 Three things I loved about the ROG Swift PG-48 UQ. One, it makes everything better. Working, playing games, watching videos. Everything looks so good on this monitor. And two, that includes old games. You don't need to play the latest and the greatest to be wowed by it. Three, a 48-inch monitor at 44 inches away is perfect for immersion. My desk doesn't have a lot of room so I was worried about the size so close to my face. But it turned out to be the optimal screen space-to-distance ratio. Bonus thing, I think I really hate about the PG-48 UQ. All other monitors are trash to me now. I can't go back. What's up internet? The whole story of the PG-48 UQ can be summed up in four short specs. OLED, 4K, 138Hz overclock refresh rate, and G-Sync compatible. Put all those together and at least theoretically you have a monster monitor. But is it only good on paper? OLED in particular, the tech behind this display sounds great on paper. They're supposed to be brighter, have better contrast, and wider color range. But does it deliver? Heck yes. The PG-48 UQ delivers on the hype of OLED monitors. Everything was so clear, crisp, bright, so inviting to look at. If you jump from using 1080p to 2K or from 2K to 4K, you may have experienced that the jump in resolution made text almost impossible to make out. Yes, the screen has a higher resolution, but that doesn't do you any good on a practical level since you have to squint to see more of the smaller text at 2K. That was not a problem with the PG-48 UQ. Text at 4K was so crisp and legible. I started diverting all of the things I needed to read, from emails to essays to the PG-48 UQ. I later found out that part of the marketing of the PG-48 UQ is that it really does have crisper text. But I didn't need to be told the marketing. Just using the monitor, the superiority of reading text off it compared to my other monitors was readily apparent. For me, this is the best testament to the quality of this monitor. You don't need to be told the specs, the supposed highlights. You just start using it and you're blown away. Sure, websites look great, Excel look great, but let's cut to the chase. How were the games? For context, I'm using an R7-3700X with a 3080. High-end, but not crazy bonkers high-end. Right off the bat, NVIDIA software detected the PG-48 UQ as G-Sync compatible and in all of the games I tried, I saw zero screen tearing, artifacts, jagged screens or any other indication that the monitor had any trouble keeping up with the FPS being pumped out by the GPU. Now you're probably thinking an FPS for sure would be wild on this monitor. But before we get to that, I did also play around with an old strategy game, Battlestar Galactica Deadlock and man, the added real estate of the screen coupled with how sharp everything was made me tempted to install all of my old favorites. Bring on Civ 6 and XCOM 2, but I had to move on as I had limited time with the PG-48 UQ. So I moved on to a 6-year-old game with Titanfall 2. The highest native rest for this game is 2K, but when I was playing it, I completely forgot about whatever heck resolution I was on because the game was gorgeous. The darks, the colors, the vibrancy of the image. It's like you're going on a blind date and your friend who set you up keeps telling you how gorgeous he or she, the blind date, is. And when you meet the person, you can tell your friend, okay, shut up, no need for the hype, I get it. Same with the PG-48 UQ. The specs are impressive, but once you sit down with it, all of that fades into the background and you're just having a really good time. Sana all blind dates ganito. It's difficult with monitor reviews to capture the quality of the screen because one, the video is recorded by a camera, compressed to heck by the YouTube algorithm, and then you, the viewer, are watching it on your own device, which could be a computer monitor, a phone, heck, even a TV. So there are several layers between my actual viewing experience with the monitor and you. But I chose to actually shoot the monitor because I think even with all of those layers, you can get a sense of the brilliance of the PG-48 UQ. Heck, as I was editing and watching the B-roll, I felt the wow feeling all over again. Finally, let's move on to an actual modern game at 4K, Cyberpunk 2077. Night City really highlights how proper black should look like in games and video. Not a smoky kind of black which you see on most monitors, but the nothingness of staring into a black hole. And then alongside the blacks, you have the neon colors reflected in puddles, the garish graffiti on dilapidated store fronts. This monitor sucks you in. Honestly, I wanted to replay Cyberpunk all over again using the PG-48 UQ, but I only had a week to spend with it and I spent most of that time playing Titanfall 2 from start to finish. First time playing the game and it was really a joy to experience it with this monitor. As I mentioned earlier, this screen was pretty close to my face and that's because, one, I didn't have the space to put it in just one corner and then have my keyboard and mouse half a room away. This is a PC monitor, not a TV, so you really will be working closer to it since it's plugged into your computer and the peripherals you need are most likely plugged into that computer. So for most setups, you're tethered. You can't get too far from this monitor and that's a good thing. I had it at around 44 inches from my face and I found this to be the perfect distance because you can still see the whole of the monitor while it takes up your entire field of vision. You're taking it all in without any external distractions. You might be concerned too with having such a large screen so close to you. Don't be. I had no eye strain, nausea, disorientation or any discomfort sometimes associated with having so large a screen so close. The size and screen quality are just so immersive that even after you finish playing, you're still replaying it in your head and thinking, wow, what did I just experience? I did have the opportunity to see not play around with the 42-inch version of this monitor and frankly, after having experienced the 48-incher, the smaller version was underwhelming. Once you go big, you can't go back. All right, I praised the PG-48Q to the high heavens but realistically, there are some concerns. OLEDs do not age well. There are a ton of videos showing stuck or dead pixels on OLED monitors just after a few years. OLEDs are getting better and better but are they as durable as more established displays? I only had the PG-48Q for a week so I have no idea how long this beautiful, beautiful display will stay beautiful. OLEDs are also more susceptible to burn in meaning if you leave an image long enough a ghost of that image should be permanently etched into the monitor. Not good. One way to prevent this is that the screen auto dims when you don't use it and then when there is some activity, it takes just a noticeable second or two to kick back up to full brightness. Now, I have no problem with this feature but you all know that one guy who likes to nitpick about every little thing and if things are not 100% 100% of the time, he gets all upset and whines about it. So I'm gonna mention that detail here but please don't be that guy. What I did find a little annoying was that the monitor keeps asking you to run pixel cleaning. A small message pops up in the lower right of the screen. I think this is also connected to preventing burn in. The monitor cycles the pixels so that all of them are getting uniform use. At first, I thought this only occurred if I left static images on for a long time because for work, I did leave a bunch of stuff on the PG-48Q on for a while. Excel, word, emails. But I noticed even while gaming, the please clean me screen would pop up and I ran cleaning several times but the message just kept appearing. I can live with this, not that big a deal for me especially because when you're gaming, the message is so tucked away in the corner that you only notice it when you end your game. ASOS has also slapped a heat sink on this thing hopefully that ensures good performance over a long period of time. In my own testing, I would leave the monitor on for basically the whole day, morning and afternoon for work, evenings for gaming, no display or performance issues cropped up even with that heavy short-term use. And finally, the big kicker, the price. If you're in North America, the SRP and what Amazon is reporting is that the 48-incher goes for around $1,500. Do I think this is too much? Ha! In the Philippines, where we're from, the SRP is around $117,000 or around $2,130 and that's using a very favorable exchange rate meaning that the current price in USD is probably even higher. So as poor saps in the Philippines are paying almost 50% more for this monitor and that's SRP. And since for a computer shop, I've seen the dealer prices. I don't think the SRP is realistic. The monitor might retail for even higher than $117,000. So of course, I think this is overpriced, right? Tell you a story. The very day I gave the PG-48UQ back to ASOS, I called up our distributor and I told them I want one. It's still coming out fourth quarter for this year but reserve one for me. I'm getting it. So yes, it's expensive as hell. And it's a hell of a lot more expensive here in the Philippines. But I meant what I said at the start. I can't go back to anything else. Five out of five candies for this gorgeous, beautiful, absolutely bonkers monitor. Please God, just last me 10 years so that I don't regret paying such a steep price. Bre, sorry kung na nosebleed ka, kahit ako eh. Na-isip ko kasi may mga foreigners malunonog kasi ito monitor na to re-neview re-ne paring Linus. Pero yung pinandala ka LTT, 42 inches lang, small time na kasi yung channel na yun eh. Yung sa amin, 48 inches. Hardware sugar lang malakas. At siya ka paano sa mga ASUS reviews, napansin ko na mas marami talagang foreigners na nunod. Gusto ko lang naman ipakita na kaya ko rin naman mag-English. Ayok kayo. Paming saan may nagtatanong kumikilala ba kami ng computer shop na trusted yung hindi kalolo ko hin? Actually meron kami. Full service PC store ang hardware sugar. Nagbabenta kami ng PC components. Nagbabenta rin kami ng fully assembled rigs. We clean computers. Kasama na rin yung excellent table management namin and CPU cooler repasting sa cleaning. We also clean and repaste GPUs. Nasamakati yung physical store namin and you can also buy from our site, www.hwsugar.ph na 100% palaging up-to-date yung inventory dun. Kung instock yung item sa amin, available yun sa site. We also ship nationwide. Thanks for watching and maybe one of these days, magkita tayo sa shop.