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ASUS MG279Q

ASUS MG279Q Review – Asus has somehow pulled off the impossible with this brand new gaming display. Until now, low pixel response times were the domain of TN panels, but their narrow viewing angles and slightly average colours were less than amazing. On the other hand, IPS panels have become the preferred choice of colour purists, and their wide 178 degree viewing angle makes them perfect for larger displays and those who need to share their screen with other viewers. As such, IPS is now seen as the premium panel type, but its benefits come with a severe cost – high pixel response times. To put it bluntly, these beautiful screens have more motion blur than a V8 supercar photographed by a crappy camera. Yet ASUS has magically endowed its new MG279Q with pixels that are speedier than a Mexican Mouse on speed.

ASUS MG279Q, IPS gets a speed boost

This large 27 inch display uses a 2560 x 1440 IPS panel, yet supports the rapid-fire refresh rate of 144Hz. It’s also one of the new breed of Adaptive- Sync displays (aka FreeSync), but it has certain limitations not suffered by TNpowered Adaptive-Sync displays. For whatever reason, ASUS has only been able to enable Adaptive-Sync when this display is running between 35Hz and 90Hz; anything outside of this range and it reverts back to V-sync on or off, depending on what the user selects. The low end of this range is actually better than the BenQ monitor reviewed here, so games running at 35fps should still look nice and smooth. However, if you’ve got the necessary GPU grunt to pull it off, the lack of support over 90Hz is a pain in the posterior. At least you can always add extra high graphics options, such as downsampling the resolution, to drop the framerate to below 90Hz.

Looking at the physical appearance of the device, we see a relatively plain bezel design, mounted on an excellent stand that supports movement in all three axis. Inputs are well catered for, with dual HDMI/MHL 1.4 ports, DisplayPort 1.2, and mini-DisplayPort 1.2. Twin USB 3.0 ports round out the connection options. The OSD is controlled via a series of buttons at the rear of the display, which we always find a little annoying compared to front-mounted controls, but at least there’s also a joystick for navigating. We love the GamePlus features – one draws a crosshair in the middle of the screen, which is basically cheating in games that don’t allow the player to have a targeting reticule, while the other displays an on-screen timer that can be used to measure cool downs within games.

As expected given the use of an IPS panel, colour and contrast performance were both excellent once we’d toned down the extremely high brightness, with plenty of detail in darker sections of games, while colours were punchy without being overly saturated. It’s definitely got a better overall image quality than the AOC display. Motion blur was also extremely hard to pick thanks to the 4ms pixel response time, while the Adaptive-Sync feature worked flawlessly.

It might cost a little more than the AOC display in this roundup, but the use of an IPS panel with such an impressive pixel response time really is groundbreaking, and makes this our new favourite 27 inch gaming panel. We look forward to seeing a G-Sync version.