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What's faster than a 500 Hertz display? Well, supposedly an ASUS display at 540,

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but that's not out yet. So for now, we've got the AW2524HF from Alienware.

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One thing I noticed is it's got this cute little whale

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on the handle. I've never noticed that once before. I own an Alienware display in case

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that wasn't already known by everyone. And it's not 500 Hertz though.

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And I'll tell you something, 500 Hertz is a dream.

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A dream come true. It's so fast. It looks like it's like you're looking through a window.

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Honestly, like I know that people say that basically every time. This feels like looking through a window

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into the real world. It's so smooth. This is the only time where it's like indistinguishable.

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We'll play Counter-Strike on it later and just show you guys how instant everything is.

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Got a stand here. This is only a 24 and a half inch monitor

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and it's only 1080p. But that's because, you know, you're trying to hit those max refresh rates

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for insane e-sports gaming.

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That's not necessarily what I'm interested in. I like a high refresh rate, but I don't know.

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Past 240, it's hard for me to tell the difference until you make another big jump, like from 240 to 500.

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Then you can actually feel it. In the box, probably should have told you guys

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as I pulled them out. We've got a USB-C to DisplayPort cable.

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We've also got a C13. We'll see later if this hooks up directly to the monitor

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or if there's a power brick. And then we've got a regular DisplayPort cable.

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This is what we're gonna be using today to actually hit 500 Hertz.

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If you're stuck with HDMI, it's not gonna hit there. It'll hit like 240, I think, at 1080p.

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We've also got our handy dandy USB B to A cable.

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This is actually really handy for stuff like, say, you wanna use the USB ports on the back of your monitor.

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You just hook up the B to A on your computer and it'll transfer all the signals.

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So for me, you know, I'm not sure how much latency it introduces,

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but I put the dongle from my mouse on my monitor just to save a USB port on my computer.

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We've got our stand.

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Little stand. Whoa, this one took a lot of effort to get out of the bag.

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We got the classic big old column into a big old twisty screw here at the bottom.

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Pretty universal design that most people seem to use.

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Not everybody, we've definitely unboxed a few monitors that don't use this system, but it's just so easy.

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We've also got this box. What's in the Alienware box? It's got a little alien head on it.

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I love Alienware's logo. Man, I remember when Alienware wasn't owned by Dell

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and it was actually like crazy. Them and like Voodoo. Oh, as for what's in here,

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it looks like it's just a safety and regulatory information as well as a little alien head sticker.

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If you wanna, you know, rep the brand a little bit. And then we've got the display in here.

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We're gonna do the old click, clack and pull it out. Click, clack, pull.

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Oh, and then we've got a little product guide here

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that tells me how to do all the things I just did. We've actually reviewed the previous iteration of this,

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the AW2524 non-HF on LTT.

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And let me tell you, it was beautiful then and right now it looks great

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except for some of these scuff marks. One moment, please. It's got a pretty sweet stand.

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It's not super big. And the nice thing is it's got these angles here.

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So if you're one of those really hardcore CSGO players

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who does the whole angled keyboard trick, you can have it lined up against your monitor there

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if it's really that close. But you know, when it's only 25 inches, 20.5,

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you gotta get in there. As for the stand's capabilities, it can swivel, yep.

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Oh, but it's on the stand, not the ARM. You know, I kinda like that.

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It feels a bit like sturdier when it's on the stand itself, not on the ARM.

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Oh, baby. It tells you to not try to pivot it

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when it's all the way lowered though in the little booklet we got. So I'm gonna put it back here

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and check out the, this is the max height.

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And then, oh, tilt too. You know, it's always welcome. But let's see how low this monitor can go.

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That's not bad. It's gonna fit just about any desk

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and it's gonna fit just about any height. Something else I just noticed is

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it's got a little headphone stand for you. So whenever you know you're done gaming,

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you just take it off, put it there. In terms of just design, you know, I like it.

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It's simple, it works. It's got the big 500 Hertz badge right here,

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big Alienware lettering on the front, which I'm not crazy about that much branding,

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but it's really not that bad. There's nothing on the stand down here, no Alienhead logo.

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Then if we look at the back, like most Alienware logos,

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it's got the first model number over here, 25.

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And then we've got the little Alienhead back here. Neat little fun fact. We had not this guy, but the previous iteration at LTX

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does FPS matter booth. And Bell ran it.

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He's pretty good at games. I've played against Dan with him and a couple of shooters is pretty good.

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And he said that the 500 Hertz did not really improve his gameplay

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or anyone's for that matter. Now, someone who is a dedicated professional

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eSports player, it'll probably make a difference for them.

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For the average person, probably not. Took it off the stand real quick

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to show you guys the IO. We've got our C13 power plug here

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for our internal power supply. If you really need a dedicated external brick,

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then this monitor probably isn't for you. We've got our USB B port, a couple of USB A ports,

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and then a couple more down here actually as well. So we've got four USB A 3.2,

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and then we've also got HDMI 2.1 and a couple of DisplayPort 1.4.

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Aside from that, we've got a navigation nipple down here. And then what looks like a power button, right there.

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We're gonna turn it on in just a minute and I'll tell you all about the panel that's in this bad boy,

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but not before word from our sponsor. All right, it's turned on.

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Let's see, it says 60 Hertz there and I believe it. This does not feel good at all.

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We're using DisplayPort because even though the HDMI connector is HDMI 2.1,

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it's not enough for 500 Hertz, 1080p, it ain't enough.

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So we're in 1080p, that's great. Advanced 60, garbage goes up to 480.

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Now, you gotta change a menu setting to hit 500,

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but oh man, even 480. Like we'll get that 20 extra Hertz,

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but it's really not much.

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Yeah, let's do it, let's do it. It says 480 in the corner, okay, great, it's working.

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Let's check out our OSD. It's the classic Alienware OSD with the navigation nipple.

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I'm pretty big on this, but that's mostly just because I've gotten really used to it

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because I have an Alienware monitor. We found SRGB to be the most color accurate

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with a Delta E average of only one and a max error of just 2.7.

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But it only does about 90% DCI-P3, which is still respectable,

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especially because this monitor is not about creation.

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This monitor is about gaming at the fastest speeds possible.

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So we've got a 4090, you know, we've got 1080p.

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It's gonna be probably CPU bottlenecked and we'll see how good it actually works.

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Overclock, 500 Hertz baby is doing it.

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It's trying, did I do it? I don't know, oh, it doesn't feel like it. It feels like it's back to 60.

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Maybe I have to enable it and then go in and change it back from 60 to 500.

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Don't get me wrong, this feels the exact same as 480 did to me.

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When you're going between 480 and 500,

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there's not a whole lot of difference. At 500 Hertz, that's a two millisecond frame time.

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Two milliseconds of frame time is very impressive. The problem is you start to see a lot of diminishing returns

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after about 120, 240 Hertz.

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At 60 Hertz, you're seeing about 16.67 milliseconds

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of frame time. And then once you jump up to 120, you have that.

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So it goes to about 8.3. And then you have it again at 240 to four

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and then you have it again at 480 to 2.2 or something

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and then the 500 gets you that flat even two milliseconds.

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That's great, but there's a huge difference between 16 and eight and even eight and four,

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but four to two, it's pretty minor. That being said, my main test for just checking

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what my refresh rate is probably running at is I just jiggle my mouse and I try to see

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how many cursors are on screen at once. Look at all those, that's science,

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that's scientific right there. Let's do a quick UFO test.

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Dang, 500 FPS refresh rate. So it looks pretty good, but I'm surprised

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by how much ghosting I'm seeing on the white and green frogs in particular.

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We've got v-sync off, but on it doesn't seem to make any difference with that ghosting either.

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So even at 500 Hertz, unless there's some setting

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that I'm completely unaware of,

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you're just not gonna fix that ghosting. Part of the problem is that while this is IPS

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and it looks beautiful in terms of color and even viewing angles aren't too bad,

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unfortunately it's just not gonna be quite as snappy

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as something like OLED or even just a TN panel.

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That stuff is light and quick, especially OLED,

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counts in literally like microseconds for pixel response time.

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So unfortunately we're gonna end up with a little bit of ghosting, at least on certain colors or shades like we're seeing here.

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We're gonna try some games though, because there is a massive difference between trying to play a game and notice a frame rate

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versus watching it on a test pattern. For me, I find ghosting is perceptible,

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but not like super perceptible, if that makes any sense.

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Like when you're gaming, you're kind of busy looking at everything all over the place, so it's not until you start to pixel peep

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and look for things specifically that you start to actually notice it,

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unless the panel's really bad. If the panel's really bad, you can tell pretty quickly.

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Now, 24 and a half inch or 24 to 25

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is pretty typical for eSports size monitors and it's also pretty typical for displays

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that are this fast. The problem with that, at least for people

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who are used to bigger displays is that it's really small. One of the first things that both Bell and I noticed

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was like, wow, we went to sit down in front of this and I'm like, I've got to like get right in front

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of this thing because it's tiny. And so it's going to be a price that you're gonna have to pay.

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You cannot get 500 Hertz refresh rate in a bigger monitor,

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at least not yet, maybe a few years from now, but definitely not yet.

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So, you know, we set our FPS max to 1,000

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just to make sure that this thing can breathe as much as it wants to and we are now getting, you know,

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600, 700, maybe 800 frames a second,

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depending on where you are. Yes, something doesn't feel right. Like it's hitting high FPS, but it's still,

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with how blurry it gets when I shake this much, it still doesn't feel like 500 Hertz

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because it's fast IPS and the moving picture response time

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isn't going to be as good as you might want it to be. It still doesn't feel perfect.

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We saw the ghosting on the frogs. We see when I shake the camera really quickly,

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it gets a little blurry and a little blendy. So I think that at the end of the day,

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refresh rate just isn't king. It's important and is this going to look amazing?

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Yeah, we'll fire up another game just to look at how good the colors are and all that.

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I think that when you're deciding on what monitor to buy,

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you really need to examine a lot more than just refresh rate and PPI.

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Let's fire up Doom. Let's see how Doom feels. So we've got HDR turned on now in Windows

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and in our sweet, sweet display here and in the game.

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I got to say, it looks okay. It's putting up some decent bright spots.

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We measured 333 nits, peak brightness and HDR, which is fine.

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The problem with this thing is it's not meant for stuff like this.

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It's not meant to look cinematic. It's meant to give you the fastest frame rate possible.

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This thing looks fine in game. I will admit, when you're watching content like this

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and you're not looking for individual issues,

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it looks okay. You're not gonna see a ton of bloom unless it's a very obvious example of,

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oh, here's a pin point here on a dark spot.

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The problem, oh, those bright flashes from the gun actually look terrible.

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It brightens up my whole screen, essentially, instead of just here. Okay, so that's a really good example of that

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looking real bad. It doesn't help that I'm also low health

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and so I've got some red filter on my screen. It's not as bad now that the film is gone,

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but it still brightens too much of my screen instead of a simple pin point

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right where my muzzle flash is. There's a reason that they're not even really promoting HDR,

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all that heavily for this version. The main difference between the HF and the H

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is that this does not have the G-Sync badge. It does not have a native G-Sync module on it.

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It's got FreeSync Premium, which is pretty sweet. I will admit, right now, this is not an awful experience

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and I'd be more than happy to play this. I'd probably play in HDR instead of SDR.

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This one, without the G-Sync module, the AW2524HF is $650 right now,

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which is kind of a lot for a 24 and a half inch,

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1080p display that doesn't even have a great HDR experience.

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However, there's really no competition at 500 Hertz

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or there's not much, especially not when you want fast IPS

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for better colors than a TN panel is gonna give you. What makes it even better is the NVIDIA one

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with G-Sync is $830. So if you wanna save like 200 bucks

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and you were already thinking of getting the non-F version,

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honestly, you've done yourself a favor by waiting

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because $200 less makes this a lot more affordable

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to a lot of people. I personally probably wouldn't buy this.

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I think that 500 Hertz, it's a little too much for most people.

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240 is still really good and still a huge jump,

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especially different panel technology like OLED where you have those lightning fast pixel response times.

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It's a fantastic experience. This is still really, really good

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and there are absolutely gamers out there who not only want this, but need it

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to get that edge over their opponent. So if that's you, the AW2524HF from Alienware

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might be worth checking out. This is ShortCircuit. If you wanna look at another video,

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check out the LG 27GR95QE.

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That's an OLED monitor, it does 240 Hertz. It's not 500, but it's still real fast.