ASUS PB278Q 2560x1440 Monitor Review
Conclusion
Published: 8th December 2012 | Source: ASUS | Price: ã460 |
Conclusion
Let's start with the monitor itself.
It's huge. Make no mistake, the difference between even a 24" 1080P monitor, and the 27" ASUS offering is immense. The amount of screen real-estate available is glorious, and you really feel the benefit of the extra pixels on offer. For comparison purposes, a 1920x1080 monitor has just over 2 million pixels. The ASUS PB278Q has 3.6 million pixels. It's very nearly two 1080P monitors worth of screen in just a 3" bigger package. This makes a huge difference to your potential productivity.
In the OC3D offices we have a few different setups available to us. We normally use triple screens for our work, and have gamed on Eyefinity setups and 3D setups. We definitely prefer the 'one giant screen' approach. Games are designed for a single screen, especially in these days where the line between a console title and a PC title are blurred so much that few games are designed to utilise more than one display.
The quality of the screen is outstanding. The PLS (Plane Line Switching) panel is a big improvement upon a TN panel, and easily a match for any IPS panels. You get brilliant colour reproduction, good blacks, good viewing angles and the whole shebang is wrapped up in a nicely designed surround. Sure it wont win any design awards, but when it comes to monitors we'd much rather have something that just works, rather than something with fancy stands and strange lights just for the sake of it. The stand is excellent and you certainly wont need to purchase a separate VESA stand just to get some decent adjustability.
Of course you pay a premium for such a big monitor, and the PB278Q rocks in at a fairly hefty £460. However, that's only hefty compared to either the bottom end TN monitors that most of us start with, or the average 1080P television where you can get a much bigger size for the same kind of money. If you look at what you're actually getting, we think that the PB278Q is very good value. If you've never experienced a good quality monitor then you can't appreciate the difference it makes. But if you think of how much you are willing to spend on good graphics or a fast processor, why scrimp on the part of the computer you actually look at?
Finally we have to point out the performance difference in average FPS. This, as we said above, is nearly twice the size of a 1080P monitor in pure pixel terms, so that requires a ton of extra horsepower and the frame-rate certainly suffers. If you've only got a mid-range card you'd be better off putting your money into a high-end GPU first, otherwise you'll be watching a slide-show.
However, if you want a big screen with awesome colours, good response, no ghosting, loads of connection options and a great stand we heartily recommend the excellent ASUS PB278Q. Our only complaint is that we only have one and everybody is fighting over the chance to use it. A worthy winner of our OC3D Gold Award, you owe it to yourself to have a screen that freshens up your whole experience.
Thanks to ASUS for providing the PB278Q for review. Discuss it in our OC3D Forums.
Most Recent Comments
I get what you mean in things like Dirt3 when there's just too much going on at the sides but I do kind of feel that adds to the immersiveness of the game. Obviously if it puts you off, it's not a good thing, but I do think it just makes everything more realistic.
Aside from that though, I do find three screens a lot better to work on in windows, whether it's just word or general use like internet/music etc... and obviously video editing spread out across 3 screens has its benefits.
I probably agree that if you're just gaming, you'd be better off getting one of these over 3x 1080 screens - but there's such a price difference between it, I find it hard to justify the cost. I mean, you can get 3x 23inch Dell IPS screens for around £70 cheaper than one of these. It's obviously going to depend on the user at the end of the day - but at the present moment in time, until these come down in price, I think I'd still choose far cheaper 1080 screens.
Thanks Tom about opening my eyes to club3d cards. been doing some reading and research and their cards are badass
Looking to get the 7990 or the 7970 royalace ghz edition
I have a quick question for you and the community:
I was a bit worried when you said cards that are paired in SLi / XFire do not share memory between the cards.
I have recently bought *two* Dell U2412Ms (1920x1600) to run as dual screens running side by side.
To power the screens I was planning on using *two* NVIDIA 660Tis in SLi. In my mind, because *one* U2412M monitor is being plugged into *one* 660Ti card, then in this case the full 4GB of VRAM should be used?
Would I be correct in this assumption? If not, then would you suggest getting one high end graphics card (670/7970/680)?
Many thanks,
np.
Until the next generation of cpus and gpus comes out and I upgrade my rig, I'll have to turn the settings in BF3 down so that my 6970 can cope with the 2560x1440 res.
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Originally Posted by noproblem
Thanks for your review Tom!
I have a quick question for you and the community: I was a bit worried when you said cards that are paired in SLi / XFire do not share memory between the cards. I have recently bought *two* Dell U2412Ms (1920x1600) to run as dual screens running side by side. To power the screens I was planning on using *two* NVIDIA 660Tis in SLi. In my mind, because *one* U2412M monitor is being plugged into *one* 660Ti card, then in this case the full 4GB of VRAM should be used? Would I be correct in this assumption? If not, then would you suggest getting one high end graphics card (670/7970/680)? Many thanks, np. |
- Thanks to give me a big smil on the face !
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Originally Posted by noproblem
To power the screens I was planning on using *two* NVIDIA 660Tis in SLi. In my mind, because *one* U2412M monitor is being plugged into *one* 660Ti card, then in this case the full 4GB of VRAM should be used?
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or if you have 3 cards its #1 = 1,4,7 #2 = 2,5,8 #3 = 3,5,9 ect
Not all games handle multiple cards very well so overall performance is pretty much never over 90% extra per card added and after 2 cards the average performance gain per card drops dramatically.
but the price is a little high... do the 3,5 mm jacks deactivate if you turn off the screen?
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Originally Posted by 1355970
My question might be weird, but about a valid issue i experienced with another screen ...
... do the 3,5 mm jacks deactivate if you turn off the screen? |
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Originally Posted by JoćoCruz
i have no idea but i think not becouse is just a pass throu
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Originally Posted by 1355970
So you say, a jack signal should not turn off, when i turn off the screen since it doesn't draw power from it, like a USB hub would? Makes absolute sense, then i guess i just had a weird monitor in the past!
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With regards to gaming above 1080p, I cannot wait until mainstream games start getting optimised for resolutions above 1920x1080.
I suppose it depends on the resolution of TVs, and so what resolutions the games consoles are outputting to the TV. 4k is only a few years away imo, so fairly soon we will be able to play games optimised for viewing in a stunning resolution.
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Originally Posted by Asta
That testing part looks like VGA review imho.
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Probably to show you how much of an impact the extra resolution will have on your gpu....
I wonder ... it was interesting to see the GTX680 chews the extra resolution much better than the standard HD in Batman and Dirt. And even the more GBs of VRAM doesn't helps Radeons, hmmmmm it must be the software optimization or something else ?
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