If you’re reading this, you’re likely going through the same decision making process I was, is it time to make the step up to 4k 144hz or go another handful of years at 1440p for the high refresh. The big fear being, can you actually use the extra hz at such a high resolution. Well, what I’m going to tell you is, if you have the graphics horsepower then it absolutely is finally the time to make the leap. How much horsepower is enough? 3080/3090 would be the target. If you’re packing less than that, 1440p may be the better option for you.
First, lets start with the color on this thing. The picture on this POPS. Probably the best color I’ve seen on a gaming monitor under the $1000 mark. It’s bright, it’s accurate, best of all it looks great without calibration. Right out of the box. So even the no fuss/plug in play group will be quite happy with this model. It is easily accurate enough for photo/video editing. HDR also looks good on this screen, but not quite to the level of FALD monitors—but, it’s hard to fault it there considering you aren’t paying FALD pricing that is easily 2-3x the price and has hurdles to leap just to get 144hz out of it. Being an IPS, the contrast ratio isn’t great, and blacks can end up looking slightly grey due to that, but it isn’t terrible either. It’s an IPS, anyone looking at an IPS knows what to expect in this regard.
Of course, people looking at this are likely here to ask about how it is for gaming. My response? It’s perfection. Ghosting isn’t an issue, even in high speed titles, while slower paced titles don’t show any signs of overshoot. Just leave the response time set to fast and forget about it, that setting will work for everything. Just make sure you have some serious GPU grunt backing it up or you’ll find yourself lowering the settings or dropping the resolution. Speaking of which: if you do drop the resolution, the monitor does a very good job of scaling the image—so it isn’t the end of the world should you find yourself slightly outgunned by a newer title. I personally am running this with a 3090 backing it up and it is a match made in heaven. The gsync compatibility works perfectly, and the input lag is way under 1 frame.
I also feel I should talk about the RGB light ring. Lets be honest here, RGB is a feature that you either love or you hate. People who like it have it on everything for their rig, and people who hate it make it well known. For this monitor, the RGB is very well done. I’m a big fan of the ability to have it sync with whatever video is on the screen. It does seem to lag behind the picture by a small amount, but it isn’t too bad and you only notice that fact if a scene goes dark to light very quickly. It works as an excellent bias light for late night gaming. The RGB at maximum settings is bright, we’re talking it glows with the fury of a thousand suns. I wish it had more options, but if you are on the side of the fence that enjoys RGBs then you will love this.
I do have one qualm with this monitor, and anyone who’s reading this probably knows what that is: The local dimming feature. The local dimming, being edgelit with only 16 zones, is not a great implementation. It works, but it leaves very noticeable streaking in the zone if the area above or below the bright highlight is dark. IMO it is best to leave that feature off for this reason. LG could have shaved the price on this unit $100 and just left that out, because it is perfection without it. I'm not taking a point away for this because it can easily be disabled.
All in all, I am quite happy with this monitor. One of the first monitors to actually manage 144hz on a 4k screen in 10bit color mode with HDR running without chromatic sampling, and it does so at a very solid price point.
[Note: this monitor can overclock to 160hz with the firmware update, and my model can maintain that 160hz. I am scoring this monitor as if it couldn’t though, because there are likely panels that will not reach that speed.]
| Standing screen display size | 27 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 3840x2160 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 3840 x 2160 Pixels |
