Review: Asus ProArt 27 QD-OLED (PA279CDV)

As far as the Asus’ appearance goes, the side bezels are a bit large, and the top and bottom bezels aren’t the same size, which I find visually off-putting. Nicely, though, the amount of adjustability is impressive. This stand can swivel, tilt, rotate into portrait mode, and the height can shift 5 inches. The stand has some very basic built-in cable management, with down-firing ports that help keep cords organized. Also, the flat base doesn’t require much space on my desk.

Each of the two back USB-C ports has a specific purpose. One is USB-C 3.2 with DP Alt Mode, which provides 96 watts of power delivery for your laptop. The other is a USB-C 3.2 port for the KVM switch, enabling you to connect two PCs to the monitor and switch between them seamlessly. Fortunately, Asus clearly labels each port, so you know which to use for your intended purpose. The monitor also comes with two USB-A ports for accessories, a headphone jack, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and a DisplayPort Out for daisy-chaining monitors together. This is a solid array of port selection that gives you just about everything you need to use the ProArt PA279cdv as a workstation.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

Photograph: Luke Larsen

Meanwhile, the controls for the onscreen display and menu are on the right side of the front panel. I tend to prefer just a single joystick for simplicity’s sake, but like the other Asus ProArt monitors, this one gives you five control buttons, plus a power button, in addition to a joystick. Once you know how to use it, though, the buttons give you quick access to switching inputs or changing brightness.

There are quite a lot of features to dig through in the menu, including a number of color modes and detailed picture-quality tweaks. There’s also a Display Widget app to handle all these settings, available in Windows 11 or macOS.

The monitor includes speakers, but they sound pretty bad, which is unfortunate for a monitor designed at least partially for entertainment purposes. Keep this in mind if you plan to watch a movie on the monitor, since you’ll only want to use the speakers for basic notifications. By contrast, the Dell 32 Plus QD-OLED has a really nice set of speakers.

OLED, Oh My!

Brightness—both measured in standard dynamic range (SDR) and HDR content—is the key feature of an OLED monitor, as it determines how good at HDR the device in question truly is. OLED displays can switch off individual pixels, a capability that provides the absolute blacks this class of display is known for. But if the pixels aren’t bright enough, the display still won’t produce a strong HDR performance.

Using an HDR test pattern, I was able to record 1,038 nits in a 1 percent window and 917 nits in a 4 percent window. These strong results deliver a greater sense of visual fidelity when watching movies or playing games than what you’d get with dimmer displays. Compared to the current ultimate HDR monitor, the Apple Studio Display XDR (7/10, WIRED Recommends), though, these results aren’t stunning. On the Apple monitor, I got to 1,905 nits of brightness in a 25 percent window. Even so, comparing these two monitors is hardly fair, given that the Apple costs more than $3,000 and should provide a premium quality to match. I’m providing these results to demonstrate the broad HDR landscape in monitors.