ASUS XG438Q 43 inch 120Hz 4K announced

Vega said:
I would say considering the cheap price, IMO one shouldn't expect the world. The 35" FALD monitors are over twice as expensive as crazy as that sounds.
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It IS expensive though... this is VA, poorly executed, many issues... all it has over equivalents is 120Hz and the size. BGR kills it for me as I need and want productivity, never-mind the other problems it has. Pretty awful value really, all things considered, but it's the only option for large format high refresh... and I will bet the Acer and other Asus with DSC are pretty much identical. The 35" FALD are an even bigger joke at those prices.

This needed to be much better, but I'm sure plenty will be happy with it.
 
Greebo said:
The GBR and the horrible looking text for starters, the ghosting, the slow response times, the Colorado accuracy.
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ok fair enough. The BGR pixel layout does cause some clarity issues for text from close up, so if you are hoping to use it as a desktop monitor it's probably not suitable. although imo the size is the bigger issue for desktop office use anyway. If you move your viewing position back a couple of feet then you can't see any issues with the text clarity, and it's certainly not an issue in gaming or movies, or when viewing the screen from a sensible viewing distance for the screen size.

The response time part of their review was, i think, a little limited in scope. In my testing i agree that the best mode for up to 100Hz is level 4, and in that mode it's comparable to most other VA panels and really as expected. in motion tests and gaming it performs quite similarly to other VA panels, and there's plenty of people who happily game on those today. You can push the OD control up to level 5 which has significant improvements to motion clarity, reducing blurring a lot but at the expense of some high levels of overshoot. you really need that mode for 120Hz but in real life the overshoot is not as obvious as you might think in motion tests and gaming.

The colour accuracy is an interesting one. the out of the box setup is good on that model, good gamma and white point and very high contrast ratio. it operates all the time with a ~90% DCi-P3 gamut, and there's no way to limit that to sRGB if you wanted to work with standard gamut content. but for the intended purposes of gaming, HDR, movies etc it's perfectly fine from an accuracy point of view. the wider gamut helps give vivid colours and supports HDR content better too. if you were wanting to do photo work or colour critical work, i think there are other issues that would be more of a problem than the colour rendering - including again the massive screen size, and the VA viewing angles. it's not at all aimed at these kind of uses, and the performance is perfectly fine for the intended uses
 
Baddass said:
ok fair enough. The BGR pixel layout does cause some clarity issues for text from close up, so if you are hoping to use it as a desktop monitor it's probably not suitable. although imo the size is the bigger issue for desktop office use anyway. If you move your viewing position back a couple of feet then you can't see any issues with the text clarity, and it's certainly not an issue in gaming or movies, or when viewing the screen from a sensible viewing distance for the screen size.

The response time part of their review was, i think, a little limited in scope. In my testing i agree that the best mode for up to 100Hz is level 4, and in that mode it's comparable to most other VA panels and really as expected. in motion tests and gaming it performs quite similarly to other VA panels, and there's plenty of people who happily game on those today. You can push the OD control up to level 5 which has significant improvements to motion clarity, reducing blurring a lot but at the expense of some high levels of overshoot. you really need that mode for 120Hz but in real life the overshoot is not as obvious as you might think in motion tests and gaming.

The colour accuracy is an interesting one. the out of the box setup is good on that model, good gamma and white point and very high contrast ratio. it operates all the time with a ~90% DCi-P3 gamut, and there's no way to limit that to sRGB if you wanted to work with standard gamut content. but for the intended purposes of gaming, HDR, movies etc it's perfectly fine from an accuracy point of view. the wider gamut helps give vivid colours and supports HDR content better too. if you were wanting to do photo work or colour critical work, i think there are other issues that would be more of a problem than the colour rendering - including again the massive screen size, and the VA viewing angles. it's not at all aimed at these kind of uses, and the performance is perfectly fine for the intended uses
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Valid, but it is £1100... and there's a lot of issues to swallow here for that price. Yes it's comparable to other VA monitor performance, but those monitors are FAR cheaper. It just feels like you're paying way over the odds for the 120Hz and the size... sure, it's the only option if you want these things, but it just ain't good enough. Maybe this is all VA can ever be though. There's obviously a reason they went with BGR, and the other issues that are present here were probably the best they could do.
 
Legend said:
Valid, but it is £1100... and there's a lot of issues to swallow here for that price. Yes it's comparable to other VA monitor performance, but those monitors are FAR cheaper. It just feels like you're paying way over the odds for the 120Hz and the size... sure, it's the only option if you want these things, but it just ain't good enough. Maybe this is all VA can ever be though. There's obviously a reason they went with BGR, and the other issues that are present here were probably the best they could do.
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Yes agreed re the price. I’m not saying the screen is perfect as it’s not, I’m just trying to give an alternative view In response to some of the concerns in case that helps some people put the comments from the hardware unboxed review into context better
 
roysters said:
is VA bad? i mean im using a TN panel! surely can't be worse... lol

I use this for work and gaming... but then again it's 144hz and has 1ms response time
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I'd suspect you'd find the Asus worse for gaming and response times. Depending what size you're at, text would probably appear worse also due to the BGR layout.
 
It's somewhat baffling to me WHY they did this... there is no single good reason to do it, other than cutting costs perhaps. I don't think EVERY SINGLE 43" monitor/TV has BGR? I'm sure I've seen talk of some that aren't. Unless there were specific technical challenges with this monitor that they couldn't overcome? Very disappointing anyway, and an own goal if there WAS something they could have done different... no way this doesn't impact sales to some degree. Even outside of the BGR issue though, this monitor is clearly beset with the same flaws almost every VA panel suffers with. I'd say bring on IPS, but at this size I can't imagine the bleed and glow we'd have to endure. :rolleyes:
 
Isn't BGR simply the panel being configured upside down? I wonder if the orientation simply depends on how that particular factory has setup production. They may not care as it wouldn't affect a TV.
 
sadbuttrue said:
Isn't BGR simply the panel being configured upside down? I wonder if the orientation simply depends on how that particular factory has setup production. They may not care as it wouldn't affect a TV.
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Yes, that's basically it. I'm not sure if Asus had any control over this exactly... I don't know what the manufacturing process is for monitors and if there's a specific reason they HAD to go with BGR, or if it would just have been too costly to 'flip' the panel. I'm sure I've heard of 43" TV's that are RGB, so it must be possible.

@Baddass - any word on the upcoming Acer CG437K and if/when you will be reviewing? Do you expect this to be identical to the XG438Q in respect to the BGR layout etc.? Any potential glimmer of hope this could be better than the Asus?
 
It’s not impossible as it’s a different version of the panel that will be used I believe as there is an HDR600 and an HDR1000 version, with the latter being used in the upcoming Acer model and also the Asus XG43UQ. But I’d be quite surprised if it was any different to be honest given close proximity of production for both and the fact this is fairly common on panels this size. I’ll probably review one of those models when available. The Asus may be more interesting given the use of DSC for single cable 144Hz

Ps TFTCentral review now online

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asus_rog_strix_xg438q.htm
 
Baddass said:
It’s not impossible as it’s a different version of the panel that will be used I believe as there is an HDR600 and an HDR1000 version, with the latter being used in the upcoming Acer model and also the Asus XG43UQ. But I’d be quite surprised if it was any different to be honest given close proximity of production for both and the fact this is fairly common on panels this size. I’ll probably review one of those models when available. The Asus may be more interesting given the use of DSC for single cable 144Hz

Ps TFTCentral review now online

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asus_rog_strix_xg438q.htm
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Yes, I think it would be wishful thinking to assume the Acer CG437K (or Asus XG43UQ) will be any different. I've really no idea what the technical/cost limitations are with regards to this BGR/RGB thing. As far as you know, would simply 'flipping' the panel 180 degree resolve the problem? If it really is that straightforward, I'm struggling to see why they wouldn't do it, so there must be more to this.

On panelook, you can see the Asus panel, compared to what I assume will be the Acer variant. Nothing in it, other than the brightness... so maybe it just comes down to how it's oriented? We'll find out soon enough I suspect, but I won't hold my breath...

http://www.panelook.com/modelcompare.php?ids=40890,40826
 
Meh, not impressed with the BGR issue, that's a pretty massive flaw for a monitor to display these in reverse. I'll wait to see what the 144Hz HDR1000 version is like, as this is more expensive perhaps they will make it RBG.
 
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