Here at PC Gamer, we feel strongly that 1440p (open in new tab) is where PC gaming belongs, and no amount of 4K gaming promotion will change that. So you can imagine my curiosity when I first heard LG's claim to make not only the "world's first" 240Hz OLED gaming monitor, but the first 1440p 240Hz OLED gaming monitor.

LG invited me to their U.S. headquarters in New Jersey to experience hands-on with their new UltraGear 27-inch OLED gaming monitor and the massive UltraGear 45-inch curved OLED. Despite my concerns about brightness, once I saw them in action, I was itching to embrace this high refresh rate 1440p world.

The first thing I noticed was how fast these panels are. Both OLEDs have a refresh rate of 240 Hz and a very low response time of 0.03 ms. Incidentally, the best gaming monitors (open in new tab) all have a response time of 1 ms, which is already quite fast. To be fair, going from 3 ms to 1 ms would probably make a difference, but going from 1 ms to 0.03 ms is overkill.

LG asked members of Evil Geniuses to play a few live matches of Valorant on their monitors to get a feel for UltraGear's speed. Without a doubt, watching professional-level competitive games was a great way to experience the smoothness of the display.

What many people will really be interested in is the 45-inch UltraGear curved OLED monitor. It has the exact same specs as the smaller (and flatter) 27" OLED, but the larger screen makes it more versatile as a display for work and play. Personally, I prefer the 21:9 aspect ratio display. When the next generation update for The Witcher 3 is released, I can already see myself sitting in my chair, immersed in the monster-filled countryside. The gaming PC connected to the large curved OLED has a RTX 3060 built in, and I was able to achieve 240Hz at 1440p with no problem (Valorant automatically switched the aspect ratio for ultrawide). This also shows that 1440p gaming at 240Hz does not put as much load on the GPU as trying to play Valorant at 4K at 144Hz, for example.

Side by side, I noticed that the larger monitors had much better color reproduction. Don't get me wrong, the colors are great on the 27", but they are less vibrant and more washed out.

This leads me to my biggest concern: overall brightness. When I first heard about this monitor, I noticed that each product page listed the brightness as 200 nits (open in new tab), which is woefully low by OLED standards. LG is still trying to learn the peak brightness of the monitor, as the page specs do not give the full picture. We are still working on that. In any case, we will know more once review samples are released to the public.

LG's first OLED gaming PC display is impressively fast and shows the appeal of a 1440p panel with a 240Hz refresh rate. It's the future I want for PC gaming. But as our own Jeremy Laird wrote today, these first generation OLED gaming monitors, while gorgeous and fast, are not "truly PC optimized," at least not yet It will be interesting to see what other monitor manufacturers like Asus have in store . [The 27GR95QE (opens in new tab) and 45GR95QE (opens in new tab) are available for pre-order and will ship in early January for $999 and $1,699 respectively; LG is also offering an UltraGear gaming mousepad (opens in new tab) with each pre-order for free. Hey, we never said this high refresh rate 1440p future was cheap, did we?