Is there a 27" 1440p gaming monitor that has good image quality?

[Emig5m]

I picked up a Asus PG279Q last night and the image quality is pretty awful compared to my TVs albeit I love the much quicker reaction time. From the back light bleed, poor overall black levels, to the fact you can't even get good accurate colors and good contrast with the monitor's built in settings and you have to use the nvidia control panel in conjunction with the monitors settings to get a decent picture but the poor black levels and back light bleed remain.

All my other displays, some that cost significantly less can easily get great image quality with the displays built in adjustments. This kinda reminds of the last monitor I bought that was popular and used the gaming moniker, some 19" Viewsonic CRT that was highly praised in the gaming community but the image quality was so poor (couldn't get the heavy green tint out of it and the geometry was the worst I ever seen on a CRT). Took that back for a 21" Sony Trinitron and it was a million times better.

Now I kinda have burnt into my head that monitors labled gaming monitor equals poor image quality. So my question is, is there a high refresh rate low response time gaming monitor that also has good image quality (dark black levels, no back light bleed, able to get good accurate and vibrant colors with only the monitors built in adjustments) or does this display not exist and you have to pick your poison (fast and ugly or slow and good looking?)

I'm not dead set on Gsync either (I get better performance just using 165hz with fast sync at a high framerate output enabling Gsync doesn't seem to do much of anything for me)

32" would be cool too (I'm coming off a 43" 4k 60hz screen so the 27" screens look like tiny cell phone screens to me but need that response time for online shooters). I have 14 days to bring back the Asus back light bleed special, what should I replace it with? This monitor seems VERY overpriced for it's 3rd rate image quality.

 

[bubulus]

pg279q bad image quality??? its an ips/ahva panel. you will not get better colors/most natural with any other panel. if you like unnatural colors just buy a screen with saturation slider. i had several gaming monitors for now. what i can tell you is that the image quality on the asus is very good. only on va panel you get better blacks but colors on the ips are better.

 

[owcraftsman]

+1 bubulus maybe you need to calibrate. Follow this guide and us something like what I use to calibrate Spyder5 Express good for all your monitors. GL

 

[MistaSparkul]

And this is why I don't bother paying extra for an IPS panel. At the end of the day its still just a crappy low contrast panel. Once you've owned an OLED or even high end FALD LCD TV these matte gaming monitors look like pure garbage when it comes to image quality.

 

[Emig5m]

Refer to post #3 in thread: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...-current-issues-Bad-QC-terrible-panel-quality

Does that sound like a display with good image quality in mind? I own a Vizio P75C1 that has inky dark and uniform blacks with full array local dimming, absolutely zero edge bleeding, much brighter picture with much more natural and accurate colors, much higher contrast ratio and HDR (this LCD also looks very Plasma-like without the plasma downfalls like
color banding, ABL and such) so my level of judging a displays image quality might just be at a higher level than someone whose only experienced high response poor image panels. Yes the Vizio is a $3000+ full array local dimming 4k HDR display but my budget $279 Sharp 4k (Hisense panel) display also easily trounces the Asus gaming monitors image quality by comparison.

So if the Asus is as good as it gets for a fast response gaming monitor I guess my question has been answered and there currently isnt another one out with better image quality which is quite odd, isn't the Asus kinda dated (2014?) tech?

I hope fast (120hz and up) 4k displays in the 43" range and some real single card GPU power are around the immediate corner. 4k gaming is bliss, its just too slow and laggy right now.

 

[Emig5m]

And this is why I don't bother paying extra for an IPS panel. At the end of the day its still just a crappy low contrast panel. Once you've owned an OLED or even high end FALD LCD TV these matte gaming monitors look like pure garbage when it comes to image quality.

Yea you must of posted this while I was typing my last post. That's what I kinda figured. Most people haven't had experience with a display with truly great image quality to compare to. This really reminds me of that old Viewsonic CRT gaming monitor from back when futuremark was madonion that the gamimg crowd was raving about and I found it absolutely horrendous. You could only adjust the blue level and the screen was overly green and there was no way to correct it plus the gawd awful geometry, worst I've ever scene on any CRT (returned for another one and it was the same issue)

 

[Emig5m]

Ok so I got the color and contrast pretty damned good (might have to bump down the saturation a few, it's still on the default saturation level). What it mainly was is that there's a lot of useless modes on the monitor that really bork the colors like the GameVisual modes, ULMB, and even overclocking to the 165Hz rate from the standard 144hz even seemed to mess with the gamma so I went back to the default max of 144hz, it's plenty fast enough. At least one time I'm pretty sure I accidentally switched to one of the GameVisual modes while trying to navigate the menu getting used to that little joystick on the back which threw all my settings off at least once or twice, grrrr... One thing I like to do when setting up a display is to use pictures that I've personally taken on a bright sunny day since I know what they looked like in real time. Like my dirt bike for example is mainly white with yellow and blue graphics. It's like if you get your whites right everything else almost falls effortlessly into place color-wise. I also like to use skin tones because nothing irks me more than unnatural skin tones. In game looks superb now. The back light bleed might even be fixable because I notice if I squeeze the bezel near where it's bleeding the most I can move it around, cancel it out or add more so it seems like these panels just aren't assembled very well causing the bleeding? The black level and black uniformity will never be on par with my Full Array Local Dimming panel but after fragging on this monitor for hours I don't think I could ever play another shooter online without one of these gaming monitors. The difference is so huge I can't even believe I've been playing FPS'ers online without such perfect precision and reaction time - it almost feels like you're cheating it's so good, heh. So outside the light bleeding that's only noticeable on dark images and the kinda poor black levels from what I'm used to with the local dimming panel, I'm pretty happy with the monitor now.

Here's a pic I took of it albeit it's a jpeg with compression and doesn't look as good as the 30mb RAW format but I think the monitor looks good enough to keep.

^Almost looks like a print screen from within the game but that's a photo taken of the actual panel as you can see the Asus red LED on the stand under it. The store I bought it from should let me set up their one on display because these things really looks like ass with the default settings or those useless GameVisual modes and even the ULMB should be turned off.