At CES last year, Asus and Acer made a big splash by showing off the first 4K/144Hz gaming monitors with plans to launch them both later on in 2017. Unfortunately, delays got in the way, and last week we finally heard that they may hit the market in Q3. Now, it turns out that at least one 4K/144Hz display may hit the market in April.
GDC is taking place this week, and as usual, Nvidia is in attendance. According to the folks at Anandtech, while at the event, Nvidia mentioned that it is ‘confident' that the first G-Sync, HDR compatible displays will arrive in Q1 of its 2019 fiscal year (not calendar year), which ends in late April.
The first G-Sync, HDR displays from Asus and Acer are based on one of Nvidia's reference designs, which in turn uses the AU Optonics M270QAN02.2 AHVA panel. This is currently the only known panel that supports all of the features Nvidia wanted for its first HDR-capable displays, including up to 4K resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate.
Both the Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ and Acer Predator X27 will include a direct LED backlighting system with 384 zones, a 1000-nits peak brightness and Quantum Dot film to enable HDR10 and DCI-P3 colour gamut.
Back when the Asus PG27UQ was still due to come out in Q2 2017, we were told that ‘around $2000' would be the correct ballpark in terms of price. However, given the lengthy delay, this may no longer be the case. If one of these monitors does come out in April, it will be interesting to see how things have changed in the last 15 months or so.
KitGuru Says: While it will be hard to run most Triple A titles at 4K/144Hz on current-gen hardware, I'm still very excited for these monitors to finally come out. Have any of you been waiting on 4K/144Hz to arrive before upgrading?