PC and console gamers who don’t have the space for a TV have been thrown a bone in the last year thanks to exceptional OLED and QD-OLED monitors that bring the best aspects of OLED displays to a desktop-friendly format. This is exemplified in the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B and Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM, two 27-inch, 1440p gaming monitors that run at a blistering 240Hz refresh rate.
While the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B and Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM look remarkably similar on paper, the small differences make one the better option. After putting both through the standard battery of tests, we’ll go over the price, performance, features, and design of the two monitors to see which comes out as the ultimate winner.
Buy the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B
Buy the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM
Price
The pricing of the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B and Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM make this apples-to-apples comparison all the more direct as both monitors cost $1,000. So, where budgets are concerned, they’re a perfect tie.
That said, since the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B has been on the market a bit longer than the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM, it has already started to see some discounts. There’s no guarantee that the day you’re shopping won’t have both monitors priced at the full $1,000, but I’ve seen the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B going for as little as $880, which is a considerable undercut to the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM. To save you some time, if you have the choice between the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B for under $900 and Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM at $1,000, don’t hesitate to grab the LG option.
Our pick: Draw
Performance
Credit:
Reviewed / Timothy Renzi
With an abundance of color and contrast, it’s a wonder that the LG OLED also has a 240Hz refresh rate for seamless visuals.
Both the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B and Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM are phenomenal monitors. Not only do they both offer the benefits of OLED, but they’ve dialed it in quite well. Even without calibration, both have highly accurate color and extremely wide color gamuts that will leave all but the most demanding designers and graphic artists looking for more. Despite the impressive performance of each, the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B offers slightly better results.
Both achieved 100% coverage of sRGB and over 90% of the AdobeRGB and DCI-P3 color spaces. LG reached 97% in DCI-P3 to Asus’s 96%, but Asus nabbed 92% of AdobeRGB to LG’s 91%. It’s in the color accuracy that the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B ekes out a lead with an average delta E of 1.91 to Asus’s 2.8. (a dE value measures how off a color is measured from a target value, with anything under 3 imperceptible to the untrained eye.)
Though OLED displays aren’t known for their high brightness, both monitors also can muster some impressively bright highlights well over 700 nits in HDR. And they pair them with the pitch-black pixels OLEDs are known for to offer extreme contrast. In our testing, the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B came out with a small lead seeing highlights in an HDR video reach as high as 837 nits while the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM didn’t measure higher than 765 nits. I’d call that a strong lead for LG, but a separate test saw the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM hit a 957-nit peak on a test pattern with a white box occupying 10% of the screen on a black background. Unfortunately, we no longer had the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B on hand to run this same test on.
Then there’s the 240Hz refresh rate. Both monitors are equal here. They’re stunningly fast, and the speedy pixel response time of OLED makes for stunning motion clarity. The blurry ghosting trails behind moving objects that can appear on IPS—and to a greater extent VA panels—are absent on both monitors.
Our pick: LG, narrowly
Features
Credit:
Reviewed / Timothy Renzi
The LG OLED excels when it comes to the variety of built-in ports.
The LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B and Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM are once again quite evenly matched when it comes to features. They both support key quality-of-life features like variable refresh rate tech and HDR, and they have a uniform brightness tool that sets a roughly 200-nit white point the monitor can maintain regardless of what’s onscreen to avoid the obnoxious dimming that can occur as more bright content is shown on screen. Both also throw in extra game-centric features, like on-screen crosshairs and FPS counter overlays.
Where the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B comes ahead is in its ports. Both regrettably lack USB-C and have similar USB hubs onboard. But where Asus’s PG27AQDM includes two HDMI 2.0 ports, LG’s 27GR95QE-B opts for two HDMI 2.1 ports. The 27GR95QE-B also includes an optical audio output port, letting you pass high-quality sound out to a speaker system. LG’s inclusion of a remote control also makes changing settings and operating the monitor simpler.
Our pick: LG, narrowly
Design
Credit:
Reviewed / Timothy Renzi
The joystick at the bottom of the Asus ROG that functions as a remote control sets this desktop monitor apart from the competition.
The design is where the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B and Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM might have set themselves apart the most, but they’re still remarkably similar. A lot of that comes down to the super-slim OLED panel that sits out front with little backing. Both Asus and LG seemed to want to show off how thin the panel was, so the rest of the monitor’s guts are housed in a smaller section that only occupies a small section on the back of the monitor. Both companies jazz up the displays with a little bit of RGB lighting here and there, but neither implementation is truly stunning.
Both monitors come on sturdy, adjustable stands and are VESA-compatible. While the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B can go straight onto a VESA mount, the Asus needs some included adapter hardware installed first. That might give the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B a small edge here, but the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM pulls it back by having downward-facing ports that are easier to access then the 27GR95QE-B’s rear-facing ports.
The biggest win for Asus here is its monitor uses a joystick at the bottom of the monitor for navigating menus and settings. It’s quick and effective. The LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B has a remote control for this, which is convenient but easy to misplace or lose entirely. The 27GR95QE-B’s actual built-in controls are a single button that has to be pressed or held to navigate settings, and it’s both tedious, poorly built, and lacking access to many of the monitor’s settings.
Our pick: Asus, narrowly
And the winner is …
As similar as these two monitors are, the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B has just enough of a lead to stand out as the winner here. It performed better in our testing and had a better port selection to make it a more versatile machine for PC and console gamers alike. The remote control is also handy, even if it could get lost. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B has already started receiving discounts that I haven’t seen for the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM yet.
It’s a narrow enough victory that context and user needs could change the result. Anyone who thinks they’re likely to lose the remote control has a good reason to consider the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM instead. The HDMI 2.1 ports also might not make a difference on the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B for anyone who doesn’t care much about console gaming.
Given how narrow the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B’s victory over the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM is, price ought to outweigh the slight differences between them. While right now you can get the LG monitor for less than Asus’s offering, that could change. If you can get a considerably lower price on one of these monitors, that’s probably the one to buy.
LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B
The LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B is a stunning monitor with seamless visuals and a 240Hz refresh rate, offered at a reasonable price.
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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.
