Late last year, I put a giant 48-inch OLED TV on my desk in search of the screen that would rule them all. It was great, with amazing color, black ink, G-Sync and FreeSync Premium on a 120 Hz panel, but not exactly right to be the perfect PC screen. Now, LG is adapting its TV a bit more for desktop use with the new LG UltraGear 48GQ900, which adds some of the features I’d like to have in this review.
The main one: the stand. While the LG C1 48 and LG CX 48 TVs have a large, wide base that discourages any attempt at desktop cable management and blocks the rest of your desktop, the new UltraGear monitor has a more traditional V-shaped foot than raises the entire screen. off the table.
The remote control. Image: LG
There’s a built-in dual-port USB 3.0 hub, an easily accessible 3.5mm four-pin headphone jack if you don’t want to rely on its built-in 20W stereo speakers, and a remote control that can make sense for using dedicated games. It has a large horn dial and easy buttons to switch video inputs, audio outputs, mute, power and a switch to LG game mode. (The TVs had, well, a remote control and no point down to navigate the menus.)
There is the headphone jack, which is compatible with DTS Headphone X. Image: LG
The Korean company’s Chinese products page also shows that you can convene a screen lookout and an FPS counter, if you will, which are table bets for high-end gaming monitors these days. You can also exceed the screen at 138 Hz, though I’m not sure immediately why you want to do this.
What the company’s press release doesn’t say, unfortunately, is whether LG has made its automatic brightness limiting algorithms less aggressive, which is what kept these giant OLED screens from being amazing PC monitors in the past. While I found the LG C1 48 great for PC gaming, it was a pain to have the screen constantly dimming as I tried to scroll through documents and websites.
There is no mention of an ASBL correction, not that we expect it in a press release
Limiters protect the OLED screen from burning, but they are a bit enthusiastic and other companies that have built game monitors around LG’s OLED screens have not found a way to do so. LG hasn’t significantly improved it on its latest panels either: Rtings writes that the new smaller 42-inch LG C2 still has the brightness limiter issue. We asked LG and we’ll let you know what we heard.
The other big question is the price: one of the reasons to choose an LG OLED TV over a giant game monitor is because sometimes you can find them around, or just a couple of hundred north of the 1,000 mark. dollars. If LG is charging a premium for the monitor version, it would be a harder sale.
Currently, the world’s flagship game monitor is probably this Alienware QD-OLED. But if you’re curious about what it’s like to live with a giant LG OLED display, I’ll describe it in detail in my review!
The new LG 48GQ900 “will be available starting this month in Japan with key markets in North America, Europe and Asia,” according to the company. You can also read about a pair of new 32-inch monitors, one with DisplayHDR 1000 and the other with 240 Hz refresh rate, in the company’s press release.