Viewsonic Elite XG270Q Review: The perfect centerpiece for your dream gaming rig

(Image Courtesy: Viewsonic)

The Viewsonic Elite XG270Q promises a lot on paper - an IPS QHD panel, easy to assemble design, a refresh rate of 165Hz with a response time of 1ms. It even has Nvidia's G-Sync technology. All of this bundled together with a unique design and of course, a gamer's Achilles heel, customisable RGBs.

With a laundry of features that all promise to impress, does the Elite XG270Q deliver? Let's take a look.

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Design

The monitor was easy to assemble out of the box and requires no tools to put together. The whole process of assembling and connecting it with my desktop took me a better part of 30 minutes. So, not complicated in the slightest.

Once it’s fully put together, the design makes a good first impression. Instead of curves, Viewsonic opts for a straight edge design with sharp lines that melds together well with the overall shape of the 27-inch screen. The sharp lines contrast with the angular inlays at the back of the monitor and present the only hint of subtle curvature at the back. It’s an intriguing aesthetic, one that captures your attention right away.

You can easily adjust the height of the stand to suit your needs, and you can tilt, swivel, or pivot the screen to make it look like a monolith slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the little touches I like is the headphone hook that can hold your cans to the side or can be neatly tucked away at the back when you are not using it. You can also run your mouse cable through a dedicated anchor that holds the wire in place and doesn’t let it get in your way during a sweaty, competitive session.

There are also fully customisable RGBs at the bottom of the screen and the back of the monitor. These sync with the Elite software to give you granular control over the lighting. There are preset modes to choose from, or you can go ahead and create a preset of your own. You can sync the RGB lights with compatible software and hardware too, unfortunately, I couldn’t test this out.

At the back of the monitor, there are two HDMI 2.0 ports, one 3.5mm audio out, Display Port 1.4, and two USB Type-A and Type-B ports. At the bottom of the screen is the expected button for power, a quick access key to toggle between preset functions or it can be customised to access anything from the setup menu, and a clicky, joy key that will help you navigate through the OSD menu and settings.

Performance

The 27-inch IPS panel has a resolution of 2560x1440 and covers an impressive 95 percent of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. It also supports HDR, which has been certified at 400 cd/m. This means it has an 8-bit colour depth, capable of producing over 16 million colours. The peak luminance of 400 cd/m makes it about 50 percent brighter compared to normal screen, while in HDR mode.

More importantly, it has a refresh rate of 165Hz with a response time of 1ms and support for Nvidia’s G-Sync technology. G-Sync is Nvidia’s proprietary adaptive v-sync technology, and if your rig has a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 GPU or higher, you can take advantage of this and turn v-sync completely off in-game. This allows your gaming desktop to take full advantage of your hardware, pushing higher frame rates while avoiding screen-tearing.

In my experience, while playing through Doom Eternal, I noticed minimal frames of tearing, it also reduces the effects of motion blur on an image thanks to Nvidia’s ULMB or Ultra Low Motion Blur technology. These two working in tandem resulted in crisp, clear images while in gameplay, and the monitor’s high refresh rate and low response times, meant that there was little to no noticeable stutters, ghosting or tearing.

The monitor also ships with preset modes that can help you quickly switch settings on the fly. Game mode, as the name suggests uses settings that are tuned for the best gaming experience, Standard is your normal preset, Custom 1 and Custom 2 allows you to customise the settings, the way you want, and there are various presets for game genres too – FPS, Battle Royale, and MOBA.

Rounding off the modes are Console, meant for game consoles, Movie, which will tune your settings for the best possible viewing experience and Web, which strangely didn’t look all that different from Standard or maybe I missed something.

Putting the technical specifications aside, the monitor is a treat for the eyes with great vibrancy to the colours, sharp details and little to no motion blur or ghosting during moving images. Though it’s a gaming monitor, it isn’t a slouch when it comes to entertainment. There are obviously some trade-offs here for better gaming performance, for example – the blacks aren’t as deep as I would like or HDR sometimes tends to wash out an image – but you won’t really notice it while you are engaged with the content. As for gaming performance, this thing is a beast as you might have guessed.

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Conclusion

At an official retail price of Rs 61,600, this thing isn’t exactly cheap and costs as much as a good GPU but this isn’t meant for people who are building mid-range or high-end gaming rigs. This is meant for the coveted enthusiast rig and if you are going to splurge, you may as well splurge on something that fits in nicely with your dream rig.

You can also find the monitor routinely at Rs 50,000 and below at online stores like Amazon, which currently has an offer going on that sees the price reduced to Rs 29,990. If you have the money to splurge, go for it or if you have the patience to wait for a sale, grit it out before you can afford it. Either way, you can’t go wrong with the Elite XG270Q.