ASUS ROG Swift (PG278Q)

Purchase Process

I ordered the ASUS Rog Swift (PG278Q) from B&H Photo on January 17, 2015 for $799.

At the time, my only options were B& H Photo and BestBuy. I did not like the shipping options on BestBuy and decided to see what B&H has to offer.

I was very pleased with their free expedited shipping, but having never purchased anything on this website, I hesitated. It also appears that it is only possible to check out items at specific times during the day. This is the first time I've ever encountered a website have some kind of business hours for purchasing items. Attempting to check out during "non business" hours would result in a cryptic error.

Error when trying to check out an item from B& H Photo during "non business" hours

At this point, I sent out a tweet to the company, and a representative informed me that check out resumes at 6:15PM on Saturday.

Response from a B&H Photo representative

I thought this was very odd, and decided to wait for the item to be available on Amazon. However, my patience ran out by that evening, so I decided to take a chance and purchase it from B&H Photo.

Once I completed the purchase, it was the usual routine. I was given an order confirmation, and soon enough my item was shipped and it was delivered on time. 

Unboxing

General Impressions

I am very satisfied with the monitor. The pixel density is obviously higher, and this makes makes everything in Windows look really sharp.  

Also, one feature I thought was very nice was the response when the power button is pressed to turn on the monitor - the image comes up almost immediately. I have not seen this in any of the other monitors I have previously used. This may not mean much, but I like the fact that exists. 

Games look absolutely amazing. I would recommend turning off anti-aliasing because at this resolution, I do not find any noticeable difference in games (this is of course subjective), and the performance gains with AA off is fairly significant. I am using EVGA GeForce GTX980, and this card struggles to keep up at times in BF4 multiplayer (64p conquest). Turning off AA gave me much better frame rates. 

Here is a video of footage Battlefield 4 multiplayer on ultra settings. The frame rate counter is on the upper right 

On certain maps like Operation Firestorm 2014 and Pearl Market, the frame rate dips into the 40s when playing with AA on. So now I run the game with all settings on Ultra except with AA and Ambient Occlusion, which are turned off. This is giving me excellent performance with frame rates going up to 120 on certain maps. 

GSYNC

I noticed the biggest impact of GSYNC when frame rates tend to drop between 50-60 fps. When the fps drops below that, GSYNC doesn't really do much, at least from my experience. 

Final Thoughts

I personally feel this monitor is worth the money I paid for it. The reason for buying a new monitor in the first place for me is because I needed to setup a work machine. I thought about buying a very cheap monitor from craigslist, but on second thoughts, I decided to buy a new monitor instead. The reason for this being, my Acer P243WAid monitor which I purchased in March 2009 is still functioning perfectly. So I figured if I purchased a high end monitor and if it lasted for the next 6 years, I would absolutely get my money's worth. Therefore I started researching monitors late last year, and the general consensus in the gaming community is that the ROG Siwft is about as good as its going to get for gamers right now. 

After having used the monitor for a few days, I think I agree. This is an excellent monitor, and I think my money is well spent. 

If you are looking for a high end gaming monitor, and price is not particularly an issue, then I definitely recommend the ROG Swift. If you are not particularly discerning about refresh rates etc., but want the extra real estate, then I wouldn't recommend this monitor, instead one of the Korean made monitors which cost probably less than half the price will do the job just fine.