Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2019
This review is broken up into categories, so feel free to skip to what interests you!
History:
So, it's been about a year now trying to decide on the perfect gaming monitor for my wife and I. We've been using budget gaming 1080p 24" monitors from Asus/Acer for years now. I was ready for something truly better overall for both of us, but the choice is hard. At first, I was looking primarily at 24" 1440p 144hz monitors. In fact, I grabbed a Dell S2417DG on Black Friday 2018 after some moderate research. I wanted a $500+ panel, but at $299, I thought the Dell would give at least as good image quality as my current TN Asus with better response rate. Then if I got something better later, I could give my wife the Dell. However, the Dell had horrible issues with Contrast, Banding, and Gamma. Tweaking Gamma/Contrast & Applying Color corrective profiles made banding horrible! And even with the colors more accurate, they were severely muted. Increasing them in software just creates more banding and clipping. What a mess! I also realized the 1440p and 24" does not work well in this day and age. Windows 10 scaling is crap, and various games have various issues with interfacing sizing, etc.
I got tired of this nonsense and decided to start researching again. Months of research went by and prices were coming down. But honestly, I was scared to buy another TN panel. Sure, they can have fantastic response rates, but finding one that actually has a good picture/color seemed difficult. IPS and VA just look better. VA seemed like a good option, but I didn't really want curved, the Samsung Q70's stand wouldn't work for me, and VA seemed to be back to bad response unless it was the Quantum Dot. So, I nixed the cheaper VAs. So that left the IPS panels. Any 1440p 144hz IPS panel was $400+, and I was almost willing to do it....
But then I kept coming back to this Pixio. I had watched it release and get great reviews, and it always hovered at $260. If I could live with IPS glow and getting "only" 95Hz, it seemed like the perfect option. At least something that will hold us over for 5 years while gaming monitor tech improves. (Can't wait for OLED 144Hz+ to be a feasible thing once they fix burn in)
So, I pulled the trigger and ordered two Pixio PX275h. I justified the 95Hz in a few ways.
1. We're not pro gamers, and we don't play FPS that often.
2. Image Quality is more important the slightly more speed
3. 95hz with a good response rate should be clear enough
4. We don't buy top end video cards and like to max our settings, so at 1440p, many games won't average much over 100FPS anyways.
5. The 30-95Hz Freesync range is fantastic and better for strategy games than the 48-144, were it flickers when you drop below 48FPS.
Build Quality (6.5/10):
First off, after buying and receiving 2 of these monitors, I had to buy a 3rd to replace one of the first two, as it had 2 bad pixels and some kind of splotch inside the screen. That one also had a misaligned stand mount so it was a paint to get it assembled. So it loses a point for the defective model. The physical build of the monitor is fine. Nothing premium or low end, just average, which is fine. The stand is fairly sturdy, and save for the difficulty of getting one of them on due to misalignment of the backer plastic, work fine. Could it be better? Definitely. But at this price point, I’m just happy it’s metal, sleek, not creaky. The screen stays stable on the table, which is fine. Would’ve liked a more adjustable stand like the Dell had, but I do like the look and feel of this simple metal stand.
The OSD is a mixed bag. While it has most of the adjustments I’d like, it’s a learning curve to use. The buttons are stiff and feel kind of cheap. They layout of the buttons isn’t horrible, but isn’t terribly intuitive either.
I’m also taking points off her due to 1 out of 3 panels having defects.
Image Quality (8.5/10):
This is why we went IPS. The Image Quality is FANTASTIC! Brightness and Contrast are great, but colors are what really pop, looking real and not over saturated. We do a lot of photo editing, so we were hoping that this would be the case, and it is! My only complaint on the colors are the OSD color adjustments. When you do user adjustment, you get an RGB scale from 0 to 100, but going from the starting point, 50, to 49 or 51 makes a massive difference! It should be much smaller increments. Also, tweaking these seem to mess up different shades of gray. I found 51 on red and 49 on green to be our sweet spot for a slightly warm look but still neutral look.
So why only 8.5? Well, 0.5 off for the OSD color adjustment issue, and the other 1.0 off due to mild IPS Glow and mild color banding. First, I expected IPS glow, and all three monitors had about the same amount of glow coming from the bottom two corners. It’s pretty much as expected, not better or worse, but I still take off a point because it does hinder dark scene quality. Then there’s the banding. It’s not bad, don’t get me wrong, but I expected gradients to be perfect. WAY better than the Dell S2417DG, but not as good as I’d expect on an 8-bit IPS panel. Now, I am using Display Port not HDMI, so that may be part of it. I cannot select 10bpc even though it appears as an option. This also means I can’t use HDR, which is fine, as I don’t particularly care about.
Viewing Angles are very good.
But overall, the panel as a whole looks fantastic 98% of the time, and I’m happy I went IPS with current options.
Motion/Gaming (7.5/10)
So this was the big one for me. A monitor needs to look good, but for gaming, I really wanted smooth motion and retained sharpness during motion. I really didn’t want to take a step back from the Dell S2417DG, but with IPS or VA, there was no choice without spending a boatload. But I’m fairly happy with how the screen handles motion. Just using my eye, I can tell that moving objects are not quite as sharp as the Dell was. But it is leaps and bounds better than my old 60hz TN panel. But smoothness is great. Freesync works to keep FPS stutters less noticeable, and artifacts such as ghosting or inversion are minimal. I use the “High” option for response rate. That being said, side by side with a good 144Hz IPS panel, I’m sure you’d notice the difference in fast paced action. So the question for the buyer becomes is it worth the added cost? If this monitor is as good as a $450 IPS 144hz with the same specs, save for the slower 95hz, then is it worth the 70% added cost for a 50% high potential frame rate? For me, the answer was no. Had the 144hz version of this screen be available and $350 or less, I would have gone for that.
So the conclusion here is that it is significantly better than 60hz, but not quite as good as a good 144hz IPS panel. No surprises there.
Sounds Quality:
Who Cares? I wish it had been $10 less and not included speakers. What a waste on a screen like this! I guess it’s for LAN parties or for content creators who need just occasional audio, but I feel that 99.9% of users of a screen like this will use dedicated speakers or headphones.\
Conclusion:
If you want to get particular about your screen, there is no perfect technology out there. OLED promises to be the future, but not yet, and they still have to fix burn in issues. For now, you have to decide between 1 of the 3 flawed panel types out there. If I could spend $400-500 on a screen and get a perfect 1440p 144hz monitor with no motion blur, no backlight bleed/IPS Glow, perfect color/contrast/black levels, and perfect viewing angles, I would. But even at $600-800, you don’t get perfection, and that’s a shame. But if you want a gaming panel that just compromises a little bit here or there without any major glaring flaws, this is a good option!
