With a very bizarre year coming to an end and all your annual leave accumulated with no where way to go overseas, it's safe to presume that you might very well just spend the December break at home.

Not that it would be an issue for you gamers out there. You’d be happy enough to stay safe indoors and take root on your couch or chair as you play on your brand new next-gen console and/or clear your backlog of games on the PC. Not to mention that Cyberpunk 2077 is — after seven years of waiting — available to play today in Singapore.

If the above applies to your year-end ambitions and if you’re in the market for a fresh monitor to enjoy games in glorious 4K resolution, LG has coincidentally announced the launch of the UltraGear 27GN950 in Singapore last month.

On paper, everything looks awesome. This is a 27-inch monitor that offers 4K resolution and an In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel for rich, vibrant colours, so immersive single-player titles (Control, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, etc) would look absolutely gorgeous. Since it has a 144Hz refresh rate and a quick 1ms response time, the monitor is built to excel in fast-paced games like competitive shooters and fighters (Fortnite, Call of Duty, Mortal Kombat, etc) too.

Admittedly, the $1,399 price point is a wee bit painful, but that’s an expected price to pay for a top-end gaming monitor. Not that it matters right now, really, because the UltraGear 27GN950 is currently sold out online with new stocks arriving only in January 2021.

You could always try your luck at authorised retailers like Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Harvey Norman and Gain City, but from the looks of it, the earliest delivery date would still be in the latter half of next month.

Judging from first-hand experience with the 27GN950, it could be worth the wait. When it comes to gaming monitors, one would typically have to choose between a Twisted Nematic (TN) or an IPS panel. The former offers the fastest response time, though the drawback is that it’ll typically have poor colour reproduction.

Monitors with IPS panels, on the other hand, generate more vibrant, accurate colours, but they’re not so great in terms of latency and response time. That’s not optimal for esports, where faster reactions win.

For this one though, you  get the best of both worlds. Colours look fantastic and vivid in vibrant titles like Control and Spellbreak — though some might even go so far as to think that they’re over-saturated. That’s a pretty easy fix once you dive into the monitor settings and calibrate the colours according to your preference.

But since the monitor is already well calibrated out of the box, I imagine there won’t be a pressing need to mess around. Colours are accurate enough for the 27GN950 to be used for creative work like editing photos and videos.

Speaking of colours, the monitor is fitted with RGB lighting on its back for the ultimate gaming aesthetic. You’d think that it’s useless since your eyes are on the front of the screen instead of the back, but switching on the Video Sync mode in LG’s UltraGear Control Centre programme lets the lighting match to whatever’s on screen. In other words, in-built ambient lighting to add an extra layer of immersion during your 30 or so hours of exploring Night City. Very neat.

Now, about 4K. Honestly, games can look monumentally better running at 4K but there’s also the matter of actually having the top-notch hardware to run AAA video games at that high a resolution without compromising performance. It’s no issue if you’ve managed to buy one of Nvidia’s latest graphics cards (or stole an RTX 3090 from a Chinese factory), but for the rest of us peasants, 1440p is decent enough.

But if you do love cranking your graphics all the way to Ultra and don’t mind the hits to the frame rate, the 27GN950 delivers. For fun, I tried running a couple of rounds on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with everything maxed out on my now-ancient RTX 2060s.

The result? Stunning, crisp visuals that could still eke out decent enough frames-per-second for competitive play, especially if you go for the “fastest” response time setting. It helps that the monitor’s DisplayHDR 600 certification gives a noticeable boost in high dynamic range image quality. I can only imagine that Cyberpunk 2077's neon hues and crowded cityscapes will look amazing on this screen. 

With such spectacular visual fidelity, one would think that the 27GN950 would make a perfect companion for next-gen gaming consoles. The bummer here is that all the good stuff is only enjoyed by using the DisplayPort, meaning that a PlayStation 5, with a HDMI connection, wouldn’t be able to run at 120 frames-per-second.

But don’t get me wrong, the monitor’s still great to run with the PS5. The HDMI 2.0 ports on the 27GN950 are able to max out content at 60Hz at 4K HDR, which proves to be excellent enough to play something like Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Whether you’re playing the game on fidelity mode (for the sweet ray tracing and beautiful effects) or performance mode (for the smoother, sharper gameplay), it’s good to know that the monitor can take it.

Overall, LG’s latest Ultragear product showcases why they’re frequently found on listicles and roundups of the best gaming monitors money can buy. But even if you do have the means to afford it, that doesn’t mean that you can get one right now. You’ll just have to wait like everyone else till 2021 to get your high-fidelity gaming binge on.

ilyas@asiaone.com

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