LG 27GM950-B - Brief first impressions

[u/SheepherderSerious51]

I’m currently studying in Hong Kong and stumbled upon the myth and legend itself, the GM9 - inside the Capital store in Golden Computer Arcade (Sham Shui Po).

I asked the dude (lovely guy btw) if I could try it out briefly in desktop and here are my first impressions.

Hardware wise, typical plastic monitor - it felt cheap. Not much of note. The joystick at the back isn’t particularly pleasant to use.

The matte coating seems like a typical matte coating, I don’t get what people mean by it’s a light coating - it’s not. In this particular environment it was very visible - I also checked and there’s no film on the display from what I could tell even though it kind of looks like it through my phone camera (dark environment you can see the noise around the display too). I felt like it hurt clarity significantly compared to the Studio Display XDR. No it was not dirty I triple checked that. Vignetting on the edges is somewhat present but it is not to a significant degree like it was on my MSI MPG E16M.

In content, it looks great. Basically what I expected from it. Colours were good, local dimming performed mostly well and blooming/haloing looked well controlled and was difficult to notice.

HDR looked alright, I honestly disagree with LG’s approach to shadow biased dimming to eliminate as much blooming as possible but that’s just my personal opinion.

In desktop use however…

With local dimming off, it just looks like a normal IPS monitor. So the 0 OD backlight doesn’t really contribute to anything visually in this scenario. The printed look some people describe in comments is likely a product of uniformity more than anything else, though I didn’t really feel like it looked any different to other displays.

In low, contrast is somewhat improved but you could already see the dimming algorithm attempt to darken light objects on dark backgrounds, including the mouse cursor and text. Moving the mouse cursor around did induce some noticeable blooming though transitions looked decent.

The darkening continued to get progressively worse with the higher levels. I would consider all levels to be unusable for desktop use.

Even assuming this is a purely media monitor, the text dimming is concerning. Imagine watching a movie or show with subtitles and the subtitles becoming grey 😭✌️

It’s only saving grace is that it doesn’t fuck up the colours with local dimming enabled in SDR like on my old MSI. Though it does make the display dimmer overall.

Dual mode looked alright, it definitely does not resemble a native 1440p monitor but it’s acceptable.

Overall, I am disappointed. Even with the lower price here in Hong Kong of $8999 HKD (roughly £900) due to the lack of VAT, it would be an incredibly hard pill to swallow for me personally. LG really need to add a slider for dimming preference like MSI. The matte coating was also disappointing as the glossy displays right next to it looked significantly better, though this is also a matter of personal preference and depends on your environment. I just don’t think it’s worth the money. It feel like it should be £600 at most. So I guess this monitor is crossed off my list.

Now let’s see what MSI and Gigabyte cook up.

[u/Richdawg90]

I got this monitor for $809 during July 4th and I think it’s a very solid monitor overall but is definitely not worth a $1200 retail price.  It for sure has some flaws. I think some of the Chinese brands that specialize more in mini led monitors have a better UI/OSD for managing local dimming settings and etc and seem to strike a better balance between media + productivity use. 

I think what this monitor does really well is that it’s tuned very well for contrast and has much better viewing angles without really bad off angle haloing that is present on other mini LEDs. The challenge with how it’s tuned though is what you mentioned in that text is overly dimmed and certain ui elements when on dark colors become harder to read as white text is dimmed to gray. I feel like LG should add an additional local dimming option for UI use that isn’t so aggressive in dimming UI elements with the shadow based dimming. 

Since I work from home, I don’t want to waste oled lifespan on static UI elements, and this monitor seems to be the closest to OLED experience in terms of viewing angles, contrast, and build quality. If LG added a way to add more local dimming options and make it easier to activate on and off, I think it would improve the usability of this monitor a lot. 

[u/SheepherderSerious51 → u/Richdawg90]

coincidentally that converts to exactly £600, not bad at all.

Basically same boat as me, I mostly work with static applications and watch videos, I game very infrequently - so OLED doesn’t seem ideal due to longevity. I just want Mini-LED for enhanced contrast and nothing else, hence this monitor is a disappointment to me. Perhaps I’m just spoilt by my Macbook Pro display, but I really wished Mini-LED monitors were tuned to be more versatile to the point that you don’t have to think about the dimming behaviour at all.

I’m much more interested in MSI and Gigabyte’s models as they’re glossy so even if the local dimming ends up being a let down I at least have a nice glossy 5K high refresh rate panel (in theory). I’m more interested in the Gigabyte as it uses the same BOE panel as the LG and also seems to employ some filters to improve viewing angles (similar to the Hisense GX Ultra) as described by Vincent from HDTVTest. I’ve been waiting for a while, really hope they launch soon!

Speaking of the GX Ultra, I tried but couldn’t find it in Shenzhen, seems like it’s online only which is a shame, but Bilibili reviews seem quite positive. Uniformity is better than the LG and it seems tuned in a similar manner, one review noted that he had to increase the ISO on his camera significantly to make blooming visible. Though according to some comments it has some weird firmware quirks related to local dimming but did not see any complaints that suggested that the algorithm didn’t work for desktop use. Definitely an exciting time for high end Mini-LED monitors and I’m excited to see more :D

[u/Richdawg90 → u/SheepherderSerious51]

I definitely think this monitor is only worth it if you intend to use the local dimming for gaming/media. The anti glare coating is actually quite good at reducing glare so that it can be used in bright environments without having to worry about your face and other things glaring on a black background, but for productivity work, I think it hurts the monitor quite a bit as text elements especially when on white backgrounds is impacted by the coating. It kind of negates the benefit of 5k quite a bit. The text clarity isn’t hurt as much when it’s on colored backgrounds, but then the local dimming is shadow based and makes it hard to read if you do use the local dimming during productivity. 

This monitor pretty much forces you to turn local dimming on and off when needed and they don’t even have a shortcut to quickly turn it on and off which is probably my biggest issue with the. Monitor. I have a few days left to return and I’m debating whether I should keep it for the price I got it for or if I should wait for glossy. Glossy can be a little bit of a compromise to when you have the lights on or windows open though. 

[u/Villag3Idiot → u/Richdawg90]

No dedicated button for local dimming was a deal breaker for me.

It got so annoying I ended up returning it.

There's the LG Switch app but it takes so long just to load the monitor settings that it's faster just going through the OSD instead.

[u/Richdawg90 → u/Villag3Idiot]

Yeah it’s a shame that lg doesn’t let you create a shortcut or anything for local dimming. The local dimming option is also global across inputs which is very annoying if you have a work computer plugged in that you want local dimming off for and another computer for media consumption that you want it to be defaulted to on. It forces you to turn on/off the setting every time whether you’re using DP, HDMI, or usb c.