Hey Newegg viewers, Juan Carlos Bagnell here in Newegg Studios. You spend so
much time building up your rig, you put in all of those fancy components, that
really awesome graphics card, and the last step of the chain is getting an
image up on a display that you're gonna be proud to show off. In this video we're
gonna be talking to George from MSI. You're gonna walk us through the new
gaming monitors coming out of MSI. George, thank you so much for joining us.
Glad to be here, thanks for having me. So just real quick for our audience can you
briefly just describe your role at MSI. Sure, so at MSI I work in the marketing
department for a technical marketing. So I deal with checking out specs for all of
our different products you know monitors obviously included, motherboards, graphics
cards you name it, I deal with all of that. And you're getting a lot of the
feedback from consumers too. That's definitely true yeah you know we work
with our consumers and just people online you know forums, reddit, whatever
you have out there and take their feedback pass it on to our HQ our
engineers and you know continue to improve our products that way as well.
Excellent, so I mean I just want to jump right in. This is a really pretty slab of
material right here. Just briefly described we're talking about two
different monitors in the 27" space from MSI. That's correct. They're actually
both in the same series, so we have our Optix MAG272CR and the 272CRX
models. So these are our newest revisions that are actually available now. You
know we're pushing the boundaries that we're used to with you know better specs
and definitely more features as well. MSI has been making monitors for a while
again you're one of those brands that I don't think people always realize
like how many components how many parts of the chain you guys are responsible
for. What separates these monitors from the other display options that MSI
currently has? Right. Well, relatively speaking you know in a sense, we're
still new to the market, but for gaming monitors compared to others that are out
there like you said, we've had our hat in the ring for a while now.
So you know starting off we've been evolving and starting off lets say 120 Hz
refresh rate monitors and maybe 3ms response time, now we're up
to with these monitors 165 Hz and you know further
beyond. Just from coming up like the early days of CRT gaming and stuff like
that it's so funny to hear someone say like you know baseline 165. That's where
we are now it's pretty great. You know like I'm used to 60 Hz monitors
what I grew up with and I tell you the first time you use a higher refresh rate
monitor, honestly you could just spend a ton of time just moving your mouse
cursor around. It's so smooth. Yeah it's so hard to go back and then it's one of those things like you
know we go through those resolution wars and it never really seems like the most
amazing upgrade when you just flip the switch. Right. But then you get a little
used to it and it's so hard to go back. Exactly. Like looking at a 4k display like
oh yeah that looks a little better and my movies look a little better and I
shoot a bunch of 4k footage and now it's native resolution, I notice it more now
going back. Yes. When you go back it's not the same. It feels really
sluggish when you go back to 60 or something, but you know it's not only
that, we're trying to pack more features into the monitor as well. One of the big
things that not a lot of people have is you know software based menu control. So
yeah, that's pretty big in my eyes. You know we have your standard you know
controls on the monitor itself. So on the on the rear of the monitor we have the
navi key, it's like a joystick, which you can use to control certain settings
change the contrast, brightness. Especially with these type of monitors,
once you start hitting higher sizes as well it's harder to reach back there
sometimes, it's not very convenient for every setup, so now you can actually
install our gaming OSD app so you can bring up that on-screen display through
software and use your mouse and keyboard to configure everything, and it gives you
other options as well. So you know you're able to create specific profiles for
games so if you like certain contrast for this game you can set it for that
and just quickly switch between that. You know, other settings as well,
picture-in-picture we can have multiple fullscreen images at once. One of my
favorite features, a newer type or more advanced type of dealing with overly
saturated black areas, essentially night vision. It's an algorithm that helps
determine it pretty intelligently compared to previous iterations. What
spots on the screen on the display are you know, really dark, really black and
you know it helps you brighten that up. It's able to detect what areas need to
be fixed and it's able to just apply that to those specific areas giving you
overall a much better picture. I want to backtrack just a little bit
we're at kind of a an evolution point. Curved monitors came out a couple years
ago it was kind of a novelty. It does seem to be that this is an
immersive experience. I'm seeing a lot more of these on gamer's
desks than in years past. Describe what the decision was and especially getting
some market feedback from MSI consumers on focusing for this
type of an experience as opposed to some of competitors who might be looking at
more like flat and then we're just gonna try and ramp up the fastest possible
frame rate that we can. Yeah yeah and you know myself as a consumer when like
you said, when these started popping up I think they look really cool right. Physically they're pretty awesome looking.
However, is it just a gimmick? Does it actually have any
practicality to it? And they certainly do. You know, with gaming these type of
gaming monitors curved the buzzword around is immersion, right? Yeah. That it's
more immersive and it definitely is and the reason for that really is compared to
say a flat monitor, the way those flat monitors emit light it's kind of
perpendicular to the panel right so it's just straight away so you end up with
areas aren't really hitting you directly. Right. So what that ends up doing is
affecting your peripheral vision a bit, so any light that's not really direct to
you it gets a little bit blurry in your vision and maybe create some
perceived image distortion. Having a curved screen it kind of helps resolve
that a bit, so now you're kind of at a focal point like a radial distance away
from the screen right? I would imagine that the gaming audience
would be pretty hip to this kind of stuff, but was there any sort of
education involved? We have all those TV buying guides, you're buying this
diagonal, with this resolution, you want to set your TV this distance away from
your couch. Was there some kind of internal discussion like, were you worried
gamers might try and put this a little too far away or maybe they're just
sitting with their nose in the screen and not getting the optimal viewing
experience? Yeah, there is an optimal distance. So, with the monitor you have
curvature ratings right? For the standard monitor or curve monitor up until now
it's been around 1800r, and that kind of tells you the maximum optimal distance
you can be from the monitor to you know get a great experience so usually it's
like by meters so like 1.8 meters or something like that,
so it's pretty long distance. Overall with these new monitors we're trying to
get an even tighter curvature to it further adding to that immersive
experience. With these we're hitting a 1500r, which I know it's kind of
counter intuitive that the smaller number is more aggressive in curvature, but
that's what we're trying to do. And yeah you know, overall there is kind of like a
teaching or learning experience to go with it, but I think until you really
experience it, use it yourself, it's hard to really get, right?
So whenever we go to shows or something like that
I'm really glad when people come up to the monitors and give it a shot play a
few games. They always seem to leave impressed and looking forward
to using it more. And it's something that kind of grows on you, like we were saying
before I mean with higher refresh rates, it's one of those things that 'Oh, neat!' when
you first experience it, and then it gets hard to go back if you get used to it.
Exactly, you know these type of monitors are definitely great for AAA
titles something like say Borderlands 3, Outer Worlds, you know something that has
a whole world that really gets you immersed, it's really great to experience.
I'm glad we have them and I'm glad we're continuing with the curvature.
You know the great thing about it, and something I kind of saw recently
that I didn't really think about before is that having a curved screen helps in
other ways as well. It actually helps with reducing eye strain, which is
something I never thought was the case, but it turns out that since you
know that you the human eye is a bit curved as well compared to say a flat
monitor, whenever you look at a flat monitor the distance changes from
you know your focal distance it changes depending on what area of the monitor
you're looking at. So your eyes constant making little micro focusing
adjustments. Exactly. That makes sense. Now that you have a curved monitor it doesn't have to
do that as much since you're at a radial distance away, so pretty much every area
of the monitor is equidistant to your eye. Then you couple that with you know
blue filter light filter technology and anti-flicker
technology and it goes a long way. And who doesn't want to have more
fresh eyes when you're gaming, be more alert. Yes, now it's a stamina
argument. Exactly. It really is, but it helps. If you're
tired you're not going to perform as well, so it helps a bit. And as
someone with glasses, I can definitely tell. Excellent. Well and this also
seems to be the right time to be sort of pushing this technology,
investing in this technology. You're partnered with Samsung for the actual
panels. That's right, yes these are Samsung panels. So I mean when these types
of products first started emerging, it seemed to me like the manufacturing was
was kind of brute force. Yes. Like you just take a regular panel and just kind
of, just kind of bend it. Yeah yeah. But now it seems like you know the sort
of manufacturing side of this is taking this much more seriously as its own
segment of product, which is why we're able to get some of these more
aggressive curves. That's correct. Right so yeah, you run into issues when
you're just brute force and bending and monitor, you know light bleed and.. I mean
just saying it, it sounds bad. So now you have a more customized manufacturing process where
you know you're able to push higher curves, you know obviously more
immersion with that with these 1500r, and you know the panel technology also
increases, you're able to increase refresh rate, keep the response times low,
and overall you get a better product. Well and also it seems like you're able
to hang with all of those other monitor metrics that we care about, things like
the contrast ratio and the HDR modes. We went with VA type panels as opposed
to simply like IPS, just for that reason since VA panels tend to have
better contrast ratios as well. So I think with these were hitting something
like 3,000 to 1 contrast ratio, and especially these panels are also HDR
ready so you even get better contrast fidelity as well. So now one of the
things I thought was kind of interesting so we've got two different flavors of
this monitor and that the refresh rate was the differentiator. Both of them
coming in at the same size. What was MSI's strategy on keeping the 27"
monitor consistent between those two offerings? You know it's the same size
and the reason really the only change is a refresh rate, is to give multiple
people the option of moving up to these higher refresh rates, because you know you
do require to have some type of pretty good hardware in order to run
especially at higher refresh rates like 240 Hz. Not everybody has a
RTX 2070, RTX 2060 or something in their system, you still have something like a
GTX 1070, you know some older hardware. You could still play eSports games,
Call of Duty even, with 165 Hz, you don't necessarily have to break the
bank with your build in order to move up to the super high 240 Hz
screens, but obviously if you have a system that can do it,
then you have that available to you. So the design... very clean, very sleek.
One of the things we've got to discuss though, because we live in a world of RGBs,
talk us through putting RGBs on this monitor and
what was it about the gaming audience that you thought they would
appreciate that as a design influence. Everybody knows the more RGB you have, the
bigger gamer you are. I mean it's like putting speed holes in my car, it's
at least 15 frames per second faster. Of course, of course. What we
wanted to do with these monitors was make sure they fit into that your gaming
environment, your gamer space, so a lot of components nowadays feature RGB and
you know we wanted to make the monitor inclusive to that as well. Especially if you
have other MSI products, you can sync them up with our Mystic Light
software, so our headsets, mice, keyboards, graphics cards, what
have you, they can all sync up and you have a really really nice experience in
your room. And aside from that, there's other features on the monitor as
well that gamers would definitely appreciate. So we feature a USB hub there
for two ports with I believe 3.2 Gen to Gen 1 USB pass through.
So that would free up at least one port on your computer, which
is pretty great you know when you have a lot of devices, webcams, and what-have-you.
Another feature that's on it that I really enjoy is a headset hanger. You can
actually press a button here it ejects a headset hanger. Hey if you need a break
you know snack break or bathroom break, take it off put it on, you're ready to go. I mean it's silly
but like I have so much stuff on my desk and I don't want to put a headphone
stand like where all of the chaos is happening kind of around the setup.
Just don't leave it on your keyboard or something like that. I did have a
question about Mystic Light, because this is again, all of these products seem like
they're also built with some evolution in mind. Never before
have we cared about firmware updates on monitors, but now these things
can actually help improve the functionality, and again we're looking at
trying to create immersive experiences. Is Mystic Light working with game
developers to try and help with RGB is a practical notification or game addition,
you know your health is low and then stuff starts glowing red, or maybe
you set it for your PC where your chip is starting to run hot you know
you'll get a visual cue coming off of your keyboard. Was Mystic Light
included, I mean was RGB included with that kind of notion for where
Mystic Light could go? Sure, definitely, that's actually one of the features of
Mystic Light, we call it ambient link. So not only does it work in that aspect
with certain games at the moment we have safe functionality with games like
Assassin's Creed for example, like you said some of our other monitors tend to
have further RGB up here on the front and with those stuff like that like you
mentioned is possible where you could have your health bar there, you take a
hit you know it could flash red or some type of indicator like that that can
help you in-game. Not only that but other you know other third-party devices
that are RGB capable, say the Philips Hue or Nanoleafs can also react. So there's
more interoperability between these different products and stuff,
not like there's one cohesive standard, but at least we're
acknowledging that these things should be able to talk to each other. Exactly
it's all about making everything inclusive in your environment.
So just to kind of focus in on the two different models, the 240 Hz
version of this, MSI is looking at their customer base, who do they see that
monitor really going to? Definitely a good question. So the 240 Hz model
will definitely require you to have a pretty good system right? It is more
hardware intensive to have a 240 Hz monitor, however we're kind of trying
to make it so more people have access to that as well, so we're keeping the panel
1920x1080 resolution for these particular models that way it's an entry
point for everybody. If you do want to you know, you just got your system you
have a really high-end Intel CPU or AMD CPU in there, really good graphics
card, or even a mid-range you know higher tier graphics card, you can still jump
over to the 240 Hz refresh rate and have a great experience. You don't always
need to be hitting the 240 Htz refresh rate also because they feature
adaptive sync technology. Right they're FreeSync compatible. Yeah Radeon FreeSync
compatible, exactly, so even if you're not hitting say 200 FPS even, the monitor is
able to compensate for that and still give you a really smooth experience.
Was there some sort of internal discussion at MSI because
there are these very specific camps of competitive gaming like don't really
feel like 240 Hz is necessarily a game-changing advantage for like a MOBA.
Right. Right but hey man if you're if you're sitting there playing shooters
that twitch rate is extremely high. Or maybe even something too where you've got
so many actions per second like an RTS. Like Starcraft. Exactly,
were those kinds of considerations weighed against the feedback that you
were getting from your consumers? Yeah definitely. You know it's going to
benefit some types of games and gamers more than others. More eSport
centric games would see a higher value from it, however it's still not lost I
feel in other types of games. Even single-player games like I mentioned
before. The fluidity is a really nice perk. Exactly. But again when you're
talking about that difference between someone who's casually playing at a 144
Hz or a 120 Hz versus someone who's looking to eek out the maximum
financial advantage of investing in this kind of gear. That's right yeah, so you
know if you're a hardcore about getting every advantage that you can, then it's
definitely what you want to be looking at is the 240 Hz models. And MSI
has a lot of relationships with eSports like actual competitors I mean you
guys are very active in this space. Was this also some of the
conversation on sort of the standards that eSports competitors are
looking at when they're hitting these arenas? If your opponents have a 240 Hz
monitor and you don't then that's a disadvantage, and we do sponsor a good
amount of you know eSports professional teams you know be it in the past.
So professional gamers, they want
top of the notch technology to get the best advantages from you know as much as
possible, so that's why we get their feedback and we have these
type of monitors available for them and anybody else trying to get to that level
as well. Excellent. Well George thanks so much for
dropping by, I mean this these are some really fun conversations, so I'm glad
that you're able to follow up on what MSI is doing here.
Sure yeah my pleasure, thanks again for having me. Excellent. Alright folks
that's the scoop. MSI two models 27" monitors. Super super fast. Get that
refresh rate up higher, compete better, compete faster. If you'd like more
information on what MSI is offering for their monitor lineups you can hit the
links down in the description below. For Newegg Studios I'm Juan Carlos Bagnell.
Thanks for watching and I'll catch you on the next one.