After these days searching at the Predator X34P, Acer’s new 34" ultrawide gaming display, we have to mention that while it’s a pretty notable product, the excessive fee tag of $1,three hundred places it out of reach of finances-orientated customers. Today we're looking at a screen from Asus that brings a similar revel in for plenty much less money.

Now after I say less money, I don’t mean we’re all of sudden talking approximately a $two hundred reveal. However the Asus ROG Strix XG35VQ does are available at $800, which is an sizable $500 difference.

And we nevertheless get a lot of the identical functions: a 35-inch 3440 x 1440 VA panel with a 1800R curve, a 100Hz refresh fee, and FreeSync support. It doesn’t have the slightly better 120Hz refresh of the X34P, nor does it have G-Sync, but otherwise we’re searching at a comparable revel in for gaming.

And in case you haven’t gamed on a 21:nine ultrawide monitor, I reckon you’re lacking out as this sort of show is my non-public favorite. Throw within the 1440p-class decision and 100Hz refresh, and supplied you've got a effective enough machine, you absolutely get a high-give up visual revel in with some thing just like the XG35VQ.

Let’s take a closer look at this monitor...

Asus does a variety of box-ticking here with the layout and capabilities. The stand supports a wide variety of motion which includes height, swivel and tilt, and there’s VESA mount compatibility. The on-display display is managed through a directional toggle on the rear, which makes navigation smooth.

There’s plenty of connectivity, along with HDMI 2.zero, a separate HDMI 1.four port, DisplayPort 1.2, and a two-port USB hub.

I could give or take the aesthetics right here; Asus has a tendency to apply fairly competitive gamer style on their ROG video display units, with crimson highlights at the stand and an… interesting sample at the again. There’s even an RGB ring at the returned with Aura Sync support, which doesn’t make lots of feel on a monitor, however Asus is simply hitting all those marketing buzzwords. I guess the RGB show itself isn’t sufficient RGB for monitors in recent times.

The bezel length here is pretty excellent, below 9mm at the top and sides, at the side of a fairly chunky 29mm bottom bezel which seems regular for these kind of ultrawide shows. And the 1800R curve is sizeable, even though it does help make the rims of the display seem barely greater on your subject of view while gaming. On a sixteen:9 show I pick a flat panel, however on a 21:9 show I assume the curve works.

I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time at the on-screen display functions, because if you’ve used an Asus monitor or in reality any gaming reveal made in the last few years, plenty of the stuff here could be very acquainted. There’s the cheat capabilities like crosshairs, which Asus sneakily calls a “exercise mode”, at the side of things like low blue mild modes, adaptive contrast, and photo in photograph.

One of the more beneficial additions is ELMB, or Extreme Low Motion Blur, which strobes the backlight to suit the refresh rate, lowering movement blur. Turning on this feature causes a big hit to show brightness and photo high-quality, but the extra clarity and apparent sharpness should assist in fast paced shooters. Turning on ELMB will disable FreeSync too, so it’s now not for absolutely everyone.

Speaking of FreeSync, glaringly one of the reasons this screen is extra cheap is it uses FreeSync over G-Sync, so it’s better appropriate to AMD GPU proprietors or individuals who don’t care approximately adaptive sync. While FreeSync video display units can be a bit hit-or-pass over as FreeSync lacks the vigorous certification of G-Sync, this unique FreeSync show helps key capabilities like low framerate compensation as the refresh rate range is huge enough.

So allow’s have a look at a number of the specs Asus lists for this display, and how near the panel absolutely receives. When it involves brightness, Asus lists 300 nits, and in my testing it pretty without problems hits this with a top stage of 358 nits in my checking out. There’s no local dimming or HDR guide here, so the maximum brightness is consistent irrespective of how a great deal white is on the panel at any one time.

Asus lists a comparison ratio of 2500:1, that's general for a VA panel and one of the key advantages of this technology over IPS or TN. In my trying out I measured 2239:1 by way of default, which falls a touch short right here however continues to be decent for an LCD. And this comparison ratio is properly held at some stage in the brightness range, all the manner down to sixty two nits, the bottom brightness supported.

The one drawback to VA panels have a tendency to be their response instances, which Asus charge at 4ms gray-to-gray. On the opposite hand, you do get exquisite viewing angles, however once more now not quite as suitable as the IPS-based alternatives although.

As for uniformity, the XG35VQ falls into the equal bracket as loads of curved displays: it’s reasonably terrible on this region. With a brand new 7x5 test grid for uniformity, we are able to truly see the edges of the panel deviate significantly from the center, with deltaE values over five.zero in some instances. When viewing strong shades or all-white backgrounds, those troubles are extremely great, but it’s not specific to this panel: nearly each curved display I’ve tested suffers inside the equal way.

Power intake is first rate, whilst calibrated to two hundred nits of brightness the panel uses just 45W of juice, even though that will increase to over 60W at most brightness levels.