If you’ve been following our recent How to: Build an Extreme Gaming PC series, you’ll know that the quality of your monitor can make or break a high quality gaming rig. But how much do you have to spend to get good or great? Nowadays, you can pick up a 27″ monitor for around $200 – or, you could pick up the ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q Gaming Monitor for around $800.
It’s a significant leap in price – but is it justified?
Of course, screen dimensions are only one part of the story. As a gaming monitor, the PG279Q is packed with features to enhance the gaming experience, media viewing and more. This 27″ IPS panel has a 2,560 x 1,440 (WQHD) resolution, with a top of the class 165 Hz refresh rate, four millisecond response time and 1,000:1 contrast ratio. So it’s clearly a different proposition compared to the cheap displays you’ll see racked out in Staples.
But a healthy chunk of the monitor’s price premium is due to the PG279Q’s support for NVIDIA G-Sync – a proprietary technology designed to eliminate screen tearing, display stutter and input lag when paired with a compatible GPU.
As we saw in our recent review of the ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero Alpha, the company likes to differentiate its premium Republic of Gamers product lines with value added features as well as an impressive spec sheet. The ROG SWIFT PG279Q follows this trend with a well-stocked settings menu.
Four colour temperature modes, three GamePlus modes, and six GameVisual modes allow easy access to predefined display profiles suited to the content being viewed. GamePlus enhances the gaming experience with four different crosshair overlays designed to improve accuracy in first person shooters. There’s also an an onscreen timer overlay allows you to keep track of elapsed time, while a frames per second counter keeps you in touch with how smoothly the game is running.
Onboard blue-light filtering and flicker-free features protect your health, reducing eye strain and potential issues with sleep due to disruption to your circadian rhythm during extended gaming sessions.
There’s certainly a lot to discover – let’s open up the box and see whether the ROG SWIFT PG279Q is worth the investment.
What’s in the Box?
A big monitor deserves a big box and your local UPS guy or gal won’t be you best friend for a while after they’ve carted in the massive box that houses the PG279Q. Inside, the packaging is surprisingly basic for a ROG line – the investment that ASUS put into packaging ROG motherboards sadly doesn’t extend to their monitors – but the monitor is well protected for transit.
Inside, you’ll find:
ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q
Power Cord & Adapter
DisplayPort Cable
USB 3.0 Cable
HDMI Cable
Quick Start Guide
Drivers and Manual CD
First Look
Even before you’ve powered on the monitor, the PG279Q is visually impactful. The large screen benefits from a super-thin 6mm bezel, ensuring your focus is on what’s on screen, rather than the screen itself. The panel floats on a reasonably chunky central column and wedge-shaped base, which naturally includes an illuminated red ROG logo and stand base. Unfortunately, there are no colour customisation options for the base LEDs, which seems like a missed opportunity. The good news is that if red isn’t your thing, you can disable the lighting.
The panel is highly manoeuvrable on the stand – tilt, swivel, pivot, and height adjustments are all available to ensure you can find the most comfortable viewing angle. You can even rotate the display 90 degrees for a portrait orientation, if you so desire. Once set, I found that the panel stayed in place very well, without the need for integrated locks or clamps. The PG279Q can also be wall-mounted, using a VESA adaptor.
Connectivity is reasonably good, but not extensive. Most users will take advantage of the DisplayPort 1.2a port (which exclusively supports the G-Sync feature), but there’s also HDMI 1.4a. Twin USB 3.0 ports are also available alongside a third USB 3.0 upstream port. A 3.5mm audio jack and Kensington lock slot completes the line-up.
At the rear of the monitor there are four buttons plus a small thumbstick, the latter used for menu navigation. The buttons are large and shaped to make them very easy to find and use when reaching behind the display. They’re used to access the PG279Q’s GamePlus modes – pressing the top button shows a convenient menu on the right side of the screen, aiding navigation. You’ll also find a Turbo Mode button, allowing you to easily bump up the refresh rate from 60 Hz to 144 Hz and a power button.
You’ll also notice that the PG279Q is equipped with two 2 W stereo speakers – they’re obviously underpowered compared to the kind of premium audio hardware a top-notch gaming rig deserves. They’ll do a job as a fallback option but you can expect distortion at high volumes. Just like a flatscreen TV, slim monitors simply haven’t got the real estate that’s required to produce decent audio. Seriously, if you’re spending this kind of money on a gaming display, you really shouldn’t neglect dedicated speakers.
Using the ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q
I connected the monitor to a Windows 10 gaming PC (powered by an ASUS STRIX GTX 980 Ti GPU) using the DisplayPort cable. Windows detected the monitor and switched to the correct native resolution, but used the generic PnP Monitor driver. I opted to install the ASUS monitor driver from the company’s website.
If you’ve yet to use a 1440p monitor and are concerned about how well Windows copes at this resolution, you can rest assured – especially if you’re using Windows 10. The desktop scales gracefully to 1440p and you’ll find icons and text reasonably comfortable to read – even at the default 100% scaling. For additional comfort, it’s worth bumping up scaling to 125% – your preferences may vary – but Windows makes it easy to configure the monitor for desktop work.
Hit the menu button and you’ll be surprised to see how packed it is with features to further enhance the experience.
The Over Clocking function – available only with DisplayPort connections – allows you to select an additional refresh rate that can be toggled (alongside the default 60 Hz and 120 Hz) with the Turbo Mode button.
Underneath, the GameVisual menu includes tailored display profiles that optimises the monitor for various types of games and other viewing. They include a Scenery Mode, Racing Mode, Cinema Mode, RTS/RPG Mode (for Real Time Strategy/Role Playing Games), FPS Mode for shooters and an sRGB Mode, designed for viewing photos and graphics from PCs.
Continuing down the options, the PG279Q’s Blue Light Filter reduces the blue light emitting from the monitor. Four levels are available with the fourth complying with TUV Low Blue Light Certification.
In Color, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Color temperature can all be tweaked. The first three options offer 0 to 100 scales while Color temperature offers preset Cool, Normal, Warm, plus a User Mode.
The Image menu allows tweaking of gray level response time and ULMB motion blur reduction – the latter is available when the monitor refresh rate is set reasonably high -85Hz, 100Hz or 120Hz.
Input selection obviously allows the display to be switched between DisplayPort and HDMI inputs, while a long System Setup menu allows configuration of display language, menu transparency, menu timeout duration, LED illumination settings, monitor sleep settings and more.
True to the ROG brand, there’s an impressive array of tweaks and configuration options available on the PG279Q’s
Performance
While the PG279Q’s display certainly looked great out of the box (if intensely bright), with only a little light bleed around the edges of our review model, a full white screen did show up an uneven patch (a glow) near the lower right corner and dead pixels in two positions higher up – these are almost impossible to photograph well, so apologies for the shaky cam shots below. As ever, your mileage will vary by individual monitor when it comes to panel quality, but I’ll admit to being slightly surprised that a review model would ship with these kind of defects. If I’d received this model following a purchase, I’d be RMA-ing it tout suite.
Calibration, using the Spyder5Pro suite actually showed the PG279Q’s default colour profile to be a little cool (which I actually preferred, but that’s a personal choice). sRGB coverage was 100% and Adobe RGB coverage was 81%, which is very good indeed – but expected of a monitor at this price point.
In real-world use, it’s tough to argue that the ASUS PG279Q is anything but a great performer. Viewing angles, as you’d expect from an IPS panel, are excellent, with even colour rendition across the 178-degree axis. 1440p YouTube video streams were rich, vibrant and full of life. The additional sharpness, depth and enhanced color spectrum of the ASUS PG279Q over the (cheap) 23″ 1080p ASUS MX239H I use on a daily basis was truly eye-opening. Videos certainly seemed less flat, more life-like and certainly more engaging.
I found the additional desktop real estate on offer was certainly useful too – spending a week with the PG279Q will certainly lead to me reassessing my display options going forward and a large 1440p IPS monitor will certainly be a the top of mind for consideration.
But of course, the real reason you’ll go for the ROG SWIFT is its gaming credentials. I loaded up Rise of the Tomb Raider to put the monitor through its paces. It was a hoot. You may have to drop your GPU’s quality settings to support the additional resolution, but paired with a first class graphics engine like the NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti, and optimal settings, the PG279Q was fabulous.
Pinsharp detail, beautiful lighting, shadows and textures all beautifully rendered. Silky smooth, fluid gameplay averaging 55 FPS without a hint of tearing. Colours were rich and vibrant – the sunset over Northern Syria in the game’s second level was a joy – forget the game, you could pull up a deckchair, grab a beer and just watch it!
In truth, my eyes were really unable to pick up the difference between the more extreme refresh rates. 165 Hz looked great. 60 Hz still looked great.
While the GamePlus modes may sound a little gimmicky, I actually found the Crosshair overlay to be really useful. I’ll admit to not being a champion FPS gamer, but the enhanced targeting certainly helped my performance.
Summary
Reading monitor reviews is tough – almost as difficult as writing them. You never really get to feel the experience delivered by a monitor unless you’re watching it. A comparison with other monitors, side by side is also really helpful. What I can tell you is that the ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q delivers a beautiful, rich, vibrant and immersive image that’s a deserved companion for a high-end video card.
It’s 1440p resolution offers a real sweet spot – detailed enough to make images, video and games really pop, with a generous amount of real estate for desktop tasks. Importantly, you’ll find Windows works really well at that resolution without the need to blow up text and icons to ridiculous proportions. With excellent sRGB and Adobe RGB coverage, the PG279Q also offers strong image editing credentials, although it’ll be bettered by professional displays.
The suite of tweakables on offer through the on-screen display makes the PG279Q a worthy member of the ROG stable. While I could see no discernable difference on screen at extreme refresh rates, gaming enthusiasts that demand the biggest, the best, the fastest gaming kit on offer will lap up the advanced performance. It’s a similar story with NVIDIA G-SYNC support. I encountered no screen tearing during my time with the PG279Q, which consistently delivered smooth, artifact-free gameplay across a range of titles. If you’re the kind of gamer that’s often annoyed by glitches, the upgrade will be worth the money. For others – those that can live with a split-second tear, or don’t have an issue with their current setup, then G-SYNC adds cost to an admittedly excellent monitor that you may be able to live without.
In terms of the build quality, I was disappointed with the dead pixels and slight display issues I experienced during tests, but there’s always going to be a degree of variation in quality from panel to panel. As mentioned, if I’d received this panel via a purchase, it would be sent straight back for a replacement. Otherwise, the PG279Q’s build was good, if not spectacular. Manoeuvrability on the stand was excellent, with connectivity reasonably good. The positioning of the connectors on the lower bezel of the display was reasonably awkward, though.
Make no mistake, the ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q is a beautiful display and serious gamers that are comfortable investing in premium hardware will undoubtedly be delighted with their purchase. Those on a budget should still keep their eyes peeled for a large 1440p monitor, without the bells and whistles of this device though. The jump in resolution and display size may well be more impactful elements of the experience than the PG279Q’s pure gaming-related enhancements.
The post Review: ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q Gaming Monitor appeared first on We Got Served.