Which 1440p, 144Hz, Freesync monitor do I pick?

dt97583 · 17 Apr 2017 at 22:40

Hello,

There seems to be 5 options available below £500 for a 1440p, 144Hz, 27" Freesync monitor - please can you help me pick...

£419.99 - AOC AGON AG271QX 27" 2560x1440 TN FREESYNC 144Hz 1ms Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red

£428.99 - Acer Predator XF270HU 27" 2560x1440 IPS FREESYNC 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red

£428.99 - Acer Predator XG270HUomidpx 27" 2560x1440 TN FREESYNC 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red

£455.99 - BenQ XL2730Z 27" 2560x1440 TN FREESYNC 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red

£499.99 - Asus MG278Q ROG Dominator 27" 2560x1440 TN FREESYNC 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Slim Bezel Monitor

My plan is to pair one of the above with either a RX 480, RX 580 or possibly a Vega card.

Thank you

Xereo · 18 Apr 2017 at 00:06

I own the below, and it's one of the best monitors i have ever own, it's perfect in every way.
If there is a free sync version, id go with that

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/acer...descreen-led-monitor-black-red-mo-098-ac.html

dt97583 · 18 Apr 2017 at 00:16

Cheers Xereo - to confuse matters even more I've just read Freesync 2 is expected with the upcoming Vega cards.

fr0sty · 18 Apr 2017 at 21:16

Hey. I can tell you my experience so far. Though I dont mind if mine has gsync or freesync so ive had both. First I had the XB271HU, mentioned above, it had a good amount of glow and quite bad bleeding in bottom right corner so I returned it for replacement, the new one had terrible bleed top and bottom right plus the top left corner. It was much worse than the first one so I decided to give up on that particular model.

Then I moved to the AOC AG271QX which is a TN freesync monitor. Although it had no technical issues at all, it's just a terrible monitor. You will literally spend hours getting it to look half decent and then even at that it wont look good for every game. Also it has a grain type effect on the screen surface which is really noticable on a white screen, ie the google homepage. Not sure how this monitor got such good reviews.

Then a few days ago I was in a shop and seen the AOC AG271QG on display. It was a perfect ips panel, no bleed or any other problems that plague these monitor and it was nice to see so now ive ordered it online and itll be here on thursday.

I wanted to try the XL2730z but im afraid to try another TN as the aoc was really awful. If you can get a good IPS thats the way to go they really do look nice when they have no problems. The acer one is fantastic right out of the box, you dont need to alter any settings at all it just looks great but the quality of them will mean you may have to return a few of them.

EDIT I forgot to add, if you are fussy getting an IPS will be harder, and also they are not worth the money especially the asus and acer models as you will have to compromise most likely and not have a perfect monitor.

balky12 · 18 Apr 2017 at 22:32

I have the AOC AG271QX, think it's great. Yeah colours looked a bit washed out in some games, but I only play a few games and have preset settings for each on at a click of a button. I will hold my hands up and say my experience with premium monitors is limited.

Other than that I can't fault it.

Will be looking at 4K plus Freesync 2 once I get my hands on Vega. As long as it performs.

fr0sty · 19 Apr 2017 at 01:10

balky12 said:
I have the AOC AG271QX, think it's great. Yeah colours looked a bit washed out in some games, but I only play a few games and have preset settings for each on at a click of a button. I will hold my hands up and say my experience with premium monitors is limited.

Other than that I can't fault it.

Will be looking at 4K plus Freesync 2 once I get my hands on Vega. As long as it performs.

I use a benq VA as my daily monitor and tried out the ips before tn. I can say with confidence the tn is easily the worst of them. I found games to look completely different (in a bad way) when playing on the tn. Particulary horror type games for some reason. Also I found the sharpness on that monitor has something fishy about it too. You can't adjust it over dp or hdmi. Also there are some completely useless features like the shadow control or whatever it's called it looks terrible. Oh and the power brick sucks too.

After a while I got overwatch looking good enough on it but going from that to layers of fear I needed a lot of adjustment again. These are two games I played on the Acer ips and man did they look good on it with no adjustments.

I want the monitor for overwatch and the new quake but I don't want to spend 400+ on something that's so limited and tricky to use. I'd rather load up any game I fancy and have it look good straight away.

I'm only learning as I go and what I've learned is that these are awful technologies and monitors are in a pretty bad place at the minute.

fr0sty · 20 Apr 2017 at 13:33

Out of your list I'd try the Asus tn out. I got the aoc ag271qg this morning and it was the quickest repack yet. Really bad bleed. Thinking of trying out asus tn next myself.

Computer monitors are the only product I know of where the customers do the quality control for them.