A couple of months ago, I looked at a different 32-inch 4K QD OLED panel
and I've got to say, I liked it so much I bought it. Now, MSI has sponsored this video for me to take a look at the MPG321URX 4K 240Hz QD OLED monitor
and I've got to say, it looks really impressive and there's one or two features that really have me wondering if I made a huge mistake.
First of all, it's flat. If you can't tell from just how not enormous this box is, yeah, this is not the curved version
but instead the nice flat version that a lot of you have been clamoring about.
Ever since QD OLED gaming monitors came out a few years ago,
that's probably the biggest thing that a lot of people, aside from the ultra-wide only options that people were upset about.
I don't want a curved panel. I want a flat panel. Well, at long last, you can have your choice.
We've got our quick start guide. We've got the base of our operation here, a base of our monitor.
We'll take that out right now. Actually, why not just get it out of the package?
Too bad. We've got a USB B to A cable for hooking up our monitor to our computer for whatever peripherals we might want to plug in.
We've got our ultra high speed HDMI 2.1 cable.
Very nice. I like the all black look. This looks really beefy too.
A lot of the time, this back plate that you're going to click-clack into the monitor is really small.
This looks like it has a little bit of extra support, but I guess we'll see.
Probably doesn't need it. It's fine. These things aren't that heavy. Behind this little foam sheet, we've got the rest of our monitor,
which is actually one of the big things I like is when they've got a nice little perforated slit right here,
so you can peel it back and then click-clack, pull it out. We don't have that, so I could probably get this in here.
We can get it in. Just going to...
Oh, that's tight. There we go.
Yeah. Yeah. I should have attached the stand first. I don't know what I was thinking.
It's not that heavy, but when you're holding it kind of awkwardly like this and then trying to screw something on,
it gets a little heavy. Ah, but we got it.
Here we go. I got to say, it looks really nice.
It's all blacked out nice and thin. You've got this...
It's a small issue, but on OLED panels, the panel itself is super thin, right?
But then you've got like the control box and whatever cooling in the back here.
And so it's like... It feels fragile when you're just touching this pot and the rest of it is so bulky anyway.
It's like, why not just make a little box go all the way around like it doesn't...
It's here anyway. Just make it go to the edge. I don't know. Some of you might like the thinness.
I'm not crazy about it. One thing a lot of you might appreciate is that there's not a ton of branding.
We've got the MSI Dragon on the back, little MSI logo on the back,
and then on the front, just a small MSI logo on the front here.
Nothing too major, no big symbols anywhere. We're like all the way across the bottom or in the corners or anything.
So that's cool. As for the IO, there's a few pleasant surprises and one small disappointment.
We've got our headphone jack, two HDMI 2.1 ports,
DisplayPort 1.4, USB Type-C, USB-B, two USB-A ports,
and then a C14 power connector on the back over here.
You might be wondering to yourself, does this USB-C port offer something like
90 Watts power delivery and DisplayPort alt?
Well, it does. It's a small feature, but it's something that's really appreciated more and more
these days as we collect more and more devices that connect through USB-C.
It's really handy to just have a laptop or something and just plug it in through USB-C.
All of a sudden, this is your secondary display. And guess what? It's charging at the same time.
Wow, 90 Watts, that's a lot of power. That one minor disappointment I mentioned, it doesn't have DisplayPort 2.1,
which offers significantly more bandwidth. Now, admittedly, there's only a few graphics cards out right now
that even have 2.1, but it's a feature that a lot of people are clamoring for
with these high-end panels, especially when they're running 4K, 240 Hertz.
That's a lot of bandwidth to actually use that without having any kind of
display stream compression involved. And so it's just so nice to have.
You're probably not even going to worry about it. You're not going to be able to use it, but I would love to see it here.
As for the rest of the construction and the stand, it's not bad.
It's got the rotation on the base, which is nice to see. I would like a slightly more, but that's good enough.
Can we, we can't go portrait, but let's be real, it's 4K, 240 Hertz, 32 inches.
I don't think you're going to put this in portrait mode. And then we've just got a little bit of play here.
It's not bad, definitely enough to get most people.
And how is the height adjustment? Okay, I would love, I would love just a little more.
I would love to let the monitor go basically to the base down here,
but we're talking about what, an extra inch and a half of distance.
It's fine. It's totally fine. And then on the back here, we've got a fanless graphene cooling solution.
So this thing should stay super quiet. As for navigating the OSD, it's not quite on the bottom.
It's a bit on the back here. So you're just going to have to reach a little bit further.
We've got one navigation nipple and then how many buttons?
One, two buttons. Yeah, two little buttons on the back.
As you can see here, it is nice and flat, nice and thin.
And our bezels aren't actually that big either. So it's probably going to look pretty good turned on.
Speaking of which, all right, monitor's on, looks pretty good.
HDR is turned on. This thing supports both true black 400 as well as an HDR peak 1000 mode.
It's also rated by Vesa for their new clear MR rating with 13,000,
which is just I think as high as it goes right now. It makes sense because not only does OLED have basically instant pixel response times,
but 240 Hertz is fast.
And so it's going to be crystal clear basically all the time.
They're honestly going to have to invent another rating because all of these really high refresh rate OLED panels are starting to hit
the max clear MR rating that Vesa created just recently.
It's already capped out 1080p. No, no, no, we want 4K so we can get our sweet, sweet 140 PPI.
Whether you're watching it in true black 400 or you're watching it in peak 1000,
it just is absolutely insane how good HDR looks when you've got the right panel to match it.
Now we do have our set to peak 1000, which is pretty bright and you might be worried about image retention or burn in.
The reality is not only is MSI offering this,
but most brands are these days with these monitors. They're offering a three year OLED care warranty that does cover burn in and image retention.
So you're covered. I mean, don't get me wrong.
Maybe it happened three years in, you know, you leave your monitor on for like a week straight
and suddenly there's image retention. But like that to me gives me a lot of peace of mind
and it's a big reason why I not only bought a QT OLED monitor years ago now,
but why I bought another one once this set of panels came out.
If you are still worried about burning, this has got MSI's OLED care 2.0 built in,
which is going to do a bunch of stuff like pixel shift. It'll auto dim taskbars or any static icons,
even this little ShortCircuit logo or like the little bottom bar on a YouTube video.
If you got it up, that should all just kind of dim out and not be as image retaining.
You don't want to you don't leave static stuff on screen for too long is bad,
but like the reality is there burn is not nearly as much of an issue these days.
One thing you might want to use those HDMI 2.1 ports for is a PS five
or maybe an Xbox Series X because it also supports variable refresh rates.
If you're not going to, you know, attach this to a 4090 and get crazy high refresh rates.
And then if you are, it's got their gaming intelligence app,
which lets you auto switch between productivity and games.
It'll change settings for you on the fly. Convenient.
Convenient.
I've got to say that CS 2 with a modern high end graphics card
and then a modern high end monitor. It's just it's something else went.
Oh my God. Okay. Well, oh, it exploded. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. It's like that guy did not shoot me.
Man, this looks good. I already bought a similar monitor at home.
I couldn't wait. I thought, you know, I don't care about the curvature.
I want it now. I'm an inpatient gamer. I don't wait.
I just buy stuff at full price like an idiot. I got to say that the flatness is actually really appealing.
I didn't think it bothered me as much and, you know, it's fine.
I'm going to go home tonight and I'm not going to cry about it, but I really prefer the flat 31 and a half inches 4k like this size
for your desk. As long as you can have something a little bigger than 27 inch,
it's like it's it's perfect and you really don't need curvature
unless it's bigger than this or ultra wide at a similar size.
And as for the rest of the panel, it just looks incredible.
Like I cannot get over how good 240 Hertz running at 4k resolution
with Qt OLED just incredible colors.
God, it's stunning. Even everyone behind me is like, wow, that looks so good.
It's like, yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, you sound exactly like that bell.
That's exactly what you sound like. Yep. That's those 0.03 millisecond OLED pixel response time
that is basically near instant. I bought one of these for a reason, not this exact model,
but don't take my word for it. Let's talk Labs results.
For color gamut coverage, we've got 147% of the sRGB color space
and the advertised 99% of DCI P3 as well as 78% of BT 2020.
For sRGB color accuracy, it was pretty good with the Delta E average
of just 1.7 in the pro sRGB picture mode.
HDR is another story. We had similar results in both game user and pro user picture modes
averaging around a Delta E of 23 with luminance error.
It's oversaturating, which honestly, most people kind of like anyway,
whether it's correct or not. Here's the thing though.
This 32 inch 4K, 240 Hertz QD OLED display retails at $950.
That is absolutely wild and is kind of a steal.
And that makes this version of this QD OLED panel really freaking competitive.
I mean, you've got your 90 Watts power delivery. You've got perfect viewing angles from literally anywhere you are.
You got 240 Hertz. Like there's just, there's some trade-offs for sure.
For example, the only cables we got in the box were power, the USB B and HDMI 2.1.
So if you want DisplayPort, you're going to have to go buy a DP cable.
If you want the USB-C 90 watt power delivery, you're going to have to make
sure you have a USB-C cable that can do 90 watt power delivery and DP alt mode.
But like, you probably already have those things anyway, or at least the DP cable.
I don't think you need USB-C unless you've got like a laptop you want to hook up.
For being $250 cheaper than the competition, honestly, I think it kind of wins.
And I think I regret my purchase yet again.
That's not the first time I've bought the first shiny new monitor that comes along.
And then like three months later, I am kicking myself for not being a more patient gamer.
And here we are. Sure, there's some other features that I wish were here and they're not, but like it's like $250 is just a huge price difference.
It brings this under a grant, which is honestly a really big sweet spot when it comes to price
and performance for people buying brand new displays that they want to use for like the next five plus years.
Thanks so much to MSI for sponsoring today's video. If you want to get one of these, check it out in the link in the description below.