Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM review: Swift by name and nature
It’s not the most versatile OLED monitor on the market but the PG27AQDM’s mastery of the gaming basics is unquestionable
Pros
- Outstanding motion handling
- Wide gamut coverage
- Slim, light and stylish
Cons
- Limited connectivity
- No built-in speakers
- No HDR certification
It is a truth universally acknowledged that OLED gaming monitors will take over the world in the not-too-distant future. Granted they need to get cheaper and be produced in smaller sizes but those are production issues which will be overcome. To see where the tide is flowing you need only look at this new model from Asus ROG, the Swift OLED PG27AQDM.
The PG27AQDM represents the state of the art when it comes to gaming OLED monitors. It’s aimed squarely at hardcore gamers, with its fast 240Hz refresh rate and super-fast response time. Of course, this limits its versatility somewhat compared to rivals such as the Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 – which has an ultrawide screen and USB-C support – but if you’re looking for raw power in a high-end frame, the PG27AQDM is unrivalled.
Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM review: What do you get for your money?
The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM costs £1,099. That gets you a 27in OLED monitor with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440, a max refresh rate of 240Hz and a quoted response time of 0.03ms G2G. On the adaptive sync front, the PG27AGDM supports AMD Freesync Premium and is unofficially Nvidia G-Sync compatible. There’s no HDR support here beyond HDR10 decoding.
As you’d expect the stand is fully adjustable and will tilt (from 5° forwards to 20° backwards), swivel (from 30° left to 30° right), rise and fall (by 110mm) and pivot 90° in either direction into portrait mode which isn’t a given for monitors this size. The stand and monitor attach using a quick-release mechanism and Asus bundles a 100 x 100mm VESA adapter. The whole package is surprisingly light too, weighing just 6.9kg including the stand.
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Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM review: What type of connections does it have?
Considering the price I think Asus has been a bit stingy with the I/O ports. For video you get two HDMI 2.0 ports – excluding next-gen gamers from the fun – and one DisplayPort 1.4 while for data you get a Type-B upstream USB and two Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 downstream and, well, that’s it. If Philips can pony up for a Type-C and two more Type-A ports on its Evnia 34M2C8600 for a not vastly dissimilar price I’m sure Asus can too.
Choose HDMI and the highest refresh rate you will see at 2,560 x 1,440 is 120Hz. To get back to 240Hz you’ll need to knock the resolution down to 1,920 x 1,080. This isn’t an issue for console gamers but for those of us who draw our water from the PC gaming well a second video input that can run at native 240Hz would have been nice, be it DisplayPort or Type-C.
Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM review: Is it well made?
Asus ROG has a long tradition of making gaming kit that really looks the part and the new PG27AQDM is no exception. The design is sharp, crisp and very modernistic and the bezels are willow-wand slender. The main body appears much thinner than it actually is because all the electronics are contained in a housing that takes up the central 70% of the panel, and the surrounding area is only 5mm thick. So tight is the fit that Asus has resorted to an external power brick.
The stand is an artfully twisted affair that eschews right angles and symmetry but nevertheless manages to keep things upright and it has a red LED built into the bottom that shines a circle of light below the stand. This seems way too bright even in low light mode until you affix the magnetic cover that turns the circle into the Asus ROG logo. There’s a second user-facing red LED on the base and one below the panel that acts as a power indicator which can also be turned off.
A second RGB light show glows through a perforated ROG logo at the back of the panel and the word Swift shines (again in red only) out on the back of the stand pillar. The rear lighting is so dim as to be almost invisible unless you have the monitor close to a wall and in a very dark room.
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Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM review: How good is the image quality?
Asus uses an LG-made panel in the PG27AQDM, and it delivers. The size and resolution give a pixel density of 114dpi which if not 4K-sharp is still more than adequate for most uses and a necessary compromise for that 240Hz refresh rate.
Measuring the gamut coverage pulled returned scores of 99.9% sRGB, 92.9% DCI-P3 and 91.5% AdobeRGB from volumes of 145.5%, 103% and 100.2% respectively. It’s colour accurate too: against the DCI-P3 profile, the PG27AQDM produced a Delta E variance of just 1.45 which should be low enough to satisfy even the most demanding user.
Brightness is never as straightforward an issue with OLED displays as you might think. Asus claims a peak SDR brightness of 450cd/m² and an HDR maximum of 1,000cd/m². I’ve no beef with either figure, I managed to record 966cd/m² in HDR which is close enough while the highest SDR reading I managed was 455cd/m² in Scenery mode. However, the whole-screen SDR brightness came out at just shy of 250cd/m² which while perfectly satisfactory for an OLED display was also shy of the whole-screen brightness the Evnia 34M2C8600 managed.
Like the Evnia the new Asus displayed impressive uniformity. Dividing the screen into 25 swatches all landed within the Recommended Tolerance for ISO 14861:2015 image reproduction while only two swatches in the bottom left corner slipped into the Nominal Tolerance band for average luminance and then only by the tiniest of margins.
Unlike the Evnia, however, the PG27AQDM uses a slightly matte anti-reflective finish, where Philips’ monitor is glossy. Which you prefer is absolutely a matter of personal taste, not science but I prefer gloss because it makes colours pop just that little bit more albeit at the expense of reflection protection.
Colorimeter-based testing aside, the PG27AQDM looks absolutely stunning to the eye thanks to an infinite contrast ratio and wonderfully saturated colours. Despite not having any sort of HDR certification beyond the ability to handle an HDR10 signal, HDR content looks good on the PG27AQDM. Colour balance of the Windows 11 desktop didn’t look as natural as it did on the Evnia but you can still leave Windows in HDR mode permanently unless you require tip-top colour accuracy.
According to the specification sheet the PG27AQDM has a GtG response time of 0.03ms which is silly-fast even for an OLED panel. Unfeasibly small numbers aside the panel displayed no ghosting or motion blur of any sort and the games I played looked supremely fluid. I’d rate its motion-handling capabilities as superb. Adaptive sync is supported over a range of 40 to 240Hz and while the PG27AQDM is not certified by Nvidia I can confirm its G-Sync compatibility.
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Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM OLED Monitor: Are there any other features I should know about?
Should gaming monitors costing this sort of money have built-in loudspeakers? Most monitor speakers are pretty awful so part of me says no. On the other hand, the speakers in the Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 are quite good which proves it’s not beyond the wit of man to fit a decent set of drivers inside a monitor cabinet. Of course, the Evnia is a rather portly lump compared to the super-slender ROG Swift so there would be genuine issues with where in the Asus would you actually put them.
One area where Asus has really knocked the ball out of the park is with the PG27AQDM’s menu system. It’s seriously comprehensive, offering a wide variety of colour modes, including an sRGB clamp and DCI-P3 profile as well as a plethora of colour customization options such as six colour temperature options, five gamma settings and six-axis colour calibration. There’s also a range of gaming features such as a black stabiliser, on-screen crosshairs and a sniper mode which magnifies the area of the display around the crosshair but it looks weird and I think it qualifies as cheating.
Secondly, it’s beautifully easy to use thanks to the wiggle-and-push joystick that sits behind the ROG-logo power light – although the nearest HDMI port does rather get in the way. Download the DisplayWidget Center app and you can manage the vast majority of the monitor settings without recourse to the OSD at all.
In an effort to reassure potential purchasers who are worried about OLED burn-in Asus has included a couple of panel maintenance features. Pixel Cleaner runs in standby mode and per Asus “calibrates any issues that may arise[…] when your monitor has been switched on for a long time”, while Screen Move subtly shunts the whole image around by a few pixels on a regular basis.
A feature that to my knowledge is unique to Asus ROG gaming displays is the 1/4-20 tripod thread at the top of the stand which lets you attach a bracket or clamp so you can mount a camera or a tablet or portable display above it. I fixed my 17.3in portable monitor in place and quickly decided that this was a really good idea.
Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM review: Should I buy it?
The Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDM isn’t as versatile as the Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 but the higher refresh rate results in such impressive motion handling that it has to be regarded as the preferred choice for the dedicated gamer, especially one that doesn’t need or want an ultrawide screen or a USB hub. It’s also impressively light, compact and stylish and earns every penny of the asking price. The absence of a Type-C port still sticks in my craw a bit given the asking price but that’s a minor niggle in the overall scheme of things.
