If you spend your time in front of a computer for hours watching movies, reading or playing games, then you understand the importance of a good monitor. However, looking for a monitor is quite taxing as there are many things to take into consideration, do you need a 4K monitor, high refresh rate or even the maximum amount of colour range? Well, that really depends on what kind of content do you consume the most. The LG 27UD88 27-inch 4K monitor hits all of them decently enough until we came to the RM4,000 price tag which we then asked the question, is it worth it?
Design
The LG 27UD88 is a gorgeous monitor, from the slim form factor to the almost bezeless front, a monitor like this would look good anywhere, be it in your living room or even your bed room. The design was made to fit in almost all spaces. The stand feels very solid and does not wobble under the weight of the screen.
The adjustable height is also very generous, giving you the right configuration depending on the surface the monitor is put on. It can also be tilted all the way making it into a portrait configuration if need be. They are also very generous when it comes to ports, giving you two HDMI ports, one USB Type-C port, two USB 3.0 ports, one display port and one line out 3.5mm port to output your sound to a sound system of your choice.
Screen
The 4K UHD IPS anti-glare LED screen with 5ms response time and 60Hz refresh rate is a joy to watch movies and view images thanks to the 99% coverage of the sRGB spectrum and a decent 350 nits of brightness, it gives you the feeling that the images could pop out of the screen at any time. If you feel the default settings are just not enough for you, the settings are there for you to get just the right configuration for you. Colour looks vivid and not dull even when there is a splash of different kinds of colour on it, there truly is an immersion that is hard to break away when viewing on this monitor.
Features
With all the good, there has to be the bad. LG has mention two things that really peeked my interest and the first is the USB Type-C port. They said that you will be able to extend the display of a device that supports video output from a USB Type-C device, charge the device with up to 60watt of power, and transfer data between the device and the devices plugged into the back of the monitor via the USB ports. Out of three of them, two seem to work well but the most important feature of extending the display via the USB Type-C just does not seem to work, we tried it with the MacBook Air, messing around with all the input settings but we were still not able to get that feature to work. Charging it and transferring data seems to work instantly as long you turn off the settings to power off the monitor if no signal input is detected.
Second is the inclusion of AMD FreeSync which is made to eliminate tearing in video games and I am sad to say that I am still experiencing a lot of tearing when it comes to games that require me to shift the camera a lot especially in games like Gears of War 4 and Vanquish.
Other than that, they even included features like Game Mode which will give you the best colour and brightness settings depending on the genre of game you are playing and a Black Stabilizer that is said to help sense dark scenes in the game and brighten those parts. The Game Mode is somewhat a good feature but it will not affect your game play much as brightness and colour is a personal preference thing and I only liked the RTS settings. The Black Stabilizer is a good idea but executed badly as games that require having a dark and eerie scene is suddenly lit up, immediately pulling you out of the immersion. Games like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice becomes almost pointless to play with this feature, thankfully it can be turned off.
At the end of the day, the price you are paying for this monitor, it would be better to just get a 4K LG TV with HDR which will cost you roughly around the same price and will give you the same picture quality that LG has been known for.
