MSI Optix MAG27CQ 27" and MSI Optix MPG27CQ 27" 1440p 144Hz Gaming Monitors Review

Just a few years agone, 1080p at 60Hz was the mainstream standard for estimator monitors and everyone seemed to be happy. Simply equally display applied science clearly took off with higher pixel density on mobile screens, people demanded the same treatment on the high-end computing side. People wanted higher resolutions, lower response times and higher refresh rates for competitive games, and curved screens for more immersive content.

Earlier this year, MSI launched the Optix MAG27CQ and MPG27CQ; two monitors that check a lot of boxes on the feature list. They are both 27" curved monitors with 1440p resolutions, FreeSync support, 144Hz refresh rates, and 1ms response times. They too come equipped with gaming focused display features, and the MPG27CQ fifty-fifty has RGB lighting. These monitors announced to be similar on newspaper although the MAG is considerably less expensive, so let'southward see how they perform and whether one of them may be a good option for your next gaming brandish upgrade.

Since this is a dual review, I'll be going over the differences and similarities between the ii models too as how they perform in games and with color accurateness.

Equally shown above, on the left nosotros have the Optix MAG27CQ ($380), and on the correct is the Optix MPG27CQ ($500). Moving forward I'll refer to them equally the Mag and MPG since the names can become disruptive. They are nearly identical from a technical perspective, but have slight differences when it comes to added features.

The MAG has a matte black and gray industrial design while the MPG is more glossy. The stand for the MAG is much smaller than the MPG and it mostly has a more than subdued aesthetic. The MPG on the other hand has RGB lighting on the front and back and has an unapologetically "gamer" aesthetic.

Both monitors have an 1800R curve, something not uncommon on larger gaming displays. If you've never used a curved monitor before, the outcome isn't every bit pronounced as you lot may expect. Looking at them straight on, the slight bend is designed to keep more of the screen in your field of view.

Mag above -- MPG below

During bodily usage, I plant the Magazine's stand a chip too small or less stable. The MPG's stand up was quite the opposite. I found that the 2 front legs were a bit too big and took up too much desk infinite for my liking.

Luckily, both monitors are VESA uniform so if this is an result for you lot, you tin ever purchase an aftermarket stand. The included stands move up and down to enhance or lower the monitor, rotate left and right, and pivot horizontally. Neither stand tin rotate into portrait mode which makes sense since these are curved monitors.

In terms of I/O, the Magazine brings standard ports that include DVI, one HDMI ii.0, one DisplayPort 1.two, and one sound jack. No USB-C or extra connections. Above the display connectors is the quick-release monitor mount. This makes moving the monitor very easy and is much preferrable to screws.

Moving over to the MPG, we find it has a bit more to offer. In that location are 2 HDMI ii.0 ports, a single DisplayPort one.2, a USB 3.0 uplink, and a headphone/microphone combo jack. On the side, there are two boosted USB 3.0 ports, a headphone out, and a microphone in port. Overall, this is a prissy mix of I/O. Also unique to the MPG is an RGB stripe beyond the dorsum of the monitor and on the lower front bezel.

The pattern design on the back is like to the 1 found on the Infinite X Gaming Desktop PC that we reviewed a while back. Putting RGB lights on the dorsum accept the goal of creating a color wash behind the monitor when it'southward on, but I found that they weren't bright enough to do that effectively.

The RGB lighting on lower bezel of the MPG is uniform with the SteelSeries Gamesense framework. While the lights on the back are purely for prove, the lights on the front end tin have a real use in games. The Gamesense software tin can integrate with certain games to dynamically control the lighting.

For example, y'all could programme the lights to display your health, ammo, or any number of other parameters. This feature is exclusive to the MPG model.

Neither monitor has visible buttons on the front end as they are both controlled by a small, red joystick on the back correct side of the monitor for the On-Screen-Display. Information technology offers four directions as well as a center click. On the MAG, it feels a bit inexpensive and flimsy, but information technology could be worse. The joystick on the MPG is more than robust and feels better. Both monitors share the same general menu design and capabilities, but the MPG has slightly more functionality. In that location are predefined viewing modes similar Moving picture, FPS, RTS, and low-blue low-cal depending on your viewing preferences. Specific to the MPG, MSI has added more options to suit blackness levels, motion blur, latency, picture show-in-motion picture, and the ability to remap the joystick buttons.

I similar the joystick over traditional front facing buttons for navigating the menus, merely it was a bit confusing at first. Nothing is labeled then information technology was difficult to effigy out which sequence of directions to push button to get to the menus I needed. In that location is besides a weird quirk on both monitors where you tin't access the display settings unless there is an active video input coming in. If the monitor is comatose, I observed it taking up to 30 seconds for the monitor to wake upwardly in order to be able to access the card. These tin make troubleshooting and configuration more difficult and surely are design oversights. For those that tin can't stand up OSDs even so, the MPG can be controlled remotely using a software app for Windows and Android.

Some other result that I couldn't figure out how to become rid of was an annoying periodic bulletin that appeared on the screen telling me that zilch was connected. If there is no input going to the monitor, such equally when you put your computer to slumber, the monitor and its vivid backlight will turn on periodically. For those that sleep in the same room every bit their figurer or are in a dorm, this will be extremely annoying.

Gaming Performance

As expected, both of these are great to game on. I personally recall 1440p at 144Hz is the current sugariness spot for gaming. There are 240Hz monitors available at 1080p, but for not-competitive gamers I think the benefit of increasing resolution and sharpness to 1440p is visually more highly-seasoned than 240Hz refresh rates.

Likewise, going to 4K at 60Hz -- unless you pay handsomely ($1500+) for the best panels available today -- the drop from 144Hz down to 60Hz isn't worth the actress resolution benefit at 4K. This will inevitably modify equally time to come hardware and connection standards come up out, simply for now nearly gamers, as volition I, stick with my 1440p 144Hz monitors.

Both Optix models advertise super-depression 1ms response times. For testing, I focused on both cinematic games and fast-paced competitive games. I used two unlike high-terminate Intel and AMD PCs running on a RTX 2070 GPU.

Barring any huge issues, gaming operation is mostly subjective. Playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, I appreciated the fast 144Hz refresh rate and input lag was not noticeable at all which is disquisitional in that game. I was happy with how the monitors performed out of the box and didn't feel the need to add together additional processing from the monitor. On the MPG, you could, for example, set the RGB LEDs to display your health or ammo, only I personally found the gaming experience more enjoyable without it.

On the more cinematic side, I tried out Shadow of the Tomb Raider as well. The game looks beautiful at 1440p and was really enjoyable to play. The curve made the game slightly more immersive, but wasn't a huge factor. If your rig isn't beefy plenty to bulldoze games at 144Hz, both monitors come with FreeSync to help eliminate trigger-happy (exclusive to Radeon GPUs, and then we couldn't enable it on our faster GeForce GPU). Overall, nada stood out to me as deficient when it comes to standard gaming sessions.

Colour Accuracy

Moving on to color accuracy, the results were more often than not adequate, but not peachy. This shouldn't come every bit a surprise since gaming monitors are less focused on accurateness and in the case of the Optix monitors, both characteristic VA panels. If you're looking for a professional monitor, consider checking out the Asus ProArt PA32UC or Dell Ultrasharp UP2718Q.

For objective monitor testing we use SpectraCal's CalMAN software suite and an X-Rite i1Display meter. We'll start with manufacturing plant color accuracy results out of the box, and so look at how they improve afterward a calibration session.

Starting with the MAG27CQ... a quick refresher that DeltaE values need to be roughly 1 or beneath for the monitor to be considered adequate for colour-accurate work. Across all 3 of our standard tests, the stock MAG performs pretty poorly with DeltaE values above iii. That's pretty bad, only not as terrible as another gaming monitors.

The grayscale exam reveals that the stock RGB values are way off. I'one thousand not sure if this is only representative of my specific panel, but this is definitely something MSI can ameliorate. Information technology should be just as simple every bit tweaking the default values at the factory to amend correspond the panel they take called. At that place is also a strange dip in the gamma levels betwixt 80% and 100%.

After the calibration, I was really pleased with how the monitor concluded up performing for a gaming monitor. While it certainly wouldn't be my showtime choice for doing colour work, you might be able to get away with some low-cal photo or video editing in between gaming sessions.

Seeing this improvement in DeltaE values shows just how much improve this monitor can perform when calibrated if you want to use it for anything besides gaming. For those without a professional colorimeter, setting the RGB values to l, 52, and 44 respectively should get y'all a amend viewing experience fifty-fifty though information technology won't be perfect. There is still some room for comeback though as higher quality gaming monitors can achieve DeltaE values below 0.5.

The RGB balance is looking much meliorate, merely is yet a little heavy on dejection. That large dip in the gamma has been generally corrected every bit well.

Screen uniformity wasn't terrible, but could take been a scrap improve. This isn't really something you can compensate for though since each pixel in the monitor may be slightly different and the backlight in this style of monitor does not offer that blazon of control. In a dark room you can run across some pocket-size backlight bleed, but it wasn't so much that it became distracting.

At present nosotros'll go over to the MPG27CQ.

Out of the box, its color accurateness is a fleck better than the Mag's with DeltaE values coming in at 2.26 for ColorChecker and 1.seven for grayscale and saturation. The RGB balance has a much tighter group, but the gamma values are considerably farther off their mark.

The calibration profile that was created performed surprisingly well for a gaming monitor.

The results are a bit better than the MAG'southward which would signal MSI is binning their panels and the more expensive MPG is getting an overall meliorate brandish. For those without a colorimeter, the RGB settings I would recommend hither are 51, 52, and 44 respectively.

Every bit with the MAG, screen uniformity has some room for improvement. One difference over the MAG is that the MPG can get a lot brighter. The MAG has a rated max brightness of 250 nits while the MPG has a rated max brightness of 400 nits. I tested this and really measured a value of 270 nits on the Magazine and 433 nits on the MPG.

As a full general summary for the colour performance of these two monitors, the MPG performs slightly better out of the box, merely the Magazine performs slightly better when calibrated. The panel used in the MAG has 85% coverage of the NTSC gamut and 110% coverage of the sRGB gamut. On the Magazine, its panel covers xc% of DCI-P3 and 115% of sRGB. Each panel will deport slightly differently and nobody is going to purchase these monitors solely for content cosmos, and so the divergence is negligible.

Lesser Line

Both MSI gaming monitors offer great specs, narrow bezels and relatively strong color operation for gaming monitors. The last big question is what'due south the difference between the MAG27CQ and the MPG27CQ?

Both are 27" 1440p monitors running at 144Hz, have 1ms response times, back up FreeSync, and have an 1800R bend. Pricing is, in our opinion, the biggest differentiator. We've seen prices for both monitors fluctuate, especially during the holiday flavour, but as of writing you can find the MAG27CQ for around $350-$380, while the MPG27CQ sells for $460-500. This is a considerable deviation for what appear to be very like monitors.

Going with the latter, you become customizable RGB lighting, a more robust stand up, boosted display control options, an extra HDMI input, and an integrated USB hub. All the same, if you covered upward any identifiable markings and only showed me the panels, I probably wouldn't be able to tell the departure between the two when it comes to day-to-twenty-four hours utilise and gaming. That's how similar these monitors expect to me, and that plays to the Magazine'due south reward.

Putting MSI's Optix offerings in context, in our contempo gaming monitor buying guide, for the all-time 1440p monitor we chose a higher-end $800 product. The venerable Asus PG279Q presents a combination of an AHVA IPS-type panel, 1000-Sync, and 165 Hz refresh rate. Similar most G-Sync monitors in its range, the Asus sells at a premium. It is a nifty product that'south been around for quite some time, just it has not dropped in price and remains an expensive suggestion for many.

For about half the price, the MAG27CQ delivers a compelling value choice.

Although GeForce GPUs dominate the loftier-stop segment, you may be unconcerned about One thousand-Sync support if you are running a Radeon-based graphics card. In fact, in our December update to the all-time graphics cards buying guide, Radeons beat GeForces every single time if you're spending less than $400 on a GPU. So if you tin can practice with FreeSync, there are considerable cost savings to be had and the MSI Optix MAG27CQ is i of the top 1440p / 144Hz refresh charge per unit / FreeSync contenders.

While MSI is better known for their motherboards and graphics cards, their line of gaming monitors are definitely worthy contenders in a crowded marketplace. If you can snag one on sale for around $350, the MAG27CQ is a dandy value gaming monitor with good specs and performance that won't disappoint.