LG UltraGear 27GX790A Review

Introduction

The LG UltraGear 27GX790A combines the power of an OLED screen with exceptionally high refresh rates in a premium package.

It’s a modern 27-inch OLED panel with an easier-to-drive 2560×1440 resolution, offering the benefit of a high 480Hz refresh rate for the crispest motion, albeit at the expense of overall visual fidelity. You get advanced DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity and a rather adjustable stand, among other things.

This high-refresh-rate behemoth doesn’t come cheap, with the £899.99/$999 price tag putting it well up there with 4K 240Hz QD-OLED options such as the Alienware AW2725Q and Asus ROG Strix XG27UCDMG that can stack up quite well against LG’s choice.

Whether the 27GX790A can come out on top remains to be seen – I’ve been testing it for the last couple of weeks to see if it is one of the best gaming monitors we’ve tested.

Design

• Clean, modern looks
• Lots of easy stand adjustments
• Port allocation is fine, if unremarkable

The 27GX790A features LG’s typical modern and understated design language that extends to their premium OLED TVs in a larger size, coming with especially thin bezels around the screen to maximise the 27-inch screen size.

It’s such a minimalistic design that you won’t find any mention of LG on the front of the monitor, with the branding found on the panel’s reverse with the UltraGear logo and a hexagonal piece that juts out from the thin screen to house all of the monitor’s important pieces.

Assembly is nice and simple, with the base screwing into the bottom of the stand, and the other end latching into place on the back of the panel. No tools are needed, so it’s easy to be up and running in a matter of moments. As is in-keeping with LG’s recent design changes to monitors, the base of the stand is flat, as opposed to having V-shaped legs, making it easier to stand things on it if you need to – in my case, it’s my Sonos Beam soundbar.

The stand is rather adjustable, with good room for height adjustment, swivel, tilt and the ability to swing around into portrait mode if you so choose. It’s all nice and easy to do, and I had no trouble raising the monitor up to eye level.

When it comes to ports, the 27GX790A isn’t as advanced in some areas as the competition. It comes with a DisplayPort 2.1 input, as well as a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports, two USB-As and a USB-B upstream port. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack in the absence of speakers that LG says is enhanced with DTS:X support.

This selection of ports is fine, with reasonable connectivity, although we are lacking any form of USB-C for display or power delivery, which is a bit of a shame. The Alienware AW2725Q has the ability to hook up audio over HDMI eARC with Dolby Atmos passthrough.

Image Quality

• Fantastically responsive with 480Hz refresh rate
• Good detail, deep blacks, and great contrast
• Peak SDR brightness not as strong as other panel types

The 27GX790A features a sublime OLED screen that blends a 1440p, or 2560×1440, resolution with a silky smooth 480Hz refresh rate to make for a moment that’s at home best with games and hardware that can take advantage of its pushing it to its limits.

My PC with a 7800X3D and 4080 Super inside could gladly oblige in eSports titles such as Counter Strike 2, where this LG monitor felt especially crisp and responsive with some gorgeous motion thanks to frame rates that could take advantage of the super high refresh rate which pro players should be able to benefit from heavily. Forza Horizon 5 felt responsive and looked excellent as I raced round the streets of Mexico.

The 1440p resolution provides good detail and is an easier-to-drive resolution than the 4K we see on other premium monitors at a similar price point. This means you can get away with a less powerful PC and still benefit from all of the 27GX790A’s lovely image quality. More cinematic titles, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Indiana Jones & The Great Circle in all of their ray-traced glory looked brilliant with punchy, detailed images.

As an OLED, it features deep, inky blacks and some brilliant contrast with my colorimeter measuring respective levels of 0.01 and 19790:1. HDR support comes with VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400, as opposed to the more advanced Dolby Vision found on rival screens.

Colour accuracy is great, with perfect 100% coverage of the sRGB gamut alongside 97% DCI-P3 and 89% Adobe RGB. This helps the 27GX790A to be especially well-suited to both productivity and increasingly specialist workloads, such as photo or video editing, if you want to engage in that sort of thing.

VRR support is plentiful, with this LG screen supporting Nvidia G-Sync, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and even VESA Adaptive-Sync. This means that whatever GPU you’re using, you won’t experience any screen tearing or juddering for a smooth experience.

As is typical with OLEDs, the only area where this screen isn’t as vibrant is with its peak SDR brightness against Mini LED and some high-end IPS options. My colorimeter measured a peak of 261.3 nits of brightness, which actually exceeds LG’s own 250-nit quoting. HDR brightness can go as high as 400 nits with the True Black 400 certification, although LG says it can go as high as 1300 nits in supported content, presumably in a small window.

Software and Features

• Comprehensive OSD menus
• No speakers

The 27GX790A’s OSD is accessible through the small joystick in the middle on the bottom side of the display, and provides easy access to a menu for fiddling with the monitor’s settings, game modes and OLED panel care settings.

It’s laid out pleasantly, and there are a lot of options to choose from with modes for different types of games, including FPS and Racing titles. You can add an on-screen crosshair or FPS counter. You can choose colours for the lighting on the rear of the panel in a similar vein to the Ambilight on the Philips Evnia 32M2N8900.

As is becoming even more common with monitors up and down the price ladder, the 27GX790A doesn’t come with any speakers. This means you’ll either have to have some separates plugged into your PC or the monitor, or use a headset.

Should you buy it?

FAQs