ASUS ROG Strix 29.5” Gaming Monitor

I BARELY TURNED THE MONITOR ON AND THE FIRST THING I SAW WAS BACKLIGHTBLEED+HUGE DEAD PIXEL right in the middle of the screen(i bought this brand new). That says a lot about AU Optronic's quality control when they made this panel. Yes folks, this isn't the Innulox or lg nano ips panel that is popular, This is the so called "fast ips" panel from AU Optronics. Still, i was willing to give this monitor the benefit of the doubt and i let PERFORMANCE dictate my judgement and not bad quality control due to negligence. I bought this monitor strictly for gaming after all. HDR HDR does work when you turn it on in windows 10. The first thing i saw was black smudges in random areas of the screen(particularly on the right side. This monitor doesn't have local dimming so i had no clue what that was. There are two modes in HDR, gamer mode and cinema mode. I chose Cinema. I put in the movie Joker and i started to make changes. Basically, HDR is useless because the contrast ratio is horrible, no FALD, and the brightness just clouds/washes out the color. Don'te ven bother using HDR on gaming because it does the same thing. The backlight bleed and IPS glow also is extremely distracting making watchign movies unwatchable. PERFORMANCE AND COLOR ACCURACY Don't bother with 170Hz, it will flicker if there's too much of a change in frame rate. The optimal refresh rate for this monitor is 165 Hz. The ideal overdrive setting is 3 (there are 5 overdrive settings, 5 being the highest) i used blurbuster's UFO test to verify this by observing overshoot (inverse ghosting). The overshoot is extremely small and the trade off of is a slightly faster g2g average of 4.8ms is the best at overdrive #3. The XG279q's g2g average of 4.8ms is basically just as fast as 27GL850-b's g2g average. Just make sure you overlcock it to 165 hz because if you keep it at its native refresh rate of 144Hz, level 3 overdrive will see inverse ghosting and overshoot. If u want to play at 144Hz, use over drive 2. ELMB sync is POINTLESS. If the framerate is below 120 Hz, you will see obvious crosstalk( double strobing), below 85 Hz, triple strobing, and frame rates below 60 Hz, you will quadruble strobing. THe overdrive level is locked out when you enable ELMB sync and based on what i saw on the UFO tests, it's locked at overdrive #4(there was significant overshoot but the trade off was a more clear image on a moving object). Overdrive is too high of an overdrive to be on, which means at lower framerates, the inverse ghosting and double/triple strobing will basically make anyone sick, add in the fact that the monitor loses brightness by half makes ELMB sync not worth it. In my opinion, ELMB sync is only good at higher framerates because the better motion clarity of a moving image is a good trade off for slight inverse ghosting because of the higher framerates . Keep in mind when ELMB sync is on, your monitor has different zones that works differently. The bottom part of the screen is where it's most clear, but the upper 2/3 is extremely blurry, and you will often see inverse ghosting, artifacts, stuttering, or double strobing. I noticed this when i played rocket league when i could barely make out what i'm seeing on 2/3 of the screen and i would often whiff or predict the wrong direction because the motion clarity on the upper 2/3 of the screen has way too much ghosting and dbl strobing. Gaming was basically buttery smooth if ELMB is turned off. Yes, there's still motion blur but it's not as bad as the other panels who doesnt' have as fast of a response time. The best gaming experience would be overdrive 3, ELMB turned off, freesync ON at 165 Hz. The only time i would suggest someone turn on ELMB sync is if the framerate is constantly above 120 hz and that is being generous. If the framerate is above 140 Hz, that's the ideal spot for ELMB sync. COLORS when it comes to color calibration, the monitor already comes in pre calibrated and rest assure they will give you a calibration map to prove it. This is the best part about the monitor, it really does come in calibrated when you receive it. The only ONE thing that Id on't agree with is its 100 brightness on sRGB mode. It's way too bright and you cannot change it because almoost verything is locked out. The other modes are pretty accurate. If I had to pick the best mode, i would pick RPG/movie mode. The last straw was when i was trying to tweak the monitor in hopes that i can somehow fix the double strobing. After maybe 8 mins on those UFO tests, you will start to see burn in artifacts(white lines) accross the screen. I told myself, wow, this is the last straw so i finally packed it up and returned it. This monitor just had way too many problems for me to tolerate 1. poor quality control(dead pixel in the middle of the screen, backlight bleed) 2. HDR useless and washes out colors. SDR looks way better. Look at the JOker photo, the brighter photo(where the brightness is washing out the color) is on HDR mode, but to the left of that picture is its SDR mode. SDR looks way better than when HDR is on. This is no surprise because of its below average contrast ratio. 3. watchiing movies/content is useless because if you are in a dark room, the IPS glow/backlight bleed will saturate the monitor which will distract you. If you even deviate from a specific angle, you will easily start to se it 4. Gaming is top notch due to its performance. Top notch g2g average at 4.8ms. . Response time is buttery smooth and is roughly EQUAL to LG 27GL850. and is among the fastest IPS monitor(just behind the viewsonic XG270qg at 1440p. 5. Burn in and artefacts will start to happen if you put an image on your screen for more than 10 mins. You will start to see artefacts when you exit that screen but the pixels that were there will remain. I call this SMEARING and it really does happen often due to its poor quality control 6. ELMB sync is useless at frame rates below 120Hz because crosstalk gets really bad. If you are playing a AAA title and turn on ELMB sync, oh boy you will not like the overshoots and triple strobing at lower FPS. Had they only allow us the ability to adjust the overdrive mode, i was willing to forgive the other "flaws" of this monitor. Sadly, the OD is locked which means by default, the whole monitor isn't calibrated when ELMB sync is on and you will see nothing but crosstalk. In my opinion, this is the WORST iteration of ELMB sync out of the ELMB sync possible monitors. Inverse ghosting, artefacts, etc. DOn't fall for the marketing folks. If you want ELMB sync, stick to the 280hz vg279qm or the 165Hz VG27aq. if I had to do it all over again, i would've just bought the viewsonic IPs nano XG270qg and played it safe. I took the gamble and wasted my time. It's no coincidence that this item has a lot of "used" copies. if I had to rate this monitor, i would give it a negative rating. Rating it 0/5 is a huge insult to monitors who were factually rated a 0/5.