OLED is so popular among shoppers seeking premium image quality that the acronym continues to expand (see: QD-OLED). But in PC monitors, OLED means limited size options and high prices. Mini LED is a strong alternative, but it has also long had hefty price tags, in part because the devices are so often marketed to creative professionals. But with this week’s announcement of the mini LED PC monitor, the technology is getting cheaper than ever.
Mini LED monitors can put more LEDs in their backlights because each individual light emitting diode in a Mini LED monitor is about half the size of the diodes in regular LED monitors. In a full-array local dimming (FALD) monitor, which has independently controlled lighting zones, this should result in greater contrast, as the screen has more control over brightness in different parts of an image. However, the contrast will not be as extreme as what you would expect from OLED.
The Cooler Master GP27-FQS monitor will release sometime between late Q2 and early Q3 with a suggested retail price of $699. However, a Cooler Master representative told Ars Technica there will be “most likely” retail prices “closer to $550.”
Even at its expected MSRP, the GP27-FQS should be the cheapest mini LED monitor. The current holder of that title appears to be the $2,000 Asus ProArt PA27UCX-K. It’s a 27-inch IPS monitor with 576 local dimming zones, a refresh rate of 60 Hz, and a resolution of 3840×2160. Today’s mini-LED options go all the way up to the famously priced Apple Pro Display XDR, a 32-inch inch 6K display with a starting price of $5,000.
You would expect to move away from the creative professional side of technology, which is often expensive, to yield more affordable monitors. But today’s non-professional mini LED options are still expensive due to their extreme refresh rates. The ROG Swift PG32UQX from Asus has a suggested retail price of $3,000, but is available for $2,900 at the time of writing. There’s also the massive Samsung 49-inch Odyssey Neo G9 G95NA, which you can find for $2,200.
Cooler Master
The GP27-FQS should also have a price advantage over upcoming mini LED monitors, including the stack of retail products announced at CES last month. For example, Acer plans to release the Predator X32 FP mini LED monitor in Q2 for $1,800.
Why so cheap?
An obvious reason for the lower price of the GP27-FQS is that it has a resolution of 2560×1440 rather than 4K and is 165Hz. AOC’s upcoming 170 Hz AG274QXM is also 1440p, but was announced for about $450 more than the GP27-FQS.
The GP27-FQS also doesn’t use any flavor of Nvidia G-Sync, which often comes at a price. (The GP27-FQS uses AMD FreeSync Premium, and you can usually run G-Sync unofficially on such monitors with varying results.)
Cooler Master’s less expensive mini LED monitor also has 576 local dimming zones. There are FALD monitors and TVs with fewer zones, but you will also find mini LED monitors with more than 1,000 zones. For example, the aforementioned Odyssey Neo G9 has 2,048.
More local dimming zones result in greater dynamic range and control over how different parts of an image look. That means you can have an image that is very bright in some places, but still very black in others. With OLED, each pixel is like its own zone, so if you’re considering mini-LED as an OLED alternative, more zones are especially important.
At the time of writing, Cooler Master’s upcoming mini LED monitor doesn’t have VESA certifications around HDR delivery, which many competitors have.
Cooler Master also announced a 4K 160 Hz version of this monitor, the GP27-FUS. This device is also cheaper than other mini LED monitors. With similar specs to the GP27-FQS, save for a bump to HDMI 2.1, the monitor will cost $1,100 when it debuts alongside its lower-resolution brother.
Brighter than OLED
One advantage that mini-LED has over OLED is that it is generally brighter. The GP27-FQS claims to hit up to 1,200 nits, which it does with HDR content. With SDR content, you can expect a maximum brightness of 600 nits.
In terms of color, the monitor claims 97 percent DCI-P3 coverage using quantum dots. That’s not quite comparable to what QD-OLED, a supposedly more colorful type of OLED that also uses quantum dots, claims. (Meanwhile, Alienware’s AW3423DW claims 99.3 percent.) But the GP27-FQS still has a wide color gamut.
Cooler Master
Beyond image quality, the price of a monitor is affected by its feature set. The GP27-FQS has a pair of 2W speakers, USB Type-C connectivity (90W power delivery), plus two HDMI 2.0 ports (instead of the latest HDMI 2.1), DisplayPort 1.4, two USB-A ports and a USB-B. There is also lighting on the back of the panel.
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List image by Cooler Master
