round-up

TFTCentral’s May Monthly Round-up

Simon Baker
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This is something new we thought we would try, for those who perhaps can’t keep up with all the news and information on a regular basis. We will try and provide a round-up of some of the key things going on in the monitor world each month. If you want to keep up to date but on a less regular basis, this should be all you need! There is also some information about possible future reviews and content included.

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You can subscribe to the RSS feed for just these monthly round-ups here. If you want to read more news then our full archive is available here.

Learn more about G-sync and FreeSync

We updated our main article about Variable Refresh Rates (VRR) last month, with all the latest information on these technologies from a monitor point of view. That’s of course well worth a read if you have chance including info on FreeSync 2, G-sync Ultimate, G-sync Compatible and many other recent changes.

NVIDIA released details about their internal testing for the new ‘G-sync Compatible’ certification as well. 503 VRR monitors were tested and only 28 (5.56%) passed! The latest news about this and the list of confirmed G-sync compatible screens can be found here. There is also a very interesting video behind the scenes at NVIDIA’s labs looking at their testing and validation processes. Well worth a watch!

New screens we are particularly excited about

Asus ROG Swift PG27UQX

Obviously every month there’s loads of new screens announced but of note during May are the following we are particularly interested in – Asus feature heavily here, they’ve had a strong month!

  • Asus ROG Swift PG27UQX – announced as part of this year’s Computex event, this is an update to the very high end PG27UQ we reviewed last year. They’ve updated the backlight using Mini LED, so it will offer 576-zones instead of the 384 on the older model for local dimming and improved HDR experience. Don’t expect to see this until Q4 at the earliest though and at a very high price.
  • Asus TUF Gaming VG27AQE, VG32VQ and VG27BQ – these are three new models in Asus’s new gaming brand available with IPS, VA and TN Film panels respectively. The most interesting thing about these is that they allow you to use both VRR (G-sync or FreeSync) and strobing backlight blur reduction modes at the same time, whereas previously you had to choose between the two. Not sure of release dates yet, but this is an interesting technological development

If you’ve spotted any screens we haven’t reported on, let us know!

Plenty of exciting panel development news

We brought you plenty of news about the panel development roadmaps for one of the leading panel manufacturers, AU Optronics. You can read the full article for more info, but the highlights include:

  • IPS panels with 240Hz refresh rate coming with 1080p resolution around July/August. Models with higher 1440p expected next year
  • VA panels with 240Hz also planned for around Sept with 1080p. Q1 2020 for possible 1440p versions
  • TN Film panels with 240Hz and 1440p resolution should start to be available soon, now in mass production
  • The eagerly anticipated 32″ 4K 144Hz IPS panel with FALD is back in the roadmap although not planned until late Q4, Dec 2019
  • Loads of new high refresh rate IPS panels
  • Updates on the 43″ high refresh rate panels and displays

We will have further news on plans from other panel manufacturers like LG.Display for you next month.

Moving Picture Response Time (MRPT) specs become more common

We wrote a short article about this right at the end of April, but you need to be aware of the more widespread use of the MPRT spec which is creeping in to the monitor market. We have some concerns about how this is used, and how manufacturers are avoiding then providing normal non-blur reduction response times. We talked about that in more detail in our article. In May we’ve seen several new screens announced with 1ms and below MPRT specs (e.g. AOC AG271FZ2 = 0.5ms MPRT, Gigabyte Aorus KD25F = 0.5ms MPRT), so this looks like it will be a new race to the bottom on response time specs, without a massive amount of real meaning behind it.

Reviews we are hoping to complete over the coming months

We are taking a couple of week’s off for vacation at the beginning of June, but when we get back we have several monitors we are hoping to take a look at in the coming months:

No promises we can review all of these, but let us know which ones you are most interested in via Twitter!

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