ASUS TUF Gaming VG27AQL1A Monitor Review

This monitor has a sleek and modern design. Even though it has a gamer-oriented style, it should fit well into any office setup.

The build quality is good. The entire monitor is made of solid plastic and there aren't any obvious issues. The stand supports the monitor well, and there's no wobble.

The ergonomics are fantastic, so you won't have any trouble placing it in an ideal viewing position. The back of the monitor has some etched designs, giving it a gamer-friendly aesthetic. There's also a small cutout in the stand for cable management.

The V-shaped stand has a wide footprint, but you can easily place things in front of it, like a keyboard or mouse. It supports the monitor well, and there's no wobble.

There are four buttons and a joystick on the back to navigate the on-screen menu.

• Power brick and cable
• USB-A to USB-B cable
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• User manual

This monitor has a low contrast ratio, and the local dimming only slightly improves it. Blacks appear gray next to bright highlights in dark rooms. If you prefer something similar with a VA panel and better contrast, then check out the ASUS TUF Gaming VG27WQ1B.

This monitor has a terrible edge-lit local dimming feature. There are four dimming zones that only slightly improve contrast. Zone transitions are slow and visible, and the local dimming doesn't improve the picture quality in HDR. The setting to control it is called Dynamic Dimming, and it automatically turns on in HDR.

The SDR brightness is good. It gets bright enough to combat glare, and it remains mostly consistent with different content. Sadly, its minimum brightness is bright, which isn't ideal if you like to work in a dark room and you're sensitive to bright lights. These measurements are from after calibration in the 'Racing' Picture Mode.

The HDR brightness is decent, but small highlights don't pop against the rest of the image. The EOTF doesn't follow the target PQ curve well, as most scenes are too bright until there's a sharp roll-off at its peak brightness, so it keeps details before your source does any tone mapping. The results are with the 'HDR Gaming' Picture Mode.

The horizontal viewing angle is great. The image remains consistent when viewed from the side.

The vertical viewing angle is okay. The image remains fairly consistent if you're standing up and looking down at the monitor.

The gray uniformity is excellent. There's almost no dirty screen effect in the center and even though the edges are slightly darker, it's not too distracting.

The black uniformity is disappointing. There's significant clouding throughout, and backlight bleed near the top and bottom right corners. The uniformity is worse with local dimming enabled because there's more blooming around bright objects on dark backgrounds.

This monitor has mediocre accuracy before calibration. It has an sRGB mode, but it doesn't clamp colors to the sRGB color space, so they're oversaturated. Most colors are slightly inaccurate, but the white balance and color temperature are both good. Gamma follows the target sRGB curve well, but some dark scenes are too dark. The sRGB mode locks most picture settings, and even changing the Picture Mode to 'Racing' doesn't improve accuracy, as you can see here.

The accuracy is outstanding after calibration. All white balance and color inaccuracies are corrected, and the colors aren't oversaturated anymore. The color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K target, and gamma is similar to before calibration, but some dark scenes are a bit too bright now.

The ASUS TUF VG27AQL1A has a fantastic SDR color gamut. It has perfect coverage of the sRGB color space used in most web content, and great coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing.

The HDR color gamut is good. It has good coverage of the commonly-used DCI-P3 color space, but its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 is a bit limited, and there are tone mapping issues with each.

The HDR color volume is good. It struggles to display most dark and bright colors well.

The text clarity is decent. Enabling ClearType (top photo) improves the appearance of the diagonal and curved lines, as seen on the letters R, N, G, and S.

The reflection handling is good. It isn't a problem in a moderately-lit environment, but if you place it opposite a window with direct sunlight, the reflections become too distracting.

The ASUS TUF VG27AQL1A has incredible gradient handling with minimal banding.

The monitor has an overclock feature, but due to bandwidth limitations, you can only use it with an 8-signal signal over DisplayPort.

The ASUS VG27AQL1A has mediocre motion handling across its VRR range. All the overdrive settings performly inconsistently as the frame rate drops, as even the recommend overdrive of '60' has inverse ghosting. There's also noticeable blur and some smearing with fast-moving objects.

The refresh rate compliance is disappointing. Even at low refresh rates, the monitor's response time isn't fast enough to make full color transitions before it draws the next frame, leading to blurry motion.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 170Hz is okay. There's noticeable blur, even with the recommended overdrive of '80', which has the fastest total response time and less inverse ghosting than '100'.

The CAD at 120Hz is okay, but there's noticeable blur, and even some inverse ghosting. Unlike at the max refresh rate, the recommended overdrive setting is '60' because '80' has more inverse ghosting, which means you may have to change the setting if you switch games or sources.

The CAD at 60Hz is disappointing. There's visible blur with the recommended overdrive setting of '20', and the higher settings have too much inverse ghosting.

This monitor has a backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). With VRR disabled, it only works between 120Hz to 170Hz. Unlike most monitors, the feature works with VRR enabled, and it works as low as 80Hz with VRR on, but it turns off if the frame rate drops below 80 fps, and it only becomes active again when the frame rate reaches 90 fps again. This means it's better to disable it if the frame rate of your game regularly drops below 80 fps, as the feature turns off anyways and the screen brightness also changes with it going on and off.

There isn't any distracting VRR flicker with changing frame rates, which is fantastic for gaming.

This monitor has a flicker-free backlight, which helps reduce eye strain.

This monitor has an extremely low input lag for a responsive feel.

The ASUS VG27AQL1A supports most signals from the PS5. Even though it's a 1440p monitor it still accepts 4k signals and downscales them, resulting in a more detailed image than at 1440p.

The monitor supports most signals from the Xbox Series X.|S Even though it's a 1440p monitor it still accepts 4k signals and downscales them, which is useful because the console only supports HDR with 4k signals.

You can use two of the USB-A ports for data transfer with USB 3.2 speeds, while the other one is only for service updates.

This monitor works well with macOS, but there are issues with VRR. There's a lot of flickering, especially in low-frame-rate games, and the screen goes black at times. It's best to not use the VRR feature with a Mac, as it works well without it. HDR works well and there aren't problems waking up from sleep, except some windows get sent back to the Mac display.

This monitor has a few additional features, some of which are listed below:

• Timer: Adds a timer on your screen.
• Crosshair: Overlays a virtual crosshair for FPS games.
• Displays: Adds a grid to help align a secondary monitor.