well hello good people and we just got back from the UPS tour and we have
something very exciting that it showed up it actually might be my dream monitor
I'm really excited for this I'm super excited Mike what do we got so this is
the XG438 we originally covered this at CES it's actually pouring rain right now
so that's not a good thing precinct to HDR 43 inch 120 hz 4k not curved so
let's get this thing inside before it pours rain on us and see what's up
so we have the monitor set up Michael how're you liking it so far there was a
couple of challenges it looks beautiful right now we're just
of course updating a couple things on Steam Eva has an issue about where I
have my pieces yeah guys Chicka seven he has his printer on the right side and
he's facing his back panel the PC on the left side guys come on
like this is insane anyways let's check this monitor out the first a quick
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know that Mike mentioned aspects really quickly in the beginning this video but
let's actually go over what we're dealing with because this ROG xg438q is
one of the craziest monitors we've ever seen so far so it features a 43 inch
flat but not curved 120 Hz 10 bit 4k panel which is almost the same size as a
small TV and that does cause some space limitations now asus has also equipped
this monitor with AMD's freesync 2 HDR and basis HDR 600 now even though that
this monitor covers 90% of the dcpip to a color spectrum which is the minimum
for HDR 600 they decided to go with a VA panel instead of IPs and for all that
specs you're looking at around $1,100 us which makes this one of the most
expensive freesync monitors around so other than the size the first thing that
jumped out was the back it's all about the rog look but entirely made up of
plastic but the stand is well designed with three legs instead of four so it
can be pushed super far back to your desk and trust me guys that's exactly
what you want to do just note that it doesn't support any height adjustment or
pivoting and only a small amount of angle changes moving on to the
connectors they're actually hidden behind a removable panel that also acts
as a cable routing channel so pulling it back shows one DisplayPort 1.2 through
hdmi 2.0 connectors and two USB 3.0 ports as well as a 3.5 millimeter
headphone jack oh and there's also this little attachable projector that
displays the ROG logo on your desk it can be controlled and turned off in the
menu so no worries if you don't like that look
asus has also included a remote but no batteries guys yep
$8,000 monitor with the remote and they couldn't include batteries so with that
out of the way I'm gonna invite Mike over here to share his experience after
using this monitor for more than a week so it's it's been an amazing experience
and at the same time I have found some very serious limitations and those
limitations have absolutely nothing to do with how powerful your GPU is but
rather its ability to accept input signals so in order for me to show you
that we're gonna have to step over to the monitor so let's get to it
this is the best possible image quality settings that you could probably have on
this monitor the reason for that is both the HDMI and the display port connectors
have a limited bandwidth so you can't really drive 4k 120 Hz at 10-bit
color you have to make some sacrifices somewhere so right now we're at 60 Hertz
10 bit color and full RGB but in order to actually bring it to 120 Hertz you
have to go down to 8 bit the amount of difference between 120 Hertz 10 bit and
8 bit isn't actually that much so if you're gaming this is totally acceptable
on the other hand if you want 120 Hertz but a 10 bit there's where the problem
comes in you would actually have to do is select the 4 to 2 chromatic
subsampling what that ends up doing it causes even bigger problems all of the
text now has this odd halo around it in in am over a purple so I know some of
you guys are gonna be asking why on the freesync to HDR monitor who are you
using the Nvidia control panel now that was just because my personal system has
the NVIDIA GPU in it right now we also use the AMD control panel and
the settings are exactly the same so 10 bit and 4 to 2 everything else you can
set that there to now about free sync to HDR personally I think it's more of a
marketing point than something that's going to be worth while right now
there's very few games that support sher they're supposed to be more that
are coming out but personally I don't see much of a difference in most games
in Mass Effect absolutely this this monitor looks amazing
now there's another big burning question that a lot of people have had is the
flat-screen monitor or the curved monitor better and I'm gonna say after
using both neither is better some people like the flat aspect of it some people
like occur that aspect of something like the predator x34 yeah either way there
is no wrong answer I personally like the flat monitor better speaking of panels
this is a VA panel and not an IPS displays and I know that might throw
some people off especially for a thousand bucks but to be honest guys
it was perfectly fine I mean just all you need to make sure is that you're at
a proper distance and sitting since you're sitting right in front of the
display it's really not a big deal and if you think about this like 4k at 120
Hz if you had IPS on top of that it's gonna cost you at least 2 grand or a
little more than $1,000 for sure and you know the g-sync
ultimate panels are definitely proof of that I also want to quickly talk about
backlit bleed I was barely able to notice anything with my naked eye I had
to crank up the ISO on my camera to actually properly see that so it's
really not a huge thing to consider or worry about but one issue we both
noticed is with the dynamic dimming feature which is basically a Souza's
version of a local dimming this is supposed to help improve contrast ratios
but with it enabled there's a vertical halo around your cursor during darker
scenes honestly it was never really apparent in games but Mike first noticed
it when watching a movie like a lot of large format displays this RG monitor
also includes a picture and picture and picture by picture setting for
productivity this is definitely a plus and I really have to appreciate that
Asus allows you to modify these second pictures the location lastly if you do
want a base amount this monitor that is an option so with all that being said
let's move on to some firsthand gaming impressions why don't we I think we
should let's go so I really like this monitor
but there's a couple of limitations so let's get to the limitations first right
now I'm just way too close I need to be another half arm length distance away
what that causes right now I'm constantly especially for me I I
love strategy games and it's what I predominantly play I'm constantly
looking into the upper right-hand corner to see my minimap and bottom left-hand
corner to see my special skills in in battlefleet gothic 2 for example one
other thing that you're probably gonna see is something I've had an issue with
too is the fact that a lot of the UI doesn't scale well in these strategy
games to 4k other than that the sharpness is their viewing angles are
exactly what I would want but one of the other issues that I've seen now is
because I'm so close to the monitor I'm actually getting some headaches and some
of you guys on Twitter mention that I might burn my retinas out and you know
what it might actually be happening so what I want to know is what Eber thinks
about all this so I'm in the hot seat sitting in front of the 43 inch monitor
and guys the one thing and I wanna just mention is just how sharp the image
looks especially on 43 inches 4k looks absolutely gorgeous I'm playing over
once right now BOTS match to be honest because I don't want to get distracted
while having this conversation with you guys the next thing I want to talk about
is color reproduction and it's good certainly not
IPS level great but honestly for FPS gaming it's perfectly fine as you're
just you know shooting enemy it's perfectly just fine view angles are also
definitely respectable it's like I said for an average gamer you're not going to
notice a huge impact from contrast shift and whatnot it's just perfect and lastly
I want to talk about the refresh rate 120 Hertz first of all you need to
capable hardware to drive 4k at 120 Hz but when you have that sorted it's
absolutely gorgeous just the response time is fast it's it's amazing so I
guess this ultimately comes down to two questions one is this your dream monitor
not right now the reason for that is I didn't properly prepare my space for it
so I couldn't fully enjoy it I'm just too close to it and you really need to
be aware of the spatial constraints before actually purchasing something
like this Flynn desk the other thing is my perfect monitor from a size
perspective is probably a 30 to 32 inch high refresh rate 4k monitor I used to
have a samsung 3:05 t it was an allege Neri monitor and I'm looking for
something like that and I'll be really honest with everybody
I don't like curved monitors it's just a personal preference if you like cruise
monitors that's it's great but I guess I will ask you the same question is this a
dream monitor for you not really because I personally have a 32 inch 4k display
and 43 inch it's a little bit too big for me I would love to see a 4k display
with that refresh rate with g-sync IPS that would be amazing but I still
thought if it's g-sync you're gonna be paying 2,000 bucks for yeah it's gonna
be expensive speaking of expensive is this our G
monitor worth $1,100 I think it will be once AMD releases higher-end GPUs right
now it's a bleeding shame that you can't properly get that hundred and twenty
Hertz over 120 frames per second consistently from what AMD has on the
market at 4k exactly but in the grand scheme of things also I think that the
$1,100 is certainly worth it if you're looking for a large format non curved 4k
high refresh rate gaming one yeah and provided you actually have the space
sorted out let us know what you guys think about the ROG XG438q I can't
believe I actually remember I know yeah that's amazing
so would you actually consider picking this up considering the price and of
course it's trade-offs given that it has a be a panel Lupton your thoughts