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Jan 15, 2024

Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM review: A strong second

Updated June 6, 2023 The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM

Updated June 6, 2023

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM (available at Walmart for $1,183.73) is something of a ‘Johnny come lately’ following on the heels of the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B. It's another 27-inch, 1440p OLED gaming monitor boasting a 240Hz refresh rate. It even uses the same panel as LG's monitor, in fact. If the differences between the two monitors weren't subtle enough, Asus even charges the same $1,000 as LG. The big difference is a custom heatsink meant to help drive the monitor at higher brightness levels, but testing doesn't necessarily back that up. Make no mistake, both monitors are fantastic in the same ways, but won't be for everyone.

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About the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM

What we like

What we don't like

Should you buy the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM?

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Gorgeous color and contrast

Fast response

Sturdy, useful stand

Some fringing issues

Max brightness is a bit low

No USB-C or speakers

At $1,000, this gaming monitor has many of the same impressive specs as the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B.

Here are the specs of the monitor we tested:

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It's hard to not to get excited by the crisp OLED display, that not only has rich color saturation, but astounding contrast too when HDR is enabled.

The LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B, like most OLED displays, is dazzling. And using the same panel, the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM manages to impress in roughly equal measure. It provides the stunning contrast that OLED displays specializes in, making bright objects pop against the rich, dark blacks on offer.

That visual glory was on full display in my playthrough of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. From beginning to end, the rich visuals of each world came through splendidly. With HDR enabled, the visual effects were especially pronounced, and nothing looked quite as dazzling as the glow of a lightsaber in a dark cave.

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM manages 100% coverage of the sRGB color space and 96% of DCI-P3, giving it an exceptional color presentation that makes each game all the more lifelike. All that said, the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B also manages more or less equal performance and slightly better color accuracy out of the box.

Measuring color accuracy, we use a colorimeter to see how close a monitors output is to the color its meant to be displaying. The test presents a score as a DeltaE (or dE), which describes by how much a color deviates from the color that's meant to be displayed. A dE of less than 3 is effectively spot on. While the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM measured at an average dE of 2.8 out of the box, it wasn't quite as impressive as LG's 1.91. Both monitors will look accurate without any user calibration, but LG simply comes out ahead.

No need to worry about lagging while gaming on this monitor. The 240Hz refresh rate ensures uninterrupted visuals.

The PG27AQDM doesn't just excel at displaying lush, open-world games. Between the 240Hz refresh rate of the display and the ultra-fast pixel response time OLED provides, visuals are super smooth on this monitor.

In Overwatch 2, the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM keeps up with the most frantic action. A Tracer blinking around the maps feels like far less of a threat when each movement is visible on-screen without the blurry trail of ghosting. In Blurbusters’ UFO test, I can't spot even the faintest bit of ghosting on this display. Of course, all of this is true of the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B as well.

This monitor offers versatility, with the option to rotate the display vertically.

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM sits on a sturdy, heavy duty stand that provides all the flexibility you should expect for a $1,000 monitor. It has some customizable RGB lighting built in—a few zones on the stand, a projection lamp on the bottom of the stand, and a dot matrix Asus logo on the rear of the monitor—which may please some looking for a more stylish desk setup, and it has a wide-open channel for routing cables.

The ability to rotate the monitor vertically and spin the stand makes it easier to plug cables in as well. Streamers will also benefit from a tripod mounting point at the top of the stand, something I’ve seen a few monitors include now.

We ran into minor flaws when it came to overall brightness.

Just as the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM excels where the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B excels, so too does it stumble.

As each pixel is self-lit, the more pixels that are trying to display bright white there are, the more power the monitor requires, and OLED displays limit how much power is being delivered at any one time across the entire monitor to prevent premature wear on the pixels. So, the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM can't display a full white screen as bright as a small white box in the middle of a black screen. This crops up as unpleasant dimming when I adjust window sizes.

To avoid this, there's a Uniform Brightness mode that simply caps the brightness at a level the monitor can maintain for small and large windows alike. The tradeoff is that it will leave the monitor peaking well below 300 nits where much cheaper 240Hz IPS displays, like the Gigabyte M27Q X, can readily exceed 400 nits at all times.

The display can also unfortunately run into some color fringing due to the subpixel arrangement. Every pixel on a typical display is made up of single-colored red, green, and blue subpixels (arranged in that order), but the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM and other OLEDs like it have an unusual sub-pixel arrangement. PCs have some tricks to account for sub-pixel arrangements to present sharper visuals, but those techniques don't always work nicely when applied to the unusual arrangement of OLEDs.

While there's almost no noticeable fringing in Chrome even on fine text, the issue can crop up a bit more in Windows files and folders. It also almost always appears along the edges of anything yellow on screen, with a red fringe showing up on the left edge and a green one on the right edge. It's a very small issue, but distracting nonetheless.

While the panel is the same between Asus and LG's 27-inch gaming OLEDs, the hardware didn't have to be. The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM sets itself apart from LG's competitor in pretty much only one way, which is disappointing because it had a chance to step up where LG let me down. Asus's monitor includes a joystick control below the screen that makes for easy navigation, whereas LG opted for a remote control that was more convenient but came with the possibility of losing it.

The issue is that neither company included any USB-C ports on its monitor, opting instead for a dated upstream USB-B connection, which only provides two extra USB ports—this feels a bit low for a $1,000 monitor. Neither monitor includes built-in speakers either. Usually monitor speakers are little more than a "nice to have" feature, but that means they are still nice to have.

Sleep mode isn't necessarily recognized by the external lighting, which isn't great when it comes to energy usage.

It's a small issue, but the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM really wants you to enjoy its various lighting features, and it's a little pushy about it.

Even when the monitor goes to sleep alongside a connected computer, the lighting stays on. There's no setting to change it to instead match the monitor's sleep state, so the only options are to leave it on all the time (not great for energy use or sleeping at night), turning the lighting off entirely (defeats the purpose of it being there), or turning the monitor off entirely (inconvenient).

While the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM can be characterized as an impressive gaming monitor, it still ranks in as the next best thing to the LG OLED.

Given the similarities to the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B, the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM is just as easy to recommend. There's no getting past the fact that a bright OLED display screaming along at 240Hz simply looks stunning in just about any gaming scenario. With no ghosting, it's even a match against faster displays like the 360Hz AOC Agon Pro AG254FG.

The Gigabyte M27Q X would make a great budget alternative for anyone not sold on OLED, but it can't match the visual poignancy of the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM.

However, compared to the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B, the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM just doesn't quite stack up. They’re usually the same price, though LG's is sometimes even cheaper at $900, but lags right behind it in a number of measures. Unless you know you’re going to lose the 27GR95QE-B's remote control, LG's monitor seems the smarter pick.

The Alienware AW3423DWF is also a stiff competitor. It offers a slightly brighter QD-OLED panel, a 21:9 aspect ratio for more screen real estate, and it has more USB ports (though still no USB-C). Asus and LG have the speed advantage and won't run into any issues with games and video content not supporting the 21:9 aspect ratio, but frequent discounts see the Alienware match (or beat) them in price to make it a strong alternative.

All this aside, the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM is an exceptional monitor that can work great on just about anyone's desk. But, it's just not quite the best.

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM is a great choice if you’re searching for a gaming computer with an visually pleasing OLED display and decent response times at a decent cost.

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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.

Mark Knapp

Contributor

Mark Knapp has covered tech for most of the past decade, keeping readers up to speed on the latest developments and going hands-on with everything from phones and computers to e-bikes and drones to separate the marketing from the reality. Catch him on Twitter at @Techn0Mark or on Reviewed, IGN, TechRadar, T3, PCMag, and Business Insider.

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