ASUS VG248QE 24" Full HD 1920x1080 144Hz 1ms HDMI Gaming Monitor

This greatly exceeded my expectations in spite of seeing many video reviews: I've had it two days and used it for the desktop and video apps. The monitor is the display for an Nvidia RTX 4080 super GPU, a Taichi x670E MB, and an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X CPU with 64GB of ram. I don't know how much of this processing power is needed for the monitor to be performing as well as it does, but obviously the hardware has to be able to drive it effectively.1. The zero black level makes a huge difference. I loved my IPS 1440p monitor that took 10 bit color. It was so much brighter, with more and deeper colors and dynamic range than my LED monitors. I have a dual display setup and can compare the images between the monitors. The IPS (PA272W) looks entirely pale and washed out in comparison, quite low contrast. Even the IPS monitor was itself a big improvement over my older LED display.2. Keeping the monitor in HDR mode is not good for SDR videos. I got a convenient windows app "HDRTray-v0.5.90" to easily check and change modes. SDR videos look washed out in HDR mode. Even in SDR mode, though, the video's colors look much wider gamut and more intense and realistic on the PG32UCDM.3. HDR10 4k films look astounding. Better than in movie theaters, even very good ones like the upgraded Grumman's Chinese theater (now Kodak) with 3-laser 4k projection, and much better than your standard 2k digital projection theater. While the resolution is much less than a 35mm film projection (at least 20 million pixels), the wider gamut and dynamic ratio of this monitor are much more important to the experience for me (at least for color video), and obviously for all the theaters moving to digital projection.4. The 4k HDR10 films look astoundingly realistic. I feel that I am actually watching directly, not via a recording. In fact it looks better than in person, perhaps because of being more close up than when usually watching a scene, Night scenes look better too, perhaps because of light scatter reducing black levels in real urban situations, or perhaps due to a bit increase in color saturation by the film studios.It's really more clear, detailed, and with more subtle color variation, than when taking to someone face to face. At least it gives that strong feeling.5. I still find it helpful when using VLC player to have the player upscale from 1080p with video sharpening adjusted to a low level, making the image sharper on the 4k display. The GPU is supposed to do something about this too, but not enough.6. The main drawback to OLED monitors is burn-in. The 3 year warranty shows that Asus has confidence in their new technology and protection mechanisms.There are myths about the pixel clean and pixel refresh options of QD-OLED monitors. What my own research into the details of that show (given the proprietary and secret nature of the Asus processes), is this. Each color of a pixel is a piece of polymer film filled with very tine (0.5 - 2 nm) semiconduction particles called quantum dots. Quantum confinement means the electrons in the free shells or levels in the quantum dots have energy levels dependent of the dot volume. When stimulated by blue LED back lights (3 for each subpixel), the electrons absorb the photons, go to a higher level, then fall back emitting a corresponding color (red or green). The blue subpixel of a pixel has no quantum dots on it.Pixel refresh gets rid of persistent images. It simply cycles each subpixel a number of times that discharges residual energy that causes the persistence.Pixel cleaning happens less often. The organic chemicals in the dots decay with time and use, getting dimmer. The monitor keeps track of how much time the monitor has been used, and how much of that was static images. It estimates the degradation of the subpixels, and increases the set voltage on the transistor gates accordingly. The monitor is manufactured with enough headroom on the blue LEDs to maintain color intensity for some total hours of monitor use- presumably much longer than the 3 year warranty on this monitor.So these processes are entirely desirable and do not negatively affect the monitor performance in any way, as they run by default. (The monitor automatically runs them.)The monitor uses other strategies to prevent burn-in or loss of intensity, such as pixel shifting and dimming the display when nothing is happening. as soon as you do anything, it gets bright again.I did a few more things to prevent burn-in from static images. I installed a convenient app called "AutoHideDesktopIcons.exer" for windows, although windows 11 has a system tray toggle for that. When I left click the desktop, the desktop icons appear. When I middle click the mouse on the desktop, the disappear. The static desktop icons seem a very likely source of burn-in.Another app, "AutoHideMouseCursor", can be set to hide the mouse cursor if it doesn't move after some set time period. If you leave the computer for a long time, the cursor says in the same position and seems like a source of burn in. This avoids that.Both of these free programs leave a small window open on the desktop asking for donations. I made a new desktop (Win+Tab) and moved them to that to hide them.Of course I have the taskbar set to autohide to avoid burn-in from that.7. I did a lot of checking for dead or stuck pixels. I couldn't find one. This is amazing given there are 24 million subpixels on the screen. It says a lot for Asus manufacturing process and quality control.8. Using the OSD (On Screen Display) was a bit tricky for a few minutes. Press in on the tiny joystick to open the OSD. What i took time to figure it out is there are two more pressure buttons under the joystick to either side. The left one exits the OSD and right one is the power switch. The onscreen legend is clear about this but it was not intuitive for me to read it at first. The very brief start guide also did not help.9. Assembly was surprisingly easy. It almost seems to lightweight and fragile a way to support the monitor, and too easy too assemble. But it seems pretty solid, although the monitor has a bit of play in the pivot or roll direction. Maybe I did not secure it to the stand fully.It has no swivel adjustment except for moving the stand. It has no height adjustment and limited tilt adjustment. I am fine with that in exchange for the light, elegant and simple stand. there are other solutions if those adjustments are needed.The monitor is thin yet sturdy, and very light. I like the design, where the screen itself is thin (I estimate 1/8") but a slightly smaller rectangular housing behind it, roughly 1.3" thick, contains the electronics. It looks futuristic. The RGB lighting is minimal and, I think, can be turned off.10. For my eyes, the slightest trace of pixelation disappears at 16". for an 8k 32" display, that would be 8". It would not add to the actual seen resolution of an image. It would need to be 64" to make sense for use as a desktop monitor, which is way too big for most people. It seems to me 4k resolution is pretty future proof for a desktop monitor as opposed to large screen tv where people might be sitting 6' away. Even for a typical large screen tv for the living room, 8k resolution seems to be overkill. In other words, this 4k monitor seems future proof in terms of resolution.What would be a big improvement in the technology would be brightness. This monitor has an HDR rating of only 400, which is minimal. A major improvement in OLED technology would be needed to reach an HDR 1000 rating. That being said, I decided the OLED image quality was more important than the best HDR dynamic ratios, as for example from mini-LED or micro-LED monitors which have their disadvantages. For me the brightness levels of this monitor are great, as I keep my office fairly dark.

This review is for the ASUS PG32UCDM, which is a QD-OLED monitor sporting a 240hz refresh rate and 4K resolution to clarify when Amazon lists all the reviews together in the way they do.Gaming performance: At 240hz, provided your graphics card can push pixels that quickly, this monitor is at the top of the game when considering the speed of competitive 4K monitors. There does not currently (2/24/25) exist a 4K panel that can do more than 4K 240hz, if you require more for competitive gaming then you should look elsewhere to a 1440p monitor or the like. I played Halo Infinite at 240hz and the experience was divine. Coming from a 144hz 4K 27" IPS panel, there is no comparison: the picture was unimaginably clear, vivid, crisp, and with dark blacks. Age of Empires IV with HDR mode enabled looks like a different game entirely. I will have to replay every older game I own with this monitor. The colors quite literally give life to old games and show you things in titles you've already played that you may have missed on your older monitor.Other media consumption:I do not own a TV, thus I consume all of my media through my computer and a monitor that could natively display all current types of media formats (HDR, Dolby Vision, etc) was important to me and this monitor excels in media consumption much like an OLED TV does. This monitor supports Dolby Vision which is quite uncommon among computer monitors, competitor's products that I've checked during my research prior to buying (Gigabyte F032U2P as well as the MSI equivalent) fall short in this area, not supporting DV. Switching HDR modes is easily accessible in the monitor settings. HDR support is excellent just the same as DV and is the default mode. Just like with games, true blacks show with OLED panels such as this one because the pixel completely turns off, unlike other panels where local dimming and other technologies try to reproduce black shades but they often come out gray as some light from the backlight shines through. Not the case with this monitor. The dark, eerie, emptiness of space in 1979's Alien really comes through and the vivid colors of Avatar shine bright as if you were really on Pandora. I cannot express enough how important a good monitor is when putting together a gaming or media setup. It is the primary way you interact with your computer.Things to know:OLED is susceptible to burn in, and as in the old days with CRTs (which were also prone to burn in), care must be taken to mitigate the effects. It's the return of the screen saver. The monitor comes with a standard 8 hour pixel refresh cycle which prompts you with the on screen display to run a pixel refresh. It takes about 5 minutes to complete, and you can postpone it if you so wish. It is also recommended to use a dark windows theme, no background, auto-hide taskbar, among other mitigation measures.Text fringing: I thought this would be a problem for me, since I am both easily nauseated by blurry text and use my computer for a lot of text-based work as well (coding and writing these reviews...). Truthfully it is only noticeable if you get very, very close to the screen, much closer than is usable. There are also mitigation measures you can take for this such as using different fontpacks and so on.Overall, this monitor is excellent and I forsee using it for 5+ years. I will edit this review if burn in appears in any significant or severe way or earlier than expected.