5.0 out of 5 stars MIND BLOWING: Did NOT regret this purchase! So WORTH IT!! Color FANTASTIC!!! Speed: EPIC
The hardest part about my computer set-up has been deciding on a monitor… I checked, reviewed, researched, went to stores to look, and took an awful amount of time to find a decent monitor. Finally, I decided to purchase this monitor for the 144Hz speed, dedication to gamers, and the 3 years warranty. Before I go further, I made the right choice! Once you open up the box you immediately see that you have purchased a MONITOR that will do your bidding for serious PC folk or gamers. This is not some cheap junk. It looks great! If looks could kill, they nailed it with the sleek, slim, and modern look. You can tell this is not a bargain store monitor purchase. The stand: awesome. Better than any other junk stands I have had the patience to work with. It adjusts to your liking, firm, simple, ergo, fantastic. Why don’t they build all monitors stands like this? Forsake wall mounts. The monitor: FANTASTIC. Once you turn her on (the power button ROCKS) the bright blaze of sunlight will hit your eyes and enter your brain like a slap. Brightness at 100 will let you know that this monitor is capable of burning retinas at a billion candles per inch as well as massages your eyes depending on your mood or quite possibly the fact that you could use this monitor outside (not recommended) and the sun will not dare to outshine it. After the first brightness adjustment, the color on this monitor seemed fine to me, in fact, better than the POS it replaced by light years. Looked around at color recommendations and the simple ones you will find online are fine for any start-up fine tuning. Trust me, color is not an issue. I do not understand why anyone is having problems with color on this monitor… it quite simply ROCKS. 144Hz speed: At startup I went straight to adjusting the refresh frequency from the starting 60Hz to 144Hz. Why? Because this is the highlight feature of this monitor! FAST refresh is better for everything. Why hobble along a 60 mph on the freeway when you know your sports car can get 144 mph without sweating? You simply must max out the frequency for games to enable better goodness on the battlefield, not to mention anything else you do on your PC. Once you put it on 144Hz, you are now a professional PC POWER-user and dare I say it: GAMER. Yes, there is an advantage, YES!! Incredible performance. Price: Got this for the ridiculous price of $209 on a black Friday weekend sale…and then it went up to like $300 after the sale. I would still pay for the $300 on this but keep an eye out for sales that come frequently enough… so worth it. Size: 24 inches is better than 22, and someday the standard will be 27 or 28.. can’t wait for the larger variants to become affordable. 24 is great however, very NICE. This monitor was thinking of you, the PC user, with muscle and power under the hood of your build. Regarding HDMI or Display Port users: Why bother? The DVI dual link cable it comes with is the baby you need to plug into your video card for 144Hz goodness. If you add another monitor, fine, deal with it. Regarding speakers: HAHAHAHAHHA, whatever. One wonders why they bothered. Monitors should not come with internal speakers because they always blow due to size constraints and placement. Ever notice how large screen TV’s all have sound bars? It’s because internal speakers are lame. 3 year warranty: Worth it! Nice!! Ever have a monitor die after a year or so for no reason other than "it was its time"? I have. Hold on to your original box, register with ASUS, and know that you can get some satisfaction when your monitor goes kaput in the next 3 years. Shipping is paid by ASUS. NICE.

UPDATE 2.5 years later:
Still rocking it, gaming it, videos galore. No issues or problems. Still have my original box if it twitches before 3 year warranty expires. It’s my precious. Considering buying another one just like this for my work desk, so worth it! Great performance, ergo as heck, and value with this monitor!! Boom!!!!

5.0 out of 5 stars Great monitor, there is a reason why it is still best seller after being out for years!
****** IMPORTANT ****** Before I start – As everyone has said on these reviews before, the colors look very pale and washed out once you get the monitor. I highly recommend that you Google or go on YouTube and search for this specific video "ASUS VG248QE Color Settings / ICC Profile (and discussing lightboost)". The uploader’s name is Static Sleet and the video was uploaded in October 2015. There are other websites that teach you how and some Reddit threads that do the same, but this video is extremely straightforward on what you should do as soon as you get your monitor out of the box.

Now, I was very hesitant in getting this monitor because I’m a pretty cautious consumer and read all the one star reviews. I was so afraid of being one of the dead / stuck pixel receivers, but whew! Everything is perfect. I just upgraded from a 20 inch, 60hz, and not a 1ms response time monitor and the difference is staggering. I have this new one and my old one set up side by side and it’s like night and day. This monitor is much more bright, vibrant, and crisp than the blurry and dull image I see on the old monitor. The box was well packaged and the monitor very secure, and there are no scratches or any parts bent / out of place.

Sure, it’s not one of the more expensive 1440p models that boast G-Sync and yada yada, but if you’re on a budget constraint that allows you only to get monitors around 300-400$, this is a steal. So, if you’re like me, stop looking at the $600 – $1000+ monitors and narrow them down to two models – this ASUS VG248QE or its 27" counterpart, or the BenQ Zowie XL2411Z that is probably the other one you’ve been looking at. The only thing that you should do now is go on Google / YouTube again and search "BenQ XL2411Z vs ASUS VG248QE 144 hz Monitor Comparison – Which is best for YOU?" by Gus Tech. As you can see through the comments and other sites that pit these two versus each other, ASUS blows BenQ out of the park when it comes to picture QUALITY (color, vibrance, etc). The BenQ is claimed to be more efficient however in games because it stays true and strong in those parts of FPS shooters like CS:GO where you’re turning around corners and shooting people very quickly. As a FPS fanatic, I can tell you that it is not noticeable at all. It was a no brainer for me to choose the ASUS model after looking at the video I just mentioned because a little "efficiency" is not worth sacrificing an amazing picture for. Unless you’re some world champ shooter that somehow notices this little difference when you’re turning around corners, you’re not going to notice any difference in those terms at all. The BenQ colors are just terrible. I wouldn’t want to play video games to be better if I’m not going to like what I’m looking at, and you probably don’t want that either.

Also, one thing I was debating on before getting this model was whether or not I should get the 27". My 20" is so tiny and I was so sick of it, so I thought – the bigger the better. However, I looked up "Is a 27 monitor and 1080p" worth it and the results weren’t that great. Many said that you would notice a loss of quality almost immediately unless your computer is extremely far away from you and to the back of the desk, but that wasn’t me because my monitor is sitting only an arm’s length away. I also read on Reddit from people with 27" models that it was simply too big for them and they actually got worse at high speed video games because their eyes couldn’t keep up with everything that was going on in the corners and sides of the screen. So, following that advice, I got the 24" because the quality would seemingly be at ‘perfect’ balance and not stretched out onto a 27" screen and because I didn’t want the problem of not being able to see everything happening if I’m playing a fast-paced video game. I’m very glad that I listened to them! I’m actually having trouble sometimes keeping up with this screen too because it’s also very big when an arm’s length away. If I had a 27", it would be great for watching some movies far away but.. not at all for games unless you have additional eyes beside your ears. An added bonus with this is that you’ll be saving 50$ too (by not getting the bigger model)!

Overall, I think you should get this VG248QE if your budget falls around here and you’re looking for an entry-level 144hz, 1ms, 1080p monitor. Yes, there are lots of one star reviews because of misplaced pixels, but I can tell you after hours of searching for monitors before I got this one that there is only ONE monitor I found with only 4-5 star reviews – and it cost 2300$ and only like two or three people actually reviewed it.. Every monitor you come by will have problems from consumers such as dead pixels, power failures, the monitor simply dying, buttons falling off, etc. The VG248QE will have a lot more of these simply because of the sheer amount of people that have bought this over the years. When you’re producing a lot of these monitors, obviously some are bound to fail. but this model, as you can tell, is always holding strong near 80% five star reviews – which is a lot higher than other monitors that I have seen on Amazon. Just pray that you’re not in the 20% and buy it. Don’t press your back button and go to the BenQ. Just get it!!

Oh, and a lot of people seem to not be getting DVI-D cables with their orders so I read those reviews and got the gold plated, ferrite, DVI-D cable that is under the "products frequently bought with this" because I thought I wouldn’t be getting one. Well, I did get one with the monitor. So, take that with a grain of salt; you may or may not get one.

4.0 out of 5 stars Versus CRG9
Scant reviews on this monitor. Seems like Asus didn’t market it well or was behind the times with this model.

TL;DR – This Asus is a fine ultrawide. However, I prefer my Samsung CRG9 due to slightly superior picture quality and lower cost at the time of this review. I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the two panels except I had both monitors operating side by side. This Asus was perfect out of the box – no dead pixels, no real issues. I’d start with the Asus if its cost was equal to the CRG9. I had to return my CRG9 once due to Samsung’s ongoing rubbish quality control issues – that hassle was awful.

Specifically, regarding the Asus picture quality: picture blurring/ghosting for fast moving objects was a margin worse despite having 165hz. The CRG9 was also outright brighter/better sustained nits. The Asus wins out almost everywhere else unrelated to picture. Asus is superior with integrated KVM, USB-C, build quality, quality control, packaging, inclusion of speakers, software. Asus’ ELMB Sync (anti-blur/ghosting) tech works but just didn’t make the cut for me.

A bit of elaboration on Asus’ features since it’s not documented well. ELMB Sync is an Asus backlight strobing method used to mitigate motion blur. Does what it implies and flashes the LED backlight in sync with the monitor frequency. This will momentarily darken/black out a frame between each displayed frame. The trade-off with the technology is it requires darkening your screen brightness to operate. This operates fine on both AMD and Nvidia cards that support Freesync/G-sync. ELMB sync works to some extent, but it’s far from perfect.

The Asus’ integrated KVM uses the built-in USB-A/B hub and USB-C inputs to operate as hardware KVM or software KVM. You can use either method – e.g. turn it on/off. What does that mean? A hardware KVM works just like it sounds – hardware input/output (keyboard, video, mouse) operate on a switch. Press KVM button, devices effectively unplug from one PC/laptop device and plug into the other. Software KVM opens a data connection to both devices using monitor USB connections: USB-C over Displayport to Device 1, and the monitor’s USB-A/USB-B hub connection to Device 2. The monitor presents installable software to each device (PC/laptop) to install. That lets you manage and facilitate drag and drop from one device to another in a PBP/PIP (Picture-by-Picture) setup. If you have a work issued laptop that doesn’t allow outside software installs, you’d be best advised to stick with the hardware KVM mode.

The Asus has some other frills as well. You can manage custom aspect ratios for multiple PIP/PBP inputs. Integrated down-firing speakers which are acceptable as far as panel speakers go. In-depth options menus for color adjustments. Factory color calibration including a card to illustrate such.

I wouldn’t suggest the HDR mode. It reduces brightness for HDR mode and lacks sufficient local dimming to leverage much for HDR. The panel has enough inherent brightness and color gamut to operate in SDR and comparatively look great.

A bit of background on reference to the CRG9 on an Asus review: My first CRG9 showed up with a cluster of dead pixels center screen and a few in the upper left. Both the original CRG9 I bought and the replacement creaks, clicks, and pops as the glue in the monitor heats up. Notoriously bad Samsung warranty support. That’s what made me look for an alternative which is this Asus XG49WCR. So I had the time to compare the replacement CRG9 and Asus side-by-side. It may be a helpful reference point.

1.0 out of 5 stars Don’t update the firmware whatever you do…
I love the monitor’s picture quality, it’s amazing and it’s great for both productivity and gaming. My big complaint is that it comes out of the box with firmware v018 and I updated two more firmwares afterwards that came out, v025 and v026, but after v025 it crippled the monitors auto pixel cleaning process.

Now after you first turn on your computer exactly 4 hours later the display goes black while it’s doing an automatic pixel cleaning which lasts 6 minutes, after which it should come back on but it doesn’t, no key presses on the remote or the computer will bring it back, it just stays as a black screen.

You wind up having to physically turn off the monitor and then back on again. Unfortunately, all your open documents and windows are thrown over onto another display should you have any and once this monitor is back on you have to move all your windows and anything you have open back over to this monitor and go into settings and make this monitor your primary monitor again.

The only way to prevent this from happening is right after you turn your computer on, set a timer for 3hrs and 57min that way you have 3min to stop what you’re doing and manually put it into pixel cleaning mode. This will prevent it from going into an automatic pixel cleaning process. When you perform it manually after 6 minutes it turns the display back on and your good to pick up where you left off.

This all started after updating the firmware to v025 and v026, they are what broke this monitor. Three weeks I’ve been going back and forth with Asus support techs and they say they can’t reproduce the issue on their end. I finally got fed up with it and contacted Amazon support about returning it even though I was 5 days past the return date they were kind enough to make an exception and let me return it.

If you decide to purchase this monitor, do not update the firmware or this issue will break your newly bought monitor but unfortunately the HDR is really washed out and the only way to fix it is to perform a firmware update. It’s really saddening because aside from this issue this could have been one if not the best 48″ OLED monitor on the market today and I can count on one hand the number of 48″ OLED monitors out there. There’s also a whole Reddit community that have this issue and one of the persons actually sent his in under an RMA and got a brand new one back and right after he updated the firmware to v026 it started doing the same exact thing as his last monitor.

Ultimately I decided on the BenQ MOBIUZ EX480UZ 48” 4K UHD OLED Gaming Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B92K7GG6 which is very new. So new that there’s only a handful of YT videos out that review it so I don’t know if it will have its own set of issues or it will be OK. Only time will tell.

So there you have it, if you update the firmware you’ll break this monitor but if you don’t the HDR is all washed out. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Anyways I hope you find the right monitor.
~Happy Gaming!

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth it just for LightBoost!
-Quality Control-
I bought three of this exact monitor. I got three monitors with three very different looking colors, particularly with three very different depths of black. I expected the colors to be inaccurate- just about every review brings that up, but I (incorrectly) assumed three of the same monitor would be inaccurate in exactly the same way. I think the problem is each has a slightly different backlight intensity, and this cannot be fixed by any brightness/contrast/gamma settings. They don’t look the same and they will never be identical. This makes me sad. I’m taking one star off for this- yeah 3 monitors is a small sample size, but, well, they sure aren’t cherry-picking the production line.
Update: Of the three of these monitors I purchased, two of them had dead pixels. I have gone through the lengthy process of exchanging both (amazon’s service was lovely, newegg on the other hand was quite slow in comparison, and newegg makes you send the product back before they ship you the replacement, whereas amazon just shipped me a new monitor instantly and told me to send the old one back by the end of the month) and have finally gotten three functioning monitors. However… I’m just not very satisfied with the quality of these monitors. I never knew what “bad colors” before buying these monitors, and I thought that it was only important to people who work in photography, or the snobby “has to be perfect” crowd. I figured, “bad colors!? I don’t care about that”. I was wrong. Everything just looks so washed out and pale, and there really is an obscene amount of lightbleed around the edges. Sometimes I see image retention artifacts on these monitors! If I weren’t so lazy I would return these monitors and try out the BenQ model that supports 2D lightboost. My previous monitors lasted me 6 years, and I only upgraded because I wanted higher framerates and lightboost… but I don’t see myself keeping these monitors for 6 years. Full disclosure, the room where I keep these monitors is rather cold (it’s 12C right now) and the display is definitely adversely affected by the cold, things get a bit better when they warm up. Maybe all my complaints will be resolved in the summer when the weather is hot. My previous monitors had no issues unless the temperature fell below 0C.

-Connectivity-
My computer only has two DVI inputs, one displayport, and one hdmi port. This monitor comes with a rather short DVI cable. In my attempts to hook up the third monitor with stuff I had laying around the house, I discovered the following: The HDMI port will not carry signals higher than 60Hz. I tried using a DVI to HDMI adapter, but since my GPU doesn’t accept higher than 60Hz over HDMI, I used HDMI to displayport. This did not allow me to go higher than 60Hz. The fault could have either been the HDMI cable itself, or one of the adapters I used. I ended up having to buy a displayport cable and it carries up to 144Hz perfectly fine. tl;dr: You should not buy this monitor unless you have DVI or displayport on your PC. The DVI cable it comes with is on the shorter side.

-Screen-
I cannot, and therefore will not, talk about screen quality because I am not knowledgeable enough. I will say that there is a little bit of motion-ghosting, but I have never seen a monitor that doesn’t have a little ghosting. http://www.testufo.com/#test=ghosting

-High refresh rate 120Hz/144Hz-
I love it. It’s gorgeous, it’s significantly better than 60Hz, and very much worth buying into. Use this to watch videos in 144FPS- it fixes video stuttering (how on earth the general population still thinks 24fps is acceptable for video is beyond my comprehension) but will introduce some other artifacts. It’s a trade off… personally I prefer perfect visual fluidity with an artifact here and there vs every single second looking like garbage because 24FPS. http://www.svp-team.com/wiki/Main_Page
Update: SVP works better at 60Hz than at 120Hz or higher. Consistent framerates are much more important than high framerates- if you can’t get a stable 120FPS, the frequent changing of the framerate will be a lot more annoying than a consistent 60FPS. SVP works by generating new frames by averaging two existing frames. The generated frame is then inserted between the two existing frames. SVP’s engine does this very well for 60Hz/FPS displays where the source video is 24FPS, however its success is limited at 120FPS. Some scenes look amazing. Others don’t. While the entire video is technically 120FPS, the extra generated frames required to get to 120FPS may not be different enough (or accurate enough) to translate into worthwhile data, and the result is a perceived inconsistent framerate. If your source video was captured in 60FPS, however, I suspect SVP will succeed in rendering it at 120FPS.

-LightBoost-
This is a godsend. It only supports 100Hz-120Hz, but 120Hz with lightboost is vastly superior to 144Hz without. Use google chrome to view this page, once without lightboost, once with http://www.testufo.com/#test=eyetracking (firefox can’t maintain 120fps and IE doesn’t seem to support 120fps). It’s a bit hard to explain, but I’ll try: This monitor has a pixel response time of 2ms (the advertised 1ms is false- never trust manufacturer specs, look for monitor benchmarks). Pixel response is how long it takes for a pixel to receive a command and change colors. 2ms is incredibly fast, but it still is not an instantaneous change. When an object is moving on your screen very fast, the pixels can only update no faster than once every 2ms and what ends up happening is motion blur; an object appears blurry because the pixels it was just on haven’t fully changed to reflect it is no longer there, and the pixels it is on haven’t fully changed to reflect that it IS there. Enter LightBoost: LightBoost turns off the backlight in between screen refreshes, and the end result is that the backlight is only on AFTER the pixels have fully changed. Without the backlight on, there is no light to carry information to your eyes. So in effect, LightBoost works by not transmitting incomplete data. The only light that ever enters your eyes contains complete images, you don’t see the 2ms of pixel transitioning from one color to another. The end result is mind blowing*, and I am SO HAPPY that I accidentally bought a monitor that happens to support this LightBoost feature- if you’re thinking of buying a 120Hz-144Hz monitor, either get this one or another one that you can verify supports LightBoost! LightBoost is not a feature that you can just turn on, it has to be enabled by third party tools and might only work for nvidia cards, I’m not sure… I just know that it’s used to help nvidia 3Dvision look better in some way, so using it for regular 2D isn’t strictly a supported feature- but the 3D restriction is completely arbitrary. Read more about it, and download the tool for unlocking 2D LightBoost here**: http://www.blurbusters.com/zero-motion-blur/lightboost/
*I haven’t used a CRT in years, OK!?
**I suppose I should put up a warning here: if you have epilepsy, know that this feature is blinking the monitor backlight, REALLY, REALLY FAST. This also reportedly causes eyestrain and other discomforts for certain people. I get eyestrain looking at a normal monitor, and I find that gunnar optiks glasses really help- maybe they’ll work for you if you find LightBoost causing discomfort.

-Stand-
It’s good I guess, though I don’t really know why they have the base swivel limited when it could have easily been designed to pivot 360 degrees- perhaps so the cables aren’t being tugged on, but I’d rather have that than have to worry about centering a disc I can’t see, but I never move my monitors or change orientation so it doesn’t really bother me. The adjustable height is nice.

-Speakers-
This is a monitor. There is no monitor in the history of the universe that is paired with good speakers. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to use them, but they’re there should you need them. If you don’t own speakers, they’re better than no sound at all. I saw some reviews complaining that the speakers on this are poor. No, the only thing poor here is your IQ. That’s like complaining about the poor performance of an integrated GPU or audio card.