Nice review...

I'll immediately jump into my journalistic operating mode though, 27-inches for Ultra HD, isn't that a bit of a silly resolution DPI scaling wise? Is Ultra HD is the best choice at this moment in time? Personally, and a lot of people will frown at me right now, I do not believe so, at 24 inches up to 32 inches I feel panels at 2560x1440 or 3440x1440 are far better suited for the job, at a much lower price and a lesser need of graphics horsepower...

Amen to that. Sure a few people can and may appreciate the extra DPI on 4k 27", just think it would be far more impressive on a larger screen. Have a feeling that Asus opted for the smaller size to showcase the effectiveness of HDR. 348 LD zones on 27" allows the zones to be smaller and the HDR effect more pronounced. If on a larger screen, the zones would either have to be increased (as well as cost) or stretched which may diminish the effect.

Paulo Narciso:

Despite being a fantastic monitor, the price is ridiculous, and it's too small for 4k.

Not sure about the size. There's a lot to be said about gaming on a high pixel density display. Edit: About Newegg/Amazon/etc "reviews", I wouldn't trust them. Companies pay a lot money to hire hordes of "reviewers" to influence people buying on those sites. Never trust them. "And you will too" sounds really legit, people.

Paulo Narciso:

Despite being a fantastic monitor, the price is ridiculous, and it's too small for 4k.

That is you're opinion. I have asus 27 AQ 4k 60hz g-sync, and the size is perfect for me. Had it since release. Perfect as secondary monitor, on the right side of my Acer x34. Same hight. 🙂

Agree with every point. It's a nice tech showcase of a monitor, but not something I would spend my money on... yet. However 2-3 years from now, very likely, especially if a 30-32" one with similar specs will be out by then.

Coming from someone who has the 1440p gsync version of this monitor it is truely insane that not only are they charging over double what i paid for, but there are compromises if you want to have the higher frame-rate (which in my mind basically makes this a 100hz/98hz monitor not a 144hz) but then you also have an active fan and halo effects. for the price range this should never have been a thing, and although halo effects wont be affecting most specially in many games its still a pain to see it on such an expensive screen. hopefully in 2nd or 3nd Gen we will have HDMI 2.1/2 and DP1.5 which can fully handle everything needed, i know it's not Asus fault, but man is it sure a kicker for the price tag

I would like it at 32-34". Nice monitor, but I agree with the pricing being too high. It's a start. Let see what follows.

Waiting for 3440x1440 200hz, so dropping this

Great review as always @Hilbert Hagedoorn

nizzen:

That is you're opinion. I have asus 27 AQ 4k 60hz g-sync, and the size is perfect for me. Had it since release. Perfect as secondary monitor, on the right side of my Acer x34. Same hight. 🙂

maybe so, but i wouldnt be paying 2500 for a secondary monitor lol.

As other have said i too think this is too small for the 4k res, id prefer a monitor i can buy, plug in and use, not have to mess with the dpi settings on the os cause everything is tiny Iv got the Asus VG248QE but might upgrade and just get the PG258Q Or look/wait for a Asus 1440p monitor with gsync thats new

Ziggymac:

Its priced so ridiculously high simply because time and time again these companies have discovered that tech nerds with access to a credit card simply have no common sense/self restraint and will pay any price to have bragging rights on tech forums to complete strangers... 🙄

What's worse is that there are a bunch of compromises being made; a 2560x1440 monitor wouldn't have had any outside QC and the backlighting zones and would've made more sense at the physical size.

It seems to me like this monitor is simply too early to the market. New GPU's are coming but currently nothing can really run it in all titles. The physical connectors are limiting its functionality to an extent. The beefy FPGA required to drive the G-Sync module not only requires active cooling but apparently is directly adding $500 to the cost of the monitor. MicroLED is right around the corner and will solve the FALD resolution problems + bring a bunch of other improvements to refresh rates, contrast, blooming, etc. Unless you have a considerable amount of money to spend I'd avoid this monitor and derivatives built on the same panel. Nearly all the technology in it will be obsolete in two years. Edit: I also want to use this thread as a soapbox and say it's time for Nvidia to end G-Sync. There are currently no QHD HDR G-Sync monitors on the market but plenty of FreeSync/Adaptive ones and now even TV's. At this point G-Sync offers no features over Adaptive Sync aside from arguably making this monitor possible.. a monitor almost no one can afford. The only thing it does is limit my choice in monitor selection and increase the overall costs of monitors it's featured in. When G-Sync offered noticeable advantages I was fine with it but now it's just pointless vendor lock in. I always assumed Nvidia would add features and make G-Sync a premium option while using AdaptiveSync for budget, but thus far they've done nothing to differentiate it. I'm not happy about it.

Eyeer:

What about Display Stream Compression (DSC)?

From a reddit thread where a guy explained it - I don't know enough about it to know whether he is right or not:

You're forgetting the blanking intervals which even digital displays need to sync to the signal. A common 4K timing is 4000x2200 'total pixels' with an active window of 3840x2160, which at 10 bpc ends up 45.62 Gbps. Even at 8 bpc it ends up 38.02 Gbps. Also those blanking intervals are where audio is packed into, so even those monitors that can run on the ragged edge of ultra-tight timings can't provide audio at the same time then. That 4000x2200 timing at 98Hz would need 25.87 Gbps @ 8bpc, which is EXTREMELY close to the DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 cable limit of 25.92 Gbps (because while the raw interface is 32.40 Gbps there's encoding and protocol overhead to consider), so these monitors are likely using that common 4000x2200 timing. Regarding DSC latency, DSC only uses a single pixel line buffer (so at 4K you're talking ~4000 pixels total, 3840 to be precise) which is trivial and basically zero latency. DSC operates entirely in YCbCr, not RGB, and it's more akin to a chroma downscaling technique that spreads it's noise along a linear pixel stream instead of a fixed color plane downscale, so the artifacts are better hidden visually. So there's no such thing as "4:4:4 DSC" for example. There's 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 4:2:0, and DSC, so to speak. And that's why nobody is discussing the new 4K@144 monitors still supporting 144Hz w/ DSC, because anyone that cares about 4:4:4 precision won't enable DSC because it can still cause artifacting in high detail areas, so the 98Hz limit will most likely still apply. This is also why you need a dual-cable monitor to do true 4:4:4 4K@120 w/ 10 bpc, because that's the only way to feed enough bits for that many pixels still, even DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 can't do that on a single cable yet.

let's see, 144 Hz with *, 120 Hz with *. They should've advertised it as 98 Hz monitor and price it alot lower. As always, overpriced gimmick from asus.

The only thing keeping me from buying it, is the fan... i won't ever buy a product with a noisy fan, a monitor least of all.

Is it possible to turn local dimming on while in SDR mode?

Thanks for the review. I'm waiting for MiniLED backlit monitors to be a real thing before I upgrade. A really nice IPS / AVHA with a MiniLED backlight would be nice. https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/mini-led-based-gaming-monitors-may-reach-market-at-the-end-of-this-year.html

I'll bet in a couple years we'll see better monitors than this with full spec performance (HDMI 2.1) at less than a $1000.

So, the most technologically advanced display that exists, and they put that ugly thick bezel on it. WHY ? It's a direct-lit LED, with no need to house LED's on the side of the panel, requiring a bezel. Also the price is insane, it's more expensive than 55"-65" OLED UHD HDR TV's ... (yes, missing 144Hz, but still ... damn !)

When you are first to the party of course your gonna charge an arm and a leg but having to sell a kidney also is one organ too far. If it was a 30/32" then maybe 1500 squid would be reasonable but 2k for 27" even with all that good stats stuff. nah thanks.