ASUS XG27_AQWMG - x2 of the February Batch
Pics here. Taken @ 100 brightness, dark room, 95% gray youtube test.
Here's my thoughts on ASUS AQWMG Tandem WOLED.
Background: I recently upgraded my 10 year old PC build, but still had some old IPS monitors. I loved OLED screens so I was naturally interested in upgrading to ASUS AQWMG.
The availability was delayed in some parts of NA, but i finally got 2 units in May. I got two because i read all the issues, know I have bad luck, and would just return the worse unit.
My batch was from the February one. W2LMTF125791. Although it came with firmware V_5 i upgraded to V_7.
Out of the box the banding was quite bad. Although all the reading prepared me for this. Upgrading firmware helped, and so did pixel refreshes over the course of a couple days.
My perspective coming from old IPS panels
Pros:
The trueblack glossy finish is amazing!!! probably the best part of this monitor!
I love the colors and contrast. I didn't believe my IPS would be unusable afterward, but I hate how chalky it looks now.
The response time is much improved from my old panels.
The refresh rate of 280hz is much nicer than 140, and greatly helps competitive gaming. Motion clarity is great!
I did appreciate the OLED care features like the auto shutoff, camera, and pixel cleaning.
Cons:
The banding. It is unnoticeable 99% of the time, until it is noticeable that 1% of the time. My units had particularly bad banding. It is visible with anything gray en masse. Discord full screen, some website backgrounds, smoke grenades, specific things like these. Even if it is a 1% issue, a product of this caliber and expense should not have this, and it makes me question the integrity of other aspects of the monitor like panel uniformity / longevity.
Text clarity is slightly worse than my IPS. I'm glad i did not get any OLED with worse text clarity than this, because going backwards in terms of visibility feels awkward. It is definitely okay though - nothing that hurts my eyes or anything.
There is some black crush, but i love black and the contrast. Someone more experienced can speak to this.
Overall I'm very happy, although a bit sad with this product. I'm conflicted because its nice to have such a nice high end modern piece of technology, with all its upgrades, but definitely some flaws and annoyances. I will probably return both, and try again, since my units look like they are on the worse end of the problem, however I would still be happy to keep the slightly less worse one.
Ultimately I love the colors, contrasts, response time, motion clarity, so I'm really excited to finally have completed my upgrade regardless.
LMK your thoughts!