When it comes to high refresh-rate gaming monitors, the cap for the last few years has been at 240 Hz. That's extremely fast -- and so fast that some of us would be hard-pressed to tell the difference over 120 or 144Hz monitors, though if you've been at that level for long enough, you'll certainly pick up on it, especially if you're into competitive gaming. Now, it turns out that Asus might have a 280 Hz refresh rate monitor in the works: the VG279QM, as spotted by TFTCentral, was listed on Taobao.com.
From the information on the Chinese webshop, we can tell that it is a 27 inch Full HD IPS monitor with HDR400 support, though HDR400 isn't much to write home about. The real jewel of this display is its 280 Hz refresh rate, which is impressive for any panel type, but especially on an IPS display. The listed standard refresh rate is 240 Hz, so we reckon the 280 Hz figure is achieved with a panel overclocking technology. These usually reduce display quality a little bit, but if you're looking for the ultimate competitive edge and you're someone that can harness the benefits, this might be the display for you.
Other specs include peak brightness rated at 400 nits, a static contrast ratio of 1000:1, and a 99 percent sRGB color space coverage.
Display connectors consist of two HDMI 2.0 ports and one DisplayPort 1.2 interface, which you'll certainly need at this refresh rate: At 240 Hz with Full HD, you're pushing just as much data as a 4K panel at 60 Hz, which means that at 280 Hz the bandwidth requirement exceeds that of a 4K display. That's despite only having a quarter of the pixels; naturally, you'll also need a meaty GPU to bring out the best this display has to offer.
The cherry on top, though certainly expected with a spec sheet like this, is that the display supports Adaptive-Sync / G-Sync.
The Asus VG279QM is listed for ¥3699.00, which as Chinese Yuan translates to about $530. That's a steep asking price for a Full-HD monitor, but it is, at least for the time being, a one of a kind display. If you're into competitive gaming and can benefit from the bump in refresh rate, perhaps consider keeping an eye out whether this display will make it to U.S. shelves.
