Buying a gaming monitor has always been a bit like Australian broadband. You could have really nice image quality, 4K and HDR support, a 120hz or 144hz refresh rate, plenty of real estate, but you couldn’t have it all especially if you wanted it to be affordable. And even if you’re prepared to spend a pretty penny, chances are you’ll still have to compromise somewhere.
You couldn’t have it all in a gaming monitor. Well, that used to be the case.
Unsurprisingly for the week of Computex, there’s been a lot of new hardware announced. First cab off the rank is Asus, which lifted the lid on a rather snazzy – if probably new car, or Intel 18-core CPU level expensive – gaming monitor that will literally have the lot.
Called the ROG Swift PG35VQ, it’ll be the company’s largest gaming monitor ever. A 21:9 ultrawide monitor with a native resolution of 3440×1440 over a mammoth curved 35″ screen, the PG27UQ also supports G-Sync and a maximum refresh rate of 200Hz. There’s support for HDR10 and the DCI-P3 colour gamut and a maximum quoted brightness of 1000 nits, which isn’t too shabby at all.
But, of course, it’s not the only monitor offering a ride on the HDR train to crazy Hz town.
Due out in the final quarter of this calendar year, the Acer Predator X35 offers much of the same. Like the ROG Swift PG27UQ, the X35 was developed in conjunction with AU Optronics and, consequently, sports a 200hz refresh rate, G-Sync support, peak brightness of 1000 nits, 3440×1440 native resolution, and support for HDR10 and DCI-P3. Both monitors have quantum dot enhancement films as well, a technology that you’ll see a lot more of in 2018 and 2019.
There’s no international price, local price or specific release date available beyond Q4 2017 right now. But experience tells us that monitors of this standard never come cheap. I’d be surprised if either of them were priced under $1500 at release, considering bog standard 4K monitors will set you back at least several hundred bucks. But it’s at least nice to know that the monitor problem is eventually going away – and hopefully in the next few years, this sort of technology will start to creep into TVs as well.
Comments
18 responses to “Monitors With Everything Are Coming”
Wonder if any of these will come in Freesync guise. Not because I want to use Freesync, but quite happy to avoid the Gsync tax if I can get built in backlight strobing (which is a much more useful feature than Gsync\Freesync IMO, and with HDR monitors, the brightness hit won’t hurt as much).
If it really was a monitor with everything it would support both Gsync and Freesync. But those don’t exist. IPS would be nice too instead of VA.
There’s also HDMI 2.1 with dynamic HDR and built in adaptive refresh rates that should be out next year….
I don’t think you’d get one with Freesync and Gsync since it’s basically a war between the two standards.
The panels above from what I understand are IPS as well. Cam from Gizmodo is getting hands on with at least one of them tonight Australian time, so we should have some more info for you as the week unfolds.
Cough, Gsync isn’t a standard, its a proprietary format.
Freesync is a VESA adopted standard.
(Yes, I’m being anally retentive).
FreeSync isn’t a VESA adopted standard, Adaptive-Sync is. FreeSync uses Adaptive-Sync but also has proprietary features like overdrive.
FreeSync is generally a worse implementation overall, which makes it all the more sad that Nvidia isn’t interested in releasing G-Sync as an open standard. If you’re going to buy a FreeSync monitor pay special attention to the frequency range it supports – it’s not always the full range of the monitor. One Asus monitor in particular is a 144Hz monitor but FreeSync is only rated to 90Hz – more than that, it switches off altogether.
Freesync blows. I can never seem to get it to work correctly despite being set up fine on my PC and monitor. Sometimes it works, I think the recent Doom I used it for, but some games I can’t see any benefit too it, games still tare.
I end up just enabling VSync for most games 🙁
1000 nits sounds like something my teacher used to warn me about in Primary School…
One day when they stop cramming all the good shit in to 21:9 or curved pieces of shit, I’ll give a damn. They need to hurry up and release a 3840×2160 screen capable of at least 144Hz. Why the hell do they keep pushing these super wide’s?! Piss off already!!!
Exactly. These monitors don’t have it all – they STILL don’t have true UHD. (Apparently we can’t say 4K because it’s not real 4K and blah blah blah cinema blah blooby-blah).
Nah, where are all the 16:10s at? 😛
haha yeah I’d rather a 16:10, but I can live with 16:9 at 3840×2160. Has enough vertical space to keep me happy.
I’d honestly be happy with just 1920×1200 at 90Hz or higher.
There was a time I would have been, but once you’ve used 3840×2160 for a while, there’s no going back!
black bar heaven
Maybe if you’re watching movies or something. I don’t particularly use my PC for that kind of thing.
I really love my super wide. I can work on 3 windows at once, all side by side.
The only thing I don’t like about it is older games that don’t support the standard, leaving me with black bars on either side of my screen.
Everything else about it is great.
Phew I was a little confused as you mentioned the PG35VQ and the PG27UQ all in one sentence. The PG27UQ being the 27incher. But luckily they both have 200hz. 😛
The only reason I noticed this is because I myself have a PG348Q so was interested if the PG35VQ has the same refresh as the PG27UQ since my one can only be 100hz.
But, does it have built-in speakers or a 3.5mm headphone jack?