Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X Monitor Review

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X looks exactly like its predecessor, the Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q. It has an all-black body with a gamer-oriented design. The stand is bulky and may stand out in an office environment but should look good in a gaming setup.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X has great build quality. The plastic on the monitor feels very solid, and there's minimal flex throughout. The stand is metal and supports the screen well. The bottom bezel isn't attached uniformly across the screen, but it's hard to tell and shouldn't be a problem for most people.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X has good ergonomics. It offers any type of adjustment, but some may find the swivel range a bit narrow. The back of the monitor is a mix of matte plastic with glossy accents, giving it a gamer-oriented design. There's RGB on the back panel and the stand. The cutout in the stand serves as cable management.

The metal stand has two wide-set feet that are far enough apart that you can place stuff in the front, like your mouse and keyboard. It holds the screen really well, and there's minimal wobble.

There's a single joystick underneath the center of the monitor to control the on-screen display.

• 3x power cables (for NA, EU, and AUS)
• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable
• USB-B to USB-A upstream cable
• User guides

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X has a mediocre native contrast, which is expected from an IPS panel. Blacks look gray when viewed in the dark, and there's no local dimming feature to improve it.

There's no local dimming feature on the Gigabyte FI27Q-X. The above video is for reference only.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X's SDR brightness is great. It easily gets bright enough to combat glare, and it's very consistent across different content.

We tested the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode with Brightness at max.

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X has okay peak brightness in HDR, and it's a slight improvement over the Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q. It meets the brightness requirement of its DisplayHDR 400 certification, but it still may not be bright enough to truly bright out highlights in HDR content.

When you enable HDR On you can't change any picture settings.

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X has very wide horizontal viewing angles, which is expected from an IPS panel. It's a great choice for co-op gaming, but you may notice a bit of color washout at very wide viewing angles.

Once again, the vertical viewing angles are excellent. The image remains accurate if you mount it above eye level, but you may still see some color washout.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X has excellent gray uniformity. The edges are a bit darker, but there's no dirty screen effect in the center. Uniformity is improved in near-dark scenes, but some backlight bleed is noticeable at the top right corner. Keep in mind that uniformity can vary between units.

Our unit of the Gigabyte FI27Q-X has bad black uniformity, but this can change from unit to unit. Due to its low contrast ratio, the entire screen looks blueish/gray. There's also noticeable backlight bleed and clouding throughout, which is distracting in dark scenes.

The out-of-the-box accuracy is great. Most colors are only slightly inaccurate, but not enough to notice, and the same can be said about the white balance. However, color temperature is on the cold side, resulting in a blue tint. Gamma doesn't follow the sRGB target curve at all, resulting in all scenes being brighter than they should. Keep in mind that out-of-the-box accuracy can vary between units.

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X's accuracy after calibration is remarkable. Any remaining color and white balance inaccuracies can't be spotted by the human eye, and the color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K target. Gamma is improved, but you still may notice that really dark and really bright scenes are slightly over-brightened.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X has an exceptional SDR color gamut, better than any monitor we've tested. It has perfect coverage of both the sRGB color gamut used in most content and the Adobe RGB color space used in photo or video editing.

This isn't the first time we've tested a monitor with such full coverage of the Adobe RGB color space. Monitors like the MSI Optix MAG274QRF-QD, Acer Predator X27 bmiphzx, and the Gigabyte M27Q (rev. 1.0) have at least 97% coverage. All of these monitors, including the FI27Q-X, achieve this by over-saturating the colors, which makes them look inaccurate.

Thanks to the perfect color gamut, the SDR color volume is also incredible. It displays bright colors really well but struggles with dark colors due to the low contrast ratio.

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X has an excellent HDR color gamut. Unlike most monitors, its DCI P3 color space matches exactly the advertised 93% coverage, which is great for watching most HDR content. Its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 is also good, so it displays most colors needed for HDR content.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X has an okay HDR color volume, but it's lower than expected considering its excellent HDR color gamut. This is because of the way we test for it and how the monitor responds to the testing. In our HDR color gamut tests, we use a 50% stimulus, and with this monitor, that results in the wide color gamut measurements because colors appear as they should. However, when using a stronger stimulus, less-saturated colors start to appear white, and at 100% stimulus, only the primaries are visible as colors, with everything else appearing as white. The color volume is lower than expected because of how most colors appear white at the 100% stimulus. This means that really bright content in HDR content can lose fine details as colors may appear closer to white.

You can see the Rec. 2020 gamut measurements at different stimuli below:

• 50% stimulus
• 75% stimulus
• 100% stimulus

The matte finish has decent reflection handling, similar to the Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q. It handles a moderate amount of light well but struggles with a ton of light on it. We suggest avoiding placing it opposite a window with direct sunlight.

Unlike most monitors, the Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X uses a BGR sub-pixel layout instead of RGB. Text clarity is still good if you enable Windows ClearType (top photo). The BGR sub-pixel layout doesn't affect image quality, but it can hurt text clarity in certain programs that don't use Windows ClearType. It shouldn't be an issue for most people, but if you notice that text still looks blurry, you can turn the monitor upside down, which results in a proper RGB format. However, this could come at the cost of increasing the input lag or having VRR issues.

If you want to learn more about the BGR layout, we tested it with different scaling options, and on a MacBook in various programs with the Gigabyte M27Q (rev. 1.0), which you can read about here.

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X uses an 8-bit panel + FRC to simulate 10-bit color depth. It has remarkable gradient handling, and there's no visible sign of banding in most shades.

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X has native FreeSync support and is certified as G-SYNC compatible. Although both AMD and NVIDIA certify the VRR to work over DisplayPort from 48Hz and above, we verified that it works at an even lower refresh rate. Over HDMI, the VRR range is from 20 to 144Hz, and only FreeSync works.

The response time at the max refresh rate of 240Hz is simply incredible. Motion looks buttery smooth, and there's isn't any obvious motion blur. The recommended Overdrive setting is 'Balance' because it's quicker than 'Picture Quality' and has a lot less overshoot than 'Speed'. However, there's some overshoot in the 0-20% transition, so if you tend to game with dark scenes and notice it, use 'Picture Quality' instead.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X's response time at 60Hz is also fantastic. The total response time with the recommended Overdrive setting of 'Picture Quality' is just a bit slow, so you may notice some motion blur, but there's no overshoot. This also means you would have to change the setting if the frame rate of your game drops.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X has a backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion, to try to improve the appearance of motion. It flickers within a narrow range and can't be used with VRR enabled.

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X has a flicker-free backlight, which helps reduce eye strain.

The input lag of the Gigabyte FI27Q-X is extremely low, and it stays low with VRR enabled.

The Gigabyte FI27Q-X has a great 27 inch screen with a high 1440p resolution. This is ideal for multitasking as you can easily open multiple windows side-by-side.

The USB inputs are advertised to supply 5V/1.5A of power if you have the USB-B upstream cable connected to a PC.

This monitor works well with recent MacBooks. The variable refresh rate feature works well both in-game and on the desktop. Windows return to their original place when you wake the computer from sleep, but not if you close the lid. HDR works, but the mapping is a little weird, so it doesn't look very good.

The Gigabyte AORUS FI27Q-X has a bunch of extra features, including:

• ANC: Active noise cancelling to reduce background noise when you speak into the microphone, but we didn't test this.
• Black Equalizer 2.0: Raises the gamma so that you can see objects in dark games.
• Crosshair: Adds a crosshair for FPS games.
• Dashboard: On-screen display to show your computer's status, like the temperature.
• Display Alignment: Displays a grid to help you align the monitor for multi-monitor setups.
• Frame Rate Counter: Displays the current frame rate.
• OSD Sidekick: Allows you to change the monitor's settings using your mouse and keyboard instead of the monitor's physical button. The USB-B upstream cable needs to be connected to your computer for it to work.
• PiP/PbP: Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture modes so that you can display an image from two sources at once.
• RGB Bias Lighting: RGB lighting on the back of the monitor, which can be controlled with the RGB Fusion 2.0 software.
• Timer: Displays a timer on the screen.