Gigabyte M32UC 32″ Curved 4K 144Hz Gaming Monitor Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The gigabyte M32UC 32″ Curved Gaming Monitor is available now from Amazon for around £670, and while I’ve seen it a little cheaper at some retailers, they often still have additional shipping costs to factor in any way. It’s not a cheap monitor, that’s for sure, but it is a large panel, with a high resolution, and a high refresh rate and those things do not come cheap when stacked together. I wouldn’t say it’s overpriced though, it’s a fair price for the level of features on offer. That being said, this monitor would have been a hell of a lot more expensive just a few years ago, but these premium features are trickling down to more consumer-friendly levels.

Overview

This monitor isn’t perfect, with a few tweaks it could be a truly great monitor, but as it stands, and at this price range, it’s still one of the more competitive options out there. So what can be improved? Well for starters, the stand could allow for some left-to-right rotation. The stand is quite large so dragging the whole thing around my desk to turn the display away from a bright light source was a bit of a pain. Hardly a deal breaker for me though, as if I owned it, it would be wall mounted, but it’s something to consider.

Colour

The next issue is the colour settings. This monitor has a really kick-ass 6-axis colour calibration system and a plethora of display settings that allow you to tinker with just about everything. However, for the most part, these settings are locked out if you use any of the pre-set profiles such as Standard, Movie, Gamer or the best one, sRGB. It’s even more locked down when you switch into the HDR mode. Gigabyte aren’t the only ones that do this, but honestly, it makes zero sense to me. I want SRGB on, but I want to adjust the other settings as I see fit. However, relenting, I’d say just put the monitor in User mode, set the tone to Warm and dial in your preferred brightness, and leave it at that, and you’ll get an extremely good picture and great colours.

High Res, Hi Refresh

There’s a lot to love though, and having both a 4K resolution and a higher refresh rate, such as 144hz in HDMI mode or up to 160Hz in DisplayPort mode with OC, is a real game changer. I have all the pixels I need for seeing the detail in my editing work or having lots of information on-screen in general. I can see far-away enemies in games like Apex Legends with great detail, making those long sniper shots so much easier. Plus, when things are fast-moving, the high-refresh-rate means things look crystal clear. The only issue with both 4K and high refresh rates is you need a pretty beefy GPU to get the best out of both simultaneously.

Added Value

There are some great bonus features too, such as on-screen overlays, giving you crosshairs, FPS and timers that can give you a great advantage in many competitive games. The built-in KVM switch means I can have my desktop setup, and my work laptop setup, and at the press of a button the monitor switches between the two systems with the same keyboard and mouse seamlessly switching between them. 1ms MPRT Response with SuperSpeed VA is nice too, albeit I don’t take my gaming that serious and the big refresh rate alone is all I need. The backlight is really powerful too, and there’s a really fantastic anti-glare coating on the panel, so watching in a bright room is very easy.

Should I Buy One?

If you’re looking for a large panel, a big refresh rate and a high resolution, you’ll find everything you need right here. There’s certainly a little room for improvement on future models, but certainly, there are no red flags that’d put me off from buying one. The brightness is great, the colours are very accurate, and the black levels are really good. If you think your PC is up to 144hz and 4K at the same time, you’ll be very impressed with it!