is a senior reviews editor who’s been testing tech since 2007. Previously at Wirecutter and Maximum PC. Current fixations: keyboards, DIY tech, and the smart home.
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I keep accidentally ruining regular things for myself. I already can’t use a standard keyboard layout, and now I think I have to buy a really nice monitor.
I’ve spent the last few months living with the Alienware AW2725Q, a 27-inch gaming monitor with a 240Hz 4K resolution QD-OLED panel. It’s one of a spate of gaming monitors that came out this year, all bearing the same Samsung Display panel, but with minor differences in features, ports, and looks.
I plopped the AW2725Q on my desk in March, replacing my hulking 32-inch BenQ monitor I’ve been using since 2022. I hadn’t really considered getting a high-refresh-rate 4K OLED monitor before this year, for a couple of reasons. The main one is that they’re expensive: the AW2725Q is about the cheapest of them, at $900. The second is that I just don’t have that much time to game anymore, and my gaming rig wasn’t exactly in danger of exceeding 60fps on my existing monitor. And my 60Hz IPS monitor was, and is, working just fine. I was happy with it. I had a suspicion that if I tried a high-refresh-rate OLED I would no longer be fine with it.
The lesson here is: trust your gut.
It might be hard to see in SDR photos, but the Alienware OLED monitor has much deeper blacks and brighter highlights. It’s also physically smaller, which is easier to see. My 32-inch IPS monitor seems bulky and washed-out by comparison.
At first, I was underwhelmed. Ninety percent of what I do at my desk is work, and you don’t really need a 240Hz OLED for Google Docs, Slack, and browser tabs. The OLED’s perfect black levels, infinite contrast, and bold colors did make watching YouTube videos a lot nicer, but that’s not really a big part of my job. My work laptop — an M1 MacBook Air — tops out at 60Hz output anyway, so the only real benefit I got from going to the Alienware on that machine was better pixel density, because the screen is physically smaller but has the same resolution as my old monitor.
Actually, for non-gaming laptop use, the Alienware is a step backward, because it lacks a KVM switch or single-cable connection. I could just connect my MacBook to the BenQ’s USB-C port for power, data, and video all in one. With the AW2725Q, I need a USB hub or dongle to get that same convenience.
Here’s the part where the reader will say, Nathan, you dingbat, surely you’re not going to judge a $900 gaming monitor by how convenient it is to use with a five-year-old Macbook, are you?
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