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The greyscale gradient appeared quite smooth without obvious dithering or strong banding. There was minor banding for some darker shades but this was only slight and didn’t cause any clear issues in other testing. The ‘Rev 1.0’ model reviewed here uses a Sharp panel. A ‘Rev 2.0’ variant is also available, based on a different panel (Innolux M270KCJ-Q7B and possibly others used interchangeably). The M27Q X features simple and unassuming styling with an 8mm-wide flush bezel for the main panel and angular accents on the triangular base. All parts are finished in matte-textured plastic. The upright is a solid piece with a 130mm height adjustment and 5/20 degrees of tilt. There is no portrait or swivel functionality. The panel can be placed high enough to use vertically with the eyepoint at center-screen. The anti-glare layer is matte and keeps reflections at bay while maintaining a sharp, grain-free image. The high resolution 27” 2560 x 1440 monitor space is certainly crowded, with this hitting the sweet spot for many users in terms of screen size, pixel density and performance potential. The Gigabyte M27Q is an offering with this combination in mind, more budget-oriented than their AORUS models. But retaining a range of attractive features such as Adaptive-Sync support including AMD FreeSync Premium. With its IPS-type panel, there’s also a focus on strong colour performance. We put this model to the test with our usual suite, including desktop, movie and game testing.
A competent 170Hz performance with well-tuned pixel responses throughout the VRR range. Adaptive-Sync worked well on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs
If you run multiple PCs, an included KVM feature has a USB-C input that can provide power, video and peripheral support. And with two HDMI 2.0 and a DisplayPort 1.4, you can run 10-bit color and HDR up to the full 240 Hz. The M27Q X is a full-featured display that looks to provide an ideal balance of resolution and speed. Assembly and Accessories The monitor provided a varied and generously saturated palette on Battlefield V. Most content under SDR, including this game, is designed around the sRGB colour space. If the colour gamut of a screen extends beyond sRGB, as it does here, it imparts extra saturation – providing a vibrant look that some users enjoy, but not providing a faithful or accurate look to things. Digital saturation enhancements such as increasing ‘Color Vibrance’ in the OSD or making a similar adjustment in the graphics driver pull shades closer to the edge of the gamut, without expanding the gamut itself. With an expanded gamut instead providing the extra saturation, you maintain good spacing on the gamut and therefore don’t lose shade variety. The gamut in this case is particularly generous in the green region, so some shades containing green showcased particularly strong saturation and vibrancy. This made for some impressively lush-looking forest greens, for example, but some green shades appeared too strongly saturated with a slightly unnatural and neon appearance in places. Reddish browns also had their red component brought out a bit too strongly, although not as strongly as we’ve seen on some models. The extension in the red region is focused more towards the yellow and orange side than pure red. This affected certain skin tones, tree trunks and wooden objects for example which didn’t look quite as neutral as intended and sometimes had a bit of an orange-red push. Blues and cyans shared in the strong saturation – some areas of sky, for example, looked decidedly vivid but not really as they should. Decent static contrast for panel type, light to very light screen surface with fairly smooth surface texture keeps image free from a grainy or layered appearance Moderate ‘IPS glow’ ate away at detail and atmosphere, especially in dimmer room lighting. HDR performance very limited from contrast perspective Through Gigabyte’s Aim Stabilizer Sync implementation, MBR can work at the same time as VRR given that your refresh rate/frame rate is over 100Hz.
Combining the above two settings gives a warmer and somewhat less green look compared to ‘Low Blue Light = 10’ alone. The blue light reduction is significant, a highly effective LBL setting – more so than either setting applied on its own. As usual we tested a range of game titles using AMD FreeSync and found the experience similar in all cases. Any issues affecting one title but not another suggests a game or GPU driver issues rather than a monitor issue. We’ll therefore simply use Battlefield V as an example for this section. The in-game graphics options are flexible enough to allow the full VRR range to be assessed. Our Radeon RX 580 isn’t a very powerful GPU, so maintaining 170fps at the native WQHD resolution is difficult. Even with graphics settings set to ‘low’, it was common to see dips significantly below this and at many points the average frame rate closer to 100fps. Without a VRR technology like FreeSync, even the slightest dips below 170fps would cause obvious (to us) tearing if VSync was disabled or stuttering if VSync was enabled. Sensitivity to tearing and stuttering varies, but for those sensitive to it the technology is very nice to have. If you’re intending to use the monitor with the PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, be aware that a small settings tweak may be required to ensure 120Hz is selectable. Details can be found in this article. I’m an Analyst and ISF-certified TV calibrator focused on reviewing computer accessories, laptops, gaming monitors, and video games. I’ve been writing, playing, and complaining about games for as long as I remember, but it wasn’t until recently that I’ve been able to shout my opinions directly at a larger audience. My work has appeared on iMore, Windows Central, Android Central, and TWICE, and I have a diverse portfolio of editing work under my belt from my time spent at Scholastic and Oxford University Press. I also have a few book-author credits under my belt—I’ve contributed to the sci-fi anthology Under New Suns, and I’ve even written a Peppa Pig book. While it has no official G-SYNC Compatible certification by NVIDIA, there are no issues when using VRR with compatible GeForce GPUs over DisplayPort.Now, the updated M27Q-P variant features a regular RGB subpixel layout in addition to a few more upgrades. Let’s see how it compares to the older model and other alternatives available in this price range! If you have multiple displays connected you can just fine-tune the Gigabyte. This is illustrated below, with a different model used in this example (taken from our AORUS FI27Q-X review). Unfortunately the main optimisation you’re interested in (for BGR or RGB) is largely determined by what is selected in ClearType for the primary display. Only applications built using WPF can have ‘per display’ optimisations and most will just pay attention to what is selected in ClearType for the primary display. This limits the appeal of multi-display setups in Windows with mixed RGB and BGR layouts.
For the price, the M27Q promises a lot of gaming performance and plenty of features for the enthusiast. Let’s dive in and see if it lives up to the spec sheet. Assembly and Accessories The stand is very solid with firm movements. The vertical movement has subtle detents, which make it even more positive. You get a 5.2-inch height adjustment plus -5 and 20-degree tilts. There is no swivel or portrait mode. Thankfully, we didn’t encounter any play or wobble when moving the M27Q around. It is very well-built. Because BIOS flashing is potentially risky, if you do not encounter problems using the current version of BIOS, it is recommended that you not flash the BIOS. To flash the BIOS, do it with caution. Inadequate BIOS flashing may result in system malfunction. You will also see in the image above that it states: “Selected Display is not validated as G-SYNC Compatible.” This means Nvidia hasn’t specifically tested and validated the display. On our RTX 3090, the experience was very similar to what we described with FreeSync. The floor of operation for VRR was slightly higher and depended on the static refresh rate selected for the monitor. At 170Hz and 165Hz, the floor was 55Hz. At 144Hz it was 53Hz and at 120Hz it was 50Hz. We observed the same LFC-like frame to refresh multiplication technology below this, keeping tearing and stuttering from frame and refresh rate mismatches at bay. There was again a momentary stuttering as the boundary was crossed, much as we observed with our AMD GPU.
Adobe Reader uses its own subpixel rendering system optimised for RGB, completely ignoring how ClearType is set up or if it’s even enabled in the first place. The top image below shows a PDF with fairly clear magenta fringing to the left and cyan to the right. It’s exaggerated somewhat in the image, but we still found it quite clear by eye. The bottom image was taken with the display running ‘Landscape (flipped)’ so that an RGB subpixel layout is used. No clear fringing was observed here. Further up the screen the screen strobe crosstalk appears in front of the object. This becomes fainter and eventually disappears a bit further down. For the more central regions of the screen the strobe crosstalk becomes displaced behind the object, becoming increasingly bold further down the screen until it eventually melds into the main object. Making the object appear doubled. Whilst the strobe crosstalk isn’t too strong centrally, and this is the main area of the screen you observe when immersed in something like a competitive FPS game, it is still visible in some central regions and very strong lower down. There’s also that pesky overshoot throughout the screen and some additional issues to consider, as we explore a little later when we provide subjective analysis of this setting. Instead of testing for response time, we test for input lag using the HDFury Diva Matrix. In this case, the Gigabyte M27Q X measured a very good input lag of 1.6 milliseconds. You might've already guessed, but when it comes to input lag, the smaller that number, the better. While other monitors like the Corsair Xeneon 32QHD165 do measure under 1 millisecond, the difference here will be unnoticeable except, perhaps, in edge cases at the far extremes of competitive esports.
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