in the market for a 2560x1440 high refresh rate monitor that
doesn't need to be overclocked and also happens to feature g-sync ultra low
motion blur and 3D Vision welcome to my
review of the only choice for someone who wants all of that stuff the ASUS Rog
Swift pg278
Q Cooler Master V series semi modular
power supplies feature 80 plus gold efficiency and their gold guarantee
5-year warranty click now to learn more ASUS was wise to go with an Rog inspired
design for this monitor physically and ergonomically it hits all the right
notes for a top-of-the-line monitor for me right now the stand has the full
gamut of adjustments 12 CM of height adjust 60° of swivel 25 de of tilt and
90° pivot with a vas am mount in the back just in case none of that is enough
for you the styling is also spoton with aggressive rear vents a cable management
hole in the stand a disable red LED ring
around the base and that's it no goofy
stuff around the screen itself no touch of color or whatever that nonsense just
a super thin matte black bezel that ensures that all of your attention is
devoted to the screen where it's supposed to be even the menu buttons are
actually really good something I wasn't expecting given how much I disliked the
ones on the pb287q this is the fastest
to navigate onscreen display that I've ever used I still don't like the rear
shortcut keys because I can't tell which is which when I can't see them from the
front but the joystick combined with the super Snappy responsive menu is a dream
to use mind you unlike other high-end monitors the Swifts menu doesn't have a
bunch of options in it like volume adjust picture in picture and like a
whack ton of inputs to choose from and when we flip the monitor over at the
back that reveals the reason in the back you'll find a DC power jack for the
included power brick a DisplayPort 1.2
input and a dual USB 3 Port Hub that I
really wish was on the base and that's it because of the g-sync module which
only supports one input this monitor doesn't have an extra HDMI input for
your game console it doesn't have weak sauce built-in speakers it expects you
to game on a PC with a proper pair of headphones or speakers the way that gay
Ben intended so far if the product wasn't even good I got to say I like its
attitude but but does it suck is it not good no no it doesn't suck I find that
27in displays with a 2560 X 1440 resolution hit that perfect pixel
density sweet spot where the image looks sharp but screen elements aren't too
small to be usable forcing you to use Windows's still terrible built-in
scaling that causes blurry text in many applications that combined with the
solid contrast and acceptable color reproduction makes the monitor good
enough for me to legit use as a daily driver something that I haven't been
able to say about any of the 4K TN monitors that I've used so far due to
their lackluster contrast and need for scaling or Ben Q's highend XL series
monitors due to their 1920 x 1080 resolution now to be perfectly clear it
is not Flawless switching from the PA 279 Q monitor that I use at home to this
was very noticeable contrast and colors are not as good and viewing angles while
good for TN are still TN with horizontal
color shift being difficult to notice in day-to-day use but vertical color shift
being very noticeable especially on white backgrounds with my head
stationary the top of the screen has a slight green cast and the bottom does go
a little bit pink but yeah nothing is perfect and the tradeoffs that you have
to do with this monitor are just part of life and at least you're getting a lot
to like about the display in return the maximum 144 HZ refresh rate and 1
millisecond rated response time makes more of a difference to the perceived
responsiveness of your PC than you'd imagine both inside and outside of games
and along with the headline g-sync feature you get stereoscopic 3D Vision
support and ulmb or ultra low motion
blur support along with other nice touches like the built-in Crosshair
overlay although you're basically a butthead if you use that for competitive
play and the near instant power on with
no splash screen ASUS I wanted to take a
moment to let you know I noticed and appreciated the emission of this
entirely unnecessary delay between pressing the power button and using my
PC thank you all right on to the gaming experience let's start with a quick
refresh of what gsync is for those of you who haven't seen my original
coverage of it here and that was a pun by the way normally Gamers have two
options number one is running without vsync which causes visual anomalies
called tears whenever a new frame is output by the graphics card while the
monitor is in the middle of a refresh almost all games do it but in some it is
especially annoying number two is to enable V where tearing is eliminated
because the graphics card is forced to wait until the next fixed interval when
the monitor will refresh to Output a frame this causes stuttering during FPS
dips and for me an intolerable amount of latency between when I execute an action
and when I see it on screen I never game with vsync on gsync eliminates the
issues associated with both of these options by letting the graphics card
tell the monitor when to refresh that means a more responsive gaming
experience with without visual artifacts this is next level stuff guys and the
experience is truly awesome you just turn it on in the driver to override
other vsync options and it's Off to the Races if you're a gamer and you want the
best monitor on the market today to play your games this is it period I did most
of my testing in Tomb Raider 2013 since I happen to be playing that game right
now and even though this monitor wouldn't be all that suitable for
professional color work using it recreationally I really didn't feel like
I was having the TN experience the way I normally do with high refresh rate
monitors in every scene from vibrant outdoor jungle locations to darken tombs
where monitors with poor contrast will make it difficult to make out details
the Swift excelled I also need some time to fire up a bunch of other stuff for my
steam Library just to try it out frame rate drops below 30fps are still very
noticeable because even with g-sync on you will experience stutters when you
dip that low but per the suggestion in the reviewer's guide I actually tried
using GeForce experiences game settings Optimizer for the first time ever since
it's designed to keep your FPS above 40 by default and honestly it actually
worked pretty well it made smart decisions for me that were similar to
what I would have input and while I'm still going to do it manually because
I'm a control freak um it did work surprisingly well for a quick I don't
feel like dialing in all my games right now solution so that's it I think this
technology is great and basically everyone else agrees and over the next
few years availability of g-sync and competing Solutions will improve Pro and
prices will fall until it's ubiquitous because it's just pling better than the
old way of doing things but that's all hypothetical future stuff this is the
summer of 2014 and this is the ultimate gaming monitor if you don't want to wait
another year at least for a gaming experience that is truly much better
than what everyone else has right now but there's a catch I did most of my
playing on a GTX Titan and I'd recommend at least a GTX 770 for medium settings
on Modern games or at least one GTX 780
for high in modern games if you want to take advantage of the high refresh ress
of it at 1440p which combined with the Swift
high- price tag makes this a very expensive upgrade one that's going to be
hard to convince people to invest in you see gsync has to sell itself to Gamers
based on the absence of annoying crap
that we've all spent years getting used to and putting up with rather than by
delivering some shiny new thing for us to drool over it reminds me of the
upgrade to SSD as long as you're still using a hard drive it might seem
extravagant and unnecessary to spend that kind of money on something with so
little storage that doesn't increase FPS directly but then you eventually take
the plunge and once you get used to it it drives you bananas whenever someone
puts you in front of a system with a hard drive in it and that's exactly what
g-sync is like looking at tearing just feels stupid to me now that this
solution is available even the ultra low blur mode which is an official version
of the low persistence backlight strobing Hack That folks have been using
on light boost monitors just doesn't get my attention at all it's cool how much
crisper moving images look you can actually read text while dragging it
across the screen but in game it wasn't that noticeable to me and since you have
to pick between that and g-sync I'll take g-sync every time it's a truly
nextg experience and from what I've seen so far ASUS's first product to deliver
this technology to the market is a slam dunk even aside from the fancy
technology let's say you're running an AMD card and you're not looking to change graphics cards cards right now
you should still be looking at this monitor versus the
xl2720z from Ben Q for its higher resolution if you've got enough shiny
pennies to afford it guys thanks for watching this video like it if you liked
it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment let me know are you shopping for
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