Gigabyte MO27Q28G Review: A Wicked-Bright OLED for Work and Play

We ran the MO27Q28G through our standard benchmark tests using Portrait Displays‘ Calman calibration software and a Klein K-10A colorimeter. We also ran it through a gauntlet of games to measure input lag and judge its real-world performance. We took these readings with Gigabyte’s out-of-the-box settings, unless otherwise noted.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

In our first test, we benchmarked brightness using the MO27Q28G’s default SDR profile. Under these conditions, we measured a maximum brightness of 312 nits at a 10% window size, in line with its SDR rating of 335 nits. That number improved when we switched over to HDR. We recorded 500 nits at a 1% window size, consistent with the HDR 500 rating. At a 10% window size, the HDR brightness reached 561 nits.

For the next test, I strayed from our out-of-the-box settings protocol, because I wanted to test Gigabyte’s maximum HDR brightness claim. I toggled on the HDR 1500 preset, set the window size to 2%, and measured 1,311 nits. That’s not quite the 1,500 nits of maximum peak HDR brightness that Gigabyte promises, but it’s not so far off that you couldn’t hit it with a few tweaks to the settings.

With the monitor’s HDR 1500 mode on, you’ve got a few options to tweak HDR brightness, as well as Light Enhance, Color Enhance, and Dark Enhance. The Light and Color Enhance have three levels, while the Dark Enhance has only an on/off option. The Light Enhance was immediately noticeable, and is definitely something you’ll want to adjust, as I thought the base HDR was somewhat dim for my taste. But once I found the combination of settings I liked, I was impressed. You’ll definitely want to experiment with the settings when playing games designed for HDR, like Cyberpunk 2077.

The MO27Q28G has a rated contrast ratio of 1,500,000:1. This sky-high figure indicates the display’s ability to produce deep blacks alongside bright whites, resulting in improved image quality in both light and dark scenes. With that in mind, contrast ratio ratings in the millions have little practical comparison value, since OLED contrast ratios are essentially infinite.

(Credit: Calman)

Finally, color gamut testing: I found that the MO27Q28G spans 98.5% of the Adobe RGB color space (see the chart above), 166% of the sRGB gamut (see the chart below), and 95.4% of the DCI-P3 gamut. That’s excellent color coverage, albeit what we’ve come to expect from OLED panels.

(Credit: Calman)