It's been an interesting few weeks testing some more affordable gaming monitors. Sure, we all love to see what the latest OLED panels can do as the refresh rates get higher and higher, but most of those screens still cost the best part of a grand – if not more! – so are out of reach for the majority of end users.
Not so the ASUS ROG Strix XG27UCS. It's not the newest screen on the market, but having dropped in price to just £319 over the last few weeks, we thought it was well worth looking at. And, as it turns out, we were correct – this is a very capable screen that delivers a lot of performance for the money.
Factory calibration is solid for one, with an accurate colour balance and generally solid gamma. The native gamut is very wide, too, with strong accuracy for the DCI-P3 space, while ASUS offers a good sRGB mode if you want to clamp the gamut to avoid oversaturation.
Gaming performance is impressive, too, thanks to the use of user-configurable overdrive. We found the OD 10 setting delivered the best balance of speed while minimising overshoot, but it's great that end users are free to tinker with this setting to their heart's content, as opposed to being offered just three or four predefined presets. Latency is also nice and low, while motion clarity is as good as you'd expect at 4K 160Hz.
It's not quite a perfect screen though, with contrast being a little low even by IPS standards, given we measured it at 860:1. There's a distinct lack of USB passthrough ports too, which may not bother some, but for others could be a dealbreaker. Lastly, as good as the ELMB Sync mode is for improving motion clarity when adaptive sync is enabled, it caps brightness at just 30 nits, severely limiting its real-world utility.
When you factor in the price though, I still think ASUS' ROG Strix XG27UCS is well worth a look if you want a high refresh-rate 4K display. Primarily it impresses with strong response times and good motion clarity for gaming, going hand-in-hand with the 4K 160Hz panel to deliver some visually impressive results.
We found it listed on Amazon for £319 HERE, or on Scan for the same price HERE.
Pros
- User-configurable overdrive.
- Impressive motion clarity.
- Strong brightness for an IPS LCD at this price.
- Wide native gamut.
- Colour balance is very good out of the box.
- sRGB emulation mode works well.
- Clean and feature-rich OSD.
- HDMI 2.1 support (albeit just one port).
Cons
- Contrast a bit low, even by IPS standards.
- No USB passthrough ports.
- ELMB Sync limits brightness to just 30 nits.
KitGuru says: For a little over £300, the XG27UCS is well worth buying if you're in the market for a fast but affordable 4K LCD.