Recently, I wrote a very long article about how to select a monitor. I went . over features you need to look for as well as several recommendations on which monitors give you strong value at each given price range. One of the monitors I spoke about was the Gigabyte G27Q.

Somebody who I built a PC for purchased this monitor after I recommended this to them, and used it. They liked it a lot, and I even got to use it and it was good. There are several ways in which you can run this monitor. You get options to customize its settings or to use one of the preset profiles such as FPS or Movies, but I was interested in playing around with the speed settings, as this was marketed as a 1ms IPS display. I used a UFO test to see the actual response time, and it was very slow. It measured consistently around 6 or 7ms. I tried adjusting to a higher speed setting, and the speed did not increase too much. This is not necessarily a horrible thing. I would still feel comfortable recommending this monitor, as the fact is basically all IPS monitors marketed at 1ms aren’t actually 1ms, I mean they can run at that speed but will have a lot of inverse ghosting. The monitor is still a fantastic value.

I also mentioned in that article that I had a museum grade monitor. This was true. I recently upgraded to the Gigabyte G27Q’s brother – the Gigabyte M27Q. This display is very similar to the G27Q, the difference being that it has an advertised SS (super speed) IPS panel, allegedly possessing a 0.5 ms response time as well as a 170hz refresh rate. I did not mention this monitor in that article, and since it is in my opinion also a very good value, and it also could potentially be a lot faster than the M27Q, I thought I would review it. I will be going over the features of this monitor as well as its performance, and how it compares to other similar displays.

Features

Just like the G27Q, this has a 2560 x 1440 resolution and uses in plane switching (IPS) technology for its panel. Both displays also are VESA DisplayHDR 400 certified, however this is kind of useless because 400 nits and no local dimming is not going to give you such a wonderful HDR experience anyway. The M27Q adds on a USB C port, and also adds a special feature that goes well with that extra USB C port. It is called KVM. There is no other gaming monitor with KVM that you can purchase, setting the M27Q apart. If you plug in a set of peripherals to the M27Q, you can very easily switch between all the PCs plugged in to the M27Q and use the peripherals with a different one. It is very convenient and saves you some trouble with cable management as you can plug everything into your monitor rather than different devices scattered across your desk. The two HDMI 2.0 ports are limited to 144hz and do not work with G Sync, as this monitor only can use G Sync because it has Freesync Premium and therefore will only work with DisplayPort or USB C. It is not certified as G Sync compatible but I have this and use it with G Sync on, so I can confirm that that is not a problem, G Sync works just fine on this. Besides the two HDMI 2.0 ports and the USB C port, there’s one headphone jack, one DP 1.2, and a USB 3.0 port. It also has a stand with height and tilt adjustment, but no swivel. This is actually a nice touch as comparable monitors usually do not have height adjustment. The panel here, which again is an IPS panel, covers 92% of the DCI – P3 range.

Performance

This monitor is marketed to have a 0.5 ms response time, and naturally you will not be able to actually run it at those speeds which is basically the case with every monitor in existence. The 170hz refresh rate already puts this in a position where you cannot really have a faster IPS display for this price, so as long as the response time performance is decent, you are getting a good deal. Well, the performance is decent. Maybe a bit better than decent. There are several different overdrive modes on this monitor: Picture Quality, Balance, and Speed. You get significantly above average performance with the Picture Quality mode, as the response time is around 5 ms for MPRT and GtG, which might sound bad but if you compare it to other IPS displays, it is not actually that bad. It’s quite good, actually. There is significant, visible inverse ghosting when you use the Speed mode, even though that will allow you to achieve a similar MPRT and a significantly faster GtG of around 2 ms. I do not recommend using the Speed mode.

The same thing goes for the Balance mode, as you get marginal improvements in GtG response time and there is significant inverse ghosting. Its very easy to notice the inverse ghosting just by moving your cursor around your desktop, so I wouldn’t recommend using it on either of these modes, especially when you consider that the motion blur caused by slow response times is harder to notice than inverse ghosting, and that Picture Quality is fast enough, even at 170hz anyway.

Is this better than other similar displays?

So essentially, along with a feature set that is very hard to find at this price, you are also getting solid, 5ms MPRT and GtG performance at 170hz with essentially zero (that I could notice, at least) inverse ghosting. (This is at the Picture Quality Overdrive setting which is the best setting in my opinion) Other displays at this price, even if they have a different feature set, cannot achieve this. This monitor already has a fast enough response time that motion blur isn’t a huge deal, but it will not perform maybe as well as something like the Asus Tuf VG27AQ, which is a more expensive IPS that mitigates motion blur not just with a speedy response time, but also with ELMB sync, which is a backlight flickering technology that seriously reduces motion blur, and also works with adaptive sync. (The original ELMB technology did not) I do not know if the motion blur reduction is really that noticeable because I have never used a VG27AQ in person, but even if it does have that much better motion blur, you are only getting that at the cost of significantly higher amounts of inverse ghosting, which is something that the M27Q has very little of. (Actually even the M27Q has a backlight strobing mode, but it also produces too much inverse ghosting. I am only comparing the M27Q with its best modes enabled to other displays with their best mode enabled.) And again, inverse ghosting is probably going to be more noticeable than more motion blur. Not to mention the VG27AQ’s increased price. That’s one example, but overall this monitor is a very good deal. It also is very similar in specs and features to the AOC AG273QXP, which is a 165hz 1440p IPS monitor. This one still has a very good combination of speed without obscene inverse ghosting. The M27Q has virtually zero at around 5ms, and the AOC one has very marginally lower response times (high part of 4 – 5), and has just barely a bit of inverse ghosting. But this takes a more expensive LG Nano IPS panel to do so, which racks up the price significantly (about a 100 dollars more) compared to the M27Q. But despite the Nano IPS panel, the performance isn’t really better than the M27Q. Again, the value proposition of the M27Q is virtually unmatched.

So overall, the Gigabyte M27Q is a very good monitor, as it is a very rare combination of good features, fantastic performance, and the little things like having a nice stand, and it does it at an extremely competitive price.