Iiyama G-Master G2470HSU-B1 review: A super budget gaming monitor

The Iiyama Red Eagle G-Master G2470HSU-B1 defies logic. After all, if you want a monitor for around £150, the best you can expect is basic competency. One of my favourite budget monitors is Huawei’s MateView SE: there are no bells or whistles, just a good-quality IPS panel mounted on a sensible stand with decent colour gamut coverage. 

To expect a comparably good gaming monitor for £20 less is bordering on delusional, but that’s what Iiyama claims to deliver here. And deliver it does: the G2470HSU-B1 is a remarkable exercise in squeezing as much as possible out of a shoestring budget. If you need a reliable gaming monitor for under £150, this is the one for you.

Iiyama G-Master G2470HSU-B1 review: What do you get for your money?

The G-Master G2470HSU-B1 is built around a 23.8in 1,920 x 1,080 IPS panel with a 165Hz refresh rate and a claimed response time (MPRT) of 0.8ms. The G2470 is AMD FreeSync Pro-accredited and works perfectly well with Nvidia G-Sync. Buried inside the cabinet are two 2W loudspeakers.

The cabinet is made from matte black plastic but feels reassuringly solid when you lift it from the box. The bezels surrounding the panel are impressively narrow for a budget monitor, just 7mm at the top and sides (handy if you want to place two of them side by side) and 19mm at the bottom. The plastic stand is compact and solid and connects to the cabinet with a quick-release mechanism.

The tilt hinge is very stiff. When I first set the unit up, I assumed it didn’t have any adjustment at all. Only after reading the user guide did I realise I was wrong, but trying to adjust the tilt made me worry that the plastic cabinet mount would snap, so I removed the stand and adjusted it that way. Even after working some play into the hinge, it was still difficult to move.

There’s a 100mm x 100mm VESA mount on the back of the unit, so a cheap monitor arm may be a worthwhile investment. Given that the G2470HSU only weighs 3.2kg, even a super-budget arm such as this one from Suptek should be more than adequate.

Given the price I wouldn’t have been entirely shocked if Iiyama expected you to buy your own cables, but the usual HDMI, DisplayPort and USB-B cables are all present and correct.

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Iiyama G-Master G2470HSU-B1 review: What type of connections does it have?

You’ll never get a vast array of I/O ports for £130, but the Iiyama doesn’t do badly with single HDMI and Display Port video inputs. The latter is the latest v1.4 spec, but the former, also v.1.4, isn’t, so you’re limited to 144Hz over HDMI. 

For data connectivity, you get an upstream USB-B port and two downstream USB-A ports, all 3.2 Gen 1 spec. Usefully, the USB-A ports are situated on the side of the cabinet, which makes for straightforward access. There’s also a 3.5mm audio jack on the rear next to the Type-B port.

Iiyama G-Master G2470HSU-B1 review: How good is the image quality?

The image quality is good, and by good, I don’t just mean good for £130, I mean good period.

To start with, basic metrics are all well covered, with a maximum brightness of 325cd/m² and a good contrast ratio of 1,235:1. There’s plenty of colour on show thanks to gamut volumes of 98.9% sRGB, 70.7% DCI-P3 and 68.3% AdobeRGB.

There’s a reasonable level of cooler accuracy with an average Delta E variance of 2.93 versus the sRGB profile. Anything less than 3 is perfectly acceptable on a monitor not specifically designed for critical colour accuracy, so less than that on a budget gaming monitor is impressive.

Equally impressive was the panel’s uniformity. Looking at luminance, all of the 25 swatches fell into the recommended tolerance category. Switching to ISO 14861, some far left and right swatches dropped into the nominal category, but only by a small margin. Once again, given the price, the G-Master G2470HSU punches well above its weight.

Running the Blur Buster’s UFO test, there was very little ghosting in the darker bands, although some inverse ghosting was visible in the lighter areas. Switching the overdrive setting from Off to the middle position reduced the inverse ghosting without any negative side effects.

Although the G-Master G2470HSU-B1 only carries official accreditation for AMD’s FreeSync Premium, it also worked faultlessly with Nvidia’s G-Sync when connected to an Nvidia GPU.

HDR content isn’t supported, which is a bit of a drawback given how good some of the latest games such as the criminally underrated Immortals of Aveum look in HDR, but given the price that shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

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Iiyama G-Master G2470HSU-B1 review: Are there any other features I should know about?

I was more than a little surprised to discover that the G2470HSU had built-in speakers, stunned to discover that they are rather good. Maximum volume from the 2 x 2W sound system, as measured from a pink noise source at a 1m distance, was an above-average 78.7dB(A), and the sound quality was generally impressive.

You don’t get a huge amount of bass, but there’s enough to avoid things sounding tinny or raucous, and plenty of space and detail right across the sound range. Turn the volume up to 10 and your games will impart an impressively visceral audio impact without any hint of distortion, and that’s all I ask of speakers built into a gaming monitor.

This being a gaming monitor, the menu system is jam-packed full of settings, most of which you’ll never use and some of which don’t do a whole lot, but the black tuner does a good job of making hostiles lurking in the shadows easier to see, and the overdrive switch improves motion fidelity. 

There are also plenty of options to adjust the colour and gamma, and there are three user-definable profiles so you can set things up exactly as you want and keep them there.

The OSD menu is navigated using five buttons on the rear of the cabinet, and it takes a while to master the system. Even once you’ve got your head around the navigation system you have to continually run your finger up and down the buttons to ensure you’re pressing the right one in any given context.

Iiyama G-Master G2470HSU-B1 review: Should I buy it?

For the price, the G-Master G2470HSU-B1 is excellent value. Basic picture quality is good, motion handling is even better, and the speakers do a good job. Even if it cost £250 I’d recommend it, but at only a little more than half that amount, it’s an absolute steal. If the lack of screen area is a concern, Iiyama makes a 27in version called the G-Master G2770HSU-B1, which retails for £45 more and is identical other than the distance between the corners.