Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP review: the best OLED for bright rooms

Samuel Buchmann

8/9/2024

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

The Asus PG32UCDP is one of the first monitors equipped with LG’s new WOLED panel. Nevertheless, it still has both pros and cons compared to the QD OLED competition.

2024 is the year of 32-inch 4K OLEDs. Almost every manufacturer is releasing a monitor of that type, most of them with a QD OLED panel from Samsung. Find out what this means and how it differs from other technologies here:

I’ve already tested three QD OLED models, including the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDM, my favourite monitor until recently. But now, the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP is standing in front of me. It uses a WOLED panel from LG and has a trick up its sleeve: it can switch between UHD at 240 hertz and Full HD at 480 hertz at the touch of a button.

The manufacturer specifications at a glance:

In this article, I’m focusing primarily on image quality. In particular, in the differences between QD-OLED and WOLED. You can read an assessment of their designs, operation and connections in my PG32UCDM test. They’re identical.

Picture quality: similar, but not the same as QD-OLED

The following is a deep dive. Measurements carried out with professional tools from Portrait Display allow an objective classification of image quality. If you’re not interested in details and diagrams, you can read the short version and then scroll to the «Gaming» section.

Here’s a summary of the key stats:

Brightness and contrast: shines during the day too

LG’s WOLED panel in the Asus PG32UCDP achieves a maximum full-screen brightness of just under 274 nits. This is marginally higher than its QD OLED brother, sufficient for most situations – unless the sun’s shining directly into your room.

Dynamic brightness is also activated by default. The less white content (more precisely, the lower Average Picture Level, APL) an image has, the brighter white becomes. With an APL of 10 per cent or less, the panel achieves 440 nits in SDR mode.

This makes gaming in bright rooms more pleasant than with OLED monitors, which don’t offer this option. Examples for these would be the Alienware AW3225QF or the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8. Especially in games, APL is almost always below 100 per cent, no matter if white brightness constantly changes a little.

The panel of my test sample is pretty evenly illuminated. I measure a maximum DeltaE of 2 between the centre and the edges of the image. However, I notice a slight dirty screen effect with plain images – a problem QD OLED models didn’t have.

HDR brightness reaches 1,210 nits in the 2 per cent window. This value is better than that of QD OLED models. At a higher APL, however, it drops just as quickly. I’m disappointed. With other Asus WOLED monitors, such as the PG34WCDM, you get more from a 10 per cent window.

As is usual with OLED monitors, the contrast tends towards infinity – black is really black. This is especially true for the PG32UCDP in daylight. Unlike its QD OLED competitors, the WOLED panel has a polarisation filter that reduces reflections within the panel. With QD OLED monitors, reflections like these turn black into dark purple.

A deep black would look best on a glossy monitor. However, the PG32UCDP has a matte coating. It disperses pointed light sources over a relatively large area, which worsens black levels depending on the situation. But in the end, the WOLED monitor is still ahead of QD OLED models during the day.

Colours and shades of grey: light black crush, accurate colours

Measuring colours and grey tones is intended to answer three questions:

1. Gamma and white balance: how accurately does the monitor display neutral grey tones?
2. Colour space coverage: how many colours can the monitor display?
3. Colour accuracy: does the monitor nail every colour it displays?

The grey tones of the PG32UCDP are very well-calibrated ex-works. Its gamma curve is close to the target value, contrast tends to be slightly too high. In very dark areas, you can’t always recognise every detail. This is remedied by the Shadow Boost option, although it raises the dark tones quite considerably. All shades of grey are displayed in neutral colours, the average DeltaE of 0.7 is in the invisible range.

The PG32UCDP covers the common SDR colour spaces very well:

• **sRGB: 127.3% (relative)/100% (absolute) (good = 100%) – the standard colour space for digital content. Most SDR images and videos are tuned to sRGB.
• **Adobe RGB: 95.6% (good = >90%) – an important colour space for editing images intended for printing.

Adobe RGB coverage isn’t quite as good as QD OLED monitors, which scratch past 98 per cent. At 95.6, the PG32UCDP isn’t ideal for professional prepress. However, as a gaming monitor, it doesn’t have to be.

Asus has clearly designed the screen for the DCI-P3 colour space. There, it’s extremely accurate in its native setting (maximum DeltaE of 1.1). As with all WideGamut monitors, sRGB content is too saturated under Windows (maximum DeltaE of 6.8). Manually switching to sRGB mode reduces the maximum DeltaE to 3.5.

HDR: no advantage over QD-OLED

OLED monitors are well suited for HDR content. By switching off individual pixels, they can achieve precise demarcations between very bright and very dark content, such as explosions in a night scene. Even dark shades of grey usually transition cleanly so that details remain visible in the shadows.

In terms of covering the HDR colour spaces, I measure:

• DCI-P3: 99% (good = >90%) – the standard colour space for HDR content, for example in HDR10 or Dolby Vision.
• BT.2020: 79.9% (good = >90%) – even larger colour space, which is being touted as the future. It's rare in current content.

The coverage of the very large BT.2020 colour space is in the typical range for WOLED monitors at just under 75 per cent. Although it isn’t as good with QD OLED, this hardly matters in practice. Most content today is aligned with DCI-P3. This colour space is excellently covered by the PG32UCDP at 99%, and the monitor displays colours very accurately, even in HDR.

At the time of testing, the Asus PG32UCDP supports the HDR10 standard, but no HDR10+ or DolbyVision. Since there are few games in DolbyVision anyway, this isn’t too tragic.

Gaming: costly all-purpose weapon

If you mainly use your monitor for gaming, you can’t go wrong with any of the current 4K OLEDs. They all offer high pixel density, a pleasant format and brilliant image quality. In fast-paced games, the frame rate of 240 Hertz also leads to less annoying motion blur.

The Asus PG32UCDP has an additional ace up its sleeve with Dual Mode. It can also be operated as a 1080p monitor with a full 480 hertz. In this mode, it’s one of the fastest OLEDs around. Even very rapid movements don’t blur together. This is particularly useful if you play competitive shooters.

Full HD resolution means four times fewer pixels. This has its pros and cons. The good? Your graphics card doesn’t have to work as hard – despite the doubled maximum frame rate. The bad? A lower resolution leads to a less detailed picture. 1,080p across 32 inches doesn’t look particularly sharp. It’s up to you whether you prefer sharpness or more efficient GPU performance.

OLED Anti Flicker is a completely new feature. All OLED panels can suffer from a flickering image at variable picture frequencies (VRR), but they’re perceived differently by everyone who looks at them, not only depending on the model, but on the device too. As a result, OLED flicker can’t be reliably tested. Asus is trying to reduce this by limiting the VRR range with the new feature. For example, to 120 to 240 hertz instead of 48 to 240 hertz.

Office work: almost all disadvantages ironed out

In the past, WOLED suffered from four drawbacks in office work:

1. The pixel density was never more than 110 pixels per inch (ppi).
2. The subpixel pattern (RWBG) led to colour fringing, especially when displaying text.
3. Matte coating further reduces the sharpness of text.
4. Risk of burn-in with static content

However, the Asus PG32UCDP uses a panel from the latest LG generation. It largely eliminates the first two points. The pixel density is much better at 140 ppi, and the new sub-pixel pattern (RGWB) is closer to the classic RGB that Windows and MacOS expect.

This means that the sharpness of text is perfectly fine for everyday use. To me, models with a QD OLED panel and a glossy coating look slightly sharper, but the test images (see above) prove my eyes wrong. Another thing the two Asus monitors have in common is that the dynamic brightness (Auto Brightness Limiter) can be switched off using Uniform Brightness, which I highly recommend, especially for image editing. And they’re both silent thanks to passive cooling.

The only disadvantage for office use is the risk of burn-in. After three weeks of using the Asus PG32UCDP, I’ve yet to notice any signs of ghosting. But this isn’t a meaningful long-term test. As with all OLED monitors, displaying static image elements for hours on end isn’t a good idea.

Samuel Buchmann

Senior Editor

Samuel.Buchmann@digitecgalaxus.ch

My fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.

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