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You get a similar image clarity and sharpness as you would on a 42″ 4K display (~106 PPI), such as the LG OLED42C2, just a bit less screen real estate due to the lower 1440p resolution. Gradient handling was good though with no visible banding issues, and only minor gradation in darker tones. sRGB Emulation Mode
Class 3)A lag of more than 16.66ms – the equivalent of more than 2 frames at a refresh rate of 120Hz – Some noticeable lag in daily usage, not suitable for high end gaming The stand is relatively compact and shouldn’t take much space on a desktop (it’s as big as any other 27” monitor). It offers decent ergonomics, with -5 - 15 degree tilt, -10 - 10 degree swivel, and 110mm of height adjustment. The display is also able to pivot to a portrait position, but if you are planning to use this as your secondary display for Twitch chats, we need to talk about your spending habits. Read our detailed article about input lagand the various measurement techniques which are used to evaluate this aspect of a display. The screens tested are split into two measurements which are based on our overall display lag tests and half the average G2G response time, as measured by our oscilloscope. The response time element, part of the lag you can see, is split from the overall display lag and shown on the graph as the green bar. From there, the signal processing (red bar) can be provided as a good estimation of the lag you would feelfrom the display. We also classify each display as follows: With a view to long-term usage, LG bundles the 27GR95QE with several systems designed to prevent burn-in, which can all be accessed from a dedicated menu activated from the remote. These include Screen Move, which shunts the entire display around by a few pixels, the self-explanatory Screen Saver and the more invasive Image and Pixel Cleaning, which take 10 minutes and one minute to run, respectively. Peak brightness in this default mode reached a maximum of 609 nits in our tests, and that was on a 10% APL window. It was also at approximately that brightness for smaller APL window sizes, but sadly didn’t reach higher, and certainly nowhere near the spec of 1000 nits from LG. We will examine other modes and whether you can get higher peak brightness in a moment. At a full white windows (100% APL) the sustained brightness was only 141 nits, which was quite a bit lower than a 100% window in SDR for some reason (~192 nits). We would have liked to have seen better HDR brightness here really. Newer firmware April 2023– no change to brightnessText clarity not great for a desktop monitor due to WOLED panel sub-pixel layout and graininess of AG coating Another problem I often found is that the HDR can be a little inconsistent, and I found that it tended to oversaturate the colors in a distracting way. I left it off because I would much rather play with good color on a darker screen than be too bright and blown out.
The main downside of OLED panels is the risk of permanent image burn-in and temporary image retention. In early April 2023 LG released an updated firmware for the 27GR95QE designed to supposedly help improve screen brightness. We have unfortunately had to return our screen sample, but our friends over at Monitors Unboxed have updated the firmware on their screen (done via the LG OnScreen Control software) and re-tested brightness in both SDR and HDR modes. They confirmed there was no change at all to HDR brightness in Gamer 1 mode, which has the ~6500K colour temp. We calibrated the screen at a software level using Portrait Display’s Calman Ultimate software and our calibration tools. We will also look at hardware level calibration afterwards.We will not go too much in to potential concerns around lifespan of the OLED panel, colour shift, dark spots or image retention/burn-in here. You can read our OLED Displays and the Monitor Marketarticle for more information about those potential issues. As a desktop monitor if you are going to use the screen for many hours per day, some of these things might become an issue in time. In our fairly short period of time testing and using the screen we noticed no issues in any of these areas.
And that color is vibrant. I measured 100% coverage of the sRGB color space, as well as 97% coverage of DCI-P3. Color accuracy was excellent out of the box, too, with a color error of 1.5 (less than 2 is ideal for video and photo editing). You could easily jump in and start editing a video on the UltraGear OLED 27 without any adjustments to the color. This monitor supports the fastest refresh rate and response time as of Dec. 2022, 240Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms, among the OLED gaming monitor. In SDR mode the luminance range of the screen is limited compared with LCD monitors, with a maximum brightness measured at 192 cd/m 2, which was close to the advertised 200 cd/m 2 which was pleasing. Most LCD monitors however can reach 300 – 500 cd/m 2 easily for SDR content and so on first glance, this might appear to be very limiting on the 27GR95QE. If you are used to using a very bright monitor or running at high brightness settings, you will almost certainly find this screen to look dark by comparison.Another big advantage of OLED technology is exceptional image consistency thanks to the 178° wide viewing angles. The image remains flawless regardless of the angle you’re looking at it. The screen has a decent range of ergonomic adjustments with tilt, height, swivel and also rotate available. They are all pretty stiff to operate though which makes changing the viewing angle a pain sometimes. Side to side swivel adjustment also has a pretty limited range, but overall the screen is very sturdy and stable. You can see that the targets had been closely matched after this process. This is a further “validation” process you can run which takes 3 minutes to complete and will produce a more thorough report, including one you can save as a PDF if you want:
Default setup is overly cool and not very accurate, but thankfully there’s a nicely configured sRGB emulation mode with accurate performance, and it’s not hard to tweak things in the wide gamut mode either for a better performance. The inclusion of hardware calibration is a nice-to-have and offers some further accuracy potential for those with compatible devices, although it’s a shame it has limited reporting capabilities and cannot be used in HDR mode at the moment. Perhaps LG will update their software at some point to make this better. Brightness in SDR mode would be considered “limited” compared with LCD monitors, but we think perfectly adequate for most people still. It might be a bit dark if you’re used to pumping up the brightness for gaming or movies though. At least in SDR there is no need for the screen to use ABL, so you get consistent screen performance and brightness regardless of your image and content. HDR brightness was disappointing and didn’t get anywhere near the advertised 1000 nits peak brightness in any sensible colour temp mode, although the setup and accuracy was decent and the OLED panel offers the usual excellent contrast ratio and HDR experience. Where to Buy At 27 inches, the pixel density is excellent on the UltraGear OLED 27. Text looks super sharp, and images look vibrant thanks to the OLED panel. You’re spending more for fewer pixels, but that’s not really important once you sit down and look at the monitor. Jacob Roach / Digital Trends / Digital Trends The LG UltraGear 27GR95QE has a slightly matte anti-glare finish to the screen. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends greatly on personal taste. Matte finishes do a better job of keeping reflections at bay, but full-gloss finishes look just that little sharper and more immersive. I prefer a gloss finish on my OLED panels, but that’s an entirely subjective opinion.This model has no speakers, unlike the other high-end UltraGear models with upgraded sets. That’s probably because of the thinness of the OLED panel, plus tuned headsets or high-end sound systems better serve a monitor like this. However, we think LG should still have included them since this option isn’t particularly cheap. Display and Performance The Screen Saver function seems a sensible one to leave turned on, as it will turn the screen off if it detects no change to the image for an extended period of time. We never saw this happen unnecessarily during any normal usage, even on pretty static desktop applications. It worked as intended in our usage when we left the screen alone fully. The bezels surrounding the OLED panel may not be the narrowest I’ve ever seen, but they only measure 8mm at the sides and 10mm at the bottom, so I’m not complaining. All up weight is 7.35Kg with the stand accounting for 2.3kg of that. I measured a color error of above 6 in HDR, and that was only at 75% brightness. The UltraGear OLED 27 is great for color work when it’s in SDR, but HDR is exclusively for playing games, watching movies, and browsing the internet. You’re meant to control the monitor with the included remote, but even with that, the UltraGear OLED 27 runs into issues. For starters, the battery slot on the remote requires a screwdriver to get open, and LG doesn’t include the coin battery you need to power the remote. This wouldn’t be a problem if you could control the on-screen display with the button on the monitor, or if LG had included the battery, which very few people are likely to have laying around, but neither of those things are true. Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
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