ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q G-SYNC Monitor Review
by Chris Heinonen & Jarred Walton on February 13, 2015 10:00 AM ESTsRGB Data and Bench Tests
Before calibration, the ASUS ROG monitor displays a blue tint to the grayscale but it keeps the overall grayscale errors below the visible error level of 3.0 dE2000. The gamma tracks low, at closer to 2.0 than 2.2, which will give the image a bit more of a washed-out look than the proper gamma will. The larger errors exist in the color gamut, where there is an oversaturation to reds, yellows, oranges, and especially blues. Blue has both a tint and saturation issues, and the errors there grow steadily as the saturation ramps from 0% to 100%. Unfortunately, since the ASUS ROG has no internal LUT, like most displays, these color errors probably cannot be fixed.
For calibration, we use SpectraCal CalMAN 5.3.5 with our own custom workflow. We target 200 cd/m2 of light output with a gamma of 2.2 and the sRGB color gamut, which corresponds to a general real-world use case. The meters used are an i1Pro2 provided by X-Rite and a SpectraCal C6. All measurements use APL 50% patterns except for uniformity testing, which uses full field.
| Pre-Calibration | Post-Calibration, 200 cd/m2 |
Post-Calibration, 80 cd/m2 |
|
| White Level ( cd/m2) | 198.7 | 200.9 | 81.8 |
| Black Level ( cd/m2) | 0.2253 | 0.2246 | 0.0952 |
| Contrast Ratio | 882:1 | 895:1 | 859:1 |
| Gamma (Average) | 2.02 | 1.97 | 2.07 |
| Color Temperature | 6659K | 6515K | 6557K |
| Grayscale dE2000 | 2.48 | 2.47 | 0.76 |
| Color Checker dE2000 | 3.64 | 2.16 | 2.74 |
| Saturations dE2000 | 2.85 |
Post-calibration the gamma and RGB balance are almost perfect. The average grayscale dE2000 falls to below 0.6 which is invisible to the naked eye. The only issue is the contrast ratio, but I believe that is a bad reading at 0% since it is coming out much higher than our black reading at maximum backlight earlier. The contrast ratio should be closer to 850:1 based on the amount of fixing needed for the RGB balance. The 80 cd/m2 measurements will back this up, so this number is just a bad read.
Colors are better, because the luminance values have improved, but the overall errors are still high due to over-saturation of certain colors. Blue continues to be the worst, followed by yellow, with all skin tones on the color checker showing errors close to 3.0. On photos of people they look a bit sunburnt, as the saturation of reds and oranges is too high, compared to a proper display. It isn’t awful, but it isn’t a monitor I would use for photo editing either. Since ASUS positions the ROG for gamers I don’t think this is a big deal as the numbers are close enough. The pre-calibration numbers are really more important here, and those indicate a bit more of this red push than after calibration.
Changing our targets to 80 cd/m2 and the sRGB gamma curve, we see similar results on another calibration. The contrast ratio here is 859:1, indicating there was a bad read earlier on the 200 cd/m2 data. The RGB balance is again perfect though the gamma curve not as much. sRGB is harder to get right, and it is dimmer providing less room for adjustment, so this isn’t surprising.
Colors show the exact same issues as with 200 cd/m2 since adjusting the backlight level doesn’t affect the saturation of the colors. People look like they have gotten a bit too much sun compared to what they should look like. For gaming, where the colors are just imaginary to begin with, I don’t think this is a big problem but it just means it can’t serve double-duty as a display for editing photos or other things. Movies will also look a bit off on it, but no worse than a regular TV will before a calibration.
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cheinonen - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
As this is my final review here at AnandTech, I just wanted to thank everyone that read them and commented on them over the past few years. I've always enjoyed my work and hope most of you enjoyed it as well, and I'm sure whoever handles displays next will continue to be excellent.kyuu - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
Thanks for the great work Chris, and good luck with whatever has stolen you away from us!Essence_of_War - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
It was a pleasure to read your reviews, I'll keep following your work at WC, best wishes going forward!wyewye - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
Good riddance noob. L2 measure response time and input lag without a CRT next time.cheinonen - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
I'm sure I can look forward to your reviews that address all the deficiencies in mine soon.SpeedyTheTurtle - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
I set up monitor arrays and I have found it very difficult to find the right information on monitor bezels. Would it be possible to measure the distance from the outer most pixel to the edge of the monitor on future reviews? This information seams to be distorted or misleading from a lot of the manufacturers.ExarKun333 - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
Seems like this would have been a good monitor 1-2 years ago. For this price, it just isn't worth-it with UWD and 4k panels in the same price range.ssddaydream - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
People talk a lot of smack on this monitor it seems or try to justify why it doesn't suit their needs. I own one and a GTX 980 and I can tell you that it is far superior in terms of motion than any LCD I've seen and it is about on par in terms of motion with my retired Sony GDM-C520K. The Asus has a much higher refresh rate than the Sony, not to mention resolution and size.My unit hasn't had any QC issues, so I'm happy about that.
Hopefully the future will bring 4K or greater color-calibrated OLED desktop displays. Until then I'll wait it out to see if IPS becomes worth a damn for motion and in the meantime enjoy the next best thing to CRT.
shonferg - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
I thought the main point of the GSync module was that, unlike standard monitors, it has an internal frame buffer to enable self-refresh. Am I remembering incorrectly?The reason I ask is that I would not think that a self-refresh capable monitor would need the video card to actually re-send the previous frame over HDMI or DisplayPort in do a refresh to keep the pixels lit up in low-framerate situations. I would think that, theoretically, even though the interconnect is limited to 60hz, if the panel itself were capable of 144hz then self-refreshes could still be done at that speed internally to the monitor.
Or perhaps the connection between G-Sync and the panel itself becomes the bottleneck at that point?
JarredWalton - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
I don't think the G-SYNC module does a self-refresh like you're describing. I could be wrong, but if it decided to start a refresh just before a new frame got sent, there would be either more latency or tearing, and neither is desirable. Anyway, whatever is happening, I know at 30FPS (e.g. in certain cut scenes where the FPS is locked at 30), flicker is more evident to me on the Acer than on this one, but I think there's still flicker here so I don't believe the PG278Q is refreshing the display twice (e.g. at 90 Hz) when the frame rate is 45 FPS.