LG UltraGear QHD 27-Inch Gaming Monitor 27GL850-B, Nano IPS 1ms (GtG) with HDR 10 Compatibility and NVIDIA G-SYNC, 144Hz, Black

I am a photographer who occasionally games. With monitors they were traditionally broken into two worlds, photo monitors and gaming monitors. Photo monitors usually are usually IPS with wide color gamut (ADOBE RGB and DCI coverage), bright, great viewing angles, high resolution. Unfortunately they are almost always 60hz. Gaming monitors on the other hand are either TN or Va panels but you get the super fast 120-240hz refresh rates. Gaming monitors are usually 1080p, have very poor viewing angles, poor color gamut, and not as bright. This monitor however is IPS, good color gamut (88% ADOBE RGB), great viewing angles, and 1440p, and 144hz! Furthermore, I was easily able to overclock the monitor to 1440p @ 150hz by making a custom resolution in Nvidia control panel. Any further causes a out of bounds notice from the monitor. Its not a huge improvement but it certainly helps for free performance. This certainly is the best of both worlds as I can game and edit photos without much loss in color accuracy. I have tried gaming monitors before and the colors were always washed out yet this monitor remains vibrant and great. I can edit photos confidently knowing that they wont look different when the client receives them. The downsides: 1. There is IPS glow as you can tell from the black screen image. The glow looks very apparent in photos but in real life its not that bad. This is due to being edge-lit with edge LEDs and not selectively dimmed. Blacks are not very black since again, no selective dimming. 2. The white is fairly uniform and there is a small band of dark near the edges. It is barely noticeable. 3. The monitor is technically HDR compatible but the brightness is around 350 nits which isnt enough for HDR. 350 nits is on par with most monitors on the market but isnt superb. 4. The OSD menu button is terrible. LG probably decided to save money by using a one button OSD joystick. Theres no confirm or back/cancel buttons and navigating the OSD is extremely difficult. When you are done, you have to wit for the OSD to time out or press and hold to close. This is extremely unintuitive and different from every other monitor on the market. Its a small thing but very annoying. Overall a great monitor if you are someone like me who wants accuracy and resolution but with gaming capabilities. There are few compromises here. Some people have a dual monitor setup with gaming and work monitor but not everyone has the space for that. This is a great single monitor setup for both!

EDIT: I bought a second 27GL850-B manufactured 7/2021 as used like new (it was brand new in a damaged box, 0 hours power on time). Its great to have matching monitors for work, and it says a lot about the quality of this panel that I bought a second. Pros: Well reviewed panel, Freesync works on Nvidia/Intel now + low framerate compensation means the display doesnt tear below 48 FPS, ICC profiles exist for download (TFT Central), only needed minor tweaks out of box to make the display really pop, panel supports 10 bit, display is light - perfect for VESA mounting. Backlight bleed is minimal, very pleasant surprise. Movies and Youtube look fine on this gaming display, just a shame that 1440p/4k havent began to replace 1080p video as default. Amazon doing monthly payments on this is a great deal. Cons: I had to exchange the first panel I received. First panel had one dead pixel out of the box, and the vertical edges of the display were much dimmer than the rest of the screen on light backgrounds. Replacement panel is fine. USB hub on the monitor is unpowered, limiting what can be plugged into it. Very odd choice by LG to save a few cents on the USB hub, my Logitech G910 keyboard wouldnt even power up connected to it - HDR on this screen is terrible, leave it off. Notes: The USB hub is used for firmware upgrades - keep the cable handy no matter how useless the USB hub is. I upgraded from an Asus ROG Swift PG278QR - that display came with about 5 dead pixels and always looked washed out. It also has a firmware bug that affects the display, and backlight bleed was an issue too. And it even cost more than this LG panel! The LG 27GL850 is a huge upgrade in quality! Watch some reviews before you buy - Hardware Unboxed goes over this display very nicely. This monitor uses DisplayPort 1.4 - you may need to update the firmware of your graphics card to support it or you will not have POST/boot output on the screen. Nvidia has a download for updating older cards - I had a 1080 Ti when I bought my first LG and it was painless to run the upgrade. If you cannot upgrade, you can change the monitor to DP 1.1 or 1.2 via the on screen menu. Im still trying to find the optimal brightness - TFT Central recommends brightness of 23 with a boost to red - it was too dim and way too red, so Im guessing LG has adjusted out-of-the-box calibration on these panels since launching them. To enable 10 bit support, use the Nvidia control panel (or AMDs equivalent) and leave HDR off in Windows. My current display calibration: Gamer 1, Adaptive Sync On, Response Time Fast, Brightness 35, Contrast 70, Gamma Mode 2, Color Temp Custom, RGB all 50, DFC Off, Smart Energy Saving Off. Im using the TFT Central ICC profile in Windows 11.

First off, I got this monitor to replace my 32 Acer Nitro 1440p monitor. I wanted something a bit smaller that had higher color accuracy. This thing absolutely delivered on all my expectations and exceeded them in terms of picture quality. The display is crisp, and the color calibration is on point right out of the box. The blacks are very deep as well, Im genuinely shocked how nice the blacks were for not being OLED. The best settings are also enabled by default for least amount of motion blurring and crispness at high FPS. I run a 6900 XT and 5950X in my system, so I have all the horsepower needed to push the full 144FPS needed. It holds up well. I would definitely rate this as one of the best monitors on the market, especially at the price point. I havent had any issues thus far, but Ill update if I do.

For many years I have been using a TN panel for competitive gaming, and a 2nd more color accurate monitor for editing videos and photos. This monitor is not only a combination of the two, but looks even better than both! My concern was that the 1ms that is advertised is actually unusable due to overshoot, when using the faster setting. I use the fast setting which is advertised as 5ms, and dont notice a difference than my 1ms tn panel. The truth is most panels (even tn) that say they are 1ms truly are not. If you look at benchmarks comparing this to other tn panels, it actually has the same response time, if not very slightly slower. As far as the colors for this monitor goes, I honestly didnt realize how much games would look different than my tn panel. It looks like I put all of my games on a higher graphics setting, as everything is much more clear. I have not done editing with this monitor, so I cant speak for that, but I have watched a couple videos in 2k and was blown away. As far is the back lighting uniformity goes, it is hard to say if I got lucky or LGs quality control is much better than other manufactures, as I dont see how the uniformity could be anymore perfect. I honestly cant tell where the back light is coming from which was a concern of mine, with buying the monitor off amazon. I also am going to post this review on other websites, as I have seen comments from other people wondering how good this monitor actually is. So if you see it on other websites with different account names, its not because LG payed me. I purchased this monitor with my own money from Amazon, as I needed an upgrade.

This monitor has been great for gaming. There are two quirks I would note, though. First, the monitor doesnt have any speakers, but my Windows 11 wants to send sound to it anyway. Im not sure if thats a monitor issue, or a Windows 11 issue, but once I shifted the settings to my headset, things work great. The other quirk is that the monitor is very bright. Like, almost too bright, even when I have brightness turned way down. I cant play with it in a dark room because it is too hard on my eyes in that setting. But others might like that brightness more than I do.

One day in. No dead pixels, monitor in perfect condition. Ill play with the settings some later, but out of the box everything looks great. So far, only used one HDMI input and the audio jack. Of note with the audio jack, if youre on Windows 10 then your system may, as mine did, set this new input to MONO output without any indication it is doing so. If this happens (both L and R channels coming out of both speakers, instead of being distinct), the fix is luckily simple. The fix to mono audio in Win 10: Right click the speaker icon in the taskbar, select Sound Settings. Once there, select Ease of Access audio settings which will be on the right side column or towards the bottom, depending on window size. Next, deselect the Turn on mono audio option, and apply. Check that its working by adjusting balance in your media player of choice. My only other note so far, is that my laptop outputs with a higher gain than the monitor does, but thats really not an issue since its still plenty loud... and I can just not use the monitor for audio, if I so choose.

So Ive been thinking about getting a monitor for a long time and after searching reviews, this monitor seemed to come up in the top 5 alot so I thought Id give it a shot. Wow its pretty amazing and the lag response is insane. I cant really give a great break of the features because Im still learning some but when I say response time is a night and day difference it is. If anyone remembers going from dial up to cable( yes Im that old), this is a great comparison. Ive always heard PC guys brang about skill but its not skill when Im getting a full second or two to look at them before they can shoot me back(fps) in warzone or even simple tdm matches. If youve been on the fence for awhile, get off and get this monitor you wont regret it. If anything goes bad with it I will update my post, but its a night and day difference from my tv( which is top of line gaming tv 3k plus in price) so not a mid tier tv. Amazing monitor

This is the best gaming monitor that Ive ever had so far. I mainly play FPS games like Valorant and CS:GO which requires extreme reaction speed and reflex, which this monitor allows me to have. The high refresh rate allows me to track the enemy much easier and smoother. I highly recommend it for competitive tactical FPS players.

Within the first few months of owning this monitor I noticed a crack in my screen on the upper right quadrant that wasnt there previously. Im almost certain it was not of my own doing since I dont touch my monitors unless its with a microfiber cloth to clean them, and I dont remember bumping into it with anything either. On further inspection, the crack seems to be almost exactly 6-8 pixels wide, and is completely straight horizontally, like perfectly so, which I think also rules out that I scratched it somehow. Im thinking that maybe one very small component got too hot and the screen cracked there as a result or something, I dont know. Again, I dont touch my monitor and I dont use sharp objects around it either, so I was pretty surprised to see this. At first I thought it was some dead pixels. Some might think such a small crack isnt noticeable in normal use, and sometimes it isnt on darker backgrounds, but on anything lighter though its quite noticeable, like a permanent small hair which you cant wipe off no matter what. Its a bit hard to see in the picture, but there it is.

Ive really enjoyed this monitor so far. I was experiencing some screen splitting issues when playing on my PC with my previous monitor (max 60Hz refresh rate), and switching to this monitor immediately fixed that issue. I like that its QHD, and the quality and sharpness of the picture is solid. The only minor complaint I have is that its a bit finnicky getting the proper balance of brightness and contrast to convey atmosphere in darker environments without completely stripping out the details in darker areas of a map. But its not so terrible that Im not able to find a balance that works. One issue that isnt so much related to gaming is that its spotty in its support for certain docking stations (or any other non-direct connection). I, like many others, have recently had to WFH full-time, and if I try to use this monitor with a Dell docking station, theres an annoying brightness flicker on the screen. A support agent told me this is a known issue and that direct connections are recommended/preferred. Not a dealbreaker, but I figured its worth mentioning to anyone looking at this monitor.