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The Asus VE278Q is an attractive looking monitor, although it fails to stand out in such a crowded market. The bundle is impressive, and the stand mechanism feels very strong, clearly built to last.
Technically this is not one of the better ASUS screens on the market with poorly calibrated ‘out of the box' settings. After a little time and effort however it produces some decent images. Colour rendition is impressive, with strong tones, smooth graduations and focused edges. With some calibration it is perfectly usable for non professional oriented Photoshop work.
Text display is good, although some of the poorly set up built in presets can cause issues when rendering fine, small text display. I found myself ‘blinking' to clear my eyes when reading very small website text with a few of the preset options.
Our biggest concern with this screen is the backlighting inconsistencies which can ruin the high definition media experience. Blacks never look as rich or intense as we would have wanted, and there is some bleeding evident on the corners. White purity caused a few concerns for me, with darker patches in the middle of the screen which can distract during some media playback.
For gaming, the response time is fantastic (rated at 2ms) and the clan gamers who spent time with the screen fed back positive comments. Power consumption is a particular strength for the VE278Q, demanding under 30 watts of power after we spent some time calibrating it. The onboard sound is a welcome addition, but don't expect to use it to create an engrossing cinematic experience.
In the United Kingdom, the VE278Q is available for £239.36 inc vat from Amazon, meaning you get a lot of real estate for the money. That said, the Asus PA238Q offers a noticeably higher quality image, with more panel consistency. Unless you specifically need a 27 inch screen, we would rather spend £222 for the PA238Q.
Pros:
- Good pricing.
- onboard speakers.
- DisplayPort connector.
- Good colour rendition.
- Strong gaming capabilities.
- Picture in Picture.
Cons:
- Panel inconsistencies and minor backlighting problems hamper the overall quality of the image.
- Not ideal for High Definition media playback.
Kitguru says: A decent screen with some problems which ruin the overall appeal.
Only 1080p for this display? I found that disappointing. I like high resolutions, but don’t need the extra size. At 27″ I’d expect 2560×1440. Obviously that’d cost more, but if I went to 27″ I’d expect that. Let’s hope the trend of ultra high resolution panels coming soon to tablets will extend to desktops in the future. Otherwise it would look rather silly to have 2048×1536 or whatever at 10″ and 1920×1080 at 27″.
The Sony Z series has a 1920×1080 option on the 13 inch screen, thats pretty impressive, although it actually might to ‘too high’ for ease of reading unless you have eagle eye vision.
Looks ok, I prefer a 23-24 inch at this resolution as I think the screen is too big for the resolution and you can actually see the scanlines sometimes.