March 29, 2024

Sapiensdigital

Sapiens Digital

ViewSonic Elite XG270 – Review 2020

For years, gamers have had to compromise when it came to the monitors they chose: fast refresh rates with poor image quality, or rich detail and slower speeds. Now, though, the ViewSonic Elite XG270 ($484.99) is set to change that as one of the first 240Hz IPS displays to hit the market. During our time with the 27-inch, 1080p monitor, we found it both lightning-fast (scoring just shy of an all-time record) and beautiful to look at, thanks to the combination of an IPS panel and the HDR 10 spec. If you’re a twitch-reaction esports hound, you won’t find anything that will boost your gaming scores more than a 240Hz refresh rate, and the increased contrast of the IPS panel makes it even easier to line up sniper shots during online combat. If you’re on the fence about upgrading to a high-refresh monitor, wait no longer: The XG270 is the fastest, best-looking buy on shelves, and it easily earns an Editors’ Choice.

More of a Good Thing

The ViewSonic Elite XG270 joins its brother, the 1440p Elite XG270QG, as one of several new monitors developed by the company that are moving the brand in an entirely new aesthetic direction. Gone are the gray and red undertones of previous years, replaced with an entirely-black housing that’s accented on the back with a single ring of RGB LED lighting.

ViewSonic Elite XG270-02

To my eyes (and throughout our testing regimen), I found that both functionally and aesthetically the XG270 and XG270QG are identical in design—and you won’t find me complaining about that. Everything I loved about the QG is back in the VESA-mountable XG270, including a stand that swivels up to 45 degrees left or right with a tilt range of -5 to 20 degrees. The monitor can also pivot a full 90 degrees for anyone who wants to use it as their secondary display. (Though why would you want to do that with such a stellar piece of kit, anyway?)

ViewSonic Elite XG270-03

At the bottom of the unit are two RGB strips that can be controlled independently of the strip on the back, and all the RGB strips can be synced up to one of three different controller programs thanks to ViewSonic’s membership in the RGB Alliance: CoolerMaster’s MasterPlus+ (PC case lighting), Razer’s Chroma (keyboards, mice, and headsets), and ThermalTake’s TT RGB (PC cases and accessories).

ViewSonic Elite XG270-06

On either side of the RGB hexagon are two mouse bungees (for left-handed and right-handed players respectively). These, when set up correctly, make it easy to manage your mouse cable if you prefer to stay away from the lag that some wireless mice might introduce into your gameplay. And when you’re gaming at 240Hz, I don’t blame you either.

ViewSonic Elite XG270-07

On the back of the unit are a pair of 3-watt speakers that (and this is rare, folks) actually don’t sound terrible. It’s almost routine at this point to observe that any gaming monitor with speakers would be better off not having them at all, due to tinny, treble-heavy output with almost no bass to back it up. But the extra watt of power that the XG270 has over the XG270QG seems to make quite a bit of difference, even though ultimately any serious multiplayer gamer will opt for a headset, both for an onboard mic and for the ability to hear where your enemies are before you see them onscreen.

ViewSonic Elite XG270-10

As for ports, the ViewSonic Elite XG270 is equipped with one HDMI 2.0 port and one DisplayPort 1.4b slot, three USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and a single USB 3.1 Type-B downstream port for connecting the monitor to your PC.

Testing the Elite: Lacking in Color, But Super-Quick in Speed

Color Gamut Coverage

To start our color accuracy evaluation of the ViewSonic Elite XG270, I checked out the sRGB gamut using Portrait Displays’ CalMAN calibration software, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, a Klein K10-A colorimeter, and an X-Rite i1Basic Pro spectrometer.

Almost every current gaming monitor does well in this test that measures how web-based content will appear (generally averaging in the range of 95 to 100 percent), and things were no different here with the XG270’s coverage scoring 99.7 percent.

ViewSonic X270 sRGB

In the Adobe RGB measurement, which generally tells you how a display will do when handling content creation tasks such as photo or video editing or 3D modeling, the XG270 starts to lose some ground to its bigger brother (which scored a record-setting 88.8 percent for gaming monitors). Here the XG270 only managed a score of 78.1 percent, which is on the lower side of what gaming monitors usually achieve.

ViewSonic X270 AdobeRGB

After that came the DCI-P3 test, which measures how accurately a monitor can display movie and TV content in creative editing apps:

ViewSonic X270 DCI-P3

Again, the results weren’t up to those we’ve seen from other gaming monitors, scoring just above the bottom of the pack at 78.8 percent.

Brightness and Input Lag Testing

At a reading of 413.8 peak nits in HDR mode, the brightness levels of the XG270 fell squarely within the expectations set by its HDR 10 spec. With black levels of 0.15, this gave the display a total rated contrast ratio of 2,759:1, well above ViewSonic’s advertised ratio of 1,000:1.

Finally, using an HDFury 4K Diva, I recorded a near-record-setting input lag figure of 1.6ms. This is imperceptibly slower than the 1.4ms of our current champ, the MSI Optix MPG341CQR, but that display topped out at 144Hz. This means that if you’re on the hunt for a 240Hz gaming monitor that features speed on all fronts—response time, refresh rate, and input lag—the XG270 is a top contender across the board.

Anecdotal Testing: Let’s Play!

To start our anecdotal testing, I ran the G-Sync-certified ViewSonic Elite XG270 through a gauntlet of gaming, including multiplayer and single-player titles ranging from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

The monitor is the very first to pass through Blur Buster’s PureXP tuning program, a certification process designed specifically by that team to reduce motion blur as much as possible in any panel they test and tune. This is achieved by a lot of special backlight strobe tuning that happens in the monitor’s firmware; the details are a bit too complex to get into here, but here’s my experience with it.

In general, the higher refresh rate a monitor has, the more prone it is to motion blur. I’ve tested several 240Hz monitors that used either TN or VA display technology, and none was free from the problem of motion blur when it came to quickly whipping the camera in a certain direction to line up a shot in FPS titles. The XG270 wasn’t immune to this issue; however, it was far less pronounced than what I’ve seen in competing models.

Not only that, but as I’ve mentioned in reviews of monitors like the HP Omen X 25f, gaming at 240Hz is undoubtedly the way to go if your main concern is beating everyone else in the multiplayer lobby. The higher your refresh, the faster you can respond to threats, and with the ViewSonic’s strong contrast ratio and motion clarity, it truly felt like I was one step ahead of my opponents for every kill I racked up during my testing rounds in CS:GO.

As far as the implementation of HDR 10 goes, which is important for more immersive single-player experiences like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I could take it or leave it. I’m one of those reviewers who holds the opinion that any level of HDR under HDR 600 isn’t worth implementing, simply because the level of contrast is too low to make the extra investment worth it. The same rings true for the XG270, because HDR movies and games simply didn’t pop above a level that they would on a non-HDR monitor.

Don’t get me wrong—this is easily the best-looking 240Hz monitor I’ve seen. However, that’s due more to the IPS panel than it is to HDR, since the image quality easily exceeded that of other 240Hz panels in standard mode as well as in HDR.

Beautiful to See, Even More Beautiful to Play

The ViewSonic Elite XG270 is even more of what I loved about the XG270QG, crammed into a display that’s both faster and less motion-blurry (an adjective I’ve just coined) than its sibling. Since its color results were lacking, it does lose a few points as a dual-purpose display for gamers and content creators (an area where the XG270QG was surprisingly adept). However, the introduction of IPS technology to the world of 240Hz gaming is, well, a game-changer. As of this writing, the only other monitor I know of that shares this same panel is the Alienware AW2720HF, and while the two are priced competitively with one another (right now you can find the ViewSonic for a street price of around $430), in my opinion the XG270 edges out the win thanks to quality-of-life improvements like its versatile stand and mouse bungees.

Not only that, but with its new Blur Busters certification, this is the first and only monitor that can safely claim that it’s ahead of the curve in the battle against motion blur. The XG270 is a thoughtful, expertly crafted gaming monitor that sets out to do one thing really, really well: help you game at your fastest with the crispest visuals possible at 240Hz. If that’s what you’re looking for, the monitor of your dreams has finally arrived.

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