MSIMAG 27CQ6F 27 Inch WQHD Curved Gaming Monitor - 1500R 2560 x 1440 Rapid VA Panel, 180 Hz - 05ms (GtG, Min), Adaptive-Sync - DP 14a, HDMI 20b CEC

MSI MAG 274QRF QD E2This is an outstanding monitor by MSI.The picture quality is amazing. It's Quantum Dot technology really gives this monitor a massive coverage of all colour gamuts.It does not need calibrating out of the box as the settings are very close to being perfect. Just set Gaming to User, Professional to sRGB, Colour Temperature to Normal, response times via three overdrive profiles to Fast, and active Adaptative Sync if you have a fairly modern GPU. Then Windows settings, set display to 180hz and it's good to go.I really love the fact that its a plug and go monitor, no messing about to get a good picture.I choose this monitor due to it's Quantum Dot tech, it has a 180hz refresh rate and it's a 2560x1440 resolution.This monitor has really blown me away. I researched a lot of other monitors and this one really stood out. Hardware Unboxed (Monitors Unboxed) has a really good review of the 1st gen version. This is the second gen with a higher brightness of 400 cd/m² and a higher refresh rate of 180hz.What impressed me the most is when I'm gaming. The colours make everything look so vivid and the 180hz refresh rate and brightness make my experience move immersive.This is one of the best non OLED monitors currently on the market.The monitor, in my opinion does not have any downsides. It's priced very reasonably, and has a lot of features that true hardcore gamers would love.For me it's a really good monitor that satisfies all my needs, emails, office work, streaming and gaming.

Didn't want to buy a 4k monitor to go with my new PC as I was quite happy with the resolution of my old 32" QHD monitor. However, I wanted a better refresh rate and more screen real estate and this monitor seemed to tick all the boxes. It's the same height as my old 32" monitor, just a lot wider. Nice bright, vibrant colours and no dead pixels. Quick screen response and you can adjust all of the monitor settings either with the small joystick on the back of the monitor or with an app on the Windows desktop. Has a good refresh rate (155Hz) and Freesync Premium which works fine with my Nvidia graphics card. The KVM facility is very basic but not a problem for me as I use an external KVM switch box. I've been using this monitor every day for several months now without any problems. A great value monitor and highly recommended.

What an amazing monitor for the price!After years of using an office monitor, I finally mustered up the courage to buy a new gaming monitor, I knew the spec I wanted and this fit perfectly and came under budget!Response rate: the smoothest monitor I have used, i remember having an AOC 1ms 144hz TN panel but this looks and feels so much smoother!brightness & colours. So far no issues, i set up the monitor in sRGB and use HDR settings in Windows - this has given me a good result with deep colours and a satisfying look.Stand: very good quality, feels robust and monitor slides effortlessly when trying to move it whilst holding nice and steady once in position. Very easy assembly, took less than 2 minutes!Resolution & screen size: it’s a big screen, but the 1440p resolution is perfect at this size! Games and movies look crisp, especially with the refresh rate making motion smooth and visually stunning.Gaming: So I mainly play MOBA and FPS games, both requiring good refresh rates. in game settings can be synced easily and so far have found no compatibility issues with Windows and steam games.There are no speakers on this version so sound quality isn’t something that can be reviewed however with the headphone jack it might be worth trying this out in future.

MSI MAG 27CQ6F 27 Inch WQHD Curved Gaming Monitor ReviewTL;DRHappy to recommend this monitor, great price to performance. Works well for a wide range of games: high frame rates for competitive shooters while triple A RPGs look beautiful at ultra settings. Box includes displayport 1.4 cable. There’s room for improvement, the monitor struggles to display details in shadows and this isn’t improved by HDR which has been implemented quite poorly. I’d also recommend replacing the stock stand with a proper monitor arm. However it is otherwise quite good: it is very bright with surprisingly good colour reproduction and minimal ghosting. Overall it is a decent monitor compared to others in this price bracket, if you can catch this on sale I’d definitely recommend buying it.Background:I was previously using a 1080p/60hz IPS office monitor despite having a fairly high end system so needed to upgrade. Got this on prime deals day for £170 (I’ve seen it go as low as £140 over the Black Friday week).Why I chose this monitor:I play a fair mix of games, from competitive shooters such as r6 siege and CoD, to AAA solo games such as Cyberpunk and RDR2. Therefore I wanted a 1440p monitor with a decent refresh rate so I could get high frames per second for online multiplayer, while also making single player games look pretty running at a lower refresh rate with graphics settings set to ultra. I decided to go with a VA panel as I’ve never been satisfied with the contrast on IPS. Ultimately I chose monitor this as it was the cheapest option that fit these criteria at the time.Out of the box:It was packaged nicely, well protected and obvious where everything went. Included was the monitor, a stand with a cable management clip, a power cord, and a display port cable that is capable of running the monitor at the max resolution and frame rate. The included display port cable wasn’t quite long enough for me so I bought another (make sure it supports DP1.4, I’d advise against running this over an HDMI cable as you will be limited to refresh rates up to 144hz, as opposed to the full 180hz. The instructions also fail to mention that you should download the monitor specific drivers from MSI’s website - I definitely recommend doing this, it’s a small improvement but a noticeable one. Assembly was very easy, I would still recommend reading the instructions but super intuitive and took very little effort.Design and build quality:The build quality is perfectly good for this price point - it doesn’t feel super premium but nor does it feel cheap. The design isn’t perfect but again is forgivable for the price. The stand on the 27CQ6F isn’t great and offers very little adjustability: you can angle it up or down and that’s it, no left/right or height adjustments can be made. I stacked it on some books to get it to the right height. It has standard VESA mounts on the back so after a couple of weeks I removed the stand and attached it to a monitor arm - I would highly recommend investing in one of these, a massive improvement over the stock stand. Alternatively MSI does sell the 27CQ6PF which is an identical panel (they share the same instruction manual) with an improved stand: I haven’t tried it but honestly I’d l recommend spending less on this cheaper model and using the money you save to buy a proper monitor arm - they free up a lot of desk space and are capable of a much wider range of adjustments. It also doesn’t have any inbuilt speakers, doesn’t bother me as these never sound good but something to bear in mind.Image quality:VA panels such as this one are generally considered to be better than IPS panels for contrast while being weaker when it comes to colour reproduction, viewing angles, and response times. After trying this I was surprised, I was expecting a much bigger difference, both good and bad. I went with VA as I wanted better contrast, and that’s where this monitor disappointed me the most. There is definitely a modest improvement in some images, however like my old IPS panel it still suffers from “black crushing” in shadows, where entire sections of very dark scenes become a large indistinguishable blob. This monitor advertises a contrast ratio of 5000:1, compared to my old monitor’s ratio of 1000:1. Although there is definitely a small improvement in contrast and shadow details, for such a big difference in advertised specs I must say I expected more. This monitor also has HDR (HDCR as MSI calls it) which should theoretically improve the detail in dark images, I’ve tried enabling it and in some scenes it does work, however it makes other scenes a lot worse to the point where some games are unplayable so I mostly just leave it off.I was slightly worried about colour reproduction but this has surprisingly turned out to be an improvement over my previous (admittedly low quality) IPS panel: maybe other monitors in this price bracket would perform better but the picture on this monitor is vibrant with good colour accuracy. I’ve tried out the inbuilt “profiles” and frankly they are all worse than the stock “user” profile which I use for just about everything. No problems with viewing angles either, the colour and brightness around the edges seems to be just as good. This is possibly helped by the curved screen, not sure how much of an improvement it really is but I do quite like it (this is my first curved screen, might be a placebo it does feel easier on the eyes). Haven’t had any issue with response times, I’ve run a few tests for ghosting and motion blur and it’s been minimal, not really noticeable in game. It has adaptive sync that is very effective at preventing tearing, pretty much never see it. It also has a dedicated MPRT mode that further reduces motion blur by turning off the backlight between frames, it offers a very slight improvement for competitive shooters but I can’t really tell the difference in most games. Enabling this disables adaptive sync so to avoid tearing you’ll need to adjust your graphics settings so your frame rate reliably matches your refresh rate (for some games I also slightly lower the monitor refresh rate in windows settings). Because it makes the backlight flicker it also slightly dims the screen but this is only noticeably if you are in a very bright room, it also disables HDR but I don’t use that anyway.Features:The inbuilt software on the monitor is a mixed bag. Some of the features can improve image quality, some do nothing, and a few seem to make it a little bit worse. The “AI vision” feature is supposed to optimise contrast and background brightness, it sometimes looks good but is a bit inconsistent and doesn’t do anything for the crushed blacks so I generally leave it off. The “Night Vision” feature adjusts the background brightness of the screen, this actually works quite well, I usually keep it set to “AI” (this is just marketing spiel for what used to be called “auto”) as the fixed settings tend to go too far in some images and not far enough in others. The image enhancement setting works ok, I keep it at weak to medium. It also has a low blue light mode, it’s not quite as gentle as some others I’ve tried but it’s still a nice touch for when I use the monitor for work. While you are downloading the drivers from MSI’s website, I’d also suggest trying out their display kit software. Although it doesn’t let you control the full range of features it is a lot easier than navigating the inbuilt on-screen display (OSD) with the little joystick on the back of the monitor. I don’t really use it but it might work for you.