Performance
MSI say this monitor comes with a factory calibration, ensuring reliable, accurate, and visually pleasing colours right out of the box. As you’ll see in our tests in a moment this very much holds up. I actually calibrated the monitor using our SpyderX Pro and it made the monitor accuracy fractionally worse, so I’m guessing they did a more in-depth calibration.
The monitor is a little smaller than what I would normally use for productivity, but it can certainly hold its own with the 2560×1440 resolution, and again, the pixel density is excellent, so even running dual windows in the browser, text is pin sharp and easy to read. The colours, contrast, and of course, those inky blacks from the QD-OLED panel are all really popping too, which only further enhances the readability, and making it a joy to use for any kind of media consumption.
When it comes to gaming, this monitor takes no prisoners, and honestly, for my gaming needs, it’s a bit much. I like my higher pixel counts, so I “make do” with a mere 165Hz 4K OLED, and that suits me nicely. However, there’s also no getting away that you need the absolute best gaming hardware on the market to play at both 2K resolution and 500Hz refresh rates. Well, unless you’re playing some visually very basic titles, but if you want anything with modern and pretty graphics, even the top end cards will need to drop quality settings, use some scaling, and in some cases a dose of FrameGen technology to really take full advantage of those 500Hz.
But regardless of if you can get to 500FPS+ or not, one thing is for certain, your gaming is going to be incredible smooth and responsive. It supports Adaptive-Sync, as well as Nvidia G-Sync technologies, so you’ll going to get tear-free gaming with no need for V-Sync, and it’ll soak up any fluctuations in your FPS. However, the biggest advantage in my opinion is the response time, with a 0.03ms GTG time, it’s telepathically fast and responsive. Assuming you’re not running a dog of a computer that’s adding lots of latency, it’s about as instantaneous as you could hope for. You wouldn’t think it would make a difference, but you can feel it, especially if coming from an LCD or IPS panel.
No matter what you play, however, the technologies stack up to make it a great experience. With VESA Certified ClearMR 21000, VESA Certified DisplayHDR TrueBlack 500, that stunnning QD-OLED delivers thanks to its true 10-bit panel, and even supports a powerful and vibrant EOTF Boost HDR Mode for a 1000-nits experience with higher APL and luminance. There’s also VRR support over HDMI, so you can reap those features on PlayStation 5 and Xbox.
The monitor has an extensive array of colour profiles to suit different work flows, but I went through a bunch and tested them with the calibration too, and frankly they’re all pretty awful. That being said, sometimes it is just preference, so they may have use for you. However, leaving the monitor in its default ECO mode seemed superior to all, or you can use USER mode to lock in a brightness profile that suits your taste. However, there’s a comprehensive suite of OSD options should you need to calibrate or tinker at any point.
