- Alienware has launched a new 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED monitor
- The AW2726DM marks a significant change in the monitor market, making OLEDs much more affordable
- It’s available for $350 / £369 / AU$699 in the UK, US and Australia.
It’s been a long time coming, but OLED monitors have finally approached a stage of affordability for PC gamers and those focused on productivity, and it looks like Alienware has spearheaded that change.
As reported by Notebookcheck, Alienware has launched a new 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED monitor, the Alienware AW2726DM, available for $350 / £369 / AU$699.
It uses a 0.03ms GtG response time, 240Hz refresh rate, AMD FreeSync Premium support, HDMI 2.1 support, and most importantly, a 1,500,000:1 contrast ratio for perfect black levels, and it easily made it onto my wish list for a second desktop display.
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In particular, the AW2726DM lacks brightness compared to more expensive QD-OLED models, with just 200 nits of brightness, and it’s clear that this is where shortcuts have been taken to keep the price as low as possible.
However, that doesn’t take away from the huge benefits that the screen has, as QD-OLED is popular for ensuring that every scene in a movie or game has the best color and image quality through deep black levels, and is mainly noticeable in darker scenes. The display is best used in an environment without glaring light, as it can easily ruin images due to the monitor’s 200 nits base brightness.
Look
The biggest takeaway is the $350 / £369 / AU$699 price tag, as this effectively makes other regular IPS or LED monitors of the same size and resolution obsolete, as the AW2726DM now sits in the same price region, offering stiff competition to non-OLED displays.
It’s hard to beat an OLED panel in most cases, and while mini-LED monitors come close to offering similar deep black levels, they can’t fully compete, with their only major advantage being higher brightness.
Samsung has previously made clear its intentions to make OLED more affordable, and while it has done so, Alienware’s case stands out as it has opened the floodgates for even more affordable OLED displays to enter the market.
This is simply because the price of the AW2726DM is the lowest I’ve seen for the screen type without a discount. We may be looking at a future where OLED finally becomes completely mainstream in the desktop monitor market, and I couldn’t be happier.
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