Samsung C27RG5 Monitor Review

The Samsung CRG5 27" has a nice design, similar to the Samsung CHG70, but with a silver bottom bezel. The back is similar to the Samsung Odyssey G5 C27G55T. It has a basic design overall, with no RGB bias lighting.

The stand has a very simple design, similar to the Samsung CHG70. It's pretty wide, but it doesn't support the monitor all that well, as it wobbles quite a bit.

Unfortunately, the Samsung CRG5 has bad ergonomics. It can only tilt, and even that has a disappointing range. The tilt adjustment is very stiff, so it's not easy to adjust.

The back of the monitor has a unique design for the inputs. It looks great, but might cause problems if you're planning on VESA mounting the monitor. Due to the extra space between the mounting holes and the back of the monitor, most mounting brackets require a lot of spacers, which aren't included. There are two clips on the stand for cable management, and they're quite helpful for keeping your desk neat.

The monitor appears to lean forward in this image, but it can be tilted back.

The Samsung LC27RG50FQNXZA has just okay build quality. It's entirely plastic, and the whole body has quite a bit of flex to it. The stand feels cheap and doesn't seem very solid. The tilt adjustments are stiff, and it feels like the whole unit flexes when adjusting the tilt. Unfortunately, our unit came with a large scratch on the right side of the screen.

As expected for a VA panel, the Samsung CRG5 has an impressive contrast ratio, resulting in deep blacks in a dark room. These results are a bit better than Samsung's advertised 3000:1, but this can vary between units.

The Samsung CRG5 doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video is for reference only, so you can see how the backlight on this display performs and compare it to a similar product with local dimming.

The Samsung CRG5 has good peak brightness. It's bright enough to overcome most glare, and there's no noticeable variation in brightness with different content.

These measurements were taken after calibration, in the 'Custom' Picture Mode, with the backlight at max. The peak brightness can change depending on which mode you're using.

This monitor doesn't support HDR.

As expected for a VA monitor, the Samsung 27 inch CRG5 has mediocre horizontal viewing angles. Black levels start to rise almost immediately after you move off-center, causing the image to appear washed out. Colors stay accurate to a wide angle, though. The curved screen can help reduce the impact of this, but our testing doesn't show the effect of the curve. If viewing angles are important to you, a monitor with an IPS screen, like the Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X might be a better choice.

Unfortunately, the Samsung CRG5 has sub-par vertical viewing angles. Again, colors stay accurate to a wide angle, but black levels raise at a very narrow angle, causing the image to appear washed out.

The Samsung CRG5 has excellent gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center, but there's very little dirty screen effect. Near-black scenes are nearly perfect, with no noticeable issues. Gray uniformity can vary between units, but it's rarely an issue on modern monitors.

The Samsung LC27RG50FQNXZA we bought has decent black uniformity, but this can vary between units. There's almost no clouding throughout the screen, but there's some backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges.

Out of the box, the Samsung CRG5 we bought has good accuracy, but this varies between units. Most colors are pretty accurate, but reds, greens, and yellows are a bit off. The white balance is borderline, and the overall color temperature is a bit on the warm side. Gamma doesn't follow the sRGB target curve, but is instead closer to a flat 2.1, so most bright scenes are too bright, and dark scenes are a bit too dark. Unfortunately, there's no sRGB mode, and it's oversaturating a bit, especially in the greens, reds, and yellows.

After calibration, the overall accuracy is nearly perfect. Gamma follows the sRGB target curve pretty well, but there are a few minor issues throughout. Colors are much more accurate, and it's not oversaturated anymore. White balance is nearly perfect, as is the color temperature.

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 due to manufacturing tolerances, even for the same model.

The Samsung CRG5 has an excellent color gamut in SDR. It has nearly perfect coverage of the sRGB color space used in most desktop and web content, but it can't quite display the full range of greens or blues. Coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space is good, but probably too low for professional content creators.

This monitor has outstanding color volume in SDR. Despite the high contrast ratio, it can't display dark saturated colors very well.

This monitor doesn't support HDR.

This monitor doesn't support HDR.

Unfortunately, there are some signs of temporary image retention on our unit, but they fade quickly. This can vary between units.

The Samsung CRG5 has good gradient handling. There's some banding in darker shades, and as it can only accept an 8-bit signal, there's 8-bit banding in our 10-bit test image.

There are no signs of color bleed on our Samsung CRG5, but this varies between units. It's rarely an issue with regular content, though.

The Samsung CRG5 has good reflection handling. The matte finish diffuses direct reflections well, and glare shouldn't be an issue.

Unfortunately, the Samsung CRG5 has just alright text clarity. Even after running the ClearType wizard on a Windows PC (top photo), there are some artifacts in every letter, especially on diagonal or curved lines.

Unfortunately, the Samsung CRG5 has a bad response time at the max refresh rate. There's no overshoot at all, which is great, but the total response time is terribly slow, especially in dark scenes. The black smearing behind our moving response time logo photo actually went even further than shown here, but was cropped when we took the photo. It's so bad that the motion blur is actually cutting off part of the letter 'G' in our logo.

There are three overdrive settings to choose from, but they don't appear to be working, as there's no noticeable difference between them. Enabling Adaptive Sync disables the Response Time setting, but it's also slightly faster than the other modes, so we recommend using that mode.

We don't know if our unit is defective or if this can be fixed with a firmware. We'll retest the response time if there are any updates.

There's virtually no difference between the 60Hz and 240Hz response time on the Samsung C27RG50. There's significant motion smearing behind dark objects, and there's more persistence blur due to the slower refresh rate, but overall it looks just as bad.

There are three overdrive settings to choose from, but they don't appear to be working, as there's no noticeable difference between them. Enabling Adaptive Sync disables the Response Time setting, but it's also slightly faster than the other modes, so we recommend using that mode.

We don't know if our unit is defective or if this can be fixed with a firmware. We'll retest the response time if there are any updates.

The Samsung CRG5 doesn't use pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight, which is great. At low brightness settings (below 29) there's a very high frequency flicker, but it's at such a high frequency that it's not at all noticeable.

Unfortunately, we noticed a brightness flashing effect when the variable refresh rate (VRR) feature is enabled, similar to what we saw on the Samsung Odyssey G7 C32G75T. It's especially noticeable when the framerate fluctuates in darker scenes at low framerates. The only way to remove it is to disable VRR.

This monitor doesn't have an optional black frame insertion feature.

The Samsung CRG5 has an incredibly fast refresh rate. It's certified as NVIDIA G-SYNC compatible, but that only works over DisplayPort. Although not officially certified, we found that it also works well with AMD cards, but strangely, it only works over DisplayPort. Unlike most monitors, FreeSync doesn't work over HDMI with this monitor.

The Samsung CRG5 has superb low input lag at the native refresh rate. Unfortunately, input lag increases significantly when gaming at 60Hz, which isn't ideal for console gamers.

The 27 inch, 1080p screen is decent, but the pixel density is a bit on the low side.

This is a pretty basic monitor, but it has a few extra features, most of which are designed to improve your gaming experience:

• Black Equalizer: adjusts the gamma to make it easier to spot other players or enemies in darker areas on-screen.
• Virtual Aim Point: a bit of a cheat, this feature adds a virtual crosshair that can't be detected by your game.

The OSD can be controlled by a simple joystick control located under the Samsung logo on the bottom bezel. It's easy to use.

• User manuals
• DisplayPort cable
• Power supply