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PG48UQ Black screen and HDR issues

Greeny_SA
Level 9
Howdy

Having some issues with my PG48UQ and wanted to see if it was isolated or not. Have seen a few threads on the 42, but less on the 48.

Issue 1 - Screen goes black without any message, just black. Doesn't drop input, just black and unresponsive for minutes at a time. Eventually you can use the remote to cycle it off and back on after a few mins. Is this a forced pixel refresh or something, even though it says nothing?

Issue 2 - Turning HDR on in windows looks washed out and awful. Not sure if I am doing something wrong or not but colours just seem brown? I noticed that RT'ings review of the 42 mentioned something similar.

Running Firmware V025 so there isn't really anything I can update to.

People have any ideas or is this just a matter of wait for a Firmware that might fix it? Seems disingenuous to sell something as HDR when it doesn't work.

Thanks
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63 REPLIES 63

This is my third day with DP and didn't have any black screen issues. With DP I am reading 10bit from the OSD but When I put Hdmi 2.1 and look at the OSD it says 8bit. I can do as you say in the Nvidia control panel I am changing to 10bit and Windows says that it's 10bit but when I check it from the OSD it says 8bit. I am guessing that really HDMI port does have a problem and they need to fix it for both black screen and 8bit.

*Edit: After 5 mins I post this, even with Display Port Cable, the black screen issue did happen and I am guessing this is really related to some power or something. It's happening after the monitor is not fully powered down for 3 days.

Would be nice if they just acknowledged it in any capacity at all.

Having the same problem here.  Latest firmware, the screen will flash black anywhere from a fraction of a second to maybe a second or two before returning.  Also facing an issue where it defaults to limited range RGB if I switch it down to 120Hz so I have to manually set the colour range, but that causes some weird artifacting like lines occasionally flashing up towards the bottom of the screen.  HDMI seems to work fine apart from when overclocked, the top row of pixels does this weird sort of flicker to the right of any contrast changes.  Does anybody else get the feeling that all modern monitors are just a little bit broken?

carpelus
Level 8

So this is my reply to myself 😅.

The screen blackout problem continues and, it is totally random. I've tried with many cables(certified) DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 and after some time the blackout problem comes back I even tried turning it off thoroughly after use and it didn't work. 

I've noticed something too. I have a wattage meter and when I turn the monitor off I see 30watt usage. I don't know what it is, for televisions I could say that it is doing pixel cleaning after turning it off but this monitor has it on the OSD so the user must do it.

I hope that ASUS will release a firmware update so it will be fixed because it is really starting to be annoying and If I contact local ASUS guarantee service and say that I have a question or problem, they say that you need to give us the monitor and they wouldn't come as other brands would and I don't believe in cargo and thinking that they will definitely break the screen...  How can we really rise our voices really lol... They should fix these problems, the monitor is released nearly 1 year ago.

Doctor_Headlock
Level 9

I've been having a bit of a tinker with my setup and touch wood, I think I've solved it. I was previously using two monitors, the PG48UQ via DP and a second over HDMI with an audio extractor in series with it. I changed the setup to both monitors using DP and removed the audio extractor from the equation. No real change. Then, I swapped the DP cable for yet another one, this time it is a KabelDirekt DP 2.0 cable, not certified obviously as the 2.0 specification was dropped in favour of 2.1 but other cables of theirs are certified so I figured it was worth a shot. So far no picture dropouts, and no garbage pixels flickering at the top of the screen. It's been a couple of days now of heavy use so fingers crossed that new cable solved it. Will let you know if anything changes.

carpelus
Level 8

So, here I am again 😀

I found a solution for the black screen issue, I bought 2 new cables but the problem wasn't solved I saw a post on Reddit for the 42" model and I have tried to turn off Overclocking* and it really works. The bad thing is it is advertised as 138Hz but if I use it at 120Hz nothing happens. By the way, so many people said "If you have more than 1 monitor that goes above 60Hz, unplug the second one and try it again because so many of us saw that it resolves if you use only one." but they also added that they tested it for 3 days so I don't want to waste my time again, and again for a test that ASUS even didn't bother.... that is a real bummer. I am hoping that they could provide a firmware update to fix it.

konahamaru
Level 10

Ya I never over locked mine, even though I'm running a top end rig with a 4090 I don't really care about going over 120 fps. It's just gonna be harder on the monitor. And what a beautiful monitor it is holy cow, I never have to adjust any light settings in game, the default is always perfect.

 
Anyways, once I upgraded to the newest firmware it quit doing that. It's been about a month but last night I actually had a little hiccup the monitor shut off for some reason. It only happened once and hasn't done it again so I'm hoping it's ok.
 
Have you upgraded the firmware yet? It made all the difference.
 
Good luck.

I am on firmware v28.  The random black screen issue is gone, however HDR is still unusable.

I have tried a few different high quality DP and HDMI cables, different computers, and a PS5. HDR does not work (looks washed out and crappy) on any configuration. I made sure HDR was enabled on the monitor as well as the device being used, of course. 

Each of the devices I tested on the PG48UQ were also tested on my ~5 year old LG OLED in the living room. On the LG, HDR looks amazing with vibrant colors and works as advertised. The PG48UQ does not and it's very disappointing considering it cost around $1600 or something.

I thought I would wait it out and see if a firmware update would fix it since the black screen fix worked, but I guess I'm the sucker for waiting for that update. Now I am past my store's return policy and I am stuck with an expensive buggy OLED monitor. 

AVOID THIS MONITOR

Which OS are you on? I found that HDR was brown garbage on Windows 10 but is improved in Windows 11. I also went through this guide and used the Nvidia control panel settings suggested - https://wiredcolony.com/asus-pg42uq-oled-hdr-best-settings-guide/#how-to-update-pg-42-uq-firmware 

Yep I came across this article before. It's a band aid over the HDR issue. HDR should just work without needing to mess with the Nvidia control panel. An example:  I tried plugging in laptop I have and HDR looks like crap in the PG48UQ. I plugged in the same laptop and HDMI cable into my old LG OLED and HDR worked with no issues. Very vibrant colors and just perfect. Plugged into the PG48UQ with the same HDMI cable again and it looked like crap. The PG48UQ has HDR problems plain and simple.