LG has listed its first OLED gaming monitors, the 27-inch LG UltraGear 27GR95QE-B. (opens in new tab) and the 45-inch LG UltraGear 45GR95QE-B (opens in new tab), with full specifications and pricing. The good news is the impressive 0.03ms response time shared by both panels. Bad? The brightness is only 200 nits. Stick with that thought, because brightness ratings are a bit tricky.
Starting with the LG UltraGear 27GR95QE-B, in many ways it’s a fairly basic 27-inch 16:9 panel with a classic 1440p resolution. It has a frequency of 240 Hz and covers 98.5% of the DCI-P3 gamut. All good stuff, but nothing you haven’t seen.
The fun starts with the 0.03ms response. It’s measured in the traditional gray-to-gray scale, which is slightly odd to smooth out the slow response of LCD panels at either end of the response curve. Regardless, it’s still more than double the 1ms that the best IPS and VA-type LCDs currently achieve by the same metric. This is a very fast screen.
The contrast ratio of 1.5M and one is equally impressive. In practice, OLED panels have infinite contrast thanks to the ability to control the brightness on a pixel-by-pixel basis and completely turn off the pixels.
If it’s good news, the least noticeable parameter is brightness. LG panels are rated at 200 nits and APL at 25%. A 25% APL bit means that 200 nits can be achieved over an area covering 25% of the entire screen.
One thing about OLED panels is that the brightness they can achieve varies depending on how much you shine the panel. A traditional LCD screen has a large, muted backlight that always has the same bright light, and the LCD panel is used to control how that light passes through. But with an OLED panel, you can turn on each pixel individually and on demand. So more pixels means more power and more heat.
Anyway, we still don’t get the full picture of how LG’s new panel performs on various APLs. We know it’s rated at 120 nits for full screen coverage, or 100% APL. But when displaying HDR scenes, the really bright bits are usually less than 25% of the screen area. So, the LG UltraGear 27GR95QE-B can definitely go above 200 nits for small, bright details. We don’t know how much.
Moreover, OLED panels have a very high contrast, so they don’t need to reach the same heights as LCDs to achieve good HDR performance. However, for context, it’s worth noting that the Alienware 34 QD-OLED AW3423DW has a 25% APL rating of 370 nits. So even by OLED standards, this new LG panel isn’t the brightest.
Its sibling, the 45GR95QE-B, has nearly identical specs, except for a curved 45-inch panel with a resolution of 3,440 by 1,440 pixels. This is a very low resolution for such a large screen.
Anyway, the 27-inch LG UltraGear 27GR95QE-B is priced at $999 and the LG UltraGear 45GR95QE-B is priced at $1,699. There’s no word on when the board will be available, but it’s likely to be soon.