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8/10
Open rating explainerInformationWIREDAttractive, thin design. Stand comes with lots of adjustability. Forward-facing buttons are convenient. Solid HDR performance for the price. 120-Hz refresh rate is a nice bonus. Great port selection.TIREDNot very bright in SDR. Some quirks when connected to macOS.OLED is common in gaming monitors these days. But for those of us who don’t need gaming gear? Well, home-office and content-creation monitors have been much slower to adopt the exciting and more capable display technology. That’s unfortunate because having an OLED monitor is every bit as useful as having an OLED TV if you ever use your monitor for entertainment purposes. OLED displays are also helpful for photo editors, videographers, game developers, and other creators who might want to work in high dynamic range (HDR) for a broader range of brightness, contrast, and color.
The PA279CDV is Asus’ attempt to bring that OLED goodness to a wider demographic, at a retail price of $699, which is competitive for the technology. This monitor makes a few compromises to hit that price, but it does so without losing what makes owning a high-end OLED display feel unique.
Unique, Ergonomic, and Easy to Use
Asus is one of the few manufacturers releasing OLED monitors precisely for this non-gamer demographic, and the PA279CDV is the cheapest it's ever had in its lineup. In fact, the monitor only has one major competitor: the Dell 32 Plus QD-OLED (9/10 WIRED Recommends). The main difference between the two is the size. Dell’s model is 31.6 inches, compared to Asus’ 27 inches. Being larger gives you more screen to work with, but it's also less sharp and takes up more desk space. The Samsung 32-inch Smart Monitor M90SF (7/10 WIRED Recommends) is the only other non-gaming OLED monitor option, but that's far more expensive.
Photograph: Luke LarsenAs far as the Asus’ appearance goes, the side bezels are a bit large, and the top and bottom bezels aren’t the same size, which I find visually off-putting. Nicely, though, the amount of adjustability is impressive. This stand can swivel, tilt, rotate into portrait mode, and the height can shift 5 inches. The stand has some very basic built-in cable management, with down-firing ports that help keep cords organized. Also, the flat base doesn't require much space on my desk.
Each of the two back USB-C ports has a specific purpose. One is USB-C 3.2 with DP Alt Mode, which provides 96 watts of power delivery for your laptop. The other is a USB-C 3.2 port for the KVM switch, enabling you to connect two PCs to the monitor and switch between them seamlessly. Fortunately, Asus clearly labels each port, so you know which to use for your intended purpose. The monitor also comes with two USB-A ports for accessories, a headphone jack, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and a DisplayPort Out for daisy-chaining monitors together. This is a solid array of port selection that gives you just about everything you need to use the ProArt PA279cdv as a workstation.
Photograph: Luke Larsen
Photograph: Luke LarsenMeanwhile, the controls for the onscreen display and menu are on the right side of the front panel. I tend to prefer just a single joystick for simplicity's sake, but like the other Asus ProArt monitors, this one gives you five control buttons, plus a power button, in addition to a joystick. Once you know how to use it, though, the buttons give you quick access to switching inputs or changing brightness.
There are quite a lot of features to dig through in the menu, including a number of color modes and detailed picture-quality tweaks. There's also a Display Widget app to handle all these settings, available in Windows 11 or macOS.
The monitor includes speakers, but they sound pretty bad, which is unfortunate for a monitor designed at least partially for entertainment purposes. Keep this in mind if you plan to watch a movie on the monitor, since you’ll only want to use the speakers for basic notifications. By contrast, the Dell 32 Plus QD-OLED has a really nice set of speakers.
OLED, Oh My!
Brightness—both measured in standard dynamic range (SDR) and HDR content—is the key feature of an OLED monitor, as it determines how good at HDR the device in question truly is. OLED displays can switch off individual pixels, a capability that provides the absolute blacks this class of display is known for. But if the pixels aren't bright enough, the display still won’t produce a strong HDR performance.
Using an HDR test pattern, I was able to record 1,038 nits in a 1 percent window and 917 nits in a 4 percent window. These strong results deliver a greater sense of visual fidelity when watching movies or playing games than what you’d get with dimmer displays. Compared to the current ultimate HDR monitor, the Apple Studio Display XDR (7/10, WIRED Recommends), though, these results aren’t stunning. On the Apple monitor, I got to 1,905 nits of brightness in a 25 percent window. Even so, comparing these two monitors is hardly fair, given that the Apple costs more than $3,000 and should provide a premium quality to match. I’m providing these results to demonstrate the broad HDR landscape in monitors.
I tested the Asus visuals in a few scenarios, including HDR video test footage, Netflix streaming, and some games. Dark scenes in Cyberpunk 2077 really come to life, aided by the deep blacks and brighter highlights. The effect isn't mind-blowing, but it's definitely noticeable.
Photograph: Luke LarsenIn SDR content, though—which is where you’ll spend most of your time—the results are even less stellar. According to my meter, it maxed out in SDR at 240 nits at full-screen brightness. While that's bright enough for most days, if you sit next to a window, you might find yourself wishing for an extra 100 nits. The Dell 32 Plus 4K QD-OLED has the same issue. The good news is that while the PA279CDV has a glossy display, it’s surprisingly good at resisting reflections and glare.
I also tested the color performance, as that's one of the features that Asus claims distinguishes the PA279CDV from its more expensive OLED options, such as the ProArt PA27ucdmr ($1,401). The color gamut was fantastic across the board, meaning the panel is capable of producing great color, covering 91 percent of Adobe RGB and 98 percent in Display P3. When plugged into a Windows machine, the Spyder Pro I used measured excellent color accuracy as well—far beyond what Asus claimed.
However, when plugged into a MacBook Pro, I was unable to get that same color accuracy. For whatever reason, the best I could measure was a Delta-E of around 2.0. That's not terrible, but it's not quite pro-level. Speaking of Mac compatibility, the PA279CDV has a number of features to entice Mac users. Once you install the Display Widget app, it'll match up color temperature with your MacBook and even allow you to control screen brightness from your keyboard. (It can’t control volume, though, which is a miss.) A lot of this is very similar to what BenQ offers in its own Mac-focused line of monitors, such as the BenQ 5K MA270S that I recently tested.
Photograph: Luke LarsenThis doesn't solve the problem of scaling. MacOS still doesn't love the 4K resolution, so you'll need to play around with different resolutions and decide which suits your needs best. When you plug it in, it defaults to a 2560 x 1440 resolution in macOS. This doesn’t yield the same sharpness as running a native 1440p on a Windows machine, but it still looks quite sharp. If you upgrade to a 5K monitor, you won't have to deal with this, but those tend to be more expensive and often aren't available in OLED. The other macOS quirk I ran into was that I could only turn on HDR if I changed the refresh rate to 60 Hz.
Despite the macOS hiccups, the 120-Hz refresh rate is a nice touch in the PA279CDV. It's increasingly common in cheaper monitors, even appearing in the Dell 27 Plus 4K, which is often on sale for less than $300. But it nicely matches the refresh rate of the MacBook Pro and gives the screen smoother animation and motion. And while serious gamers will certainly desire a faster display, 120 Hz at least allows games to look fluid at frame rates over 60 frames per second (fps).
Hope for HDR
There's a lot to like about the PA279CDV and very few reasons for frustration. I'm thrilled to see the category of non-OLED gaming monitors grow, especially in the direction of affordability. The vast majority of laptop screens and monitors lack any meaningful HDR support. So, as these HDR-capable monitors become more accessible, the hope is that we'll see more high-quality HDR content available online. Heck, most browsers and streaming services don't even support HDR at this point. The PA279CDV is exactly what we need more of to improve the situation, and the monitor’s strong port selection makes it a solid option for a home-office workstation in its own right.
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$699 $599 at Amazon$894 at Best Buy
