How Much Does it Cost?
Amazingly, this monitor is not as expensive as I thought it would be. Cooler Master has put the more basic non-RGB version of its stand on this monitor, and it comes with a more traditional VA panel, but beyond that, it’s really delivering premium-quality performance, and it’s doing it for just £219.99. That’s truly amazing value and frankly, if you’re not already spamming the buy now button, I’d be surprised.
Overview
I think Cooler Master has struck gold with this monitor, and I can see it selling out very quickly indeed. It’s just striking right at the heart of what the majority of PC gamers are wanting right now. Firstly, it looks cool, it is a really nice-looking monitor that has the same design DNA we saw on their £799 flagship model, so for a more affordable model to look pretty much just like it is really nice to see.
Colours
The colour reproduction is superb too, and while sure, you can get better on other monitors, you’ll struggle to beat it at this price range. It’s clear that more “expensive” panels are filtering down into more affordable models now, as we shift to newer technologies on the high-end models, such as Fast IPS, Mini-LED, Micro-LED and OLED. It’s good enough to do colour-sensitive video and image editing, and when it comes to watching movies, TV or playing games, the image just looks great overall. There’s HDR support too, which does give you a wider colour gamut, but it’s fairly basic, and obviously limited by the backlight technology, so not great for movies or TV in HDR, but I played some Apex and Sea of Thieves with it on, and they hyper-saturated look of those games did look decent in HDR, but personally, I’m sticking with the superior SDR mode.
Fast
At 165 Hz, this monitor is plenty fast, and when it comes to gaming, anything North of 120Hz is a real game changer. You’re effectively cutting input latency and response times to about 1/3rd of what you get at 60Hz, so the action feels tighter and more responsive, fast-moving cameras and objects look nice and clear, and it’s just a better gaming experience. Plus, getting high frame rates at 2560 x 1440 is attainable on a good mid-range card from the last couple of generations. Typically if you can hit 60 Hz at 4K in a game, dropping down to 2K and doubling the FPS is going to be easy.
Should I Buy One
27″ and with a 1500R curved panel, the Cooler Master GM27-CQS really just feels like it’s perfectly situated to be a gold standard for what a good monitor should be. It’s a good size, it has a fast and attainable maximum refresh rate, with FreeSync premium, it’s got a fast response time of just 0.5ms, the colours are awesome right out of the box, and the price is an absolute bargain, in a range your average consumer could sensibly afford. Honestly, at a little over £200, there’s almost no excuse for not having a great gaming monitor these days.
