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So I have been doing research for about 3 days and it was so overwhelming at first. I literally was losing my mind and going cross-eyed, every monitor has bad reviews it seems, when I finally felt I had found the one it was back to the drawing board.
My goal 27inch (ish) and 1440p (because at 27inch 1440p is basically as tight as you can get pixel wise). 4k is overkill at this size and will ruin your fps in games. You are welcome.
After doing tons of comparisons I narrowed it down to 5 monitors, 2 of which had to go. Here we go.
1. Gigabyte M27Q - IPS Panel This was chosen because of its awesome specs, ratings, contrast, response, you name it, this checked all the boxes and hit 165hz at $300 dollars, I was like ok this one is definitely on the list, but it has one drawback which is mentioned in all reviews its a BGR panel, burn that one to your brain. Instead of standard RGB, no biggie right? Apparently it messes with fonts and how they look and all you gotta do is swap cleartype over via tuning. Well I did that, it helps, but it is so freaking bad it ruined the monitor. I dont know how these review sites can just say its really not that bad, its awful, even during gaming you can see this weird 3d glasses old school blue red to the side of pixels. I dont understand why they did that and why review companies would be ok with this. I boxed it up within an hour of testing, it was making my eyes freaking water it was so bad. How can people live with that?
2. Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X -- $699 This was going to be the higher end choice, again ips. Due to it being BGR and me seeing the m27Q I stayed very far away. So thats a no, x'd right off the list.
3. Asus XG27AQ (this monitor) - $499 IPS panel, this monitor hits all the checkboxes, smooth, fast, great color out of the box, semi decent price, good stand, rgb lighting on the back, low ips glow, good contrast, the border around the monitor is good, its flat, 27inch, 1440p 170hz refresh rate. Quality control is good, menu is good, simple and easy. Im happy with it, it also beats all my previous gaming monitors ive ever tested and its top rating on rtings, and I can see why. This thing nails it, gaming is crisp, responsive, no ghosting, smearing or trails, colors pop and hit just right, off angles are great as well. This is why I kept this monitor.
4. MSI Optix MAG274QRF-QD -- IPS 165HZ $449 price, this monitor gets great reviews, posts essentially better specs and contrast than the XG27AQ (which btw is the best 2k monitor asus offers right now). The only thing I see about that one is there is hit and miss in reviews on getting bad panels, with the asus group they just dont have that issue, as well color out of the box not the best but can be made better than the XG27AQ, it also can do better hdr content and overall maybe the better monitor in the entire list of all IPS panels at 2k. Check the reviews on amazon its high rated for sure, but msi is just known for some quality issues and grey uniformity on rtings does show its better so Id say the quality of the panel is less (more dirty) but it does win on performance.
5. The samsung g7, its a va panel 240hz, its $699 so its top budget pricing and it apparently smokes. The only downside is the curve and its a curvy thing. As well the off angles arent that great (maybe why its curved). Some state it has dark vingetting in the corners, but all corners can be weird. Either way its a panel to highly consider especially if you got the budget and the power to push new titles to 240fps, RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 or way lowered quality settings will get you there. Either way the g7 is definitely ready for a power house graphics card, RTX 4090ti in the future might get it there.
So overall run down here. These are my suggested top 3 monitors to look at.
Asus XG27AQ - great panel, price, performance, colors, quality control, less fuss, just buy and be happy.
MSI - also great, slightly better price, might come out with a winner might not, has better specs and contrast and such over the asus.
Samsung G7 - Darks are great, contrast blows these two away, curved if you like that go for it, there is also a 32inch model.
These are the kings right now, until for whatever reason oled gets it butt in gear and starts producing high refresh rate oled panels in 27-32 inch.
Also if you want a good monitor $299, I would go with the gigabyte g27q, that one is a RGB panel, 144hz its not as good as the m27q, but the m27Q is useless like I said due to the image text clarity issues that make you go blind.
Cons of this monitor: there are two. One this monitor qc can vary. Aka dirty panels. There maybe some yellowing on some panels on a white screen. You'll see a variation or blotch of yellow very slightly almost hard to see but it's there. You'll only notice on a white white screen. You may have to do a return once or twice to get a good one. I bought 4 got 1 really good one. 2 decent. 1 kinda not so great.
2. This one is hard for some to see. When you scroll on a white page with black text and the color of the screen is warm or windows has turned on night light mode the words can kinda trail or ghost in red. I've never seen this before. Turning off night mode makes it go away. It could be a windows thing or a warm color issue.
Thats it folks! Hope this review helped I tried to make it as simple as possible and dont want you people to have to deal with cutting through so many reviews just to get it down to that. Definitely look at the rtings website and forget what they suggest just use their table tool and play with that to see whats at the top you can even narrow it down to resolution and such.
Until then this monitor gets all 5 stars from me, in reality its maybe more like all 4.5 stars, but since no other monitor is really out there that blows it away, maybe a flat G7 samsung panel or oled panel soon, either way im glad I got this monitor otherwise I would return it and it beat all my old gaming panels (144hz as well) aoc, benq monitors.
Also stay away from tn panels, those are crap and they dont even rank anymore in gaming, ips has taken its place, va is still iffy and not many panels yet, but they could do better soon.
