Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED Review

The Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 is the fourth OLED screen we've reviewed over the last year and it's another impressive piece of kit. It may not be without its flaws, but depending on your use case, there is certainly a lot to like here.

Primarily, we know by now what an OLED panel can offer in terms of its gaming prowess, and that presents in two key ways – unmatched response times and highly impressive HDR. Both are on show here, as we measured sub-1ms response times across the refresh range, while per-pixel dimming results in an impressive HDR experience.

Factor in the vibrant and punchy display, with OLED's infinite contrast ratio lending an incredible depth to the image, and we have a very good looking screen indeed.

There are issues, however, with overall brightness being a concern. You either have to contend with a very aggressive ABL, resulting in noticeable changes to overall brightness depending what is being shown on screen – or you have to settle for a rather dim 200 nits brightness when using the Brightness Stabilizer mode. Neither is ideal – in practice I found myself using Brightness Stabilizer when browsing the web, but disabling it every time I played a game, which got a bit annoying after a while.

For those who use a single monitor for multiple purposes – i.e. those who don't solely game on their monitor – the text fringing could also be a problem. This is inherent to LG's WOLED displays, and while you may get used to it after a while, I still found myself getting slightly irritated by the fringing even after having the 27QHD240 on my desk for over a month. If you only game on your monitor then it's not a problem, but if you work from home for instance and do a lot of text-based work, then I personally think I'd struggle to deal with the fringing day in, day out.

As good as the HDR is too, it's not as good as we've seen from some other OLED displays. We measured a peak of below 700 nits for a 5% APL, when other screens are close to 800 or even 900 nits for a similar window size. Don't get me wrong, even at this brightness level the HDR still looks great and is a mile above anything you'd get from an LCD, but equally I have used brighter screens.

For a monitor that costs over £1000 depending where you look, those issues do get amplified. I maintain the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 is worth buying, especially if you only use your monitor to play games and want to max out the 240Hz refresh rate in fast-paced multiplayer games. The annoying ABL and fringing, however, could dissuade a chunk of the audience, so it will be interesting to see what 2nd Gen OLED monitors can bring to the table.

We did see the 27QHD240 for £920 from Amazon UK HERE though the price has since gone up. It's available from Overclockers UK for £1049.95 HERE.

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Pros

• Gorgeous panel with perfect contrast.
• Sub-1ms response times.
• Superb motion clarity at 240Hz.
• OLED is great for HDR with per-pixel dimming.
• Two HDMI 2.1 ports.
• Integrated KVM.

Cons

• Aggressive ABL results in noticeable changes to brightness depending on what's on screen.
• HDR brightness isn't the highest we've seen.
• Colour fringing around text may be noticeable for some.

KitGuru says: It's a great gaming display and excels if you can push the framerate close to the 240Hz refresh. There are some downsides though, with the limited brightness being the main drawback.

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