LG UltraGear 27GP850-B Review - Premium 1440p gaming monitor?

To those who missed it, LG has finally brought the UltraGear 27GP850-B gaming monitor to the Philippines.

UltraGear gaming brand!

Its headline features include a large 27-inch panel with 1440p resolution, 180Hz refresh rate, and 1ms GtG average response time.

It is priced at PHP 28,999 in the Philippines and is now available at LG offline stores and dealers and on LG online stores on Shopee and Lazada.

So, after a month of gaming and media consumption, we share our thoughts and experience with the LG UltraGear 27GP850-B.

Let's dive into the review!

Unboxing/Accessories

The box

It comes in a black box with the LG UltraGear branding on the outside. 

Documentation

Inside is the monitor and documentation.

Color calibration Factory report

This includes a factory calibration report that assures customers that the monitor offers outstanding color accuracy out of the box.

Cables

Aside from the documentation are the included Power cable, HDMI cable, DisplayPort cable, and USB-Type B cable.

Build Quality/Design

Rearview

The new 27-inch UltraGear is made of a combination of high-quality polycarbonate, glass, and metal. The outer shell is mostly made of textured black polycarbonate with red trim and accents. The front panel is made of glass while inside a polycarbonate shell is a metal frame and structure.

Front view

In front is the massive 27-inch panel with almost no top and side bezels. The bottom bezel is around 1 cm thick. On the bottom bezel is the LG logo along with the NVIDIA G-Sync sticker.

Tool-less assembly

The panel, stand, and feet are packaged separately. Fortunately, the assembly of each main component does not need tools. Users just simply screw the feet on the stand with the included two screws. 

The panel on the other hand connects to the stand with the 100 x 100 VESA mount.

You can even rotate the screen!

Also, the stand allows its users to raise and lower the height of the screen and even rotate to 90 degrees.

Top view

On top of the panel is a smooth surface. The red exhaust pores are visible from the top.

Bottom view

At the bottom is a smooth surface but it has the joystick controller and a Kensington lock port.

Back panel

At the back of the monitor are the ventilation vent, VESA mount, regulatory information, Display Port, two HDMI ports, two USB-Type A ports, one USB-Type B port, 3.5mm headphone port, and power-in port.

Left and right sides

The panel itself is slim with a majority of the thickness coming from the electronics at the back and on the stand.

The stand is solid and heavy which allows for one-handed panel height and tilt adjustment.

Multimedia Experience/Performance

Netflix

LG UltraGear 27GP850-B has a 27-inch Nano IPS panel with a 2560 x 1440 resolution. It has a peak brightness of 400 nits and it supports 98 percent of the DCI-P3 color space. This results in crisp and detailed images with vibrant colors that resulted in us enjoying the movies we stream on Netflix and the vibrant colors of the video games we ran on the monitor. 

Reading texts are a pleasure too as each letter is crisp with outstanding clarity.

The 400 nits peak brightness along with the anti-glare coating makes the panel bright enough to be visible even under direct sunlight from a nearby window.

Because of the 1000:1 contrast ratio, the images aren't as contrasty as we would like and it is one of the few concerns we had regarding its performance. 

In HDR, the panel reaches brightness at just under 500 nits which makes it pass the VESA HDR 400 but realistically, if you are looking for a proper HDR monitor, it is recommended to have a panel with at least 1000 nits.

It has impressive horizontal viewing-angle performance and decent vertical viewing angle performance. Users will find that there will be almost no loss of image quality when viewing from an off horizontal angle. Users should also be precise with the vertical viewing angles as it is not as forgiving.

VALORANT on the 27GP850-B

The panel surprised us with its impressive gray uniformity performance. It manages to maintain the gray thru most of the panel, especially at the center. Only the corners seem to have darkened. In terms of Black uniformity, the panel could improve as there are some areas of the display that suffered from backlight bleed.

LG offers a 165Hz refresh rate that is overclockable to 180Hz. What surprised us is that the panel offers nearly identical performance at both 165Hz and at 180Hz. At both refresh rates, the response times are fast with almost no overshoot and almost no noticeable blur with fast-moving objects in 'Normal' mode. In 'Fast' mode, there are minimal changes. The input lag is also impressive with the panel barely reaching 4.5ms. It averages around 3.6ms at 180Hz.

Overall we are very happy with the speed of the panel.

The included Black Frame Insertion feature is a backlight strobing feature that can reduce the appearance of persistence blur but is limited to refresh rates of 120Hz to 165 Hz. It does not work when the panel is overclocked.

Lastly, the panel is fully compatible with the Xbox Series X and S but has limited 1440p compatibility with the Sony PS5.

Pros - 180Hz overclocked refresh rate, 1ms response time, minimal reflections, minimal artifacts, fast 3.6ms input lag, great gray uniformity performance
Cons - Not for color-sensitive play or work, Stand doesn't swivel, Not true HDR, low contrast, limited PS5 1440p support

Verdict

Brimstone of VALORANT

The LG UltraGear 27GP850-B is one of the best gaming monitors with 1440p resolution that we've ever tasted so far.

It has great resolution and color with decent brightness. It does suffer in HDR a bit, but the viewing angles and gray uniformity remains impressive.

It also has great build quality while having an eye-catching design. Moreover, it also has a lot of ports that make it an excellent addition to any setup.

But what impressed us the most is that the panel manages to offer outstanding performance at 165Hz and at the overclocked 180Hz mode. It managed to minimize ghosting and blur which makes it ideal for gaming that needs the best image quality at an incredibly fast refresh rate.

Overall, we highly recommend the UltraGear 27GP850-B to any gamer who wants the best image quality at 180Hz with a 1440p resolution. It does come at a price but we think it is worth it.

What do you guys think?

Build/Design - 4.25

Multimedia Experience - 4.25

Performance - 4.25

Average - 4.25/5