To the editors of the portal Gamemag.ru the new 4K HDR 60Hz VA monitor from the company fell on the test ASUS – CG32UQ. The price of the device in Russia is about 76 000 rubles.
The monitor comes in a huge cardboard box, made in black and green colors. Inside, it is tightly packed in a protective foam and special synthetics.
The delivery includes the screen itself, a sturdy stand, a base stand for two gamepads, a massive power supply with a cable for connecting to an outlet, a nozzle with a headphone stand, a remote control (without batteries), four special screws for attaching to the wall, HDMI-cable, Displayportcable, wire for power USBports, manual and warranty card.
Assembly is quick and easy. Using the screw built into the base, you fasten the leg, which is then inserted into a special niche on the back of the screen body. No screwdriver needed.
The wire connection is standard – through the inputs / outputs that look down and are hidden with a special plastic cover. Surprisingly, this time ASUS does not have a swivel mechanism that would allow you to rotate the screen 90 degrees into portrait mode, which would make it easier for you to access all the connectors. You can only tilt the screen towards yourself or away from you in a horizontal plane within 5-20 degrees, respectively, as well as raise and lower it within 10 cm thanks to the rail mechanism of the leg.
Designers conceived the device as the center of a hardcore gamer who plays not only on PC, but also on all modern consoles: PS4 Pro, Xbox one x and Nintendo switch. Therefore, in CG32UQ there are all necessary ports: three HDMI 2.0, one DisplayPort 1.2, one 3.5mm headphone minijack, two USB 3.0 and two USB for charging gamepads that are located on the base-stand.
Cables can be led out through the hole in the leg, but for some reason, the designers did not calculate the diameter of the gap – because of the ferrite filter, the power cable does not creep in.
The device has a hole for the Kensington lock and an audio system from Harman / kardon two speakers of 12 watts each. The sound is better than in most monitors with built-in speakers, but it lacks bass and, accordingly, volume.
The 32-inch screen makes the image epic, which is great for movie projects and games with beautiful landscape panoramas, like the same “The witcher 3” But this also means that the ASUS CG32UQ is huge – it weighs a little over 9 kg, and the base occupies a vast area of the table (250 x 515 mm).
The width of the front of the display with a frame is 729 mm, and the height is 428 mm. The frame below takes away from the screen – 20 mm. Top and sides – 15 mm.
The design of the device is distinguished by a massive base with a rubberized surface, which was conceived as a stand for gamepads, as well as the presence of 66 point LEDs located at the edges on the back of the monitor. 17 on the left, 17 on the right and 32 more on top.
Technology called Halo sync and works in much the same way as Philips Ambilight, painting the wall behind the monitor in colors that continue to display on the screen. The thing is actually very amateurish. Personally, I liked it at first, but over time I turned off all the effects, as I noticed that it distracted from the gameplay. Also, the backlight is almost invisible if the device does not stand close to the wall.
Otherwise, the appearance is inferior to the premium line of ASUS – Republic of Gamers. The materials on the CG32UQ are the most common. The blue border around the mount in the center on the back of the monitor echoes the color of the mini-joystick and the design of the system menu, which turned out to be lagging and blocks half the screen, complicating the process of setting the picture. Perhaps the designers created large menus specifically for those who would configure the device using the remote control, but for some reason made the text relatively small.
There is a convenient quick display of all the main statuses, like permission, HDR, color mode, sound settings and backlight. You can select predefined options, and then fine-tune them for yourself, including a blue filter. For me, the “Racing” mode turned out to be optimal with the manual change of the brightness and contrast parameters to 90 and 80, respectively. In this case, you get adequate grayscale, neat gradients, excellent brightness, good black LCD by the standards, and rich saturated colors with a contrast of 3500: 1.
The pixel density is 139 ppi. Image and fonts are very clear. Details do not fall into small squares as when working in Windows 10, and in games on PS4 Pro and Xbox one xif the picture was originally created in high resolution. On the Nintendo switch the situation is more complicated: those games that go to 1080p look good, and the rest are worse.
In SDR mode, the monitor produces approximately 470 nits of brightness, which is an excellent result for such a screen. In the HDR mode, it shows a maximum brightness of about 680 nits. The problem is that the ASUS CG32UQ has side lighting and 8 bits (with a full carpet, a 10-bit screen costs twice as much).
In HDR mode on a black slide, when you move the mouse cursor in a dark room, you will notice that the backlight is trying to stretch the bright areas, increasing the brightness of the LEDs on the side. In theory, this means that instead of very bright dotted highlights, the image will be overexposed, but in fact the effect is simply minimal: there is not much difference between SDR and HDR, except that the Windows 10 menu in HDR mode looks pixelated. Therefore, it’s easier to just always use the SDR mode.
SDR
HDR
SDR
HDR
Since before us VAmatrix, then the black level is not bad for an LCD with normal backlighting – about 0.13 nits. If you look at the black slides in the dark, you can see the characteristic flashes on the sides – they are not as bright as the basic IPS panels, but can still be seen when you watch dark content.
In turn, white, red, green and blue colors are displayed evenly.
Of course, VA has its drawbacks in the form of not the best viewing angles. Usually this is a small problem for the monitor, since the player almost always sits exactly in the center, but in this case, due to the huge diagonal format by the standards, a significant angle to the edges of the screen is formed, because of this, slight drops in contrast become noticeable if you sit close .
If you play on the console even at a distance of one meter, the viewing angle narrows, so the changes at the edges are almost not noticeable.
And when you look at the screen from the side or from above, the color saturation decreases already noticeably – they become faded. If you play together in front of one screen, say, in Mortal kombat, then distortions at the distant edge can be noticeable significantly.
Fortunately, there are no severe degradations when the picture goes yellow, like the outdated TN panels.
It is worth noting that the ASUS CG32UQ is a very responsive gaming monitor. The company claims that the input lag value is 13 ms, but in fact it’s still better – just 9 ms.
5 ms response time. I did not find any blurry contours and loops at the edges of fast moving objects. The main thing is to set level 2 in the OD settings. Overclocking artifacts may already be noticeable.
ASUS CG32UQ – good fast gaming 4Ka monitor with a huge screen and rich colors, which allows you to experience a television immersion on your desktop. A remote control, built-in speakers, a stand for gamepads, charging slots and wall lighting are all nice details. However, as an ultimative expensive universal device, I would not choose VA, but IPS with carpet backlight. For example, ASUS ROG SWIFT PG27UQ. Of course, its cost is higher, but at the same time you get the best image, excellent HDR, hardware NVIDIA G-Sync instead of AMD FreeSync and screen updates up to 144 Hz instead of 60. Given the fact that the next generation of consoles will have 120 Hz support, this would be a better investment.
