The Breaker Times

Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDP

MSRP $999.00

“The Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDP is a massive step forward for OLED gaming monitors.”

Pros

• Insane motion clarity at 480Hz
• Useful 24.5-inch crop mode
• A slew of burn-in prevention settings
• Display Widget Center for monitor control

Cons

• No USB-C input
• Lacking a KVM

I was floored the moment Asus announced the ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDP. After we just saw the first 1440p OLED monitors last year, here Asus was claiming it could increase brightness while pushing a 480Hz refresh rate. If Asus could pull it off, I thought at the time, the PG27AQDP would be among the best gaming monitors. And after months of waiting, the monitor is here. Somehow, even with sky-high expectations, Asus managed to exceed them.

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Yes, you’re getting a higher refresh rate and better brightness compared to the OLEDs of last year, but the PG27AQDP is more than that. It’s a monitor that brings together more than a year of growth from Asus in the OLED space, packing in more features than ever before while delivering exceptional image quality. The PG27AQDP isn’t another niche OLED. It’s the new standard, and other displays are going to have a hard time achieving what Asus has pulled off here.

Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDP specs

Subtle design changes

Looking at pictures of the PG27AQDP sells short just how stunning the monitor is in the flesh. The design overall is familiar if you’ve seen a monitor like Asus’ PG32UCDM. The display is sat on a tri-point stand that offers a wide range of adjustment, as well as an underglow that blasts through an ROG logo. I particularly like this stand on a 27-inch monitor, too. Adjusting it down to a comfortable height almost blocks out the back of the stand, which makes the screen look like it’s floating.

The design is familiar, but it’s not identical to previous ROG designs. In particular, the back of the monitor features a diagonal design that mashes solid plastic and an illuminated ROG logo with a semi-transparent bit of plastic that expose the internals of the display. It looks fantastic.

It’s impossibly thin, too. There’s a bump on the back of the monitor that houses Asus’ custom heatsink, but the edges of the display are remarkably small. It’s similar to the thinness we saw on the LG UltraGear OLED 27 when it debuted, which remains one of the thinnest OLED monitors you can buy.

Otherwise, Asus includes some of its more premium design touches that were absent on the recent XG27AQDMG. You get a clean cable routing channel through the stand, along with an illuminated logo on the back of the stand. At the top, you’ll also find a 1/4-inch mount for attaching a tripod head, a microphone, or any other accessory you could want.

A culmination of features

As if the high-level specs weren’t enough, Asus packed a ton of features into the PG27AQDP. For starters, it includes a range of AI features that are meant to be more intelligent versions of pack-in features we normally see in monitors. There’s a crosshair, a shadow boost mode, and even a MOBA map highlighter, all of which are dynamic to what’s happening in your game. I never felt the need for these types of features previously, and AI doesn’t change that. But they’re some nice goodies to play around with.

The more exciting features are elsewhere. The PG27AQDP includes Asus’ Extreme Low Motion Blur, or ELMB, which you might more commonly know as Black Frame Insertion (BFI). This halves the refresh rate of the monitor (240Hz) and inserts a black frame in between each refresh. The idea is to increase motion clarity, as you’re seeing sharp frames instead of a blur between refreshes when games can’t max out the 480Hz refresh rate.

Like ELMB on previous Asus monitors, the brightness is significantly limited on the PG27AQDP. It’s not something I imagine most players will use considering you should be able to max-out the refresh rate in most games where motion clarity is a major concern. Still, I’m not mad at Asus’ kitchen sink approach to features. Even if only some players will engage with these features, it’s great to see Asus cater to them.

One of the more useful features available is the 24.5-inch crop mode. This is the prevailing monitor size for esports displays, and it can be tough to adjust to a larger monitor. Asus allows you to crop in to 24.5 inches, but more importantly, it does so with one-to-one pixel mapping. Instead of weird fringing trying to run 1440p in the crop mode, Asus runs the monitor at 2,368 by 1,332 with the full 480Hz refresh rate. It’s native pixel density, just in a smaller area.

Plenty of control

Asus has one of the best on-screen displays (OSDs) on gaming monitors right now, and it’s even better on the PG27AQDP. That’s because of the OLED Care features. Most monitors place their burn-in prevention settings somewhere at the bottom of the OSD, which has made navigation tough as more and more features are added to gaming monitors. Asus segments out your panel maintenance features into their own section, making it easy to find what you need.

You don’t need to use the OSD, though. Asus offers its Display Widget Center, which allows you to control your monitor with a keyboard and mouse. I don’t mind using the four-way joystick given how cleanly Asus’ OSD is laid out, but Display Widget Center is definitely more convenient once it’s installed (Asus includes a QR code in the OSD that links to the download).

The range of ports is fairly standard. You get two HDMI 2.1 ports and a DisplayPort 1.4 connection, along with two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports that serve as a hub. You’ll need to use the lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC) to reach the full resolution and refresh rate of the display, but you’re free to turn it off in the OSD — at the sacrifice of the resolution and/or refresh rate.

There are a few missing features here. Critically, there’s no USB-C input and no KVM switch, both of which are becoming important when devices like the Steam Deck OLED (or your work laptop) can hook up with a single cable. I’ll take the $1,000 price tag of the PG27AQDP over a USB-C connection, but even considering the price, a USB-C port isn’t a big ask.

The brightest OLED I’ve tested

Asus has some pretty insane claims for this monitor considering it’s the first 1440p OLED with a 480Hz refresh rate. That alone is impressive enough, but Asus also claims an insane 1,300 nits of peak brightness. That’s the same claim we’ve seen for previous monitors using a new LG WOLED panel, such as Asus’ own ROG Swift PG34WCDM. And just like that monitor, this one can’t hit 1,300 nits. It’s still insanely bright, though.

I measured 1,146 nits for a 1% window in HDR, which is the highest result I’ve ever recorded. It’s not 1,300 nits, no, but it doesn’t really matter when a 27-inch display is getting that bright at an appropriate viewing distance. The PG27AQDP can’t maintain that level of brightness for long, however. At a 4% window, it dropped to 864 nits in HDR. SDR brightness isn’t anything special, hitting 400 nits on the dot for both a 1% and 4% window.

Color coverage is great, but it’s not exactly surprising. The monitor covered 100% of sRGB, 97% of DCI-P3, and 88% of AdobeRGB. That’s exactly where nearly all current WOLED and QD-OLED panels fall, and this monitor isn’t changing that. Although not surprising, I don’t want to sell the gamut short here — this is fantastic coverage.

Color accuracy is a different matter. Flipping to the sRGB calibration mode, I consistency saw a color difference of 2.4 or higher. Ideally, you want to be under 2, especially for a $1,000 OLED monitor. Cranking the brightness up to its maximum in SDR resulted in a color error of 1.46, which is acceptable. I’ve seen better results on monitors like the Alienware 27 QD-OLED, but for a WOLED panel, that’s in the range I’d expect.

The gap exposes one of the oddities with OLED — particularly WOLED — right now, and that’s color saturation. As you decrease the brightness, saturation also decreases. That leads to worse accuracy, particularly in the grays. You’ll probably run the monitor toward the brighter end of the spectrum in SDR regardless, but it’s still worth noting.

Insane motion clarity

We’ve seen higher refresh rates than 480Hz before, and we’ve even seen this refresh rate on an OLED before. But this is the first OLED monitor that manages a 480Hz refresh rate at 1440p. The insane refresh rate combined with the low response times of OLED make for a monitor that feels impossibly smooth — and one that feels shockingly responsive as it tackles the issue of motion clarity head on. Most gamers don’t need a 480Hz refresh rate, and the PG27AQDP doesn’t change that fact. It makes a lot more sense than previous attempts, though.

A 480Hz refresh rate also showed up on the LG Dual Mode OLED, which is a monitor that allows you to switch between a 4K display at 240Hz and a 1080p on at 480Hz. For most gamers, the approach here makes more sense. You get a higher resolution than 1080p, and you still get the insane smoothness of 480Hz. It’s a compromise that ends up making for a product that hits the target for a larger swath of gamers.

The refresh rate is focused on competitive games — Valorant, Counter-Strike 2, among others — but don’t discount the cinematic experience. You’re still getting the inky blacks of OLED and excellent color, so games like Alan Wake 2 and the recent Black Myth: Wukong look incredible. You don’t need me to tell you that this monitor provides a great gaming experience, though. You need me to tell you if you should buy it.

Surprisingly, the answer is yes. I fully expected Asus to charge a premium for having the first 1440p OLED with a 480Hz refresh rate, but it didn’t. This monitor comes in at the same $1,000 price point as the crop of 27-inch 1440p OLEDs we saw last year. You can get those models for cheaper now, but with the brightness and color advancements found in the PG27AQDP, it’s worth spending up. From a value perspective, the 480Hz refresh rate is a footnote, not the main draw.

And that’s a great thing. The PG27AQDP is living proof that the world of OLED gaming monitors is still rapidly evolving, with Asus delivering higher peak brightness, better color coverage, and double the refresh rate of the PG27AQDM for the same launch price.

Warranty and burn-in protection

Asus has slowly built up its warranty and OLED care features over the past year, and it has quite the suite of features available. Like most of the OLED monitors available today, Asus offers a three-year warranty that covers burn-in. You shouldn’t develop burn-in during that time, especially if you’re using Asus’ burn-in prevention features.

The PG27AQDP debuts Asus’ new suite of burn-in prevention features called OLED Care+. And there’s a lot here. For starters, you get pixel cleaning that will trigger every few hours of continuous use, as well as a screen saver that will trigger when the PC is idle. There’s also pixel shifting available, which will slightly shift images on screen — you have control over the frequency — to reduce strain on individual pixels.

Asus goes much further, though. There’s taskbar detection that will dim the Windows taskbar while you’re on the desktop, as well logo brightness adjustment, which can dim static logos and elements like the HUD in a game. Asus includes dimming controls for bright highlights on the screen, and even something it calls “target mode,” which will dim everything on screen expect for the targeted window.

There’s a lot here, rivaling what I saw with the MSI MPG 321URX. What stands out most, however, are the stats. Asus now includes stats in the OSD that show how long you’ve ran the panel between refreshes, how many refreshes you’ve performed, and the common interval between refreshes. It’s extremely helpful, as it’s easy to get sidetracked and miss routine maintenance on an OLED panel, or worse, refresh the panel too often and put undue strain on it.

An easy recommendation

I’m struggling to find complaints with the PG27AQDP. There’s no USB-C, and the brightness isn’t quite as high as Asus claimed, but those criticisms pale in comparison to how much this monitor has to offer. It manages a massive step forward in image quality and motion clarity while coming in at the same price of 1440p OLEDs we saw just a year ago. Asus is the only player in town with this display right now, too, at least until Acer releases its competing 480Hz OLED.