LG UltraGear QHD 27-Inch Gaming Monitor 27GL850-B, Nano IPS 1ms (GtG) with HDR 10 Compatibility and NVIDIA G-SYNC, 144Hz, Black

I picked up one of these in 2020 and absolutely love it! The colors are very important to me for print and photo work. The contrast is excellent as well. Its been a fantastic monitor, Id buy a secod one in a heart beat if I needed one.

Nice monitor. Crisp, clean images. But a little too prone to finger smudges. And I feel like I rarely ever touch it!

I bought this monitor for my new computer which is able to play games at 144hz 1440p. The monitor was easy to setup, looks great and I love the way the monitor itself looks. The 27 inch screen really takes up your whole view while gaming. It looked great out of the box and I have no complaints whatsoever. I didnt even have to setup Gsync/Freesync or configure any settings. It looked and worked great right out of the box. I could theoretically see someone who is REALLY focused on color quality maybe needing to do some kind of adjustment to the settings, but I guarentee for 99% of people its not a problem at all. If you do care about that kind of stuff, find somewhere that can give a more detailed description (like Hardware Unboxed on youtube), but again, I dont think most people will care. I play in the dark sometimes and dont have any complaints about the brightness. If your like me and never experienced playing at 1440p 144hz before (assuming you have a computer that can play at those specs) it was a massive upgrade to my experience and I was not disappointed. The resolution bump is great, but the higher framerate is even better. It makes everything feel much smoother and natural. Youll notice the difference even moving the mouse cursor in Windows. If you are in a position to afford that kind of upgrade, it definitely makes for an improved experience. For 1440p at 144hz gaming in this price bracket, this is an excellent option. I did a lot of research on other options and this was consistently a strong reccomendation and now I see why. Ive used it every day since I got it and loved every second of gaming on it.

I wish it had built in speakers but besides that I love it. Bring it bright light doesn’t make it hard to see and the screen itself is beautiful

I upgraded from an Acer ED273 which I had since August 2019. I liked that old monitor well enough - except it had a backlight flickering problem I could never fix. After plenty of research I decided this one was the adequate upgraded replacment. I ordered it as used - like new from a seller, and got what Im pretty sure was more or less a brand-new monitor, with a very good panel at that. Even lighting and very little backlight bleed - a HUGE improvement from the Acer one. I would of course expect that at roughly $150-$200 more expensive. The colors are beautiful - though the reds are somewhat oversaturated. This monitor does tend to overblow most colors, but doesnt really bother me much. Its only red that looks nutso to me! The 144hz refresh rate and 4k resolution are a treat to the eyes. It was easy to set up and feels sturdy - though I am using a third party desk mount arm rather than the stock stand. The VESA mount seems strong and I looove the control stick for navigating the settings menu - the old Acer one had an INFURIATING control stick that, on several occasions, left me wanting to bite the monitor clean in half. I cant even describe how beautiful and responsive this one is compared to the garbage crap on the Acer ED273! I will be updating this review as monitor use progresses over the years to keep up with wear-and-tear and overall lifetime of the device. I know, initially, I am STOKED to have this beauty! I can hardly wait to really sit and play games on it - I only tested some 4k gameplay video in the mean time, which looked amazing!

I write this review as the former owner of 3 Asus PG279Qs and one PG279QZ. I was drawn to this realm of the monitor market because I do not believe that 4K displays are worth it at this particular point in time. As far as I see it, the majority are a compromise as the bandwidth requirements for running 4:4:4 chroma subsampling, an extended color gamut, a refresh rate of 144 Hz and beyond, and a resolution of 3840x2160 all at the same time will be much better served by DP 1.5 or HDMI 2.1 (proper HDR wouldnt hurt either). Although it could be argued that achieving 144 frames at 1440p is more resource intensive than 60 frames at 2160p, I believe the experience to be the most immersive, at least until 144+ frames becomes viable at 4K. Unfortunately, based on the price to performance ratio trend of the current generation of graphics cards (Nvidia’s in specific), it is going to be a long, long time until that is achievable at a reasonable price. All things aside, I can state with confidence that I’ve found my sweet spot for monitors in the form of LG’s 27GL850. It has addressed all of the quality control concerns that I’ve experienced throughout my quest of trying to obtain a high refresh rate, 1440p IPS-type display. Seeing as this is an LG product, the monitor can rightfully be referred to as having an IPS (In-Plane Switching) panel as this is their proprietary term for the technology that produces the wider color gamut and viewing angles. I did not buy this display because I am a hardcore gamer; I bought it because I wanted a quality monitor with good color reproduction, a uniform panel, and good response time. My purchase was based solely on the off chance of LG producing a monitor where quality control wasn’t an after-thought. Now that it has finally arrived, I am proud to report that this monitor delivers. The display has zero backlight bleed and excellent uniformity, contrast, and response time. White uniformity is even across the entirety of the screen while the factory calibrated colors appear accurate even next to my calibrated Dell. Outside of sRGB mode, the colors do come off as over-saturated, although some may prefer the added vibrancy of the Nano IPS technology (I did not). Black levels are on par with most other IPS-type displays that I’ve used despite the specified measurement coming in at a somewhat lower figure than similar displays. As for response time, it seems universally accepted by the monitor community that the fast setting is adequate in preventing overshoot. The faster and fastest settings produce undesirable artifacts known as coronas. Despite this monitor not having variable overdrive, I have had no perceivable issues when it comes to gaming as I do tend to binge on CS:GO from time to time. If I had to nit-pick, and I do because this is a review where transparency informs prospective buyers, I will say that the strength of the presence of IPS glow on my display falls on the moderate end of the spectrum. This could be due to the fact the panel is 27 inches, which is a decent amount of real estate for this phenomenon to occur. It is also important to keep in mind that this is something that varies on a per panel basis. Without a doubt, it is a consequence of choosing to utilize an IPS panel for one’s computing purposes. Regardless, it is nothing unexpected or anything that cannot be addressed by adjusting the brightness level as well as the viewing distance, height, and angle. Besides simply turning down the brightness, placing the monitor further away is one way to remedy the matter. Another way to minimize the glow is to position the screen in such a way that one’s gaze meets the center of the screen as IPS-type displays fare better when the height of the top bezel is of equal height or greater in relation to one’s eyes. A final tip is to manipulate the screen’s tilt angle as oftentimes angling it upwards reduces glow. By applying these adjustments, I can easily say that this is overall the best monitor that I’ve used to date. I will not sit here and bash Asus’ most recent iteration of their high refresh rate, 1440p IPS-type display, the PG279QZ, as one can refer to the top review of the PG279QZ to see what types of problems plague those monitors. What I will say is that it’s a breath of fresh air to see that quality control still exists in consumer-grade monitors. Realistically, no manufacturing process is going to produce near perfect monitors all of the time; however, this purchase has instilled confidence in me when it comes to the LG brand. I imagine that this model will provide all disillusioned monitor buyers a glimmer of hope when it comes to having a fighting chance at obtaining a quality monitor in this realm of the market. ***As per a request in the comments, Ive attached pictures of the monitor at brightness of zero, 50%, and 100%. I also managed to track down another monitor from Micro Center, so I posted the same array of shots for this sample too. The results were very similar; however, a small circular area of bleed does exist in the top left corner. It is somewhat noticeable on a black screen unless I increase the height of the stand. To identify the pictures of the second monitor, please see the pictures without the headphones in them. Despite trying several approaches and platforms, the photo uploader refuses to retain the sequence in which I had originally ordered them).***

This monitor is amazing. I did upgrade from a 10 year old Samsung 27 1080p 60hz so Im sure there are many monitors that would have been a decent upgrade. But this LG is just awesome. Maybe I just got lucky but I have ZERO dead/stuck pixels, and it has worked flawlessly since I hooked it up about a week ago. As usual in these types of purchases its easy to read all the horror stories and get too caught up in them. Dont worry and buy with no worries. I was on the fence about it until I saw it listed for $499. So heres the thing: I was checking this daily to see if/when it would be back in stock through Amazon. It was available through other sellers for around $630 -$999??!! for a while. Then one afternoon I checked and it was in stock, and was listed at $499. And I took a moment to decide if I should just do it...and I did. And by the time I pulled up my cart, it was sold out, and was back to $630. So, WAIT UNTIL IT IS $499. Its a fantastic monitor but not enough to get screwed out of $200+. My 1080ti runs everything I play currently at 1440p 144hz like a dream. PubG, the new Modern Warfare, Dying Light, Battlefield 3-1, GTA5, theyre all absolutely amazing at this res and refresh rate. If you have a card to push it, GET IT NOW! (as soon as its $499). EDIT: The only thing I forgot to gripe about is the length of the cables. Theyre waaayyy too short. The display port cable isnt even 6 long so unless youre putting the monitor directly on top of your tower youll probably need a longer one.

Within the first few months of owning this monitor I noticed a crack in my screen on the upper right quadrant that wasnt there previously. Im almost certain it was not of my own doing since I dont touch my monitors unless its with a microfiber cloth to clean them, and I dont remember bumping into it with anything either. On further inspection, the crack seems to be almost exactly 6-8 pixels wide, and is completely straight horizontally, like perfectly so, which I think also rules out that I scratched it somehow. Im thinking that maybe one very small component got too hot and the screen cracked there as a result or something, I dont know. Again, I dont touch my monitor and I dont use sharp objects around it either, so I was pretty surprised to see this. At first I thought it was some dead pixels. Some might think such a small crack isnt noticeable in normal use, and sometimes it isnt on darker backgrounds, but on anything lighter though its quite noticeable, like a permanent small hair which you cant wipe off no matter what. Its a bit hard to see in the picture, but there it is.

I went back forth for a while on what type of monitor to get. I was coming from a 4k display, but a pretty cheap 60 Hz TN panel that I got on a Black Friday sale years ago. High-refresh 4k panels are too pricey (and I dont think my graphics card could cut it), but I wasnt sure if I wanted to commit to trading resolution for framerate. My initial impression after using the 27-GL850-B for a couple of hours is that I absolutely made the right decision. The picture quality blows my old monitor out of the water — the better colors and viewing angles more than compensate for the lower resolution. I have to really lean-in and look hard to notice the pixel edges, and I sit fairly close to the screen. Movies/shows/videos look amazing, as well. >99% of the content I watch isnt available in 4k, anyway, so for those things the monitor is just an improvement in every way over my old one. Screen real-estate is obviously less, though, which, depending on what you do, can impact productivity (which is why I brought the old 4k monitor to the office!). Initial impressions for the high-refresh are very positive. Id never gotten to use a high+variable refresh rate monitor for an extended period of time, and honestly didnt think the difference would feel as stark as it did. Games like CS:GO are lightning-quick, and even moving the cursor across the screen feels buttery smooth compared to the 60 Hz (probably garbage input lag) panels that I have as my secondary and tertiary displays. Even for non-competitive or not-as-fast-paced games, I appreciate the snappiness over a 60 Hz display. Variable refresh works great out of the box (on Windows 10, at least — intending to test with Arch Linux soon, and might update this review). Some other reviews have mentioned the recessed VESA mounting point being a problem. This recess is 12cm x 12cm and roughly ~0.65 cm deep. I was worried that I was going to run into an issue here, but my monitor stands (Monoprice #15708) VESA mounting brackets just barely cleared and were able to fit into said recess. I strongly suspect that, even if ones VESA mounting bracket is too large, as long as it is symmetrically so, then one could just use longer M4 screws than the ones provided (this will put extra radial torque on the screws, which screws arent really designed to handle. In theory, the monitor is light enough that it should be fine, but dont blame me if you break something). Some minor complaints: * Every preset other than the default Gamer 1 preset grays-out many picture options except brightness. For example, if I want to use the clamped-gamut sRGB mode (which is accessed as a preset in the OSD), then Im prevented from adjusting the white point. * I/O (particularly the DisplayPort) is along the vertical center of the monitor, which results in interference between DP cable/plug and my monitor stand. Mine might be an uncommon situation, but it still couldve been avoided. * HDR support is token.

Overall quality is great. You can adjust the monitor stands height with a good range.