Asus ROG PG348Q 34-inch Curved G-Sync Monitor Review
OSD Setup And Calibration
OSD Tour
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Pressing the joystick brings up the main menu, and it is fairly comprehensive but missing a couple of things too.
First up is the Overclock control. The PG348Q runs at 75Hz natively but can be bumped up to 100Hz in 5Hz increments. A reboot is necessary after any change to refresh rate. We had no issues running our sample at 100Hz in all tests.
Game Visual includes six picture modes. Racing is the default and probably the best bet for users who don’t choose to calibrate. sRGB provides similar accuracy but locks out all adjustments and fixes brightness at 170cd/m2.
The Blue Light Filter has four levels of operation plus off. It will warm the color temperature to prevent eye fatigue along with reducing brightness a bit. We feel the same thing can be accomplished with proper image adjustments during calibration.
The Color menu controls brightness and contrast along with color saturation in some modes. You also get three fixed color temperature presets plus a user setting with RGB sliders. There is no gamma control, but if you adjust contrast properly, it isn’t needed. See our calibration notes below for full details.
The Image menu contains only the PG348Q’s overdrive control. The options are Off, Normal or Extreme. Normal provides good reduction of motion blur without visible ghosting. Extreme is more aggressive, but we could see white trails behind most moving objects.
The Input Select menu does just what is indicated. It is also the only way to change sources. Obviously for G-Sync operation and high refresh rates, you’ll need to use DisplayPort. HDMI supports native 3440x1440 signals up to 50Hz.
The OSD is available in 21 languages, can be positioned anywhere on the screen, and has a max timeout of two minutes. You can also adjust its transparency. Key Lock will turn off the bezel keys to protect your settings. Light In Motion refers to the pattern that comes from the PG348Q’s base. It has three brightness levels, or you can turn it off. You can view signal information here as well, although everything you need to know is always displayed in the upper-right corner of the OSD menu.
If you want to return the monitor to its factory settings, choose All Reset. Enabling Deep Sleep will reduce power consumption in standby mode.
GamePlus
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Like all Asus gaming monitors, the PG348Q includes GamePlus features. You get four different aiming reticules, a countdown timer and an fps indicator. You can only use a single option at a time. The fps counter doesn’t have a black box around it like we saw in the two MG-series monitors reviewed here recently. You can move it around the screen with the joystick. The reticules and timers are also moveable.
Calibration
Many Asus gaming monitors require no calibration in the Racing mode, but we found a gamma anomaly in the PG348Q that needed some attention. Adjusting the white balance produced excellent grayscale tracking but did not address the gamma problem. Our solution was to lower the Contrast slider. That took care of the issue, and overall dynamic range was not significantly affected. It’s important to make this change, because it also influences color saturation tracking and color luminance. You’ll see how it all works on page four. Please try our recommended settings below to optimize your PG348Q.
| Asus ROG Swift PG348Q Calibration Settings | |
|---|---|
| Game Visual | Racing |
| Brightness 200cd/m2 | 60 |
| Brightness 120cd/m2 | 32 |
| Brightness 100cd/m2 | 25 |
| Brightness 80cd/m2 | 18 |
| Brightness 50cd/m2 | 8 |
| Contrast | 43 |
| Color Temp User | Red 97, Green 100, Blue 100 |
I would guess that the larger market is the people who grew up gaming that are now career professionals. I suppose that doesn't imply their taste in hardware styling has matured, but personally I'm over the whole PowerRangerMegaZord kitsch that started with Alienware in the 90s.
It looks like a beautifully specd monitor. Just wish it wasnt so painfully styled.
Given you have the rig to run 4K?
My concern is relative adoption of 3440x1440 vs 4k. I *feel* like 3440 is not as widely supported as 4k, and with 4k, there's no fisheye (right?).
for ref: Currently running 3x32" surround on a 1080 (for ref concerning frame rate). 3440x1440 = 4.9M pix, 5760x1080 = 6.2M pix, and 4k = 8.3M pix.
I've tried 4K, and this is far superior. There is no 4K with similar specs. Two of the three most important things this monitor provides are missing on 4K; 100Hz, and 21:9. Before this monitor, I had a 144Hz monitor, and dropping to 100Hz was a sacrifice I was willing to make, but I'll never go back to 60Hz, even with G-Sync/FreeSync. And 21:9 is the real difference maker. The extra horizontal screen real estate is amazingly useful, and it's what provides greater immersion than ever before; probably immersion that can only be beaten with VR (not even with triples because I hated the bezels).
I don't see any adoption issues. Firstly, this format is becoming more and more popular all the time. Secondly, whether it's adopted by the masses or not, I'v had zero support issues to date. The most I've had to do is edit a config file (World of Tanks), but all other games have been completely straight forwards.
There's zero fish eye in any games. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.... I mean, your in-game FOV isn't distorted by having a wider monitor; you just see more left and right, in a completely natural manner; there's no stretching to fill it.
I've tried triples and 4K, and I firmly believe that the three most important factors in a gaming monitor, which I'll never go without again are:
21:9
G-Sync/FreeSync
100+Hz
Resolution would only be 4th on my list, and I'd even take a 2560x1080 21:9 before I went to 4K, just so I could have the 3 must haves above.
Cable management is actually good. If I recall correctly, the cables, where they plug into the monitor, are hidden behind the back cover, and then feed through the stand, coming out at the rectangular square you can see at the bottom/back of it.
I am assuming this is mostly identical to the Predator X-34? Gonna have to make a decision on which brand to go with.
I am hoping the new version, the X34P, which is supposed to have some performance improvements is released soon, to either drive this price down, or be affordable enough to upgrade.
I can't wait to fire up Forza Horizon's 3 on this badboy at max settings. Good time to be a gamer!
It uses the same panel as the Acer Predator X34, yes. The ASUS PG348Q seems to have had less issues/better QA, and the OSD and associated controls are far superior on the ASUS as well. Many also tend to prefer the PG348Q styling. Other than that, they're more or less identical.
Sim racing on these monitors, in cockpit view, is one of my favorite things. Try out iRacing if you can, and use the built in FOV calculator.
If you take a 4k monitor and chop of the top and bottom 1/6 of the screen, you get 1440p with an even wider screen. How is having additional vertical real estate bad? Assuming the 4k monitor has 100+ Hz that is variable, for the same price, I don't see how it's not better.
I love the 21:9 form factor too, and I use one at home, but at these prices, I don't see how a 1440 21:9 can beat a 4k with the same specs.
If the price was more in line with the comparative resolutions, aka it didn't cost virtually the same with <1/3 of the pixels, I would say that 1440p IPS in 21:9 with a 34" diagonal is my sweet spot too, but it just costs too much. This is pretty much the highest-end of these types of displays, especially with 100 Hz, so it's understandable, but with a comparable 4k? Why go with this?
Thanks for the input. 60hz is fine for me, especially when I gain G-sync. The extra side view with 21:9 vs 16:9 is up for debate if it is worth the extra hassle as follows. Obviously, if the game natively supports it, it is a bonus.
Everyone should do their own research on this, but what I have found from wide screen GF site is this...Fallout 4 : 4k native, 21:9 with ini hacks and/or 3rd party progs.
Witcher 3: 4k native, 21:9 doesn’t work with latest game patch 1.31.
Elite Dangerous: 4k native, 21:9 ok but UI for gal/sys map doesn’t work right.
DCS:A10C: 4K no, 21:9 hard to tell, but I think it works from what I’ve read.
These are just a few examples, but this is the kind of hassle/problems I don’t want anymore. I put up with them with my 3 screen surround set up as it is.
Going forward, I would HOPE games support both res native with no hassle/hack/bugs.
As I said, there is no 4K with the same specs (100Hz). Chopping the top and bottom off a 4k monitor? What are you doing, running a 21:9 resolution inside your 4k Monitor? No.... it's not the same thing.
And you need a bigger 4K monitor to match the horizontal width of a 21:9, but when you do match it, you're not seeing more of the game; you're just seeing a smaller amount of the game with more graphical fidelity, but also enlarged.
Out of those games, I play Elite Dangerous regularly, and everything works fine, including the maps - I'll pay attention when I next play it, but I certainly haven't noticed any issues.
It does have VESA. However, depending on the mount you use, you might need spacers to hook up the monitor to your mounting plate. I used Sanus SMF115-B1, had everything I needed to mount it up.
Only thing I don't like about the Sanus, it doesn't have height adjustment. I played with my monitor for about a week and got the height dialed in with the stand. Then I mounted the Sanus so it replicated the same height.
As for the cable management, I'd say it's meh. With the thickness of most video cables, it kinda of hard to angle the cables out of the monitor the way they want you do with the back cover on. Combine that with the USB cables and it's a tight fit. I'm not using the back cover, everything is working fine.
Wanted to add, I love my PG348Q monitor. I play mostly BF and CoD which don't seem to have any issue with 3440x1440 resolution. Game play is so darn smooth. Already forgot about the cost. This is one of my primary hobbies, so I figured why not. Zero buyers remorse.
The width is 31.5 without the bezels, but I'm guessing it's 18.5 high without the bezels. Is that right?
Width is spot on. On mine, viewable(top to bottom) part of the screen is 13-1/4.
This is coming down to “do you want 1.75 inches more on each side but 1.6 inches less on top and bottom at 80% the pix density (PG348 1440), or not (XB32 4K)?”. I believe what happens in a game is, for a given scene, you see a bit more on each side, but the same on top/bottom.
The 60 hz vs 100 hz is a can of worms, but from what I’ve seen on the web, a gamer with experience in a particular game can tell the difference between 60 and 120, so I doubt 60 vs 100 is much different. Different people seem to be more sensitive to hz and fps. So if that is Moog’s main thing, then I’m not going to dispute him, and I could understand why it would be a deal breaker for him.
Everything else about the monitors is the same.
To be clear, if I have the panel dimensions right:
PG348 ($1230) 100 hz is 31.5 W x 13.25 H for area of 417 sq in @ 3440 x 1440 for 4.9M pix and 109 ppi.
XB32 ($1220) 60 hz is 28 W x 16 H for area of 448 sq in @ 3840 x 2160 for 8.3M pix and 137 ppi.
So with the 4k, you lose 1.75” on each side, but gain 1.6” at top and bottom, and get 1.25x the pixel density.
Not an easy decision for me.
I have this monitor it's have really amazing picture quality
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<a href="http://www.shubhgems.in/yellow-sapphire/"> Pukhraj Stone</a>
Depends on the games you play. FPS like CoD and BF4, 60Hz feels sluggish to me. I had a 120Hz monitor, I could feel a difference until about 85Hz. After that it felt the same, couldn't really notice a difference between 85 and 120Hz. 1080GTX with this monitor is the sweet spot right now imho. 1080 has enough power to push this monitor for the next few years. Gaming is so fluid with Gsync.
When the hardware/monitor exist (single card gpu) to push 4k over 100Hz, I'll consider upgrading.