1 week ago
7
Sharp 4K and fast 1080p in one surprisingly well-priced monitor
High-resolution monitors have become a lot cheaper over recent years, in contrast to a most internal component types, which are currently in a race to see who can plunge us into financial destitution the fastest. It wasn’t that long ago that the 4K, 160Hz, 27in panel of the Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG would put it out of reach for anyone who didn’t have access to a sovereign wealth fund, yet here it is, discounted to just £319 / $299. That’s only about half what it would cost to buy a new graphics card capable of actually running 4K games.
I tested the Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG back when it emerged one of the first dual-mode monitors – or, at least, one of the first dual-mode IPS screens. If there’s a game where you’d value smoothness over sharpness, you can flip the XG27UCG from 4K/160Hz to an esports-spec 1080p/360Hz, trading pixel density for potentially double the visible frames-per-second. I also kept it on my desk for several months after that piece went live, partly because Asus forgot to ask for it back, and partly because… well, I liked it.
When I first tried it out in 2024, the XG27UCG was £413 / $499, and in the UK specifically it's now dropped to a new all-time price low. The same was almost true for the US, but literally as I've been writing this post, it's crept back up from $299 to $333. Damn it all. That's still a deep cut from the list price, though.
UK deal:
US deal:
Frankly, even if you never engage Twitchy Headshot Energy Drink mode, the XG27UCG is still a very respectable 4K monitor that never feels compromised for having a 1080p side gig. I recorded it covering 99.5% of the sRGB colour gamut and hitting a contrast ratio of 1041:1, both good by LCD/IPS standards, and never saw much in the way of ghosting or unintended blur. It’s not as slick in motion as a bleeding-edge G-Sync Pulsar model, but then that’s one corner of gaming monitors where we’re not likely to see 4K displays at sub-$300 prices for a while; indeed, all the launch monitors for Pulsar stick to 1440p.
English (US) ·