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The LG 27GR95QE-B is a fantastic gaming monitor based on its test results and specifications. Its unique OLED panel is fast and vibrant and capable of brilliant HDR performance, even when compared to its mini-LED counterparts. We like its design and added features, plus it’s not stupendously expensive like we feared it would be. The LG 27GR95QE also features Hexagon RGB lighting at the rear with adjustable colors and lighting patterns. In a dark room, the LEDs are even strong enough to reflect off of the wall and create atmospheric ambient lighting. Regardless, these issues will happen over hundreds and hundreds of hours of playing the same kind of content, so don’t worry about it too much…just a little. If this is your first experience with an OLED panel, you will be surprised by how thin the actual display is on the 27GR95QE. That’s because OLED panels don't require much space than traditional LCD technologies, and hence can be paper-thin without losing out on functionality or performance. As such, the screen requires some careful handling while setting up, as there is not a lot of room to carry it without touching the actual display. That said, like most OLED panels, the one on the 27GR95QE feels durable and reliable, so I wouldn’t fret about baby-ing it too much.
With over a week of screen time with LG’s new 27” OLED monitor, I can confidently say that this is a stellar product, and absolutely is the upgrade one should consider. Of course, OLED panels do come with one major caveat, and that is the less than average standard brightness, which could struggle in showing bright images under well-lit conditions. Design and Features With an LG computer monitor you’ll discover cutting-edge display technology and slim designs, from the LG CINEMA 3D monitor, the new standard in 3-dimensional excellence, to our dazzling LED and LCD monitors, which offer state-of-the-art display and features. You’ll get a new outlook on life with monitors and other computer equipment from LG.We measure the screen at default settings (with all ICC profiles deactivated and factory settings used), and any other modes that are of interest such as sRGB emulation presets. We then calibrate and profile the screen before re-measuring the calibrated state. LG 27GL850 August 15, 2019 A detailed look at the new 27″ 1440p high refresh rate IPS gaming display from LG. With a DCI-P3 gamut, 1ms G2G response time spec and 144Hz refresh rate. Can it live up to all the hype? Smart Energy Saving mode is applied by default to optimize power consumption, but you can enjoy a brighter gaming experience by turning it off.
Moreover, the screen is exceptionally thin and has ultra-thin bezels on all four sides of the screen. It has a light 35% haze matte anti-glare coating which prevents reflections without adding too much graininess to the image. The resolution of 2560 x 1440 is comfortable on a 26.5″ sized screen providing a nice desktop area to work with, including decent support for split screen working and an obvious step up from 1080p displays. Some people may complain that it does not have a higher 3840 x 2160 “4K” resolution which could provide an even sharper image for these kind of uses, although there are added complications then of how your applications and OS handle scaling, and whether your system is powerful enough to run the screen at 4K in different situations, including for gaming. As we discussed in our recent article, ‘ The Obsession with 4K and Do You Need it on a New Monitor?‘, we think that 1440p is perfectly fine for most people on a ~27″ screen like this and in many situations preferable. Right now it is difficult and expensive to increase the pixel density on these OLED panels, but we’re sure that in time we will see higher resolution and higher density options released. For now 1440p on a 26.5″ screen is still great! Brightness for office use These coordinates listed are also CIE 1931 colour gamut x,y, coordinates but if we plot those relative to that reference, and assume the blue target was met at 0.1490, 0.0600, then that would equal a 99.9% absolute coverage of sRGB (102.8% relative). Really we would also like the coordinates to be listed here as the more accurate and recent CIE 1976 u’, v’ coordinates, and the coverage % from there. If we convert the coordinates to CIE1976 and plot the colour gamut according to that reference, we get a 99.6% absolute coverage of sRGB (101.7%). It looks like the colour space has been achieved nicely though which is great. We would have just liked the software to report these % for us. When you enable an HDR input source you are left with a few available preset modes in the menu – Gamer 1, Gamer 2, FPS, RTS and Vivid. Most other picture related settings are greyed out, but brightness remains available in case you wanted to turn that down at all, and sharpness too in case you wanted to change that for gaming and movie viewing. The default 100% brightness setting is optimal for maintaining the highest possible peak brightness in HDR content. In our original testing only the ‘vivid’ mode showed any real improvement in HDR peak brightness, reaching up to 792 nits, but only at the expense of an overly colour colour temp, now measured at 9252K. Even this wasn’t reaching the 1000 nits advertised, and we have no idea where that spec came from really. We couldn’t achieve it from our testing. As we said above, the newer April 2023 firmware made some adjustments to the Gamer 2 preset mode which we have added to the table above, making that much cooler now and reaching 882 nits max, but at ~8900K colour temp. Even this “cheat mode” didn’t help it reach the advertised 1000 nits.
It’s that combination that makes the UltraGear OLED 27 so striking. The 240Hz refresh rate is easily beaten out by the recent barrage of 360Hz screens we’ve seen, like the Asus PG27AQN, but it’s still much higher than you see on a typical gaming monitor. Combined with the response time, motion clarity can reach the levels of a 360Hz panel, making it a great option for competitive games like Overwatch 2, Rainbow Six Siege,and Valorant.
At all brightness levels in SDR, there is no need for the screen to use ABL, so you get a consistent brightness level no matter what your content is. That’s great news on an OLED panel as it’s annoying to see changing brightness as you move windows around or look at different content where ABL is used. A lot of fuss has been made about the screen being “dark” but that isn’t really a problem for office and general uses in our opinion, not unless you’re using the screen in a very bright room or are simply used to having a very bright LCD monitor pumping out 300 nits+. It’s perhaps more of an issue for gaming and video where maybe you want a brighter screen or use the screen from a further viewing position. Text Clarity and Sub-pixel structure The LG 27GR95QE was a really interesting screen to test, being the first super-high refresh rate OLED monitor released to market, and the first OLED gaming monitor in a smaller and common size and form factor. There’s no doubt the OLED panel can offer some impressive and excellent performance in many areas, although it’s not perfect if you’re after a multi-purpose monitor, and struggles a little in some areas it should do better. Features: 98.5% DCI-P3, adaptive sync, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB Type-C, 1x USB 3.0, optical port, remote, HDR10, PiP In the bottom section we compared the screens native colour gamut against common wide colour gamut reference spaces. The coverage of DCI-P3 is very good, at 97.4% absolute coverage being slightly under (but very close to) the spec of 98.5%. There was very little over-coverage of DCI-P3 too (100.6% relative), so the screen is very close to that reference space, which is good news should you need to work with any content in that space, often used in HDR content creation and consumption. There are 7 monitors using the same panel with different design, features, connectivity options, warranty and pricing.
The 27GR95QE is compatible with AMD FreeSync and Nvidia GSync, so you don’t have to worry about screen tearing or stuttering of any kind, regardless of the brand of graphics card you have in your system. Peak brightness in this default mode reached a maximum of 609 nits in our tests, and that was on a 10% APL window. It was also at approximately that brightness for smaller APL window sizes, but sadly didn’t reach higher, and certainly nowhere near the spec of 1000 nits from LG. We will examine other modes and whether you can get higher peak brightness in a moment. At a full white windows (100% APL) the sustained brightness was only 141 nits, which was quite a bit lower than a 100% window in SDR for some reason (~192 nits). We would have liked to have seen better HDR brightness here really. Newer firmware April 2023– no change to brightness In early April 2023 LG released an updated firmware for the 27GR95QE designed to supposedly help improve screen brightness. We have unfortunately had to return our screen sample, but our friends over at Monitors Unboxed have updated the firmware on their screen (done via the LG OnScreen Control software) and re-tested brightness in both SDR and HDR modes. They confirmed there was no change at all to HDR brightness in Gamer 1 mode, which has the ~6500K colour temp. With a view to long-term usage, LG bundles the 27GR95QE with several systems designed to prevent burn-in, which can all be accessed from a dedicated menu activated from the remote. These include Screen Move, which shunts the entire display around by a few pixels, the self-explanatory Screen Saver and the more invasive Image and Pixel Cleaning, which take 10 minutes and one minute to run, respectively.
LG 27UL650 Review – 4K IPS Monitor with FreeSync and HDR The LG 27UL650 is the next 4K monitor in line to the well-loved 27UK650 which provided accurate color and excellent… In early April 2023 LG released an updated firmware for the 27GR95QE designed to supposedly help improve screen brightness. We have unfortunately had to return our screen sample, but our friends over at Monitors Unboxed have updated the firmware on their screen (done via the LG OnScreen Control software) and re-tested brightness in both SDR and HDR modes. The Gamer 2 HDR mode has now been changed to be much cooler than before, reaching around 8900K in their measurements. This does however deliver a brighter image, reaching up now to 882 nits max (2% APL) but at the cost of a much cooler and bluer image. This is a common cheat method on OLED screens to try and reach a higher peak brightness, and we would not consider this useful unless you specifically like a very cool looking image. Where is the 1000 nits peak HDR brightness? Peak brightness in default Gamer 1 HDR mode, with a white point close to 6500K at 6847K We’d argue that reflections on glossy panel are likely to be far more problematic to most people than a small impact to the contrast ratio from an AG coating for what is at the end of the day specifically designed to be a desktop monitor. Remember, this isn’t designed to be a TV, it’s not designed to be used in a dark lounge with carefully controlled lighting for relaxing night time viewing. It’s designed to be used as your desktop monitor, throughout the day, in a normal lighting setup where you have windows, overhead lighting and lamps around. The monitor also supports hardware calibration and comes with the LG True Color application, allowing you to store two calibrations on the monitor itself without having to rely on ICC profiles. Design & Connectivity This is also the first sensible monitor-sized OLED panel released (with a high refresh rate above 175Hz which was the previous max) and is bound to attract a lot of interest. It’s 27″ panel (well, 26.5″ to be precise) offers a common 2560 x 1440 resolution, a wide colour gamut with 98.5% DCI-P3 coverage quoted, and even support for hardware calibration. Being OLED it’s well placed to handle HDR content with its per-pixel dimming, and it has a quoted 1000 nits peak brightness spec. This is made possible through the use of LG.Display’s latest generation “META” OLED technology, including MLA (Micro Lens Array), which you can read a lot more about here if you’re interested.
Colour accuracy of wide gamut Rec.2020 content was very good overall. With a moderate 73.3% coverage of this very wide colour space possible, the largest errors came in pure red and green, which is typical for any HDR display really. Colours and skin tones looked accurate though and this was a good factory setup for HDR accuracy. Original Firmware Testing for Gamer 1 and Gamer 2 This term has become a little mixed up in the OLED market and sometimes associated with two different things. The correct usage for this term is related to how OLED panels operate from a technical and physics point of view, the other incorrect usage is where it has become associated with the ASBL (Auto Static Brightness Limiter) image protection feature common on OLED screens. We’ve talked about what an “ASBL” function on an OLED display would do above, which dims the brightness of the screen when it detects static images. ASBL isn’t featured on this screen anyway, but this is often what people think ABL means, but it’s not.
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