustment, it's harder to turn the screen for someone next to you. There's also a clip on the stand for basic cable management.

The monitor has a basic joystick underneath the center of the display to control the on-screen display.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Power cable and supply
• Mouse bungee clip
• User documentation

The LG 27GR95UM-B has a mediocre contrast ratio. It’s really low with local dimming off, as blacks look gray. While using the local dimming feature helps improve the contrast ratio, blacks still look gray next to bright highlights.

The full-array local dimming feature is bad. Although it uses Mini LED backlighting with 1,560 small zones, it's ineffective and actually makes the picture quality worse with it on. There's a lot of black crush, so it's hard to see any details in dark scenes, and bright objects and subtitles cause a ton of blooming. It even struggles to keep the black level uniform throughout, as it looks blotchy with real content.

There are three Local Dimming settings, with 'Normal' and 'Fast' performing similarly, and 'Faster' being the most aggressive with the most black crush, but also results in the brightest image.

You can see different examples of real content with Local Dimming set to 'Off' and 'Faster':

Settings

• Game Mode: Gamer 1 (after calibration)
• Brightness: 100
• Peak Brightness: High
• Local Dimming: Faster

The SDR brightness is excellent. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare, and while there's some changes in brightness between different content, it isn't distracting. If you're sensitive to bright lights and you're using the monitor in a bright room, turning Peak Brightness off with any of the Local Dimming settings enabled allows it to achieve its lowest minimum brightness.

You can see more results with different Peak Brightness settings, keeping the other settings the same:

Settings

• Game Mode: Gamer 2
• Brightness: 100
• Peak Brightness: High
• Local Dimming: Faster

The HDR brightness is amazing. It gets bright enough to fight glare if you want to watch content in bright rooms, but because it keeps this brightness the same across different scenes, small highlights don't really stand out. Its PQ EOTF tracking also has a slow roll-off at its peak brightness, so it doesn't let highlights get the brightest they could. Plus, real content looks worse than what the test slides show, as the local dimming fails to improve the picture quality in HDR, and even causes black crush.

You can see more results with different Local Dimming and Peak Brightness settings below:

The horizontal viewing angle is okay. While the image gets darker at wide angles, it’s still fine for sharing the screen with someone next to you.

The vertical viewing angle is good. The image remains consistent whether you’re viewing it from above or below.

The gray uniformity is very good. Although the edges are darker than the rest, it isn’t distracting, and there’s hardly any dirty screen effect in the center.

The black uniformity is decent. With local dimming off, there’s distracting clouding and backlight bleed. Using local dimming improves the black level with the test image, but in real content, the screen looks blotchy throughout.

The accuracy before calibration is decent. Although it has a dedicated sRGB mode that locks colors fairly well to the sRGB color space, it still has issues with the white balance and gamma tracking. Plus, the color temperature is on the warm side, giving the image a red tint. Unfortunately, other modes are less accurate with more oversaturated colors.

The sRGB mode locks you out of a few settings, including:

• Black Stabilizer
• Response Time
• Black Level
• Color Temp
• Gamma
• Sharpness
• R/G/B
• Six Color
• Smart Energy Saving

The accuracy after calibration is remarkable. Calibrating it fixes any issues that occur before calibration, and it gives you access to the settings that are locked out in the sRGB mode.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It displays the sRGB color space perfectly, and it also has very wide coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in content creation, but it oversaturates most colors and undersaturates cyan.

The HDR color gamut is incredible. It displays a wide range of colors in both the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces, with minimal inaccuracies, except for white.

The HDR color volume is excellent. It displays dark and bright colors very well, but it’s limited by its incomplete color gamut, especially in Rec. 2020.

The text clarity is fantastic. Even with ClearType off (bottom photo), text looks sharp, and enabling it makes letters look bolder (top photo). These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

The direct reflection handling is poor. Light bounces off like a mirror, which is distracting in a sunny room, and its matte coating still spreads some light out across the screen.

This monitor does an excellent job at maintaining low black levels in a bright room.

There's a ton of distracting reflections coming off the screen. Despite the fact that the monitor gets bright, it's best to avoid using it in a sunny room.

The LG 27GR95UM-B has remarkable gradient handling. There's almost no banding in areas of similar color.

This monitor has a native 144Hz refresh rate that you can boost to 160Hz using the Overclock setting. Your graphics card needs to use Display Stream Compression (DSC) to reach that over DisplayPort. You can change the Input Compatibility Version setting to '1.4' if you prefer disabling DSC, but that lowers the refresh rate. If you want a monitor with a higher 240Hz refresh rate, take a look at the AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD2.

On top of supporting FreeSync VRR and G-SYNC compatibility, this monitor also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The LG 27GR95UM has good motion handling across its VRR range. The 'Fast' Overdrive setting has the best motion handling at most refresh rates, but it has a bit more inverse ghosting as the refresh rate drops. If that bothers you, the 'Off' and 'Normal' settings are more consistent over the refresh rate range but have more blur. The 'Faster' overdrive has such high CAD that it passes the limits of the chart, as you can see in an alternative chart.

The refresh rate compliance is good. Although its response time isn’t fast enough to make full color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame at its max refresh rate, it’s much better at low refresh rates.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 160Hz is good. Although there's a bit of blur with the 'Fast' overdrive setting, it doesn't have any noticeable inverse ghosting like 'Faster.'

The CAD at 120Hz is good. It performs similarly to its max refresh rate, with the 'Fast' overdrive setting having some blur but less inverse ghosting than 'Faster.'

You can't select a 120Hz refresh rate in the monitor's EDID over DisplayPort, and the only ways to get 120Hz are either over HDMI or using VRR to go down to 120Hz. Motion looks the same whether you use VRR or not.

The CAD at 60Hz is decent. Setting Overdrive to 'Off' results in some motion blur, and unlike at higher refresh rates, 'Fast' has some inverse ghosting.

This monitor doesn’t have an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

The LG 27GR95UM doesn’t have any visible VRR flicker with changing frame rates, which is fantastic.

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

The LG 27GR95UM has very low input lag no matter the refresh rate, so gaming feels responsive.

If you're looking for a monitor that has Auto HDR Tone Mapping with the PS5, check out the Sony INZONE M9 II.

While the monitor supports any signal from the Xbox Series X|S, you need to enable the console’s HDMI override setting for 1440p @ 60Hz to work, which disables VRR. Keep in mind that the Xbox doesn’t support HDR with 1080p or 1440p signals, so this isn’t a limitation of the monitor.

The 3.5 mm audio output serves as a combo jack with audio out and mic in, but you need to have the USB-B cable connected to your computer to fully use it. It also comes with DTS Headphone:X to simulate surround sound audio.

The LG 27GR95UM works well with macOS. The monitor's overclock doesn't work with all connections, but other than that, there aren't any obvious issues. If you’re using a MacBook, you can close the lid and continue working on the screen, and after reopening the lid, windows return to their original positions.

This monitor has a few extra features, including:

• Black Stabilizer: Adjusts the gamma so that it's easier to see opponents in dark areas.
• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair that your game's anti-cheat tool won't detect, giving you a competitive advantage.
• FPS Counter: Displays the current frame rate of your source.
• DTS Headphone:X: The monitor offers a few different sound modes to use with compatible devices.
• Hexagon Lighting: This is the setting to adjust the RGB lighting on the back of the monitor.
• Peak Brightness: Makes the screen the brightest possible.
• Waves MaxxAudio: It supports Waves MaxxAudio, which can enhance audio and be turned on or off.

If you want a monitor that can display glasses-free 3D with some games, check out the Samsung Odyssey 3D G90XF S27FG900X.

You can see more OSD pictures by downloading this zip folder.