Asus just revealed two new tandem OLED monitors at an event adjacent to Gamescom 2025, including a flagship model that’s able to hit a blistering 720Hz (!) – at a reduced resolution of 720p – or a still-scintillating 540Hz at its normal resolution of 1440p. A 1000Hz OLED has long been the goal for display enthusiasts, and by that metric we’re now the majority of the way there.
The tandem W-OLED screens used on both the flagship PG27AQWP-W and lesser XG27AQWMG are also remarkable, with the new panels promising 15 percent higher brightness – a longtime OLED weak point – plus a 25 percent wider range of colours and even a 60 percent longer lifespan than earlier W-OLED panels, thanks to lower power requirements.
I went hands-on – or should it be “eyes-on”? – with both screens and came away impressed. The colour gamut and brightness improvements are hard to distinguish in the glaring lights of an event space – that’s why we do reviews with a colourimeter after the fact! – but the motion clarity that refresh rates this high on an OLED monitor can provide is immmediately obvious in fast-paced games like Counter-Strike 2, where you’re often trying to track (and aim at) fast-moving targets.
This monitor looks incredible from behind – which is a shame, as most people will probably put it on a desk with a wall behind. | Image credit: Eurogamer
It’s a bit hard to describe exactly how this looks in person, but the main thing is that the trails that often accompany fast-moving objects – artefacts that are called overshoot and undershoot – are basically nonexistent at this kind of speed. Everything looks smooth, with many more intermediate steps in a given chunk of time. There are even faster 750Hz TN panel monitors, to be fair, but these LCD-based panels don’t have anywhere near the raw pixel response times of an OLED – let alone the colour reproduction, contrast or viewing angles.
Of course, you will need a beastly PC to hit anything near 720fps even in older esports titles, but for a lucky few this is quite an achievement. Asus has also included a full 80Gbps DisplayPort, so you’ll be able to access that full spec without the need for Display Stream Compression (DSC). The cheaper XG27AQWMG ought to confer those tandem OLED improvements without needing an eye-wateringly powerful PC, with a 1440p 280Hz spec sheet that is a good fit for most enthusiasts, and it consequently makes do with standard HDMI 2.1 with DSC.
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Both monitors also come with a new panel coating that Asus is calling “trueblack glossy”, and it aims to combine the rich look of glossy panels without losing black depth in varying levels of ambient light. Eyes-on testing at the event with a phone torch showed concentrated reflections, unlike the diffuse reflections of matte coatings, but with a deeper black look on dark content – definitely far from the dark purple that you get on QD-OLEDs that are turned off, for instance.
The design of the higher-end PG27AQWP-W is also remarkable, with a semi-transparent rear shell that shows off some of the interesting circuitry inside. As someone that grew up with G3 iMacs and a purple see-through Game Boy Colour, I absolutely dig this. Asus has also skeletonised the monitor’s stand, presumably for aesthetic reasons, but also to reportedly reduce the amount of metal used. The XG27AQWMG is a little ordinary-looking by comparison, but does come with a more compact rectangular desk stand that allows more keyboard and mousing space.
This OLED coating demo was convincing, with the new trueblack glossy coating obviously providing better black levels and less diffuse reflections than regular glossy and regular matte coatings respectively. | Image credit: Eurogamer
There are a few feature additions too. Alongside the usual raft of burn-in countermeasures, Asus is adding a presence sensor that will automatically turn off the screen when you’re not there. “Did I leave my OLED on?” has almost become the new “did I leave the stove on?” for OLED monitor owners, so having this as a tunable option makes some sense, as long as it dims rather than turning off so that it doesn’t mess up window placements or confuse running programs.
Pricing wasn’t announced alongside the other details, but I’d guess that the flagship PG27AQWP-W to cost at least £1300, while the XG27AQWMG is likely to cost the better part of £1000, despite the less powerful panel and lower-bandwidth ports. OLED monitors are getting increasingly affordable, but tandem OLED isn’t going to come cheap – at least for a while.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a nice place to spend time checking out a new monitor like the XG27AQWMG, and at a native 1440p 280Hz, you actually have a chance of maxing it out with a high-end GPU capable of frame generation. | Image credit: Eurogamer
On that note, Asus claimed during their event that they are the number one producer of OLED gaming monitors, but they’re largely reliant on LG and Samsung for producing the actual displays – and therefore there’s no doubt that we’ll see (potentially cheaper) options based on these same fourth-generation W-OLED panels from other brands in the near future.
Based on this early look though, tandem OLED looks just as compelling in the desktop monitor space as it does for high-end TVs – even if it comes at the same staggeringly high prices.
Disclosure: Asus paid for flights and accommodation to Cologne for Gamescom so that we could see their new products in person.
