Our Verdict
77%
An astonishing gaming display, but plenty of competitors offer nearly as good performance for much less money.
The Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR is the company’s new flagship high-refresh gaming monitor, sporting a maximum refresh rate of a whopping 360Hz. What’s more, it includes a new system latency tracking tool, where you plug your mouse into the screen and it will tell you the delay between clicking the mouse and the muzzle flash (or other trigger) appearing on screen. It’s impressive stuff, but does it add up to being the ultimate performance gaming monitor?
The biggest elephant in the room is the size and resolution. When you’re paying $750 and still just getting a 1080p screen with a 25-inch diagonal, it doesn’t make for the most dazzling first impression. Thankfully, the image quality is decent. The use of an IPS panel means viewing angles are very wide, and you get a stable image with none of the color shimmer that can affect TN panels. Contrast is high too for a standard IPS panel, measuring 1,148:1 in our tests. As such, there’s a good depth and punchiness to the image.
Color accuracy is good out of the box as well, if not quite perfect. The menu offers a host of image quality tweaking options, including seven color temperature presets and five gamma options. By default, it’s set to a 6,500K temperature and 2.2 gamma, which is what we’d expect, but in our tests its color temperature wasn’t quite there, registering 6,962K. Nonetheless, for gaming and the vast majority of other tasks, this display is good to go right out of the box.
Meanwhile, the menus are packed with features and are easy to navigate thanks to the excellent mini joystick controls on the back. One setting you won’t find, though, is Asus’ ELMB sync mode, which allows for backlight-strobing blur reduction with G-Sync.
Instead, you just get Nvidia’s ULMB mode, which doesn’t work with G-Sync, and only works at up to 240Hz. Comparatively, the likes of the Asus VG279QM offer ELMB-sync at 240Hz, and 240Hz with backlight strobing is actually better for image clarity in fast motion than 360Hz without it.
Speaking of which, that 360Hz refresh rate is impressive in action. It’s not a night and day difference compared to a 240Hz panel in real-world gaming, but there is an extra level of smoothness. However, you’ll need some serious GPU power to get many games to run at that frame rate. Even the lowly CS:GO required us to drop most settings to Medium with no AA to regularly get above 300fps on a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti at 1080p, for example.
Meanwhile, the Nvidia Reflex Latency Analyzer technology is genuinely useful for optimizing your games’ latency. We were able to measure a noticeable difference in average total system latency between 360Hz and 240Hz (18.4ms vs 38.0ms), and between running a game with all the graphics settings turned down (18.4ms) and all of them turned up (26.3ms). That said, both these changes also increase the overall frame rate, making it clear that there’s a general improvement in responsiveness without the need for a latency analyzing tool.
Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR pros and cons
Pros
- Exceptional gaming performance
- Fantastic image quality
- Genuinely useful latency analyzing tool
Cons
- Very expensive
- Lacks ELMB-Sync
- 360Hz is overkill for most
Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR specs
The Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR specs list is:
| Screen size | 25″ |
| Resolution | 1,920 x 1,080 |
| Panel technology | IPS |
| Maximum refresh rate | 360Hz |
| Stated response time | 1ms |
| Max brightness | 400cd/m² SDR |
| Backlight zones | 1 |
| Stated contrast ratio | 1,000:1 |
| Adaptive sync | G-Sync |
| Display inputs | 1 x DisplayPort 1.4, 1 x HDMI 2 |
| Audio | Headphone out |
| Stand adjustment | Height, pivot, rotation, tilt |
| Extras | 100 x 100mm VESA mount, Aura Sync RGB lighting, 2 x USB 3 ports HDR standard DisplayHDR 400 |
Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR price
The Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR price is $750, making it a very expensive gaming monitor. However, it’s the only one yet to offer a 360Hz refresh rate.
Price: Expect to pay $700 (£700)
Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR review conclusion
The Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR can quite legitimately claim to be the ultimate performance gaming monitor, as it’s the only one on the market to offer 360Hz refresh rate – the next closest is 280Hz. It also offers excellent image quality, even if it is at a low resolution. However, the lack of ELMB-Sync is a major detractor and its price is hard to swallow. At the very least, opting for the version without the latency analyzer (PG259QN) will save you $100. If you want the very fastest gaming monitor at whatever cost, though, this is it. That’s why it’s our top esports monitor in our best gaming monitor guide.