Blur Busters Forums

Part 1 the good

Prologue

I posted my honest review at amazon a month ago but it took a very long time for amazon to post it. They only posted it after selling out(thanks to COVID-19, amazon's sales went through the roof causing a huge bottleneck). I even got an email from amazon about fraud . Thank god i have evidence to prove everything i said so they finally posted. I had 2 warnings about me excessive returns because i'm extremely picky when I buy a new monitor and i had to explain to amazon that my returns are justified because i have EVIDENCE (dead pixel) to prove it. If I even see 1 dead pixel, it's an automatic return.

Review. The GOOD

The monitor i am going to review is the Asus rog strix XG279q. It's a 1440p, 170hz(Overclocked), IPS monitor from Asus. Instead of the innulox panel the vg27aq uses, it uses the new AU Optronics "fast" IPS monitor.

Response time This is the fastest 1440p IPS monitor. And yes, AT ITS OPTIMAL setting.(aka, the setting i recommend whenn you are gaming).

The main test i used is Lagom. I also use multiple other test to cross reference it such as blurbusters to check for motion blur, crosstalk,artifacts) . There are 5 overdrives but the best overdrive setting is 3 at its optimal refresh rate of 165hz(170hz you will see annoying flickering, 165hz is optimal). If you go any higher than 3, you will see massive overshoot. At overdrive 3, the average g2g response time i got was on average 5ms. It's slightly slower than the Nano ips from LG on its "fast" setting, but the difference is negligible. THe black transitions are about equal to that of the LG as well. At overdrive 4(where ELMB-SYNC is locked at), it's faster than the LG AND the viewsonic nano panel, and i had it clocked at 4.1/4.2 ms average g2g(15 samples).. Sadly, at overdrive 4, there's massive amount of overshoot so I don't recommend it. You can easily test this on blurbusters to fact check my review.

Keep in mind, at overdrive 3, there's still very slight overshoot but it's not too bad. If you don't want any overshoot at all, go to 2. Overdrive 4 and 5, dont' even bother since at overdrive 3, there's already slight overshoot to begin with. Lastly, overdrive 2 is recommended if you are playing under 100hz.


elmb sync is locked at overdrive 4. Overdrive 4 is FASTER than the LG and the viewsonic nano ips competitors, and yes it IS the optimal setting for this monitor at its highest refresh rate because the overshoot is mitigated by the enhanced motion clarity from strobing its backlight. The trade off if simply worth it. . MPRT>>>>>>>>>>>ALL. Another good thing about ELMB sync is it remains BRIGHT even if you turn it on. All you have to do is change the viewing mode to RPG or vivid viewing and raise the brightness level to 100, and you will have a BRIGHT display regardless if ELMB-SYNC is on.

Colors. The color calibration right out of the box is about as accurate as anyone can have. No need to even calibrate it because it's already calibrated for you and i can attest this. It also has SRGB mode(software emulation, not the clamped version). The wide gamut gives the monitor a more vivid and colorful image(especially when i played rocket league, oh boy the colors were beautiful.

Ergonomics are among the best as well. You can set the height very high, you can tilt, swivel as well. The best part is raising the height. You can raise it up. THE OSD is also very good because on the bottom part of the panel, there's a mini stick where you can change the OSD. It's among the best i've ever seen.


Console gaming/future proof. For the playstation 5 and the xbox series x, this(and the fi27q-p) is the best monitor because you can have 1440p+adaptive sync+120hz+HDR on at the same time. Unlike the LG nano, where HDMI vrr caps at 100hz which means the LG nano is limited to 60hz at 1440p(unless you change the resolution to 1080p(a non native resolution looks ugly). The viewsonic nano panel has hdmi 1.4 so console gaming is utterly useless bcuz it doesnt' have HDMI VRR like the freesycn monitors.

incoming Part 2. THE BAD(and yes, it gets REALLY BAD)

Part 2, The bad

Response time. If the framerate of a game is below 120hz, ELMB-Sync is utterly useless and counter productive. You will see a lot of crosstalk(double image), and below 80hz, triple strobing, below 60z, triple.5 strobing. Otherwise anything below 120hz, ELMB-Sync is useless which means you have to switch overdrive setting to 2 or 3 which is unfortunately slower than the LG and viewsonic nano panel.

ELMB-Sync. The VG279aq has better implementation of the ELMB sync. For the XG279q, 2/3 of your screen is BLURRY and has massive blur and rosstalk. Only 1/3 of your screen is GOOD and that is unfortunate. I actually deranked from top 100 to top 1000 just because of ELMB-SYNC. The top half of my monitor was extremely blurry and i whiffed EVERYTHIING The only good part is the bottom 1/3(for my monitor). ELMB Sync only works on certain quadrants of your monitor unfortunately. And like I said above, the bottom 1/3(for my monitor at least) is only good at framerates above 140hz. The implementation of ELMB-SYNC is VERY POOR, and they should've changed it to overdrive 3 to make it tolerable at lower framerates.

Colors. Good colors ONLY in videogames. Everything else is washed out. The SRGB emulation mode doesn't clamp the gamut since it's only an emulation, and you cannot change the brightness(which is WAYYYY to bright), basicxally SRGB is useless. If you watch movies, you will NOT like the colors because w/o HDR, everything is washed out but WITH HDR, it gets even worse. (example, non hdr, the skin color for every human being is red LOL,).

HDR-off

. Unfortunately for wide gamut monitors, oversaturation isn't always a good thing. The colors are inaccurate and washed out. Here's an example.

HDR-on

. The contrast ratio is simply not good enough for HDR.

Quality control. If you buy this monitor, check for any dead pixels. There's a good chance you will get a dead pixel. Also, check for image retention. From what I hear, almost every XG279q panel has bad image retention(aka burn in) which contributes to dead pixels. So the chances of you getting a dead pixel after a few months of usage is extremely high. Same goes with image retention. if you leave an image too long on a screen, and once you exit that screen, you will see image retention. If you leave it long enough, you will get "burn i n" which can cause dead pixels.

I found out my panel had bad image retention. I found out by simply doing a UFO test, and after 10 mins, you will see image retention from those UFO tests. The only way to remove that is to simply watch a youtube video. Even then, if a monitor gets enough image retention, theres' also a good chance you will see a dead pixel or a permanent burn in. Now, I only speak for myself and the monitor i purchased, but i'm not the only person who has these problems. here are some links to prove it

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.p ... -retention

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comme ... retention/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comme ... n_problem/

When i purchased my panel brand new, it also came with a HUGE dead pixel the size of a peanut.





And this is an IPS panel right? it's supposed to have good viewing angles right? Well, the IPS glow will get in the way. This made watching movies UNWATCHEABLE. I would rather watch a movie on a crappy TN monitor than this.

. The IPS glow/backlight bleed gets even worse on different angles.

tld;rklr don't buy this monitor.

i rated it a 1/5 star. But if i had to give a negative rating, i would.

Coming up next. its VG279qm/VG259qm cousin. the 280hz refresh rate 1080p monitor

thanks for the review and definitely looking forward to your next review!

I have the same screen and am probably the first one here to leave a mini review for it. I have now seen from a few sources about image retention on this screen, but mine has none at all. There must have been two batches or maybe two assembly lines and one of them did something very wrong.

Still to this day with tons of time on it with screensaver disabled and a LOT of excel / sheet work on full brightness I do not have a single pixel of image retention. I still hate this monitor because ELMB is a fucking scam, but I will at least vouch for this aspect of it.

I wonder if we will ever get to the bottom of this....

do a UFO ghost ing test and leave it on for 15 mins, then exit the screen(make sure your background is black

you will see image retention.

RLCScontender wrote: ↑

23 Apr 2020, 22:20

do a UFO ghost ing test and leave it on for 15 mins, then exit the screen(make sure your background is black

you will see image retention.

I did and I don't have any. I also did this test multiple times. https://marco.org/rmbp-irtest.html and didn't have any. I also do not use a screensaver and have static desktop icons on a dark background for hours displayed at max brightness with ELMB disabled often and don't have any.

So perhaps you should take your own advice and have a nice day friend;

RLCScontender wrote:So please stop speaking for everyone just because YOUR monitor has different E̶L̶M̶B̶ ̶S̶y̶n̶c̶ +image retention+, doesn't mean ALL the other monitors have the same problems as you do.

Tried as well. Had image retention after 5 minutes. But quickly disappeared again. But this is normal behaviour on IPS panels.

Avean wrote: ↑

28 Apr 2020, 14:31

Tried as well. Had image retention after 5 minutes. But quickly disappeared again. But this is normal behaviour on IPS panels.

Darn, you should probably return it.

Dmoney405 wrote: ↑

10 May 2020, 15:46

Avean wrote: ↑

28 Apr 2020, 14:31

Tried as well. Had image retention after 5 minutes. But quickly disappeared again. But this is normal behaviour on IPS panels.

Darn, you should probably return it.

This is strange. I tested it again and now nothing. Figured i maybe tested with 100 brightness so i upped my brightness again to max. No retention..... When i wrote this i had really clear retention even after 5 minutes.

return it, that's a monitor defect. it doesn't matter if u have anti image retention measures like "going to another scren quickly" or having a screen saver. OVer time, the image retention will burn in your monitor, so instead ofa 10 yr lifespan, u are looking at 1-2 yrs tops.

my cousin owns this monitor, and he doesnt have any burn in or image retention issues. The UFO tests after 20 mins, there aren't any burn in artifacts