ASUS ProArt Display PA27JCV Monitor Review

The ASUS ProArt PA27JCV has a straightforward, office-oriented aesthetic. While it has a silver stand and lower front bezel, it has a black plastic body at the back. It fits in well for an office environment.

The build quality is good. While the monitor's plastics feel sturdy, they have some creak and a small amount of flex. The front buttons feel decent, and the front control joystick works well, though it has a cheaper feel. Additionally, the bezels don't have any defects.

The ergonomics are superb. You can make any common adjustment with it, and most adjustments offer a wide range of movement, though its swivel range isn't quite as extensive. The stand features a cutout for cable management.

The ASUS ProArt PA27JCV is very light, and the base allows the display to move around the desk fairly easily if you push the unit. However, it wobbles a fair bit when bumped and doesn't recover very quickly.

The thickness measurement is taken with the monitor at its lowest height. At its highest height, it's 4.8 inches (12.3 cm) thick.

The ASUS PA27JCV has a power button, five control and shortcut buttons, and a joystick on the front of the monitor to control the on-screen display. It also has a mechanical power switch on the back.

• HDMI cable
• USB-C cable
• Power cable
• Microfiber cloth
• Calibration report
• Documentation

The ASUS PA27JCV has satisfactory contrast. It has better contrast than most IPS monitors, though deep blacks are still somewhat gray in a dark room. The contrast doesn't improve much if you enable local dimming.

Settings

• Backlight: Deep
• Dynamic Dimming (Local Dimming): On

The local dimming is awful. There's extensive blooming with bright content, as there are only 16 zones, and bright objects cause large areas to light up. There's not very much blooming with darker scenes, though many of the details are lost.

Zones that should light up do so, though adjacent zones also light up with larger objects, even if those zones aren't needed for the content. Additionally, objects transition between zones smoothly. However, zones activating at the edge of the display cause hotspots in the other corners to be visible.

There's minimal flicker/pulsing with larger objects. Smaller objects cause distracting backlight pulsing as they transition between zones, but it's not noticeable with regular content. Additionally, subtitles light up the center column of the monitor. This is noticeable with back-and-forth dialogue, but it's not too distracting.

If you set Backlight to 'Normal,' it looks almost the same as if local dimming is off.

Settings

• Preset: Native (after calibration)
• Brightness: Max
• Dynamic Dimming: Enabled
• Backlight: Deep

The SDR brightness is amazing. It easily overcomes bright glare and maintains a consistent brightness with all but the smallest bright content. You can have all content display at a consistent brightness by turning Dynamic Dimming off. The minimum brightness is the same no matter what setting you choose for Dynamic Dimming.

Settings

• HDR: PQ Clip
• Dynamic Dimming: On
• Backlight: Deep
• Brightness: Max

The HDR brightness is good. While highlights don't pop and small highlights are more muted, the monitor easily overcomes glare from bright light sources. It follows the PQ EOTF curve extremely well, with a sharp cut-off at peak brightness, so highlights get as bright as possible.

The horizontal viewing angle is adequate. While it works fairly well if you're sharing your screen with someone else who's just off-center, it washes out at wider angles.

The vertical viewing angle is fair. The monitor washes out and looks slightly yellow if you're standing and look down at it.

The gray uniformity is good. It gets notably darker at the left and right edges of the screen, but it's quite uniform in the middle. Additionally, you can see this monitor's 5% gray uniformity.

The black uniformity is bad, and backlight bleed is quite visible at the four corners of the screen.

If you have local dimming on, there's almost no backlight bleed when the only content is in the center of the screen. However, if there's bright content in any of the corners, there are hotspots in the other corners of the screen.

The accuracy before calibration in the 'sRGB' Preset is amazing. Color accuracy is impressive, its color temperature is quite close to the 6500K target, and it has decent white balance. Additionally, most parts of scenes have the correct brightness, though dark parts of scenes are a bit too dark. Brightness is locked at 89 cd/m² in this mode.

Locked-Out Settings

The 'sRGB' Preset mode locks out the following settings:

• Brightness
• Saturation
• Hue
• Color temp
• Gamma
• RGB tuning

If you want to access these settings, you need to use another mode like 'Native,' though it's less accurate and has very oversaturated colors.

This monitor has additional Preset modes for different color gamuts, such as Adobe RGB and DCI-P3. You can see how each of these modes performs below. Note that the graphs use the sRGB gamut as the target and don't show the accuracy of each mode in its own color space.

The accuracy after calibration is superb, and you won't notice any inaccuracies. The 'Native' and 'User' Preset options provide nearly identical results, but 'Native' lets you adjust Gamma, Color Temp, and Offset, so we used 'Native.'

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It displays all colors in the sRGB color space and has amazing coverage of Adobe RGB. However, in Adobe RGB, green and red are inaccurate.

The HDR color gamut is fantastic. It displays nearly all colors in the commonly used DCI-P3 color space, as well as a wide range of colors in Rec. 2020. However, white is fairly inaccurate in both DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020.

The HDR color volume is good. While it displays dark colors fairly well, bright colors aren't as vivid.

The text clarity is fantastic. However, it's not as clear as we expected given its pixel density. As you can see in the detailed "Subpixel Layout" photo, the screen's matte coating causes subpixels to look less distinct and sharp than other 27-inch 5k displays. The "Subpixel Layout" photo is slightly out of focus, so the pixel layout is easier to see. You can also see a picture of the subpixels that are fully in focus.

As a result, this monitor's text clarity is a bit worse than a 27-inch 5k display like the Apple Studio Display. However, it's slightly better than a 4k 27-inch display with a regular matte coating.

Additionally, at certain angles, the monitor's matte coating causes a sparkle effect. This occurs primarily when viewing bright solid colors, particularly white.

These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on or off.

The direct reflection handling is incredible. This monitor has an aggressive matte coating that reduces glare really well, and it has minimal reflections.

The black levels raise a bit in bright rooms, and blacks look gray.

This monitor has minimal reflections coming off the screen. Even glare from strong light sources isn't distracting.

The gradient handling is incredible, and you won't see any banding between shades of similar colors.

Your computer needs HDMI 2.1 support to reach 60Hz over HDMI.

In addition to FreeSync and G-SYNC compatibility, this monitor also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

However, sometimes VRR doesn't work properly. If you're using DisplayPort and have VRR enabled, the screen splits if you set the monitor to native resolution at 60Hz and use the default color depth.

Additionally, the setting name to turn VRR on and off changes depending on your connection type. If you're using DisplayPort, the VRR setting is MediaSync, and if you're using HDMI, it's VRR. However, both do the same thing.

Finally, the following settings are locked out when VRR is enabled:

• PIP/PBP
• Aspect Control
• Mirror Mode
• Trace Free

Trace Free is the overdrive control, so it's not possible to adjust it so long as you're using VRR, though it remains in effect when VRR is on.

The ASUS PA27JCV has disappointing motion handling across its VRR range. Motion is blurry no matter what Trace Free setting you choose. In fact, the CAD of '80' and '100' are so high that they exceed the limits of the graph. We've created an alternate graph at a different scale to illustrate how high the CAD gets.

The refresh rate compliance is bad. Its slow response time means that it can't make full color transitions between some frames, so motion looks blurry.

The CAD at the maximum refresh rate of 60Hz is bad, and blur is visible even if you're quickly scrolling through documents and web pages. The '40' Trace Free setting has the lowest CAD overall. However, you can use '60' if you want a faster first response time and don't mind a bit more inverse ghosting.

This monitor doesn't support a 120Hz signal.

The CAD at 60Hz is bad, and blur is visible even if you're quickly scrolling through documents and web pages. The '40' Trace Free setting has the lowest CAD overall. However, you can use '60' if you want a faster first response time and don't mind a bit more inverse ghosting.

This monitor doesn't have a backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

The ASUS PA27JCV has no visible VRR flicker, and all parts of the scenes remain consistent, even with changing frame rates.

The backlight is completely flicker-free, as it doesn't use pulse-width modulation for dimming.

The monitor has low input lag for a responsive feel.

The Xbox Series X|S only supports HDR with 4k signals, so this isn't a limitation of the monitor. However, the VRR range only goes from 48Hz to 60Hz.

This monitor has several USB ports, and its KVM switch allows you to connect multiple devices to the monitor and switch them between two different computers. The monitor is rated to provide 96W of power over USB-C, though we could only draw 86W of power during testing.

The ASUS PA27JCV works well with macOS. Both VRR and HDR work as expected, though HDR looks slightly less saturated than the 'Native' SDR picture mode. Additionally, the KVM switch works well with macOS.

If you're using a MacBook and close the lid, windows shift to the ASUS's screen. Opening the lid or waking the laptop up from sleep moves the windows back to their original position.

However, if you're using HDMI and close the MacBook's lid without having it plugged into power, the monitor and MacBook go to sleep. Plugging the power back in again, even if the MacBook lid is closed, causes windows to shift to the ASUS's screen, though it takes a few seconds for the desktop to reappear on the ASUS.

We found the 5k resolution scaling on the MacBook made everything very small. Using a scaled resolution fixed this.

The ASUS PA27JCV has several extra features, including a KVM switch, which lets you switch between two different computers while using the same devices. It also has several other features, such as:

• Power Sync: Lets HDMI-connected devices turn on or off at the same time with supported devices.
• Blue Light Filter: Adjustable blue light filter to decrease blue light output. You can learn more about this in our blue light filters article.
• LuxPixel: Anti-glare coating helps to reduce reflections in bright environments.
• Light Sync: Detects both monitor and room brightness to help provide a more accurate image.

It also has ASUS's QuickFit Plus features, including:

• Safe Area: Lets you organize content on one page for a consistent look and feel.
• Center Marker: Displays a crosshair in the center of the screen, similar to gaming monitors.
• Mirror Mode: Flips the image horizontally.
• Customization: Lets you adjust the frame size on the screen.
• Ruler: Displays a ruler on the top and left side, and you can switch between metric and imperial.

You can learn more about the monitor's settings in the User Guide, accessible on this monitor's Manual and Document page.