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We use the Open Source Response Time Tool (OSRTT), developed by TechTeamGB, for our response time testing. This measures grey-to-grey response times and presents the results in a series of heatmaps, the style of which you may be familiar with from other reviews.
Initial Response Time is the time taken for the panel to transition from one colour to another, where lower values are better. We present the initial response time, so overshoot is not taken into account and is measured separately. We use a fixed RGB 5 tolerance for each transition.
Overshoot is the term given for when a monitor's transition exceeds or goes beyond its target value. So if a monitor was meant to transition from RGB 0 to RGB 55, but it hits RGB 60 before settling back down at RGB 55, that is overshoot. This is presented as RGB values in the heatmaps – i.e. how many RGB values past the intended target were measured.
Visual Response Rating is a metric designed to ‘score' a panel's visual performance, incorporating both response times and overdrive. Fast response times with little to no overshoot will score well, while slow response times or those with significant overshoot will score poorly.
We're not focusing heavily on response times here, as all OLEDs perform pretty much the same – with near-instant response time behaviour that is the same regardless of the refresh rate.
As we know, that doesn't mean motion clarity is the same regardless of the refresh rate, and some people may not be bothered about the jump from 360Hz to 500Hz here with the FO27Q5P. It's certainly a smaller difference than the jump from 60 to 120Hz, but I'd still say it's perceptible and could be a welcome upgrade for some gamers.
It's overall very similar to 480Hz WOLED in terms of motion clarity, but I've also pulled in the AOC AG276QSG2, a 360Hz G-Sync Pulsar monitor. That screen offers even better motion clarity due to its high-grade backlight strobing technology, while it also has the benefit of being easier to drive due to its lower refresh rate. However, it's still an LCD monitor with worse contrast and generally inferior image quality to an OLED, so there's more to think about than just raw motion clarity.
The FO27Q5P offers black frame insertion, which Gigabyte calls Ultra Clear. This means that, with it enabled, you get broadly equivalent motion clarity at 250Hz as you would without BFI at 500Hz, and it's obviously a lot easier to drive games at 250fps! It does disable adaptive sync and brightness is capped at 149 nits in my testing, but it could be worth using depending on the games you play.
