Asus ROG Strix XG27UCDMG Review

Introduction

The Asus ROG Strix XG27UCDMG aims to provide a contextually ‘cut price’ solution to the problem of 2025’s new OLED gaming monitors costing four figures.

It does so by taking the guts of its dearer brother, the ROG Swift PG27UCDM, taking away some HDR support and reverting to an older DisplayPort standard with a slightly different design, and therefore bringing the price down to £938.99/$979, which nearly makes it the cheapest OLED of its kind.

This XG27UCDMG is otherwise identical, with the same fourth-gen Samsung QD-OLED screen in the same 27-inch size, with a 4K resolution, 240Hz refresh rate and rich selection of inputs, including HDMI 2.1, a 90W USB-C and a three-port USB-A hub.

The Alienware AW2725Q is arguably its closest competitor on price and specs, offering an $899 option that’s based on the same panel, and comes with a different chassis and inputs. 

I’ve been testing the XG27UCDMG for the last couple of weeks to see if it’s one of the best gaming monitors we’ve tested.

Design

• Design cues taken in part from more affordable Asus ROG screens
• Stand offers excellent adjustment
• Solid selection of inputs, including high-power USB-C

The XG27UCDMG features a similar understated look to its more affordable, non-OLED brother, the XG27UCS. This is because for this particular OLED model, Asus decided to go with its Strix branding, as opposed to Swift.

This means it comes with a stand with a small base, complete with a convenient phone holder.

Otherwise, there are some more stylish and modern elements with the XG27UCDMG, such as its classily illuminated ROG logo and its thin bezels across the front.

The stand is easy to assemble, with the base screwing into the bottom, as well as good adjustment with tilt, swivel, height adjustment and even portrait if you need it.

The port selection here is solid, coming with a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports, a DP 1.4 port (more on that later), and a USB-C port that can provide up to 90W of power delivery with DisplayPort capabilities. In addition, you also get a three-port USB-A hub that’s powered by the adjacent USB-B port.

Alienware’s option does away with the 90W USB-C, with it only supporting up to 15W of delivery, although one of its HDMI ports is an eARC for hooking up a soundbar. This port selection here is comparable to last year’s rivals too, with the Philips Evnia 32M2N8900 that also came with a rich selection.

Image Quality

• Fantastic detail and silky smooth motion
• Deep blacks, and marvellous contrast
• SDR brightness not as strong as other panel types

Underneath the cosmetic changes, the XG27UCDMG has the same fourth-gen Samsung QD-OLED panel as both its more expensive brother, and Alienware’s option. 

This means you’re getting the same sublime detail, deep, inky blacks and infinite contrast, as measured by my colorimeter. We’re getting a black level of 0.01, and a fantastic contrast ratio of 12210:1, signalling the prowess of this screen’s dynamic range.

Thanks to its 240Hz refresh rate, on-screen action felt especially smooth in everything from high-intensity shooters such as Counter-Strike 2 to more cinematic titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Indiana Jones & The Great Circle. It’s especially crisp and sharp.

Being an OLED, you also get sublime colour accuracy with this screen. My colorimeter measured 100% coverage of the sRGB colour space, as well as 99% DCI-P3 and 91% Adobe RGB, demonstrating this panel’s suitability for both productivity and more colour-sensitive workloads.

This fourth-gen QD-OLED screen also benefits from a bump in pixel density, with the XG27UCDMG rated for 165ppi, or pixels per inch. This helps the legibility of text against last year’s 32-inch models and generally affords more clarity for productivity and gaming workloads.

Support for VRR is good, with this Asus option supporting AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and Nvidia G-Sync. HDR support is less impressive, with the XG27UCDMG only coming with basic HDR10 and VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black. This is the other technical area where Asus has cut down this monitor. The Alienware AW2725Q supports both of those, as well as Dolby Vision.

The only area where this Alienware panel falls down, as other rivals do, is with its SDR brightness. OLEDs don’t typically get as bright as their Mini LED rivals, for instance, at least in SDR workloads. My colorimeter measures a peak of 237.5 nits, which hits the typical target of 250 nits. Nonetheless, it can get up to 1000 nits peak brightness in a smaller window for truly impactful HDR performance in supported content.

Software and Features

• Comprehensive OSD menus with some clever features
• Move to DP 1.4 makes no real difference
• No speakers

The XG27UCDMG comes with a rich OSD that’s also easily navigated by the small joystick on the reverse.

There is everything from on-screen crosshairs to different game-specific picture modes and lots of options for OLED care, including a proximity sensor that can turn the screen black if it senses that you’re away from the screen after a certain period of time.

The curiosity here is the move to the DisplayPort 1.4, as opposed to the DP 2.1 port that’s found on the more expensive PG27UCDM. The DP 2.1 port offers a higher bandwidth connection to allow for the full 4K/240Hz output of the screen without the need for any compression – DSC. 

However, in practice, there isn’t necessarily that much, if any, of a difference between monitors with the older 1.4 connection – I certainly didn’t notice anything with the XG27UCDMG that would suggest it’s running DP 1.4 as opposed to 2.1, and I’ve had it rigged up over DisplayPort for all of my testing and use.

This monitor also falls into the typical modern trope of not coming with any speakers. This means you’ll be working with either a gaming headset or a separate set for your audio, which you may well already have around, so it’s not too much of a loss.

Should you buy it?

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