Iiyama ProLite GB2773HS review

Gaming monitors can cost more because of their high refresh rates, but not the Iiyama Prolite GB2773HS. It’s £130 cheaper than its nearest rival, the 120Hz BenQ XL2720T, and has a large, height-adjustable 27in TN panel with a huge refresh rate of 144Hz for silky smooth visuals.

The main advantage of a high refresh rate is a reduction of the tearing (two or more frames appearing onscreen simultaneously) that can occur when your graphics card outputs more frames than your monitor can display.

Apart from a high refresh rate, the GB2773HS is an ordinary monitor. There’s only an i-Style Game mode, and the GB2773HS’s menu settings don’t have any special options. The GB2773HS doesn’t have many connection ports, just VGA, dual-link DVI-D and HDMI inputs, as well as headphone and microphone jacks.

The GB2773HS isn’t a bad monitor, though. Once we’d calibrated the GB2773HS, its picture quality was much better than that of the BenQ XL2720T. At default settings, the GB2773HS’s image quality is fairly average. Our colour calibrator showed it was displaying 89.1 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut at default settings, which is a few per cent lower than that of the BenQ XL2720T but still in line with the average TN panel.

The GB2773HS’s main areas of weakness were its red and magenta coverage, which meant colours had a slightly cool appearance. Calibration widened the coverage of the sRGB colour gamut to an outstanding 97.6 per cent. This surpassed the BenQ XL2720T’s post-calibration coverage of 94.8 per cent, which shows an accurate monitor doesn’t mean an expensive monitor.

After calibration, colours looked as warm, bright and vibrant on the GB2773HS as on our reference monitor. We noticed a slight amount of backlight bleeding across the bottom edge of the monitor, but it wasn’t visible during every day use unless we were watching a film with black bars either side of the main image.

After calibration the GB2773HS showed an outstanding 97.6 per cent of the colour gamut

Contrast levels were also impressive. Areas of shadow were particularly well-illuminated, but if you need even more detail, there’s always the option of increasing the monitor’s contrast levels using the onboard menu settings, as we had them set to just 50 per cent during testing.

The Iiyama Prolite GB2773HS is a great gaming monitor. It doesn’t have any fancy features or 3D capabilities like the more expensive BenQ XL2720T, but if you just want a fast monitor for smooth visuals, this is a good buy. It wins a Budget Buy award.