Gigabyte G32QC Review – 32” 165Hz Perfection?
By all accounts, this is a great monitor. It’s fast, responsive, smooth, and has some great colours, so why am I not blown away? Lets run you through it and see if we can work out why! But first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!
Lets start with the important bit, the panel. It’s a tightly curved 32”, 1440p, 165hz VA panel, but it’s a pretty good one. Response time looks to be in the region of 5ms going from black to white which is really good for VA, and around 10ms going from white to black. The difference comes from the overdrive which on it’s “speed” setting, did a good job without too much overshoot.
Ghosting is a little prevalent, as you can see there is quite the trail behind the UFO, but it wasn’t something I picked up on while playing so your mileage may vary. You can always enable “Aim Stabilizer” in the menu which is Gigabyte’s way of saying backlight strobing, and that can help a little although sometimes I find it a little off putting. Oh and keep in mind you’ll have to disable freesync if you want that on.
Input lag wise, my time sleuth reported just 3ms at the top of the display over HDMI, and around 10ms at the center of the display. Again, that’s pretty good. 3ms is a little slower than the fastest I’ve seen, but definitely faster than most.
Colours wise, it’s very impressive. It covers well over 100% of the sRGB spectrum, and 85% of AdobeRGB, with a whopping 91% of the DCI P3 spectrum. That is down from 95% on the FI27Q-P, but considering this is almost £200 cheaper, I can’t be too mad.
The gaming experience was pretty good. It’s a larger display than I’m used to, but it was enjoyable including for fast paced games like CSGO. The fast refresh rate, combined with the snappy response time meant playing was smooth and generally nice.
Moving on from the panel, the I/O is reasonable. You’ve got 2 HDMI ports, a DisplayPort, and a USB 3 hub you’ll have to have connected if you want to use their OSD Sidekick software that lets you control all the on screen display features from Windows.
Adjustability is a little limited, you do have a decent amount of height and a good bit of mostly upwards tilt, but as you see me moving it you might notice a problem. It wobbles. Like crazy. It acts like a tuning fork, as any motion makes it shake back and forward for a good 30 seconds. The huge base, you’d hope, would stop this but thanks to a cheaper stand (including fairly cheap feeling plastic on the base) it doesn’t. Also, you have to screw the monitor in with the smallest philips head bit you can find, despite the screws being pretty big. You will strip that head and it will be a massive pain.
Those issues come from Gigabyte making this a more “budget” option. The concessions they’ve made, the build quality in particular, is the cost you pay for getting a really impressive panel. At around £420, it’s still not cheap, AOC offer a 27” VA 1440p monitor for a lot less, more like £280 when in stock, but it isn’t quite as good a panel and obviously a little smaller. There are some other 32” options, none that I have checked out though so can’t compare.
Overall, I think Gigabyte could have been squeezed in a little bit better build quality for the price, considering its competitors offer much better quality, with slightly worse panels, for a lot less money, but if you buy one of these I can’t imagine you’d be disappointed. It’s a great gaming experience and has colours that are good enough for part time creative work. It could maybe do with being £50 cheaper, but it’s still a good buy even if it doesn’t blow you away.
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TechteamGB Score
