MSI and Gigabyte debut new 500 Hz QD-OLED gaming monitors — 27-inch 1440p panels with high-end features

Gigabyte Aorus FO27Q5P and MSI MAG 272QP

(Image credit: Gigabyte / MSI / Future)

OLED monitors are getting more accessible, but innovation on the high-end isn't slowing down. Manufacturers are racing to increase resolution and brightness or push the refresh rate as far as possible, and this time it's the latter. 500Hz monitors are nothing new, but 500Hz QD-OLED monitors certainly are. Initially showcased at CES this year and Computex, we're slowly seeing this new crop of ultra-fast gaming monitors hit the market, and two new entrants are joining us today—one from MSI and one from Gigabyte.

The MSI 272QR and Gigabyte Aorus FO27Q5P are the latest flagships from both brands and they share identical specs for the most part. First off, both of these monitors are using the same 27-inch QD-OLED panel from Samsung under the hood, with very minor differences brought about by firmware and design choices. This is a Gen 3 panel, which means it has an updated subpixel layout that improves text readability compared to earlier OLEDs. It's also brighter, but not as much as the newer Gen 4 screens.

Text clarity difference between older and newer QD-OLED panels — (Image credit: Future)

Both are 27-inch 1440p screens with a 500 Hz refresh rate. They carry an HDR1000 certification from VESA, along with HDR TrueBlack 500 and ClearMR 21000. Keep in mind that those HDR numbers represent peak brightness in the smallest windows. The OLED screens offer near-instantenous 0.03 ms response times. There's also FreeSync Premium Pro support for VRR, and both monitors are G-Sync Compatible.

These displays have 99% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space with both claiming an average Delta-E score of under 2ΔE, which would make them accurate enough for some professional-level use. Furthermore, these are true 10-bit monitors. The real difference lies in connectivity as the MSI 272QP features 2x HDMI 2.1 and 1x DisplayPort 2.1a UHBR20, which indicates 80Gbps of bandwidth that should be more than enough to push 500 frames at 1440p without Display Stream Compression (DSC). MSI also includes a 98W USB Type-C port with DP Alt mode.

In contrast, the Gigabyte Aorus FO27Q5P has the same 2x HDMI 2.1 and 1x DP 2.1 UHBR20, but it also adds another UHBR20 Mini DisplayPort and 1x DisplayPort 1.4 out for daisy chaining. The USB Type-C port on the Aorus only supports 18W charging and does have DP Alt mode. You'll also find two 5W speakers on this monitor. The brands have also fitted custom cooling solutions behind these screens to drive the pixels without breaking a sweat.

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Both monitors come with headphone jacks, but the Gigabye also adds a mic jack. In terms of the USB ports, there are two USB 3.2 downstream ports and one USB 3.2 upstream port on the Gigabyte while the MSI is rocking a pair of 5Gbps USB Type-A and one 5Gbps USB Type-B. The last hardware difference between the display is their power management. The MSI model has an internal power supply while the Gigabyte unit comes with an external adapter.

Lastly, there are a load of OLED care features on both monitors to protect them from image retention. AI takes center stage with Gigabyte in particular using it to adjust color, resolution, and motion clarity on the fly. Both monitors come with 3 years of burn-in warranty but pricing has not been announced yet. If pricing for other 500 Hz OLED monitors is anything to go by, expect to pay around $1,000 for one of these.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

23 Comments Comment from the forums

GeorgeLY

Why? This is well beyond human abilities. Anything faster than ~100Hz is.
So, it has useless feature, it is low resolution, and it is expensive.
Pass.
Reply
usertests

GeorgeLY said:
Why? This is well beyond human abilities. Anything faster than ~100Hz is.
So, it has useless feature, it is low resolution, and it is expensive.
Pass.
Taps the sign

Blur Busters Law: The Amazing Journey To Future 1000Hz Displays
Reply
cyrusfox

GeorgeLY said:
Why? This is well beyond human abilities. Anything faster than ~100Hz is.
So, it has useless feature, it is low resolution, and it is expensive.
Pass.
1440p is good enough for me, either that or 5k, QHD I would not call Low resolution, but perhaps that is where we are now (I think FHD or HD definitely are low resolution, but technically I think only 408p/i is considered standard resolution). So low all depends on ones viewpoint/preference.

I love seeing the advent of high refresh, the only issue I see is price. bring it down to 1/3 of this price and I will start looking at picking one up.
Reply
usertests

cyrusfox said:
I love seeing the advent of high refresh, the only issue I see is price. bring it down to 1/3 of this price and I will start looking at picking one up.
I think another concern could be power consumption. From my quick AI slop check, doubling refresh rate doesn't double the power consumption, but it is higher. This could be driven down in the future by newer display technologies such as MicroLED, or by automatically limiting the refresh rate like LTPO.

Still, onward to 1000 Hz. And probably a little higher, such as 1200 Hz, which is evenly divisible by PAL/NTSC/cinematic frame rates such as 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60, 120, etc.
Reply
Mr Majestyk

GeorgeLY said:
Why? This is well beyond human abilities. Anything faster than ~100Hz is.
So, it has useless feature, it is low resolution, and it is expensive.
Pass.
It's purely for e-sports, not for the vast majority of gamers. 500-600fps is highly desired in superfast paced e-sports. 1000fps would be their holy grail.

I'm just bemused that there is an arms race to entice this small segment.
Reply
hotaru251

Mr Majestyk said:
It's purely for e-sports, not for the vast majority of gamers. 500-600fps is highly desired in superfast paced e-sports. 1000fps would be their holy grail.

I'm just bemused that there is an arms race to entice this small segment.
e-sports would be running 1080p high refresh.

1440p high refresh is just a waste even in e-sport scene.
Reply
UnforcedERROR

GeorgeLY said:
So, it has useless feature, it is low resolution, and it is expensive.
High refresh rates are about input latency more than perception, 1440p at 27 inches is 109 dpi which is quite decent (for reference 4K at 32 is 138), but I agree it's expensive.

cyrusfox said:
1440p is good enough for me, either that or 5k, QHD I would not call Low resolution, but perhaps that is where we are now (I think FHD or HD definitely are low resolution, but technically I think only 408p/i is considered standard resolution). So low all depends on ones viewpoint/preference.
Absolutely is enough. The industry standard for screen dpi for years was 72. 1440 is an excellent sweet spot between 1080 and 4K.

Mr Majestyk said:
I'm just bemused that there is an arms race to entice this small segment.
It's a larger segment than you might think. They wouldn't be fighting this hard if it wasn't.

hotaru251 said:
e-sports would be running 1080p high refresh.

1440p high refresh is just a waste even in e-sport scene.
Not true at all. Granted a lot of FPS players still play 4:3 resolutions, but the hit between 1080 and 1440 is very minimal, which is why you're seeing notably more 1440p monitors in the segment. The main thing about 1080 is you can generally have more hz (and fps in-game) due to the lower resolution, and that's really the primary reason you still see so many 1080 high refresh monitors.
Reply
Tanakoi

usertests said:
Taps the sign

Blur Busters Law: The Amazing Journey To Future 1000Hz Displays
Because some blogger wrote it doesn't make it true. The worst Hollywood film at 30 hertz (ok, actually 29.997 hz) and 1080p looks far better and more realistic than any 4K 500 hz image. Instead of generating an ever-faster stream of raw pixels, graphics power is much better spent on fewer frames, but with much better lighting, ray-tracing, physics, etc.
Reply
usertests

Tanakoi said:
Because some blogger wrote it doesn't make it true. The worst Hollywood film at 30 hertz (ok, actually 29.997 hz) and 1080p looks far better and more realistic than any 4K 500 hz image. Instead of generating an ever-faster stream of raw pixels, graphics power is much better spent on fewer frames, but with much better lighting, ray-tracing, physics, etc.
It doesn't make it false. Cinematic is actually as low as 24 Hz and nobody outside of Peter Jackson cares. Gaming and productivity (and VR if that gains market acceptance) will keep pushing frame rates up. In games, low-cost frame generation can be used to quadruple frames in the short term. Long term graphics results depend on how many decades and orders of magnitude of improvement we can squeeze out of semiconductor fabrication. Hardware progress will slow to a crawl by the late 2030s unless we transition to 3D nodes that continue to boost transistors per mm^2 and can deal with the heat adequately.
Reply
Notton

Yeah, there's no difference between a movie shot at 24fps that has scenes made for movies and a fast paced FPS/TPS game you control yourself.
There's also no such thing as artistic elements in cinematography, none.
Nor are there movies shot at 48fps, let alone 120fps.

None at all.
Reply

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