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The gaming monitor genre has plenty of extremely expensive or extremely cheap products. Most users shop on price and gravitate to the two ends of the spectrum. If you dig a bit more, though, some products deliver nearly all the performance of the top displays but cost only a little more than the budget ones. The HP Omen 27qs is a standout example.
In the response and lag tests, I found it matched lag numbers with most of the 360 and 500 Hz screens I’ve reviewed and only differed in measured draw time. And the visual difference is largely eliminated thanks to one of the best overdrives available. With precise tuning, it eliminates trail artifacts and delivers extremely high motion resolution. For gamers who prefer MPRT or backlight strobing, HP has also paid attention to that feature with a clean implementation and plenty of brightness to compensate for narrower pulse widths. The Omen 27qs’s video processing easily matches the very best monitors I’ve tested.
I was equally impressed with image quality. Out-of-box accuracy is at the professional level with visually perfect grayscale, gamma and color gamut. The default picture mode uses sRGB color for SDR content which is the correct choice. Users who prefer a wide gamut for all material can choose the Native mode and apply a few tweaks to have perfect color. The contrast is about average for IPS panels, but a greater dynamic range is available thanks to field dimming for SDR and edge zone dimming for HDR. The picture is superb in every respect.
The Omen 27qs is around $430 at this time, so it’s not the least expensive 27-inch QHD monitor out there. But it sells for less than competing 240 Hz screens and offers better color and video processing than just about anything else. It just does everything well. If you’re looking for the price/performance sweet spot, the HP Omen 27qs is there.
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