At PC Gamer, we feel strongly about 1440p (opens in new tab) This is PC gaming, and the hype of 4K gaming isn’t going to change that. So you can imagine my interest when I first heard LG’s announcement of not only the ‘world’s first’ 240Hz OLED gaming monitor, but also the first 1440p 240Hz OLED gaming monitor.
LG invited us to its US headquarters in New Jersey to preview the new UltraGear 27-inch OLED gaming display and the massive UltraGear 45-inch curved OLED display. Despite some concerns about lighting, I’m eager to embrace this high-refresh-rate 1440p world after seeing these in action.
The first thing I noticed is that these tiles are fast. Both OLEDs have a 240Hz refresh rate and a ridiculously low .03ms response time. The best gaming monitors for context (opens in new tab) all have a response speed of 1 millisecond, which is already very fast. To be fair, you’ll probably see a difference of 3ms to 1ms, but 1ms to .03ms is too much, and I’m here for it.
At LG, members of Evil Geniuses played several live matches of Valorant on each monitor so I could experience the speed of the UltraGear. A look at competitive games at the tournament level shows the smoothness of the display and no doubt accurately determines who will drop more than $1,000 on one of these items.
It’s the 45-inch UltraGear curved OLED display that I think will appeal to a lot of people. It has exactly the same specs as the smaller (and flat) 27-inch OLED, but the larger screen gives it more versatility for both work and play. And personally, I always used the 21:9 ratio. As the Witcher 3 next-gen update rolls out, I imagine myself sitting back in my chair in a monster-infested countryside.
Attached to the big curved OLED, the gaming PC has an RTX 3060 inside and can hit 240Hz at 1440p without a problem (Valorant automatically switches from ultra-wide aspect ratio). This again makes the argument that playing 1440p at 240Hz isn’t as demanding on your GPU as trying to play Valorant at 4K at 144Hz.
On the flip side, I noticed that the colors look much better on the big screen. Don’t get me wrong: colors looked great on the 27-inch screen, just less vibrant and more washed out.
This leads to my biggest concern, overall brightness. When we first heard about the monitor, we noticed that each product page listed a brightness of 200 nits. (opens in new tab), which is sadly underwhelming by OLED standards. As the specs on the page say they don’t give the full picture, LG is working on getting the monitors to their maximum brightness. Either way, we’ll know more once the sample is released into the wild.
LG’s first OLED gaming PC monitors are incredibly fast, and I can see the appeal of a 240Hz refresh rate on a 1440p panel. This is my PC gaming future. But as our own Jeremy Laird wrote today, these early OLED gaming monitors were gorgeous and fast, but “failed to optimize for a real PC.” It will be interesting to see what other monitor manufacturers like Asus have in store roll up your sleeves.
Pre-order for 27GR95QE (opens in new tab) and 45GR95QE (opens in new tab) These are expected to go on sale in early January for $999 and $1,699. LG is also introducing its sleek UltraGear gaming mouse pad (opens in new tab) free with every pre-order. Hey, I didn’t say this high refresh rate 1440p future was cheap, did I?