Asus has been making some of the most high-end OLED gaming monitors over the last several years, even delivering some of the best ones in the space… if you could afford it. Still, the Asus ROG Strix XG32UCWG is significantly more affordable than many of its competitors and even its predecessor, which was released only last year.
Launching at $999, the XG32UCWG is a feature-rich display, offering a dual resolution 4K and 1080p screen, up to a 330Hz refresh rate, and the potent combination of deeper blacks and vivid colors thanks to Asus’s new TrueBlack Glossy screen finish. It’s a performer and definitely worth picking up if you’re shopping in the upper echelons of the gaming monitor market.
Asus ROG Strix XG32UCWG – Design and Features
When you’re talking about gaming monitors, there’s a few staples when it comes to design: RGB, hard angles, little bits of edginess like cybernetic scrawl or fake PCB traces on the back of the monitor that are all but invisible when the monitor is in place on your desk. Responsiveness is also key: Gaming monitors need to be fast, without ghosting or smearing. Ideally, they’re high resolution for clarity and have decent enough colors that you can enjoy the game without being distracted.
The point is, there are expectations, and then there are expectations. Not just a good picture, but an amazing picture. Not just responsive, but rapid. So-called gaming features aren’t just staples, but push the boundaries of what you can find anywhere else: zoomed-in sniper modes, night vision, adaptive AI that can adjust the picture so you always have the best visibility, no matter the situation and don’t have to worry about changing it yourself.
The XG32UCWG is that latter kind of gaming monitor. It checks every one of the boxes you would expect and then steps it up so no one can doubt: This is a monitor designed around making your gaming experience more fun, whether that’s offering visuals that are rich enough to make your teeth hurt or by offering a competitive advantage.
It’s also beautiful, with a 32-inch, glossy WOLED panel. It’s the perfect size for its 4K resolution, delivering a crisp pixel density of 140 pixels per inch. At this resolution, it’s able to excel up to 165Hz. That’s fast enough for most gamers already, but if you’re a competitive player, you can turn on Frame Rate Boost mod and up that to 330Hz, though that limits the resolution to 1080p. If those aren’t fast enough and you’re willing to spend a couple hundred dollars more, you can pick up the XG32UCWMG, and bump that to 240Hz at 4K and 480Hz at 1080p.
Refresh rate is important, but it’s not the only thing that matters. The display also needs to be responsive, and it doesn’t get much better than OLED for speed. The panel technology is inherently more rapid than competing IPS, VA, and TN panels, which typically have a 1ms response time. The XG32UCWG is rated at 0.03ms. Whether you’re gaming at 4K with its 165Hz refresh rate or 1080p at 330Hz, the monitor offers motion clarity that should be toward the top of what’s possible today.
But while competitive gamers have historically been willing to trade picture quality for response time, the XG32UCWG demands nothing of the sort. In fact, it’s fair to say that this is one of the best-looking OLED monitors I’ve tested over the last several years. It offers the same midnight blacks as all OLED monitors (which allow every pixel to be a local dimming zone and controlled for brightness, right down to turning off) – but then the “all” part of that isn’t exactly true.
In comparison to traditional gaming monitor panels, OLED blacks are better, but what’s not often remarked on in OLED monitor reviews is that, in bright ambient light, those black levels actually start to rise again, undermining why you might have chosen an OLED in the first place. This is especially true with QD-OLED monitors. Glossy coatings help mitigate this and, as a result, have a tendency to have colors that pop and pictures with enhanced crispness, but there hasn’t been a fix until now.
The XG32UCWG debuts Asus’ new TrueBlack Glossy screen coating. This new screen finish manages to offer the best of both worlds, maintaining the enhanced vividness of high gloss while managing to prevent more light from reflecting from its panel, keeping blacks visibly darker. And it’s no gimmick. Between the exceptional colors that the panel is able to offer on its own, its enhanced contrast is more noticeable.
In essence, you get the best of both worlds: truly deep blacks and the added color pop of the glossy screen. The reflections can be something else, though. It’s as close to a mirror as monitors come, so you may need to arrange your environment to avoid this becoming a distraction.
The monitor offers a peak brightness of 1,300 nits, covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut, and is rated for 99% of DCI-P3. SDR brightness continues to be a limitation of OLED technology, especially if you’re running at less than 100% brightness. Asus doesn’t offer a rating, but in its sRGB mode, even at 100% brightness is clamped and the output averages around 290 nits. The brightness can be driven to around 450 nits by swapping to its Custom Settings mode, and this also scales down with the amount of white present on the screen.
Returning to the physical side of the monitor, it is very similar to what we’ve seen throughout this generation of OLED displays from Asus. The panel itself is exceptionally thin with a box on the back to house the motherboard and cooling components. The component chamber is on the chunky side but like the RGB ROG eye that illuminates on one half, it’s probably going to be invisible once you place it on your desk. What you perceive is the thin panel, not the box.
There’s a generous port selection too, which has been typical with Asus’s premium offerings, but I still love to see it since it’s not a given, even in the flagship monitor space. Along the bottom edge, it comes with one DisplayPort 1.4 port (with Display Stream Compression), two HDMI 2.1 ports, one USB Type-C that also supports video and 15W of power delivery, three USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports, a USB Type-B to drive the USB hub and firmware updates to the monitor, and a headphone jack. It’s a decent selection, though 15W of PD charging isn’t going to be enough to charge your laptop while you use it, so you’ll still need to power your device if you’re using it that way.
The stand has undergone a major revision and, while I like it, it’s definitely a double-edged sword. Instead of using the tripod base of many other high-end Strix monitors, it uses a small base plate for its foundation. It almost looks too small for a 32-inch monitor but it held it steady without difficulty. And this allows it to have a significantly smaller footprint and more easily place things like an Elgato Stream Deck underneath it. On the other hand, its simple design just doesn’t look as premium as the old tripod. Personally, I would still choose this new design to save space.
The arm of the stand is very similar, if not identical, to the old design, though. It slots into the base and is held firm with a single thumb screw. You can adjust the height by just over three inches, swivel ±15 degrees, and tilt +20 to -5 degrees. There’s no rotation adjustment for portrait mode, though that’s less common on a monitor this size. It includes the 1/4-20 thread at the top to easily mount a camera, light, or other streaming gear.
The Asus ROG Strix XG32UCWG is absolutely packed with features. As an OLED monitor, burn-in is still a concern you need to be aware of, but thanks to Asus’ OLED Care suite (as well as its cooling system and 3-year burn-in warranty), it’s less of a concern than it has ever been. Asus took the kitchen sink approach when it comes to OLED burn-in prevention. If there is a safety feature out there it doesn’t include, I haven’t heard of it. It has toggleable options for pixel shifting and regular pixel refresh cycles, logo and taskbar detection, a target mode that darkens everything but the window you’re looking at, selective dimming, and a Neo Proximity Sensor that can detect when you’re not at your monitor and display a black screen to prevent pixel wear entirely.
It also comes with a wide selection of gaming features. It has your usual content-based picture presets (Movie, Racing, sRGB, etc.), but also comes with Sniper Mode, Extreme Low Motion Blur black frame insertion, OLED anti-flicker, 24.5-inch and 27-inch monitor simulations (if you’re used to gaming on a smaller screen), and several AI options to dynamically change the color of the crosshair, raise the shadows, or adjust picture settings based on what’s on the screen. It also comes with KVM functionality to quickly swap between two devices, like your PC and a console, and supports Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture to keep track of two inputs at once.
All of this can be controlled through the OSD or DisplayWidget Center software. Asus has made strides in achieving parity with the options available between both, so you’re free to choose which works best for you. The software suite is definitely worth installing, partially because it’s required for the three AI modes, but mainly because it offers hotkey support. This includes a hotkey to raise the actual OSD and navigate it with your keyboard instead of the joystick.
Asus ROG Strix XG32UCWG – Performance
I put the Asus ROG Strix XG32UCWG through its paces in formal benchmarks and real-world gaming to see whether it’s actually a good value or if you’re better off saving for a more proven option. After all, monitors like this often go for $1,200, so it’s fair to ask what trade-offs it may demand.
Kicking things off, I ran it through a suite of assessments using my Datacolor SpyderPro colorimeter. Its SDR brightness isn’t bad if you’re willing to turn the brightness all the way up and adjust the contrast for balance. Under those settings (100 brightness, 70 contrast), I measured peak SDR brightness at 447 nits. Lowering brightness to 75 and contrast to 60 dropped that output to 253 nits, on average. The maxed out brightness in sRGB mode peaked at an average of 287 nits. This puts it on the dimmer side if you’re not topping out your brightness settings which is generally not recommended if you’re worried about burn-in.
In HDR mode, the brightness also fell a bit short in my measurements. In a 10% window, I measured peak brightness at 784 nits but in a 2% window, that jumped to 1,087 nits. It’s not 1,300 nits, but seems like it could get there with small enough highlights, like glinting reflections on water. The OSD also includes an option to dynamically boost the brightness. I couldn’t reliably measure a smaller window with my test setup and couldn’t figure out how to force that boost to apply to see if I could manually push its brightness higher.
Gamut and Accuracy
In its sRGB mode, its color accuracy is stellar and doesn’t require any extra calibration. In my tests, it holds an average Delta E of 1.55, making it one of the most accurate gaming monitors I’ve tested out of the box. Asus claimed 100% coverage of the sRGB color gamut and 99% of DCI-P3, and it achieved both of those scores – with one caveat. Hitting 99% coverage for DCI-P3 required using the specific DCI-P3 color space. Not a big deal, but it’s not always necessary either.
Gaming on the monitor is excellent. I’m not a pro gamer by any means, so 165Hz is perfectly sufficient for me, especially with the natively low 0.03ms input latency. Motion clarity was excellent at this refresh rate, which is demonstrated in the crystal capture I was able to grab in BlurBusters’ Test UFO Ghosting Test. Ghosting just isn’t going to be an issue here. Higher refresh rates would increase clarity in fast motion but only marginally. High level competitive players may notice, but I suspect most people would struggle to tell the difference.
If you are an esports player, the monitor’s Frame Rate Boost mode is for you. Dropping the refresh rate to 1080p makes hitting its 330Hz refresh rate with your in-game fps much more possible if you have a reasonably powerful gaming PC, which will significantly increase fast-motion clarity and responsiveness. By default, this mode stretches that lower resolution over the monitor’s full 32 inches. The resulting picture is soft and the difference is stark and off-putting. It’s a direct A/B comparison that does the Frame Rate Boost mode no favors.
Thankfully, that’s where the 27-inch and 24.5-inch picture modes come in. 1080p doesn’t look great on a 32-inch monitor, but even dropping to the 27-inch size makes a big difference. This comes with its own trade-off in that the picture crops in, leaving black bars around the remaining screen space. But there’s always a trade-off with dual resolutions, and if you’re a competitive player that wants to push that higher frame rate part of the time and enjoy a higher resolution for the remainder, it goes with the territory.
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