Xiaomi G Pro 27i  Monitor Review

The Xiaomi G Pro 27i has a simple yet premium design, with black and white plastic casing throughout. It also includes a ring of RGB lighting on the back. The matte black plastic hides fingerprints well, which is useful because this is the area you'll touch more if you're adjusting the screen, and it's easier to see fingerprints on the white plastic. Lastly, it has thin bezels on three sides, with a thicker bottom bezel.

The build quality is great. The plastic materials feel solid, and there isn't anything that feels cheap about it. While adjusting the monitor on the stand feels good, and the screen stays in place, the biggest knock is that it wobbles easily, especially if it's on an unstable desk.

The ergonomics are excellent. You can easily adjust it in a number of ways, including vertically, and the screen stays in place well if you do. There's also a cutout in the stand for cable management.

The two-legged stand takes up a good amount of space on your desk, but at least there's space to put a small keyboard in between the feet.

There's a joystick to control the on-screen display. It's easy to use, but you'll notice fingerprints on it after using it.

• DisplayPort cable
• Power cable
• User manuals, including calibration report
• Tool (one side key, other side Phillips head)

The Xiaomi G Pro 27i has a low native contrast ratio without local dimming. That said, once you enable the local dimming feature, the contrast ratio improves a lot, and blacks are deep next to bright highlights.

Setting

• Local dimming: High

The local dimming feature is good. It includes 1,152 dimming zones and improves the picture quality in dark scenes with deep blacks next to bright highlights. It looks best when you view it directly in front as it keeps small details really well, and there's no visible black crush. Plus, there isn't much blooming around small, bright objects, like subtitles, but there's a bit more around larger highlights. It also transitions between zones well, and it's only distracting when there's a transition from black to very bright. There's also a bit of minor flickering when there are quick transitions. That said, it looks worse when viewed from the sides, at around 45 degrees or more, as it's easier to notice black crush and blooming from those angles.

Settings

• Picture mode: Movie (after calibration)
• Color space: Native
• Local dimming: High
• Brightness: Max

The SDR brightness is amazing. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare. While disabling Local dimming lets the 2% and 10% windows get brighter (878 cd/m² and 843 cd/m², respectively), larger test window sizes are dimmer compared to having Local dimming on 'High.' Besides that, the lowest minimum brightness is actually with Local dimming on 'High' and not with it off.

Settings

• Picture mode: Locked
• Game mode: Locked
• Local dimming: High
• Brightness: Max

The HDR brightness is fantastic. While really small highlights are slightly dimmer than larger highlights, it still makes content pop and fights glare well in bright rooms. That said, its PQ EOTF tracking is a bit darker than intended, and with a slow roll-off at the peak brightness, it doesn't let all highlights get the brightest possible.

Most settings are locked in HDR, except for FreeSync and Local dimming, and there are no picture modes to choose from. If you choose to disable Local dimming, the brightness of most test windows is around 845 cd/m², and the image looks washed out. The EOTF tracking is also similar to when it's enabled.

The horizontal viewing angle is okay. While it's fine for sharing the screen with someone sitting right next to you, the image gets darker from wide angles.

The vertical viewing angle is decent. While it's fine if it's slightly below or above eye level while on your desk, the screen gets darker from wide angles, like if you're standing up and looking down on it.

The gray uniformity is good. The edges of the screen are a bit darker, but there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center, which is great.

The black uniformity without local dimming is bad. There's noticeable backlight bleed and clouding throughout. Using local dimming greatly improves the uniformity, as there isn't any backlight bleed, but still a bit of blooming.

The accuracy before calibration is great. Using the 'Movie' Picture mode with Color space on 'sRGB' results in the best accuracy, as it locks colors well to the sRGB color space and has an accurate color temperature and gamma tracking. However, there are white balance issues.

Using the 'sRGB' Color space only locks a few settings: Color Temperature, Saturation, Gamma, and Aspect Ratio. You can choose from various Color spaces and Picture modes, but they have less accurate colors, as you can see with the 'Standard' Picture mode and 'Native' Color space. You can also enable Game Mode to get gaming-specific features, like FPS, MOBA, and RPG, but it has worse accuracy.

There are reports of a red tint issue on some units with firmware 1.0.06 and 1.0.07. Our unit is firmware 1.0.07, and while we didn't initially notice this problem, there are steps that result in it:

• The monitor goes to sleep and you turn it back on OR you turn Game mode on and off.
• The Color space is set to 'sRGB,' 'Adobe RGB,' or 'DCI-P3.' However, it doesn't happen in 'Native' Color space.

After we did this, we also noticed the red tint issue on our unit, but it's very minor and we only really saw it in certain content, like with full-screen white. There are steps to stop the issue:

• With Game mode off, set the Picture mode to 'Standard' and switch to 'Energy Saving.'
• Change the Picture mode back to 'Standard.'

The accuracy after calibration is incredible. There aren't any noticeable issues, and you get access to settings that are locked out in the sRGB mode.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It displays a wide range of colors in the common sRGB colors space. While it also displays a wide range of colors in the Adobe RGB color space, it oversaturates them.

The HDR color gamut is remarkable. It displays a wide range of colors in both the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces, with good tone mapping, except for white, which is inaccurate on both. It's slightly worse with Local dimming off, as you can see in DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020.

The HDR color volume is amazing. It displays dark and bright colors really well, especially in the DCI-P3 color space. It's slightly worse with Local dimming off, as you can see in DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020.

The text clarity is good. Using Windows ClearType (top photo) helps with clarity, as letters are less sharp without it. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

The direct reflection handling is decent. The screen spreads light out due to the matte coating, and bright objects don't look very distinct.

This monitor has some black level raise in bright rooms, so blacks aren't deep and inky, but they don't rise too much either.

The monitor has noticeable reflected light in bright rooms. It spreads light out, while also having some mirror-like reflections, which can be distracting.

The gradient handling is remarkable. Any banding between shades of similar colors is hard to notice.

Due to bandwidth limitations over HDMI, you can only reach the max refresh rate with a DisplayPort connection.

On top of FreeSync and G-SYNC compatibility, the Xiaomi Mini LED Gaming Monitor G Pro 27i also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The Xiaomi G Pro 27i has good motion handling across its VRR range. Most of the Response Time settings perform similarly, but the 'Fast' setting is consistently the best across its refresh rate range. That said, there's still some blur, and it gets worse at low refresh rates.

The refresh rate compliance is good. The Response Time settings are all similar, and while the response time isn't fast enough to make full color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame, it's better at low refresh rates.

The data has a lot of noise due to the monitor's backlight flicker, but you can see the compliance with charts that smooth out the flicker below.

• 179 fps
• 165 fps
• 144 fps
• 120 fps
• 100 fps
• 80 fps
• 60 fps

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 180Hz is great. There's the least amount of blur with the 'Faster' Response Time setting, while the 'Fastest' setting has more inverse ghosting.

The CAD at 120Hz is good. It performs similarly to its max refresh rate, with the 'Faster' overdrive having a bit of blur but less inverse ghosting than 'Fastest.'

The CAD at 60Hz is good. The 'Fastest' overdrive has the best performance, but this only happens when the signal starts at 60Hz. If you start at a higher refresh rate and use VRR to go down, then 'Fast' and 'Standard' are better, as you can see in VRR Motion Performance.

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

The Xiaomi Mini LED Gaming Monitor G Pro 27i has minimal VRR flicker with changing frame rates. Although the video has a bit of a strobing effect, this is the camera that causes it, and you can't see it in person.

This monitor has low input lag at any refresh rate for a responsive feel.

Besides not supporting downscaled 4k signals, this monitor doesn't have any issues with the PS5 or PS5 Pro.

As the monitor doesn't support downscaled 4k signals, you can't use it for HDR gaming on an Xbox Series X|S, because the console only supports HDR in 4k.

This monitor works well with macOS. If you use Local dimming, HDR looks good, but there's a blur trail when moving the mouse cursor across a bright area with Local dimming on 'High.' That said, if you disable Local dimming, then HDR looks washed out. If you're using a MacBook, you can close the lid and continue working on the screen as long as you have a mouse and keyboard connected to the laptop.

The Xiaomi G Pro 27i has a few features, including:

• Aspect Ratio: Changes the aspect ratio of the image.
• Backstrip Lighting: Controls the RGB lighting on the back of the monitor.
• Dark Scene Boost: Adjusts gamma so that you can see opponents better in dark areas.
• DCR (Dynamic Contrast Ratio): Changes the contrast ratio on a per-scene basis, but this is not the local dimming feature.
• Low Blue Light Mode: Reduces the blue light that the monitor emits.
• Refresh Rate: Displays the current frame rate of the source.