Asus has stormed Gamescom with a massive wealth of new hardware, but their new ROG OLED monitors have caught our eye.
This year’s Gamescom might be lacking in surprises and farming simulators, but Asus doesn’t appear to pulling any punches. Aside from the Evangelion crossover, Asus is bringing just about everything to the expo.
While routers and motherboards might be nice, the trio of OLED gaming monitors that they unveiled sounds spectacular. Not only are they housing OLED panels, but come in three different flavors of sizes.
“The Chosen One”: ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM
Being called “The Chosen One”, the ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM is an apparent world first for OLED gaming monitors. It sports a 240Hz refresh rate, a 4K panel, and is sized at 32-inches. Asus claims this is the perfect sweet spot in terms of performance and size for most players.
The panel is a QD-OLED or Quantum Dot OLED panel. While it might not hit the levels of black that a traditional OLED can, it should usher the price down.
There’s also a USB hub on the back, which Asus points out can charge an Asus ROG Ally. The hub is USB-C based, rather than USB-B. On the back, you’ll find DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1, so both ports will be able to provide high refresh rates.
Asus goes ultrawide with the ROG Swift OLED PG34WCDM
Sporting a curved panel and a 3440×1440 resolution, Asus is touting the PG34WCDM as “the next generation of immersive gaming”. It has an 800R curve, which encapsulates you within the sides of the screen.
This monitor looks like it is going to feature a true OLED panel, with a maximum brightness of 1300 nits. It’ll also be G-Sync compatible and also has that killer 240Hz refresh rate.
As with the other monitors, Asus is also outfitting this one with a Smart Keyboard-Video-Mouse (KVM). This will allow you to control two devices – say a ROG Ally and your desktop – at the same time with the same keyboard and mouse. As it’s an ultrawide monitor, this also means picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture can display the two devices at the same time.
There’s another piece of software to help you control this, but it appears optional.
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On the back, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 are also featured.
ROG Swift OLED PG49WCD goes even bigger
Aside from the two other monitors, Asus isn’t pulling its punches with the ROG Swift OLED range. The PG49WCD is a massive 49-inch, ultrawide display that clocks in at 5120×1440 resolution. It also has a curve rated at 1800R to wrap around your vision and also comes with a KVM switch onboard.
The KVM switch will allow you to control two PCs at once, but the much larger screen will make it so that it looks like two smaller monitors. When your mouse hits the edge of one screen, it’ll automatically start to use the mouse and keyboard on the other.
When split, the monitor will provide two 1440p monitors.
It is closer in spec to the PG32UCDM, with Asus going with the QD-OLED. However, OLED – QD or not – can get really, really hot. Asus has worked around this by attaching a “large and efficient custom heatsink” to remove the need for a fan.
There’s also a graphene film behind the panel itself to reduce heat.
It isn’t as fast as the others, only being rated at 144Hz, and comes with AMD FreeSync to reduce any screen tears.
As well as featuring DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1, there’s a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port for the hub, as well as a 90W USB-C port.
When do the ROG Swift OLED monitors launch?
The two ultrawide monitors appear to be launching towards the end of 2023, with the “Chosen One” planned for a 2024 launch. We will be sure to keep you updates as we hear more about these behemoths.
