I have been using Philips 279M1RV for at least 1.5 years now, and it's a good monitor. Especially since I got it at 350 euros. That had a catch, though, since it had a crack in the bottom right corner, that also sent some lines across the whole bottom, but it was still usable and looked quite good. I was not actively looking for a new monitor, but a 15% coupon for everything Samsung prompted me to look into what they have, that I may want, one of the possible things was a QD-OLED monitor (G80SD).
But since it is an expensive piece of tech, I was not sure, and started doing research into alternatives, if I am even considering to waste so much money. My research led me to ASUS PG32UCDM. It was a very close match between the two, but I based on reviews and people's comments about experiences, as well as my own experience with Tech Support in both companies (with ASUS being better, although still far from perfect), I decided, that ASUS one is probably the one to go with. But it's more expensive. Luckily Gigantti had one in outlet for 1239 euros, so 310 cheaper, which was 35 euros cheaper than what I could pay for Samsung (at the moment of writing G80SD can be purchased for 889 euros which is a much better price, not accounting for that 15% coupon). So... I went and bought it.
Despite having some post-purchase regret after seeing how massively Samsung dropped the price, overall, I am pleased with the purchase. At the least, now my monitor is not blasting my eyes. Philips was bright even at 0 brightness. Possibly because of the damage to the panel, since increasing the brightness was not producing as much difference as one would normally expect. I made a video with 2 panels side-by-side, and Philips was at 0 brightness, while ASUS was at 20 (in SDR mode, of course). And today I actually lowered it to 15.
First thing you will notice on the video is color difference between the 2 panels with Philips looking more vivid, and ASUS more... "Dull", one may say. After using Philips for a long time I felt the same for a few minutes, but it's not really the issue. The thing is ASUS is more accurate, because it allows to clamp (or "clip") the color gamut to sRGB mode. What that means is that it has a wider gamut (more colors) natively, since it's OLED and HDR, but SDR content does not cover as much, since it generally relies on sRGB, which is smaller. Not sure I can explain things properly (you can Google for articles explaining thing better, like this one), but in short it means monitor with when smaller color gamut is sent to a monitor with a wider gamut it results in more saturated colors, or as one would say "vivid". But they are not "correct" colors, since it replaces unsupported/unknown colors with closest match (that is the brightest red, green or blue).
You can say something like: "You are just convincing yourself, that this is ok or better, because you wasted a lot of money on the monitor". Maybe there is a portion of that, too, but I did realize what "correct" means when I compared how human skin looks like, when I played some video from Linus Tech Tips. I did not realize how red-ish it was on Philips until I saw a proper natural white skin color on ASUS. It's what they call "night and day". The comparison video does have a human as well, but not in good environment for, video quality is not good, and the man is also Asian, so it's not as noticeable. With Linus though - on ASUS, he looks like a proper human. And, yes, technically Philips has sRGB, but it is, in essence, limited to ability to adjust colors in color temperature with 3 sliders, so you kind of can clam the gamut. On the other hand, ASUS does have several presets that can provide similar vivid colors, too.
This is a bit of personal preference, though, and you do get used to either palette. In fact, in games Philips' "popping" colors do look quite good in SDR, which was one of the reasons why I did not use HDR on the monitor, even though it has it. Another reason was that is has local dimming, and that resulted in the monitor blasting at me at almost full brightness most of the time, let alone just looking ugly. In bright scenes it is mostly fine, but in dark ones - really bad. In fact, you can see that in the comparison video, as well. Of course, depending on the movie it may not be as critical, and comparison itself may not be as fair, since OLED naturally has much higher contrast, which improves perceptive quality.
But when you get into a game... I do not know what this is. Color accuracy? Contrast? Faster panel? Everything looks crisper. And no, that's not Vivid Pixel function, because even without it the difference is there (in fact difference between values is negligible at best to my eyes, so I leave it at default). The perceived clarity does not make much sense to me, since monitor with higher PPI (that is Philips) should result in sharper image. Even in SDR it just looks better. Heck, even "Assassin's Creed: Mirage" with its washed out colors in HDR looks better on ASUS than what it looks like in SDR on Philips, and when you switch ASUS to SDR... Let's just say, it definitely improves immersion. And all of this while keeping support for variable refresh rate, which Philips loses, if you want HDR (and vice versa, obviously).
So, yeah, not regretting the purchase that much, aside from Samsung probably being able to provide similar experience for significantly smaller price... But that comes with "heavy" TV software which you have to use even when connected to PC, even poorer customer support, less accurate colors, no "formal" certification for anything (HDR, motion clarity, variable refresh rate, etc.). Essentially, you are saving money, but risking getting worse experience over time, because claims may end up marketing fluff, that works for 1st year or so. Not saying it will, but personally I have more trust in ASUS.
That does not mean there are not some things, that I would like them to address in firmware, if possible, and the below was sent to them (ticket E24120059190-0001):
- If I enable "Dynamic refresh rate" with refresh rate set to panel's native 240Hz I can see significant flicker on dark(er) images, when the refresh rate changes, it is especially noticeable in Window's elements themselves if dark mode is used. I was thinking that this is VRR flicker natural to OLEDs, but... switching maximum refresh rate to 120Hz resolves this issue completely. Or maybe 99% of the time, because sometimes shadow around one of the windows can flicker as if the window was losing and regaining focus, but unsure if that's even related. I suspect this is more of a Windows thing, but would be nice if you can work something out with them to remove the flicker and allow to use 240Hz, if it is. I also suspect that this may be result of DCS (I am on HDM2.1, but from what I understand it still implies compression when used at 240Hz), but not sure how to validate that. Even if it is the case, it probably would make sense to not allow "Dynamic refresh rate" in Windows if 240Hz are selected or show some sort of warning if DCS is being used. Or in general, if this is just OLED's thing. Although the WOLED version of the monitor seems to have some anti-flicker setting, so maybe just adding it here would completely resolve things?
- Why is there sound volume settings in the OSD, if monitor has no speakers? I suspect this is for speakers connected to the monitor, but... Why is there when no speakers are connected? It may confuse some, think.
- Manual Pixel Cleaning has a few "issues'. So apparently (and I googled it), it will fail if my PC has monitor sleep timer less than 10 (or even 5) minutes. I think there needs to be an option to ignore signals from sources during manual Pixel Cleaning or, if that's not possible, have a warning about this limitation when triggering Pixel Cleaning manually. What's more manual Pixel Cleaning only briefly flashes power indicator if indicator is turned off in OSD. This may be fine for some people, but I think it is better for it to flash regardless of the setting. Or have a setting to allow it to flash even when power indicator is turned off.
- I noticed that "Game Visual" in SDR seem to be randomly returning itself to "Racing" instead of keeping my "User Mode". Have not figured out the logic yet.
- Display Widget Center does not seem to have image and color settings. I know you will want to correct me, since it does, but it has them linked to profiles, which is fine, but... it's not the same as in OSD. It took me a literal day to realize, that the settings are there. IMHO, Widget should be replicating the structure of OSD as much as possible.
- There is no need for separate Widget. I mean it's fine for people who want to install it separately, but why not have the same thing in Armory Crate as well? I mean like a component with optional tray icon. Armory is supposed to be a centralized control panel for all ASUS components, after all, so it would make sense to have monitor controls integration there.
- ADM driver automatically selected pixel format as YCbCr 4:4:4, and for some reason OSD shows it as "limited" color range, although technically it's not. Selecting "Full RGB" format, obviously starts showing "full range". in OSD.
- I am not sure automatic logo-dimming is working at all. At least I did not notice any changes in brightness. Maybe it requires the screen to be at specific brightness for it to work? Best example of this is actually not a logo, but Steam's FPS counter. I had a relatively long cutscene, where FPS counter was stuck at 30 FPS, and it did not look like it was dimming at all, although if it was static, it should have been recognized as a logo, IMHO. Although maybe the problem is not so much with the function but with lack of description for it? Nothing explains how it's supposed to work, really. At least some clarification in documentation would be nice here.
- Similar thing with proximity sensor, and that's been noticed by other users, if you search for this: it's unclear if it's even working. I set it to high, and still even if I leave the room display gets turned off by Windows (I have 3 minute limit), and not by itself. But on the other way, there is no description about after how long exactly it's supposed to turn off, so maybe it's set to 5 minutes or more? Clarification in documentation would be nice.
- This may be more of a game specific issue or maybe something requiring extra calibration of settings, but in Dead Island 2 the darks are too bright in HDR mode. Even in the settings in the game you can see how the black point setting still allows to clearly see the skull logo even at 0. At the same time, in Windows' calibration I can get the cross to completely disappear at 0, as expected. Shadow boost is not enabled, and changing HDR modes on monitor does not seem to change this either. While this may be game specific, I tried the game with Philips 279M1RV and it was not a problem at all, so perhaps this is something that can be addressed on Firmware level.
- This is most likely a game issue, but still worth mentioning, in case you can help with that, too: Assassin's Creed Mirage is just bad in HDR mode. It's extremely bright and overexposed even when setting luminance to 200 and exposure to -2 in-game. Changing HDR modes on monitor does not help. SDR looks waaaaaay better in this game. According to Reddit it looks like this game (and allegedly previous 3) have bad HDR implementation, but considering that blacks are a bit too bright in Dead Island 2, as well... Maybe it's the monitor's logic? Maybe issue with yet unpublished firmware version? Maybe I should downgrade it?
- Related to points 10 and 11, and thus also suggesting that something is off in HDR processing on monitor, here you can see how in HDR mode "LG The Black" can clearly show something in the dark background. I stress "clearly", as I would expect it to be possible to see it in general, but it feels like it should not be that obvious. I thought I was tripping, when I saw it initially, and thought it was some artifacts. This also suggests that maybe the brightness is being boosted unnecessarily. The video has my settings for the monitor here.
- Allow us to increase size of OSD. With how big the panel is, it's a bit annoying to have to stress the eyes to read the OSD.
