ASUS MG278Q 1ms 27-Inch FreeSync Gaming Monitor

What can I say about this monitor. Its expensive, especially for a monitor using a TN panel that was released four years ago. You may also be distracted by the slightly off color (mostly noticeable on white/light backgrounds) when coming from a more color correct IPS monitor. However, these are the only complaints I have of this monitor and, in the end, its pros much out way its cons.First off, gaming on this monitor is amazing. Selecting a monitor with 144hz and Freesync was the best decision I've ever made for improving my gaming experience. Being able to utilize extra FPS my new GPU provided made a huge difference to the fluidity and clarity of movement in games. The 1440p resolution gives a much crisper quality picture and the increased screen real estate is great when I'm working on music or need multiple browsers open. Lastly but not least, the TN panel allows for a 1ms response time, reducing motion blur and ghosting to imperceptible levels. I was originally put off by the color difference created by the TN panel, so I decided to order an IPS gaming monitor to see if it was really that big of a deal. While the IPS monitor's colors were more vibrant and accurate, the motion blur caused by the increased response time was unbearable. So while the games colors looked more accurate, the visual quality and gaming experienced was ruined. I returned it the next day and decided to stick it out with the Asus, and it was definitely the best choiceI have now been using this monitor for about a month and after tweaking the "Racing Mode" screen settings in the OSD and downloading a color calibration file from Tftcentral (google it), the colors do not bother me anymore and actually look great for a TN panel. I now have the monitor mounted on an aftermarket VESA mount but the stand that came with the monitor was well built, sturdy and very easy to adjust. I also liked the design, which gave hints of a gaming computer in its design but kept it simple enough to be used in any situation.I highly recommend this monitor to anyone looking for a high quality gaming monitor. I especially recommend it to people who are sensitive to motion blur and ghosting effects. If all you want to do is photo/video editing, watching videos, browsing the web or just really need a monitor that display colors accurately, then you will not need nor want this monitor. Everyone else will find this monitor to be just what they are looking for.

Received this monitor on Oct 1st 2015. So far it is performing very nice. I have an Asus PB278Q IPS 1440p monitor I have used up until now. I was waiting for a good 1440p Freesync 144Hz monitor to come out that included fixes for the ghosting found in early Freesync monitors. Asus has addressed this problem with their Trace Free settings built in at release. I know other makers like BenQ have recently released new revisions of their products to address this issue as well but this monitor has it out of the box. I almost bought the MG279Q IPS Freesync monitor but too many people were complaining about bad panels on that model and having to return them several times to win the lottery and get a good one. I also like having the upper end 144Hz in Freesync where as the MG279Q topped off at 90Hz. I use 2 Asus R290X ROG cards and they will push over 90 FPS very often at 1440p.I'm not sure if the bad panel issue of the MG279Q will be the case with this model or not but the one I received had no issues at all, perfect out of the box. No dead pixels no bad panel quality. I'm very happy with the product quality. Now I have this monitor for gaming and when I need to work with photo editing I can use my PB278Q as my dual monitor with its quality IPS display.As a quick test of Freesync. I setup my 2 monitors to duplicate my display and I ran the AMD Windmill Freesync demo on them. I can very easily see the side by side comparison of Freesync compared to no Freesync. I set the demo so sweep framerates I can watch them go up and down between 45 to 65 FPS and see where my PB278Q is having screen tearing over and over while my new MG278Q stays in perfect sync with a smooth display. I have played a few games where I used to see screen tearing a lot like SWTOR , BF4 and Dragon Age Inquisition, they are now smooth as butter. The onscreen OSD FPS that you can turn on with the monitor also helps a lot with seeing when Freesync is working and when its not for specific games. When it is not working you will see the monitors FPS display stuck at the refresh rate you set the game to. When it is working you can see it scale up and down in sync with your games FPS by also having Fraps on or an in game FPS tool showing your actual game fps.In conclusion I am very happy with this monitor, it has taken some getting used to looking at a TN display again. This is the best looking TN display I have owned, but the IPS display definitely looks better when just browsing the internet and doing things on the desktop. I bought this for gaming through and in games you can't really tell the difference between the TN and IPS as far as how the picture looks. The 1ms GTG pixel refresh rate and Freesync from 40Hz-144Hz totally makes up for not having the IPS screen while gaming. By keeping my PB278Q I have the best of both worlds.Update:Recent driver improvements from AMD have added more Freesync support for DX9,DX10 now to include DX11 and DX12. I can verify the support now for Freesync is pretty good running Crossfire as well. I recently upgraded to 2x Fury X Cards which work great in Crossfire and Freesync now with latest driver releases.

Ive wanted a 144 hz monitor but wanted to wait until this came out.I have a Radeon 295x2 that encourages freesync use, and this monitor delivers. Enabling freesync was easy and you notice it almost right away. MGSV phantom pain runs noticably smoother with the freesync, as do other games. The freesync calibrates nicely with games like star citizen, and you can notice it being smoother than my old 60 hz and no freesync (i still use this monitor in a dual setup, with no problems.I tested 2k resolution, and it was beautiful. No dead pixels. Beautiful, brighter colors compared to my economic monitor. Very easy set up and the cord holder behind the monitor is great too.The only thing i noticed is that some games dont like running 2k with freesync, like MGSV; the frame rate drops to stupid low levels, like 10 to 20, when you try to play it full screen on the 2k monitor. Going to windowed mode -- where it operates at 1920 -- makes it behave just fine though. However other games such as Diablo 3 and Star Citizen had no problems reconfiguring on load for the monitors max resolution.I just want to make buyers beware about 2k: you will need a serious rig if you want to play games like Star Citizen (which uses crysis 3) at max settings for anything beyond one monitor. Thanks to freesync at 144 hz, SC is very playable and scales nicely, but you definitely notice a fps drop when playing 2k. This is just with one of these monitors and a single 295x2, with a smaller 60hz monitor sitting idle (nothing was running) while playing on one screen. But playing SC at standard resolution and 144hz freesync is AMAZING.I would highly recommend this monitor to anyone wanting to usee freesync at 144 hz.