The MAG27CQ is a new 27 inch 1440p 144Hz curved gaming monitor from MSI, so let’s check
it out and see if it’s something you should consider.
As mentioned this is a 27 inch monitor with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio and runs at the 1440p
resolution, so 2560 by 1440.
It’s got Adaptive Sync, so you’ll need an AMD graphics card in order to take advantage
of this, unfortunately I’ve only got Nvidia cards here, so I wasn’t able to test this.
The panel also runs at 144Hz, which is a great choice for gamers, and as you may have noticed
it’s also got an 1800R curve.
This is a fairly noticeable curve, especially for a monitor of this size, but after using
it for a few weeks I did start to get used to it.
The panel also has a 1ms MRPT response time, and has a peak brightness of 250 nits.
It’s also a VA panel, and to me the colours look great, I couldn’t notice any changes
even when looking at the screen on sharp angles, MSI list that it’s capable of 178 degree
viewing angles both vertically and horizontally.
In terms of colour accuracy, MSI note that the panel is capable of 110% of sRGB and 85%
of NTSC, and when testing with my Spyder 5 pro I got results of 100% of sRGB, 79% of
NTSC, and 84% of Adobe RGB.
Unfortunately the Spyder doesn’t track sRGB above 100%, but in any case this seems pretty
good and I’ve happily been using it for content creation.
The panel also has a 3000 to 1 contrast ratio.
I’ve also performed my usual backlight bleed test, which involves having the screen completely
black in a dark room to help emphasize any bleeding.
I then take a long exposure photo to display any bleed, so this is a worst case scenario
test.
As you can see there does appear to be a little bit of bleed, however even in a dark room
I was only just able to notice the bit down the bottom myself, although it was very slight,
and under normal lighting conditions it was perfectly fine, although this will of course
vary between monitors.
It’s not all just about the panel though, taking a look at the rest of the monitor it’s
got a silver V shape stand.
The bezels are fairly thin, at around 9mm based on my own measurements.
The stand can also be removed, revealing a standard 75mm VESA mount.
The on screen display was pretty easy to use and navigate through, there’s only a joystick
on the back right hand side which you press to access the menu.
Speaking of the back, it’s a matte black plastic, with some red accents, including
red lighting strips on the left and right.
These only light up red and breathe on and off, and I found that they weren’t really
bright enough to notice unless in a completely dark room, but you can turn them off if you
prefer.
The IO is on the back toward the bottom and faces down.
There’s a DVI port, HDMI 2.0 port, DisplayPort 1.2 output, 3.5mm headphone jack, and power
input, no USB hub or speakers here.
The HDMI port supports up to 120Hz, so you’ll need to use DisplayPort for the full 144Hz
refresh rate.
There’s also a Kensington lock nearby.
As for the included cables you get a HDMI cable, a DisplayPort cable, and of course
power cable and external power brick.
Both the stand and display together weigh in at around 5.8kg, although due to the large
size I wasn’t able to test it myself.
Despite the stand being covered in plastic, it’s metal inside, and it does a pretty
good job of supporting the panel.
Even if I bump my desk it only wobbles a little.
As for the overall dimensions, the panel itself is around 61.2cm in width and 36.3cm in height,
so it’s not that large of a screen, it feels just a little different coming from my old
24 inch monitors, but still the extra space is definitely better.
There’s a fair bit of adjustments available too, with -5 to 15 degrees of tilt, -30 to
30 degrees of swivel, and 6.5cm of height adjustment with enough tension so that the
screen actually stays where you leave it, no pivot here.
The power consumption for the monitor is listed as 60 watts on the spec sheet, and while testing
at 144Hz with minimum brightness and the backlighting on I found it to sit at around 15 watts, at
50% brightness the total power draw rose to 27 watts, while at 100% brightness it increased
to 41 watts.
Turning the backlighting off only decreased the power draw by 1 to 2 watts.
So far the monitor looks pretty good, but how was it to actually use day to day?
This was my second time with a high refresh rate 1440p monitor like this, and to be honest
I preferred this one.
The other one that I used was 32 inches, which I think I’d personally prefer to have at
4K.
The curve here was quite aggressive for me, but after a few weeks I got used to it and
didn’t mind it, I’m still not sure if I prefer it, but I suppose it’s personal
preference.
The high refresh rate was really nice though, especially in games where my frame rate could
get high enough.
In modern games you’ll need a powerful graphics card to actually take advantage of the higher
refresh rates, especially at a 1440p resolution, but for less demanding E-sports titles like
overwatch and CS:GO you can get away with a lower end graphics card, especially if you’re
willing to drop the settings down a bit.
Playing Overwatch on medium settings with my Nvidia 1080 ran well above 144 FPS and
the gameplay was very smooth the whole time.
If you’ve got a lower end graphics card you can always drop the resolution down to
1080p instead while gaming.
I’ve also used the monitor to edit some videos and that went well too, I found 1440p
at 27 inches to be a great size, any larger and I’d probably be looking at 4K, although
unfortunately we can’t get 4K monitors with refresh rates this high yet, and graphics
cards aren’t really powerful enough anyway.
I found this monitor to be really good for gaming, and then also great for all other
tasks, although this will of course depend on your personal preference regarding the
curve.
As for the price it’s going for about $600 AUD here in Australia, or around $450 USD
on Amazon for my international viewers, putting it in a similar range to many other monitors
with these specs, and on the lower side for such a monitor with a curve.
So what did you guys think about the MAG27CQ gaming monitor from MSI?
I really liked the high refresh rate at the 1440p resolution, from games to just browsing
through pages on the Internet, everything felt nice and smooth.
At first I was impartial to the curve, and even while finishing this review I thought
I didn’t really like it, but when I went back to a regular monitor it did feel kind
of strange, like the corners were just too far away or something, it’s hard to describe
but I think I’d probably prefer the curve, even at the 27 inch size.
The colour accuracy of the display was also great, and I’ve really liked using it to
edit video for the last few weeks.
Be sure to let me know your thoughts down in the comments, and leave a like if you found
the information useful.
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one.