Asus ROG Swift PG258Q Monitor Review
Why you can trust Tom's Hardware
Grayscale Tracking
The PG258Q comes set to its Racing mode by default. While it isn’t too far off the mark, it doesn’t qualify for our “doesn’t need calibration” list. We’ll walk you through our measurement and adjustment process now.
Our grayscale and gamma tests are described in detail here.
In the grayscale tracking department, Racing, sRGB, and FPS mode look almost identical. All run a bit red, especially in the middle and upper parts of the brightness range. If you prefer a warmer look, the blue light filter won’t be needed. But if you want to nail D65, some changes are necessary. In addition to the tweaks made to the RGB sliders, we also changed the Dark Boost setting and the Contrast control. The latter two have a greater effect on gamma tracking and color gamut accuracy which you’ll see in our charts below.
Comparisons
Gaming monitors aren’t known for exceptional out-of-box accuracy. While we suspect many users aren’t concerned about this, we think premium prices should mean better default performance. An average error of 3.55dE is just above the visible level, but obviously the PG258Q is capable of more. 1.22dE won’t move it to the professional ranks but it is a respectable result nonetheless.
MORE: Best Computer Monitors
MORE: How To Choose A Monitor
MORE: All Monitor Content
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Christian Eberle is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He's a veteran reviewer of A/V equipment, specializing in monitors. Christian began his obsession with tech when he built his first PC in 1991, a 286 running DOS 3.0 at a blazing 12MHz. In 2006, he undertook training from the Imaging Science Foundation in video calibration and testing and thus started a passion for precise imaging that persists to this day. He is also a professional musician with a degree from the New England Conservatory as a classical bassoonist which he used to good effect as a performer with the West Point Army Band from 1987 to 2013. He enjoys watching movies and listening to high-end audio in his custom-built home theater and can be seen riding trails near his home on a race-ready ICE VTX recumbent trike. Christian enjoys the endless summer in Florida where he lives with his wife and Chihuahua and plays with orchestras around the state.
Retro-style gaming monitor will hit the market for $200 — the display features a 1080p VA panel with a 180 Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync support
TSMC posts strong year-on-year revenue growth of 34% despite month-to-month slowdown — foundry pulls in $8.5B in revenue for November 2024
Microsoft allows Windows 11 to be installed on older, unsupported hardware but specifically nixes official support — minimum requirements for full compatibility remain unchanged
-
apertotes I just don't get it. How can you leave the contrast (arguably the most importante feature on a screen after the resolution) out of the first page of the article? I couldn't care less about the bezel width, but please, state the contrast!Reply -
ahnilated 1080P, *sigh* who wants this anymore! Get me a 4K monitor at 30-32" with good specs and G-Sync that isn't $4000.Reply -
dstarr3 19637653 said:1080P, *sigh* who wants this anymore! Get me a 4K monitor at 30-32" with good specs and G-Sync that isn't $4000.
Because that's the reality of GPUs at the moment. GPUs can get you a solid 4K/60 or a solid 1080p/144. You're not going to get 4K/144 in any modern games on any PC at the moment (unless you're only playing 20-year-old games). So there's not a lot of sense in wanting to invest in a 4K/144 monitor now, only in anticipation of when GPUs can finally push that many pixels, because you'll be wasting the monitor while you wait, and when such GPUs finally do arrive, the monitors will be better and cheaper. -
Rosanjin Do we know if this monitor is 3dVision capable?Reply
I would assume so, but I've learned some very expensive lessons by making purchases based on assumptions. : / -
ahnilated 19637717 said:19637653 said:1080P, *sigh* who wants this anymore! Get me a 4K monitor at 30-32" with good specs and G-Sync that isn't $4000.
Because that's the reality of GPUs at the moment. GPUs can get you a solid 4K/60 or a solid 1080p/144. You're not going to get 4K/144 in any modern games on any PC at the moment (unless you're only playing 20-year-old games). So there's not a lot of sense in wanting to invest in a 4K/144 monitor now, only in anticipation of when GPUs can finally push that many pixels, because you'll be wasting the monitor while you wait, and when such GPUs finally do arrive, the monitors will be better and cheaper.
The reason you won't get it is because the GPU's won't do it, not because the games won't. Game developers want to make more realistic games but the GPU's are lagging way behind. Nvidia hasn't had any real competition for many years so there was no need for them to push to 4K gaming at 144Hz or higher. I am hoping AMD's cards will force Nvidia to get off their buts as it seems the consumers aren't going to pull their money from Nvidia until Nvidia gets back on the ball. -
Geo Matrix I agree with AHNILATED! DSTARR3 says, "Because that's the reality of GPUs at the moment". I say let's have some serious change! Asus and Nvidia are "milking the cow" with these old relics. Everything is now going 4K, 6K and 8K. It's time to stop milking the cow and people's wallets and put out the new technology. It's 2017, not 1980. We all know the new tech is already here.Reply -
dstarr3 Based on the performance bump we saw from the 1080 Ti, I don't think it's fair to say that nVidia's slouching when it comes to GPU performance. Pricing, sure, they could use more competition. But something like 4K/144 is a seriously enormous amount of processing to do. The DisplayPort and HDMI interfaces themselves had to be updated to transfer that much data. I'm amazed we got 4K/60 out of GPUs as quickly as we did. Give it another generation and we should be hovering around 4K/144. But you ask why there's no 4K/144 gaming monitors coming out yet, and this is why. There aren't any 4K/144 GPUs out yet, either. And it's not because any particular company is stagnating. It's because pushing that many pixels to a monitor is a huge, huge task.Reply -
Deadshot-89 I use an Eizo EV 2336W. It has incredibly accurate and incredibly deep and vidid colors right out of the box. It also has a very deep picture and for an IPS screen very deep blacks. And to top it all off, it has extremely nice viewing angles, no color-shifts and it retains a ton of brightness at very steep angles. Motion performance is very OK for a 60 Hz screen.Reply
My current hardware isn't really capable of producing more than a reliable 1080p60. (GTX 970, i5-4590). So I see no reason to switch to a higher res screen or higher refresh rate screen.