Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Response & Lag
To learn how we measure screen uniformity, please click here.
While TN screens have visibly improved their viewing angles in the past three years, they still lag behind their IPS and VA competitors. As long as you don’t plan to play games from a 45 degree side or top angle, you’ll be fine. Our only suggestion pertains to multi-monitor setups, where you should be very precise about placement. Asus makes that easier thanks to its alignment feature in the GamePlus menu. Compared to other modern TN panels, the MG28UQ looks about the same. We had no issues with its head-on image quality.
Screen Uniformity: Luminance
Our MG28UQ sample suffered from a center hotspot and a little extra brightness down the right side. The tonal transitions are smooth and there are no obvious blotches present. Obviously this is an individual problem, seeing as how the U2879VF managed a better score. The issue didn’t harm gameplay at all but we could see a little extra brightness in shadow detail displayed in the affected zones.
Here’s the white field measurement.
The white field test is affected by extra output in the same center and right-hand zones but not nearly as visibly. We couldn’t see a problem in either the 100 percent field pattern or any other brightness levels. You won’t see the issue until you get to the darkest points in the scale. This is acceptable performance.
Screen Uniformity: Color
Fortunately our MG28UQ sample displays nearly perfect color uniformity. Whites are neutral regardless of where they appear on the screen. This is an exceptional result.
Pixel Response And Input Lag
Please click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.
We doubt anyone will be able to discern the three millisecond difference in panel response among our test subjects. All run at 60Hz so the variation is likely due to the various overdrive implementations. The MG28UQ’s motion blur is equally minimal and can be further reduced with the Trace Free slider. 60 is the sweet spot where you get the best resolution and the least ghosting.
Here are the lag results.
It’s clear that among our six Ultra HD gaming monitors, only the AOC has enough lag to cause a visible problem in fast-paced gaming titles. The rest will provide a good experience for all but the most skilled players. We had no trouble enjoying an afternoon of fragging during our gaming tests.
Gaming With FreeSync
The first order of business is to tailor our games detail levels to keep the action at or above 40 fps. In Tomb Raider this means High detail when played on the Radeon R9 285 system. We also found improvements by turning V-sync on. Without it, framerates below 40 resulted in annoying shimmering artifacts when moving past subtly-textured surfaces like wood or stone. Fine detail doesn’t tear as obviously as, say, a telephone pole or vertical edge. But the pulsing effect can be distracting. The triple-buffer setting also bumped up the refresh speed a little. The rate almost never dropped into the 30s. And we saw no additional input lag.
Attempts to play Far Cry 4 reminded us that it’s high time we upgraded our FreeSync test system. Even on Low detail framerates barely cracked 20. V-sync took care of tears but judder and input lag was well below what anyone would consider playable.
Battlefield 4 is the least-demanding title we use for testing and it proved easy to play on High detail at 50-60 fps. There was nothing to report here except smooth detailed motion processing with no ghosting or significant blur. While we prefer the higher contrast of the Acer Predator monitors we just finished reviewing, the MG28UQ provided us plenty of fun as we moved through the urban landscapes with all vertical lines and textures intact. At this point, the only way an Ultra HD gaming experience can be improved upon is with higher refresh rates. Hopefully we’ll see new screens with DisplayPort 1.3 in the very near future.
