I've had my MG279Q for a few days now. Also rocking a 290X. First of all, yah, it's fast enough for 2560x1440 in current games. Freesync seems to be helping, as it should. Compared to running v-sync, motion will still appear choppy at low frame rates, but it won't stutter the same way. It stays consistent. If you drop below 35 FPS though, the physical refresh will get left at 35hz until you come back up and it will stutter really bad. That said, medium to high frame rates look really good. Above 60 it's very quick! I'd still like more power for games like Witcher 3, but it's definitely playable.
Ok, now here's the bad part. The hardware itself seems really good, but the firmware cripples it. You get very little actual control over the setup. There's 6 presets to choose from. Of the 6, only Racing mode and sRGB mode seem to have accurate color. The others have really wacky gamma, contrast and color settings designed to make them stand out for their intended application. It's a joke. Scenery mode makes a bright environment pop and shows vivid color in medium lighting by adding way too much contrast and making dark areas really dark. Cinema mode is hopeless. FPS and RTS are similar. FPS has pretty flat color and a hard grey haze effect. It does pull up a lot of detail from dark areas. Good for munchkins who don't care about quality and just want to win. Those guys might still be better off with a TN I guess. RTS is very similar, looks better in some situations, but completely crushes color detail in low light. Not at all suitable for a typical roll player looking for immersion in a game with dark areas. Like you know, most RPGs. Racing and sRGB modes seem to have the same basic, fairly accurate color profile with no obvious errors. No banding, squashed detail, all together wrong colors, etc. They aren't terribly vibrant either. sRGB locks you out of everything, even brightness. I guess they think it's calibrated really well just the way it is... Racing mode lets you change brightness, contrast and color levels. BUT, it still locks you out of the sharpness control. Text actually looks good, but images and games at native res. are conspicuously blurry compared to a higher sharpness level on one of the other settings. So that's a real bummer. They give you no gamma control anywhere, so I haven't been able to make any of the other settings really usable. Another source of sharpness that's available on another page is "Vivid Pixel." It adds sharpness, but has a really horrible embossing effect that makes everything look like ass.
This lack of control is what I expect from a low end screen. It's what they do to differentiate the lower models from the higher ones. I'd like to think this is a higher end screen. They marketed this screen precisely at people who wanted a capable gaming monitor but weren't willing to give up their high quality IPS screens to get it. Being forced to choose between blurry graphics or grievous color errors wasn't what I was expecting when I decided to take the plunge on this "high end" IPS, QHD gaming monitor. If they'ed only enabled sharpness in racing mode, I may have been satisfied. As it is, I think I'm going to look into newegg's return policy. It's a real shame, this was supposed to be exactly the screen I was waiting for, albeit, not in 32". If it could be setup properly, I think the panel itself could have been really Good. IPS glow off-angle is no joke on this panel, but when you're in position, it looks fine. Nothing like being off-angle with a TN.. I think this is a typical example of engineers making a fantastic product, while the marketing guys stand over their shoulders and force them to ruin it with gimmicky features that break its functionality.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram