GoKawiilThe Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM games with an addictive quality that carries over to its incredibly sharp and colorful image. It is a flagship among flagships.
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With prices generally higher than their LCD counterparts, the best OLED gaming monitors remain a premium category. And within that, there are flagships even though you’ll rarely see the words “bad” and “OLED” in the same sentence.
Asus ROG Swift displays represent an entire series of flagships, with every model featuring plenty of bells and whistles along with benchmark performance. I’ve looked at many of these in the past, and here, I have the latest one, the PG32UCWM. It’s a 32-inch Tandem RGB Stripe OLED with 4K resolution at 240 Hz, FHD at 480 Hz, Adaptive-Sync, HDR10, DisplayHDR 400, Dolby Vision, and wide-gamut color. Let’s take a look.
Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM Specs
Swipe to scroll horizontally Panel Type / Backlight Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) Tandem RGB Stripe Screen Size / Aspect Ratio 32 inches / 16:9 Max Resolution and Refresh Rate 3840x2160 @ 240 Hz Row 3 - Cell 0 1920x1080 @ 480 Hz Row 4 - Cell 0 FreeSync and G-Sync Compatible Native Color Depth and Gamut 10-bit / DCI-P3 Row 6 - Cell 0 HDR10, DisplayHDR 400 True Black, Dolby Vision Response Time (GTG) 0.03ms Brightness (mfr) 270 nits full-field Row 9 - Cell 0 1,000 nits 3% window Contrast Unmeasurable Speakers None Video Inputs 1x DisplayPort 2.1 Row 13 - Cell 0 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB-C Audio 3.5mm headphone output USB 3.2 1x up, 3x down Power Consumption 52.4w, brightness @ 200 nits Panel Dimensions WxHxD w/base 28.1 x 20.2-23.3 x 10.9 inches (714 x 513-592 x 277mm) Panel Thickness 2.5 inches (64mm) Bezel Width Top: 0.3 inch (8mm) Row 20 - Cell 0 Sides: 0.35 inch (9mm) Row 21 - Cell 0 Bottom: 0.43 inch (11mm) Weight 19.84 pounds (9kg) Warranty 3 years
First, we’ll tackle the alphabet soup in the room: Tandem RGB Stripe OLED. Let’s call it TRS-OLED, consisting of two light-emitting layers with red, green, and blue diodes. This approach addresses several issues. With two layers comes lower power consumption at a given light level. Tandem white OLEDs do the same thing. RGB Stripe takes care of the fringing issue where white diodes behind color filters can spread their light and cause a loss of sharpness. In practice, you will be hard-pressed to see any softness from any OLED, but an RGB Stripe panel like the PG32UCWM is a tad sharper, and you’ll see it in a side-by-side comparison. To this, Asus adds its True Black Glossy screen coating, which earns its name by reducing the effect of ambient light on the screen. Visually, it deepens black areas and improves perceived contrast.
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Another advantage of RGB Stripe is increased color volume. Most wide gamut screens employ Quantum Dots to increase volume up to 110% of DCI-P3 or more. RGB Stripe achieves most of that without the light-reducing effect of a QD layer. The PG32UCWM delivers an honest 100% of P3, which is a little less than the competition, but it’s more than the 93-95% coverage of non-QD monitors. Asus promises and delivers accuracy out of the box as well with a calibration report stored in the panel’s firmware.
It wouldn’t be ROG without serious gaming performance, and on that, the PG32UCWM delivers in spades. 240 Hz at 4K is available for those with enough video card power to achieve it. If you want maximum fps, there’s a 480 Hz mode with FHD 1920x1080 resolution. You can also employ ELMB at lower frame rates to reduce motion blur. Asus includes its exclusive OLED Anti-Flicker feature, which mitigates stutter during rapid frame rate transitions. Does this translate into a fast and smooth experience? Check out my test results on page two to find out.
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