XG27AQDMG insane banding/posterization

[Lax567]

Hi All,

Just got a XG27AQDMG, and after some testing in games, I think something is seriously wrong.

I've got very noticeable posterization in dask-ish colors. For example here are two pictures from Genshin and Honkai Star rail :

The white circular shape is not supposed to be visible (it's a smooth gradient to the edges)The light cast is very unsmooth, I mean look at this

I'm running SDR with :

• user mode
• brightness 30
• uniform brightness ON
• shadow boost OFF
• gamma 2.2
• latest firmware MCM103

Tried :

• both DisplayPort and HDMI,
• going down to 60Hz
• made sure I'm running full RGB 10 bit
• increasing brightness, enabling shadow boost helps but it only makes the "white circle" bigger

That can't be normal, is my monitor faulty ?

Thank you

[Lax567]

In my case, I wasn't using novideo_srgb, the issue was there out of the box.

[Incubus32]

Out of curiosity I've tested my 5 day old monitor and here's my results. 

FPS preset 240hz (100 brightness):

User preset @ 60hz (65 brightness)

I think  your panel is defective or something. Are you from the US as well? 

This mainly the reason I bought 4 year extended warranty from Bestbuy lol. 

[Lax567]

I'm from France, but I've already returned the monitor anyway.

Your second picture seems bad already to me, but it's hard to say with this exposition. Try taking a picture in the dark and focusing on any corner of the monitor to over-expose the picture.

Also, 65 brightness is still too high, try with 40 or lower + uniform brightness ON for "worse results" 😁

[Incubus32]

I see. Though if that bad results just come in when brightness that low, I can live with that. I don’t use the monitor with so very low brightness since I don’t have a light treated space where the monitor sits. Also if gaming I tend to put it on 100. Just testing the real world setting I would use. 

[Incubus32]

If you don’t mind, what monitor you changed it with? 😅

[deusXex]

On the second image you can clearly see the huge drop in brightness from a certain gradient level. This causes all of the issues on all near-black color gradients, including the black crush many people are mentioning. The sad part is that this issue is so specific to this particular monitor, that it can't even be fixed via proper calibration using software like a DisplayCAL or Calman. Imho, it's caused by incorrect response curves for white subpixel and its contribution to the final color lightness, which needs to be properly calibrated in firmware for every WOLED panel. I mean you can reduce it a bit with software calibration or gamma change, but you will mostly just shift the problem to other (probably lower) gradient levels.

[Sriarno]

Well, you've chosen ASUS 🤡brand what else can you expect from them??😂 Other brands at least tries to give proper service & support but here that's not the case. In future don't make this mistake again by choosing cash grab 🤑brand like ASUS.

[RealNC]

For anyone still reading this, it turns out that 6-bit temporal dithering helps a lot with banding/posterization issues with dark color shades. This is on Nvidia. Use novideo_srgb's advanced settings to set dither state to "enable", mode to "temporal", and bits to "6 bit". Yes, that's 6! Not 8, not 10. In HDR mode, do not enable the sRGB color clamp checkbox. Only enable the dithering.

This HDR gradient test is improved by a lot with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoMPrr-Uefs

[Yelov]

I had this issue on the AQDMG which I returned. Now I have the new AQDP and it has the same banding issues, which makes the benefits of OLED almost irrelevant since dark scenes just look awful due to the banding. What I find infuriating is that reviewers and YouTube tech channels are not covering this, you only see it mentioned it forum posts like these.

But I can confirm that the above suggestion to enable dithering helps, but only in certain scenarios (e.g. the pattern in the codepen linked above). Dark scenes in shows/movies don't seem to benefit from it.

[Lax567]

Well that sucks, sorry to hear that. I've also read some people complaining about the 4k 32" one, so it seems every Asus W-OLED is affected by this issue.

I agree with you on the reviewer side of things. I've been pushing RTINGS to re test the XG27AQDMG for this particular issue, and they kinda semi-acknowledged it, which is better than nothing.