everyone knows that at high levels of competition the slightest advantage can
be the difference between chicken dinner and a sloppy second place sandwich so
competitive gamers should be really excited by the ASUS pg259q
this is the first 360 hertz gaming monitor
but can this fast ips panel even take advantage of
that kind of high refresh rate without becoming a blurry mess can any pc games
even run at 360 frames per second
and if they can will you a common gamer be able to properly
appreciate the difference between this and an already insanely fast 240hz
monitor i doubt it but our sponsor believes in you this is
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the video description
you've probably heard or even experienced that upgrading from a gaming
monitor that refreshes at 60 hertz up to one that refreshes at 100 plus hertz is
a much more noticeable jump than say going from 120 or 144 up to 240. that's
because 60hz displays are showing you a new frame about every 16 and a half
milliseconds whereas 120 to 144 hertz
that's a new frame about every seven milliseconds
that means that whatever you're looking at in that comparison is going to be
twice as up to date then when we jump
from 144 to 240 that only shaves three
more milliseconds off and finally going from 240 to 360
that's an extra 120 refreshes per second
above the existing fastest monitors around for a whopping savings of just 1.4
milliseconds each frame to find out if that's an improvement that can even be
perceived by the average gamer we set up a blind test with the pg259q next to not
one but three competing 240hz monitors
to see if anyone including me
could tell the difference
i'm excited i really don't like this monitor this is good this one feels good
yeah i'm guessing just purely off of how many of like this block i can see at
once when i go like this i think i can see more of it 70 sure
that this would be the highest refresh rate one really having a hard time even
picking out the difference because these games are running at about yeah about 700 frames
per second or above so i will say this is the 360 and everything else is the
240. i have no clue if i can do this uh you can see here like i'm basically just
creating circles with this thing on all of them so it doesn't really matter if
you have more frames if it's all just kind of a smeary mess anyway i think i
might guess this one just because i feel like there's a bit more like
trails behind the objects when i move it i want to say that the second one might
be 360 hertz but that's kind of just a guess at this
point honestly it's number three damn it really uh it really doesn't feel any
different to me you think you're gonna bamboozle me eh not a chance i'm a pro
gamer i need more wood i'm gonna say
it's that one but i i i'm probably wrong so
you're wrong cool i'm going with my gut feeling i don't even i don't even i can't
like i can't tell but not only did i kind of feel like it
was this one i scored the best on this one i'm saying it's
one it's subtle he's this like yes i gave an answer
yes it was correct don't read too much into it there were
quite a few learnables here starting with that none of our gamers even the
ones who guessed correctly were confidently able to identify the 360hz
monitor from gameplay but is it just because the refresh rate jump
is too small another factor could be the pixel response times remember guys if
the pixels can't change color fast enough smeary motion blur could hurt the
experience no matter how many times you refresh the picture per second by the
way you should try refreshing ltteststore.com where the pictures are
always clear wow we really shoehorned that one in anyway
early 240 hertz monitors like the ASUS pg258q
used tn panels the lcd technology with the fastest pixel response times by
contrast the pg-259 pg259q uses an ips
type panel which is traditionally known more for color accuracy and wide viewing
angles rather than for speed so to see how the pixel response times
of this new monitor compared to its 240hz tn predecessor we put together a
blurbuster's pursuit camera setup which helps us capture the motion blur
produced by the monitor without the blur introduced by persistence of vision you
can see here the old tn has less ghosting but is actually a bit less
clear with thicker lines and a bit of image doubling compared to itself
running at 240hz the pg259q at 360 looks
only slightly more clear but with a similarly slight increase in
inverse ghosting caused by pixel overdrive and a lot more smearing on the
dark background which suggests that the panel struggles with light to dark
transitions and for bonus points by the way here it is compared to the samsung
odyssey g7 which uses a va panel
interestingly the clearest image we got from the pg259q was when it had ulmb
turned on which is only available at 144hz
and 240hz nothing more nothing less you know i'd actually love
to see a pursuit camera setup of a high refresh rate OLED since they supposedly
have instantaneous pixel response times which actually we can do when lg's cx
120 hertz OLED tv arrives make sure you guys sub so you don't miss that
anyway with all that in mind is there any point
in paying that's more expensive two to three
hundred dollars more for the pg-259q
compared to a last-gen 240hz monitor
well probably in our video investigating
how refresh rate affects the performance of pro gamers we discovered that it
depends on the in-game scenario so even if this monitor doesn't offer much more
motion clarity than existing offerings the higher refresh rate could still give
you an advantage in situations like our csgo double door hallway test where
having the most up-to-date information can make a huge difference and there are
actually other ways that this monitor is just plain better than its predecessors
take a look at this color accuracy yeah that's that's for real you could
legitimately use this thing for gaming by night and creative color critical
work by day as long as you're working in the srgb color space that's because as
an 8-bit panel its gamut coverage isn't the greatest and unfortunately that
doesn't change even if you use a graphics card that supports display
stream compression rats that also plays into its HDR
performance i mean hey it's hdr10 compatible
but its low peak brightness keeps it from really
shining in this respect and like most hdrint monitors as we call
them it can look sometimes worse in HDR mode than in sdr it also has g-sync
though and that is standard real g-sync not compatible or ultimate which means
that its variable refresh rate range is completely unlimited and it means it has
variable overdrive meaning less noticeable coronas at lower frame rates
than you would get if it was overvolting the pixels the same across all frame
rates it does have limitations as mentioned earlier it's got ulmb but
notice the use of NVIDIA's acronym here ASUS usually calls their low motion blur
e-lmb and might you expect it to have elmb sync
that is backlight strobing while g-sync is on well sorry it doesn't you'll have
to turn variable refresh rate off if you want that motion blur reduction that
gave it that amazing clarity
back to the bottom line though should you buy this monitor
i for one think it's absolutely fantastic
but only for a very specific gamer so if
you're a competitive player and you play games that your pc can
actually run at frame rates above 300 FPS and you don't need more than 1080p
then this is one of if not the best 240hz monitor on the market and oh it
can also run at 360hz if you're sensitive and skilled enough
to well if not benefit from it at least
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the link in the video description if you're looking for another video to
watch an obvious one is checking out the big collab we did with shroud mr grimms
corey and paul's hardware where we determined once and for all if higher
FPS makes you a better gamer spoiler alert it does
but with some caveats you definitely have to watch the video