Amazon.com: Customer reviews: MSI Full HD Gaming Red LED Non-Glare Super Narrow Bezel 1ms 2560 x 1440 144Hz Refresh Rate 2K Resolution Free Sync 27” Curved Gaming Monitor (Optix MAG27CQ)

Top positive review

Simply Amazing and Very Customizable

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2018

The OPTIX AG32C is an absolutely amazing monitor! I set it up and started watching some TV to warm the screen up for about an hour. After that the fun began, and I started gaming. Here's my personal take on it in a few different games.
PUBG: Amazing colors both highs and lows, the low lighting in this game is a fantastic fit for the monitor and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Fortnite: Vibrant colors were sweeping the screen at an amazing pace without screen-tear or any blur. This monitor performed wonderfully.
Far Cry V:The game played beautifully, and the curved screen and amazing color range gave the game a very immersive feeling.
World of Warcraft: This is another game where the vibrant colors play a big role in the game. This monitor made everything extremely visually pleasing and the pop of the colors was magnificent.

The only downside to it though is that my monitor took a week to arrive and had a single dead pixel, and don't feel like waiting two weeks for a replacement and going through all the trouble.

Other than that, I would highly recommend this monitor to ANYONE. It has a fantastic color range that can be toned to whichever settings you would like, and a wide variety of settings and and modes to play with to make your experience as unique as you would like. And for the price, you aren't going to find another monitor that beats this one in quality and style.

38 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

Edge1973

Good performace while under its meager 24 month warranty, after that, good luck...

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2023

SO, you know they say that companies do the due diligence in finding out how long their product should last and try to give a warranty that they can safely back and make a generous profit. Well, 24 months was about it, for this one. As shortly after my monitor started having lines across the bottom of the monitor, it has only gotten worse and worse. I have been meaning to review this monitor for a while. Shame that warranties are getting to be less and less, as companies know the junk they are selling is not going to last long at all and they do not want to pay for any returns. I have two other monitors that I have been using for 14 years now and are still great monitors. If I hadn't gotten used to curved widescreens I would use them as main gaming monitors. Although the time on them are like 1.5 ms instead of 1ms or less that you can get now days. Solid monitors though.
Btw, this was a pretty decent monitor while it held up. Fast, pretty, good color, it is decent enough for the price, again, sans its longevity. I dislike the button on the back to control everything. Other monitors use this button in conjunction with other buttons, this one uses it for EVERYTHING sans the power. Best thing to do is try to find the software and use the app on your computer to adjust settings.

4,539 total ratings, 1,606 with reviews

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From the United States

Tim Hicks

Simply Amazing and Very Customizable

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2018

Size: 32 inStyle: Optix AG32CPattern: MonitorVerified Purchase

38 people found this helpful

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Croquinho

An excellent gaming monitor

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2021

Size: 32 inStyle: Optix AG32CPattern: MonitorVerified Purchase

I had a friend of mine I often game with tell me about this monitor, which he had bought. I had not known of a monitor that had a separate power supply, with a 12 volt connector, but that's okay with me. What did impress me, was the 1 millisecond response time, and 144 frame refresh rate. When gaming, these things matter. It was easy to set up, but you need to do a little researching up to choose the refresh rate through Windows, or your video card control panel. There is a lot of settings you can choose from, to optimize your needs, so it can work FANTASTIC! I have an MSI video card, and setting things up with that control panel is super easy. The wide, and curved screen does take a little getting used to, but I adapted quite quickly. The 32" screen size is great, and watching videos on it makes it look like I am watching TV. I have noticed that some text appear a little fuzzy, and not as crisp as I would expect, though it isn't bad at all. The colors POP, and my oh my, the game scenes look so darn real I had found myself trying to look around the side of the monitor to know what was there during a game, then laughing at how realistic it was! Hands down, this is the best monitor I have used.

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VampireRX

Perfect

Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2020

Size: 32 inStyle: Optix AG32CPattern: MonitorVerified Purchase

Like many, I hope, I read a lot of reviews for months before pulling the trigger on expensive tech. This decision was tough, I knew what wanted to have in a monitor and went YouTube and google nuts researching.
Decided on this, glad I did.
It comes with both an HDMI and display port cables. Coming from a 60hz 27 inch to this was awesome, I used to have a lot of edge bleed and ghosting or tearing, using a 5700xt Radeon which murders most games will do that. I set it 165hz as advertised and with a 1ms gtg it handles everything I do with it, even when it hits 250+ avg FPS I get no tearing, very impressed. The colors are vibrant, darks are actually dark now, and it’s bright to, factory default brightness is 80% and that’s bright enough, a lot monitors have great color and blacks yet are too dim, not this one. It’s spot on. The stand is very sturdy and has almost no wobble in it, even if I hit my desk hard it’s solid.
The red backlight on the rear face is nice too, gives you a theater type feel to it when watching it in the dark.
All in all, great monitor no DOA or bad pixels, would definitely recommend to anyone who is looking for 1080p 32” with high refresh rate and good contrast.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Make the jump to 144hz (if you can)

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2018

Verified Purchase

Simply amazing (if you have the computer to utilize it). I don't know why there haven't been many official reviews of this monitor yet. This a great monitor at a good price. The build quality is pretty good, very sturdy and smart looking, but a little industrial. Even without the 144hz refresh rate, the panel looks great. Colors are nice and rich. It is a VA panel, so better than a TN, but not quite as nice as a IPS panel. There is also a nice range of adjustability for finding a good viewing angle. The curved shape of the display is more immersive (for gaming) than a flat panel.

Making the jump from 60hz to 144hz is amazing if your'e a gamer who has a computer to run games at frame rates above 60fps. You will also notice it when using the cursor and scrolling through web pages and apps.

Some other thoughts: This monitor comes with a HDMI cable AND a DP cable. You should use the DP cable because it is the only way to get a true 144hz refresh rate. If you use an HDMI cable, you can only get 120hz. You can read this in the (bare-bones) user manual. The monitor is easy to set up, but you will need a screwdriver to mount stand to the base. The case bezel is tiny, but there is a boarder around the panel itself, so the empty space between the display and physical end of the monitor is about 5/16th of an inch (still very thin).

6 people found this helpful

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Peej

This monitor is AMAZING! Here is a few tips and things to look out for before purchase!

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

FIRST EXPERIENCE AND OPINIONS *jump past for my recommendations and tips new and veteran pc gamers

This monitor is incredible! Jumping from 1080p to 1440p is phenomenal. its not going to be as nice as a 4k screen but 4k is absolutely not ready for competitive gamers like me. I cannot be handicapped by low fps or low refresh rates. This monitor has a lot of settings to pick from within the intuitive UI menu accessible from the rear joystick like button. The monitor has 3 refresh rate settings (Normal Fast Fastest). Fastest is enabled with the use of the anti motion blur setting in the menu. I personally use fast as using fastest lowers the screens brightness down 40 percent or so. In all honesty, I could not feel the difference between fast and fastest, I still destroyed players in Rainbow and Fortnite :D With the addition of FREESYNC 2 and other cool color management settings, this monitor is one great value for performance.

THINGS I HIGHLY RECOMMEND DOING AND LOOKING OUT FOR DURING INITIAL USE or PRIOR TO PURCHASE!
-Make sure you have sufficient desk space for this beast, the pictures do not really show how far back the monitors rear leg gets. This monitor needs close to a foot of clearance from the back of the panel to the wall or whatever you have your desk near (that is how i measured)

-it is EXTREMELY important that you have decent hardware before purchasing this display, if you are unsure if your machine can handle this monitor at the settings in game you to run it on, type your computer specifications into YouTube and take a look at benchmarks. I would say if your rig cant hit at least 60 fps minimum on 2K on your settings, I would advise looking into a different monitor. (my system has an NVIDIA RTX2080 and a Ryzen 7 2700x, works brilliantly for my tasks)

- Run thorough checks of the hardware and peripherals that come with the unit, I received two monitors within a week. My first one was replaced by my second. My first display seemed fine until I noticed a little too much light bleed and some dead pixels on the bottom right. I eventually exchanged it and got my replacement 2 days later. after running some light and screen tested I found that the second one had a perfect screen but the stand and feet I received were busted. There was this little red ring above the feet that came damaged. Additionally the second unit was quite wobbly (material quality 3/5 not much attention to QC). I took the screen from the new one and just used my old stand and everything is fantastic.

-If you made it this far you are probably fairly impressed with this monitor, for newer PC gamers (yes do not buy this monitor for console games, you are essentially throwing money in a fire with all that unused technology just sitting there) this panel does not automatically switch to 144hz by itself, you need to enable and change this setting within windows display settings or through your GPU control center.

-If you are buying this monitor for anything other than PC gaming, I highly think you are wasting your money as many of the features in this monitor are aimed towards the PC gamer. You can grab a better monitor for productive use for half the price with the same resolution. Do not get me wrong, this display has some great color reproduction and a lot of settings for the productive person. However, a big portion of the pricetag of this monitor is directly aimed at the needs of a PC Gamer.

I wish you all luck and excitement with your new monitor!
if anyone wants to request more pictures of the display, reply to the review :D

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

AnotherGuy

Most amazing monitor ever laid eyes on

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

This monitor is simply... Brilliant.. Here is an extremely in-depth review of this beloved monitor (yes it has cons)

Pros:
- Beautiful display, crystal clear.
- Extremely accurate colors
- Contrast is impeccable.
- Build quality is very strong and sturdy (was worried because of the small bezels).
- The frequency and response time is out of this world.

Cons:
- VESA mount 100 x 100mm is very misleading. The manufacturer provides virtually zero guidance. You need to go to their website and then unzip a file to get their PDF manual (which is ridiculous, they link you to this page with a QR code on their one page pamphlet of a manual included in the box, I had to get on my laptop and find it because of the zip file). The holes on the back of the monitor are placed in an extremely poor spot, it’s not true VESA if I need to get longer screws to fit a VESA mount on the back. The plate of my mount won’t sit inside the hexagon shaped bezel where the stand sits (you can see this displayed in the manual and the pictures I posted), I’m guessing only VESA mounts with the corners missing the edges can actually fit inside. Be very careful with which VESA mount you choose. If this wasn’t such a great monitor, I’d take a star for that.
- 1 or 2 grayed pixels.
.. It did have a one or two lightly grayed pixels in the top left corner, but due to the pixel density of the 1440p screen (roughly 113ppi) it’s hardly noticeable. It looked like a dirty spec on white screens like Web Pages, Word, and Excel but only for a second and while I noticed it, it was very easy to forget about (honestly forgot about it completely but remembered for the purpose of this review as I couldn’t think of any other cons). You can take my review with a grain of salt as my primary use is for gaming. I just do some programming for school and fun, didn’t bother me with that either.

Other reviews of monitors said this is an extremely little amount for bad pixels and honestly better to just bite the bullet than fight it because the next monitor could have even more. I’m not sure if this is acceptable or not but MSI doesn’t have major promises. I’d still give this product 6 stars if I could.

Other thoughts:
- The anti-motion blur (“fastest” response setting) creates a lot of ghosting on Windows.. I didn’t notice any of it in the heat of a game though. In fact, the “Fastest” setting reduces brightness and creates more ghosting than “Fast” setting, so I typically just use Fast for everything. It is by far the best.
- Eye-saver setting really ruins color (with good reason), but I could see it being great for productivity, I can’t stand the color but I noticed INSTANT eye strain relief when I switched to it for web browsing. It was the strangest sensation.
- SteelSeries GameSense doesn’t really have any compatibility at the moment and I didn’t have the patience to try and create custom profiles as it allows for... I can’t even see the LEDs while I’m gaming at a ridiculous pace like CS:GO and Overwatch. But it is cool to look at when you happen to notice or walk in to see your whole rig, with the LED lights synced up with your chassis (there is no setting for this, I had to sync it manually).
- Overwatch and CSGO (CS:GO) look SPECTACULAR. The frequency and resolution are amazing. I have a GeForce 1080 Ti, and it’s pushing over 300 FPS at my settings, and still accomplishing roughly 110 FPS on highest (epic) settings on Overwatch.
- The Freesync can’t work with GeForce but if you push over 144 FPS, it’s not noticeable. I noticed a tiny bit of stutter when it dipped below 100fps at higher settings, but it was still much better than 60hz, and would be improved further with an AMD card with Freesync.
- My gameplay vastly improved at both games with hitscanning and twitch/flick shots, and I credit it highly to the new monitor. The response times are just ridiculous. I had a 24” 1080p 144hz AOC monitor before and could never achieve the beautiful fluid motion I have got with this monitor, it’s unreal.

10/10 would buy this monitor again, might even wait until it’s a better price for 3x displays.

25 people found this helpful

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Cloutier

Well worth every penny

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2019

Size: 24 inStyle: Optix MAG241CPattern: MonitorVerified Purchase

TLDR; Great monitor, highly recommend if you're a gamer. Added a quick snapshot of the Side-by-side of my new MSI / Old Lenovo

Went into a local tech store just to browse around and stumbled upon a curved monitor, they had it as display so you could sit down and test it out. Fell in absolute love!

So I decided to browse around and see what I could find, I looked at some Dells, BenQ's, Lenovo, HP, etc. And thought to myself, "hmm I'm a huge fanboy of MSI I bet they have something". Believe me, I compared and compared for hours, reading mixed reviews of each monitor.

So decided to give this one a go and I've gotta say for a $200 monitor it's absolutely remarkable. No dead pixels or tears on arrival. Was essentially plug and play ready but I messed around with some of the settings to optimize my person experience. Also went to their support website and downloaded the program so I don't have to mess with the back button which by the way, isn't that bad to navigate! Easier than most monitors I've ever had to adjust!

You can't beat the crystal clear image, 144Mhz, 1ms response time... I'm an avid gamer and I also watch a lot of videos/movies. Everything is phenomenal so far, my one and only complaint is that there was no MSI plastic sticker like I've gotten in most of my other purchases in regard to MSI! I was so disappointed, had a place ready to place it and everything! :((((

10/10 honestly, I applaud MSI once again and still going MSI strong for all my gaming gear. Whoop whoop!

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David R.

It's a great monitor & Great for the price!!!

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2018

Size: 32 inStyle: Optix AG32CPattern: MonitorVerified Purchase

It is a nice monitor. There are red lights on the back panel. You can't change the color unfortunately. For the price vs the specs. It's a great monitor. I haven't had any issues with it. It runs great. I haven't had time to load it with a graphics heavy gave yet but, I will and respond with an update. I just wish I could afford to buy two more and a three monitor stand. That would be an awesome setup / rigg. Maybe someday I will... After I buy a 3D printer LOL!
***UPDATE***
I did notice a very small speck of discoloration on the screen. I believe that it is a chip in the top layer. It is not really noticeable because it is in the lower left portion of the screen. However, It is there. Other than that the monitor works phenomenally. I have ran graphics heavy games on the monitor and have not noticed anything that would cause me to reconsider my purchase. This is still a great monitor for the price I paid. I would definitely buy it again. I would consider purchasing two more to make my three (3) monitor setup complete. I have seen the fram rate counter go up to 165fps. Possibly higher on certain games. Great monitor for the price.

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Kim W

Good monitor with small imperfections

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2018

Verified Purchase

I've been using this monitor for two months now. Mainly for university homework and gaming. The aesthetic of this monitor is great and it gives an advantage of smoother motion for gaming. I have already put at least 100 hours into Rocket League since I bought this monitor and I noticed a big improvement in reaction time because of how much more information 144hz provides.

Pros:
• Very cheap. $239.33 is super affordable when compared to any other curved high refresh rate monitor

• 144hz is great for gaming

• VA color vs any TN panel. It looks as good as my IPS panel, with some colors being more saturated. It does not appear more accurate, just more vivid.

• Matte finish on screen. My glossy screen is hard to use when it's bright out, but this is typically easy to see in bright conditions.

• DisplayPort is a must these days because it is so much more powerful than DVI or HDMI.

• Design is great. It has thin borders and a solid plastic piece on the bottom where the logo is and it matches my other monitor perfectly.

• The joystick works well enough for menu navigation. The menu always pops up if I turn the monitor off by long pressing the joystick button.

• The curve is hard to notice when using the monitor and harder to notice after using it for over a month.

Cons:
• Brightness! It is not a bright monitor when you have the response time settings turned up to Normal or Extreme. This is not an issue if you don't mind the pixel blur. I don't have issues with this because the stock brightness matches my Acer H236HL and this monitor's response time is still better.

• VESA Mount. The mounting option is pretty awful if you don't have extra pieces of hardware lying around. The holes for the vesa mount are recessed and the screws that came with the monitor are not nearly long enough to get past the exterior casing and through a VESA mounting plate. I used 12mm spacers along with some extra long bolts (about 3cm but I think 2cm would have worked better) that didn't quite fit but get the job done. (Images provided)

• Stuck/dead pixels. I have 5 stuck subpixels that just display green (4) and blue (1) all the time. 4 are in a line on the left and one is on the other side. I also have two spots on the screen that have either dim pixels or just some display manufacturing issue. One spot is in the middle on the far left, and it looks like a large dust spot but can't be wiped away, and the other is in the middle on the top edge. They aren't too distracting but it always looks like something is on the screen and it's visible in most program UI elements. (Images provided)

• VA subpixel arrangement is strange and causes many things to look aliased. At first it is jarring, but over time you grow used to it. Text will look blurry right away, but your eyes can adapt rather quickly. Something about the VA panel also causes the pixels at the far edges to be hard to see. (Images provided)

• Blue LED on bottom right corner. It's annoying because it projected 10 feet across my room to the other wall. A small piece of electrical tape alleviated the issue, but I know other monitors (HP Omen specifically) will allow you to turn stuff like that off.

It's a great monitor for the price and even with the stuck green pixels I am enjoying using it every single day. Although I wish they weren't there, they are only visible in dark scenes.

101 people found this helpful

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Avid Reader

Affordable way to get into 144hz, but takes some adjusting

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2019

Size: 24 inStyle: Optix MAG241CPattern: MonitorVerified Purchase

It's hard to review this monitor, because there are some things I absolutely love like playing a title that works amazingly well with 144hz and freesync. It's quite beautiful and for some types of action and first person games really necessary to be honest. It makes gaming enjoyable for hours on end, something I hadn't realized was being as hindered by my old 60hz no freesync setup as much as it was.

That said there are some things you should know.

1. Setting the monitor settings and game settings to be ideal might be a chore. Once you get to the sweet spot it's worth it, that's why I don't massively lower the score. But, you DO want to do a LOT of tweaking once you get a monitor like this to figure how to really get out of it what you want. hint: if you're not really feeling the wow factor yet, you need to do more tweaking or find a game that really shines in 144hz.

2. The curve is kind of pointless if you're only getting one. Doesn't really make anything better.

3. GAME DEVELOPERS are going to matter to your experience as much as your graphics card and monitor. If they don't support things well, then that's an issue. One trick that's really cool to this monitor is enable your graphics card to render a higher res than the monitor, then you'll get a really awesome look for the anti-aliasing that gives you a bit of the impression of the higher resolution. But guess what, this stuff can all be broken by game devs... using things like forced TAA that messes it up. You may find yourself doing work-aroundy things at times to get the best experience.

Even with the extra work and headaches, is the overall experience worth it? Yes, if you're going to play anything with a lot of motion... an open world game, an FPS, a racing game, a platformer. Unless you only play like 2D facebook games, then it can do quite a lot for enhancing the motion quality of your games.

Also only major things I have to say about this specific model: not much documentation. It's glitchy to run with a second monitor that isn't 144hz (I believe this is a windows 10 issue) where I've settled on manually turning the second monitor on and off. And some loading screens in games or videos from games have heavy flickering which is annoying. It's not in that many cases, but it is annoying when it happens.

3 people found this helpful

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MSI Full HD Gaming Red LED Non-Glare Super Narrow Bezel 1ms 2560 x 1440 144Hz Refresh Rate 2K Resolution Free Sync 27” Curved Gaming Monitor (Optix MAG27CQ)

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