ASUS TUF Gaming VG279 Gaming Monitor Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The ASUS TUF Gaming VG279QM HDR Gaming Monitor is available right now for just £369.99. I think that is tremendous value for money given the level of features and performance. Sure, it’s a lot for a 1080p monitor, but this is far from a standard monitor. I can see this one being a HUGE seller for ASUS in the competitive gaming and enthusiast market.

Overview

Right out of the box, this monitor impressed me and continued to do so throughout our testing. It’s really well made, and everything fits and moves with confidence. Nothing squeaks, nothing feels loose, and everything just feels like a quality product. Of course, being ASUS and part of their TUF range, which really does mean TOUGH, then that’s no big surprise.

Calibration

The out of the box profile was set to “Racing” which seemed a bit strange, and there wasn’t a single profile called “default” or “normal”. The closest I could see would be sRGB mode. I Didn’t do a full calibration on this monitor though, I just didn’t see the point, I truly didn’t. It was scored at 5/5 for Gamut, 4/5 for tone response and 4/5 for colour accuracy by our testing software. Setting that to sRGB improved tone response by half a point and colour accuracy by half a point but at the cost of some vibrancy and brightness. It seems to think that the blues are too high, but I can’t see it, the monitor looks awesome and the colours are great. It’s set up way better than some professional monitors, leave the settings at default and you’ll be very happy.

Performance

Awesome colour reproduction is one thing. However, that’s not a big surprise for an IPS panel really. What is impressive is the response time of around 1ms. Fast IPS is impressive, and doing so at a whopping 240Hz or even 280Hz if you push the monitor into the overclocked region.

Contrast is superb, with inky blacks that one should expect from HDR 400. Obviously 400 isn’t the most HDR you can get, but when you’re sitting 2-feet from it, it’s plenty.

The refresh rate is king here though, and being able to throw G-Sync between 40 and 280 Hz is amazing. You’ll never need to worry about stutter again. However, keep in mind that you’re asking a LOT of your GPU to get North of 200FPS, even at 1080p, you’ll be wanting a flagship GPU to really get the best from it. A 1660 Ti may get you to 144Hz in Fortnite, but it’ll be an RTX 2080 Super or 2080 Ti to get you around 240+.

Should I Buy One?

If you take your gaming pretty seriously, then this monitor is here for you. It’s really ticking all the right boxes, ultra-fast refresh rates, awesome colour reproduction, G-Sync, fast response rate, Extreme Low Motion Blur Sync, and more. It’s a bit of an investment, but one that you’ll never regret. Highly recommended.