Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED - Review

I am not going to bore you with a long introduction paragraph and come straight to the point: the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 is a phenomenal piece of kit. If you have the deep pockets for an accessory like this, get it .

After over a week of use, I am so impressed with the Xeneon 27QHD240 that I will be truly disheartened when I will have to give this monitor back after the review period is over.

Design and Features

Unlike the Xeneon Flex, Corsair has thankfully ditched the curve for a traditional flat panel with the 27QHD240. While curved-displays certainly have their benefits, it's more befitting for larger displays like the Flex than something that is 27” in size.

Like other OLED panels, the 27QHD240’s panel is paper-thin but setting it up out of the box was relatively easy thanks to the large port hub attached to its back, and a thin plastic film on the panel that protects it from damage. The port hub connects to a slim, black stand which measures at 17.5cm x 10.5cm (WxL) and is relatively petite in size so it won’t take up too much desktop space.

The stand is the only part of the monitor with some design flair as it is adorned with hexagonal perforations to give it some pizazz. There is no RGB lighting here, which is a welcome change from what other manufacturers have attempted before, although I won’t shy away from using back-facing ambient lighting if it’s done well. Elsewhere, the monitor is pretty plain looking, leaving the OLED panel to do the heavy lifting. The bezels are expectedly thin, but unlike the LG 27GR95QE, it doesn’t sport a thicker chin at the bottom for a more unified design. One could easily stack up multiples of the monitor if their pockets run deep enough to afford that.

It offers your standard amount of swivel and tilt options, as well as sufficient height adjustments to place the monitor exactly where you want to. There are also VESA mounting ports on the back if you want to set it up on a wall or on a monitor arm. The most impressive part of the 27QHD240’s design, however, are the front-facing ports which makes plugging in cables a whole lot easier, but might cause the monitor to look slightly untidy if you have a lot of wires hanging out from it.

Corsair has fitted the monitor with a smattering of ports which should cover most of your basic needs, and then some. There are a total of four video inputs, including two HDMI 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4, and one USB-C port with DisplayPort alternate mode (for laptops) and 65 watts of power delivery. This array of connectivity is pretty common among most OLED monitors, with the only exception being the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM, which for some reason only offers one HDMI 2.0 port.

There is also a USB hub which connects to four USB-A ports and one additional USB-C port. That’s more than found on most gaming monitors and provides a lot of flexibility for connecting wired devices. A single 3.5mm headphone jack is also provided, but we would recommend using your PC’s onboard audio device or an external DAC for better audio experience (as well as for any virtual surround sound support).

On-Screen Display

Corsair has included one small innovation with the 27QHD240 and that is with how one can access the on-screen display menu. The bottom of the monitor features a proximity sensor that causes the on-screen shortcut menu to appear when your hand comes within about an inch of where the joystick, and the input and power buttons reside. This makes it easier to detect where the buttons are, so you aren’t left with folding the monitor to find the correct buttons - especially if you like to game in the dark.

Corsair provides a reasonable list of image quality adjustments, including preset color modes, gamma adjustments, color temperature with RGB color calibration, and saturation. While the level of adjustments available is decent enough, it does pale in comparison to what LG and Asus provide with better selection of color space modes and additional color temperature options. The UI is also quite plain on the Corsair, but it remains quick and responsive, and is logically arranged.

The monitor also has a Brightness Stabilizer that disables the monitor’s dynamic brightness to provide a more uniform level of luminance. The upside here is that it controls the noticeable swings in brightness that plagues every OLED monitor, but the downside is that it will also limit the overall brightness by a significant amount, resulting in a dull and bland image.

Image Quality and Performance

The Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 sports a 1440p resolution, backed up by 240Hz refresh rate, 0.03ms GTG response time, 98.5% DCI-P3 color coverage and 450nits of peak SDR brightness, and around 1,000nits of peak HDR brightness.

For SDR content, the 450nits of peak brightness is quite excellent, especially for PC games. Unlike console games, which make good use of HDR, games aimed at the PC market typically stick to SDR content (although HDR support for PC games have been improving as of late). This allows the 27QHD240 to produce a much brighter image than some of its competitors - the LG 27GR95QE, for example, was much dull in comparison due to its 250nits of peak SDR brightness. The higher brightness level is achieved using LG’s META technology, which uses a layer of microscopic lenses that are layered on top of the WOLED pixels which allows the backlight to pass through in a much more efficient manner over the conventional setup. This technology is found on LG’s latest series of televisions, and it’s good to see it make its way to PC components, as well.

Out of the box experience with 27QHD240 was excellent, with no calibration required from my side at all. This also explains the relative lack of image quality settings because Corsair was confident that the monitor was good to go from the moment it was plugged in. I used the “Gaming” and “Movie” presets for their specific use cases, and I was extremely pleased with the results. The OLED panel kicks in to provide sharp and vivid image quality, with rich and well-balanced colors that never seem to overwhelm each other no matter what you are playing on screen. The panel was also deft at preserving rich shadow detail and black levels (but of course), giving each scene an incredible sense of ambiance and depth.

I phased the monitor through multiple games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Spider-Man Remastered, Exoprimal, and Diablo 4, and to re-experience those games on an OLED display (coming from an IPS panel) was a revelation. I compared the image quality of the Corsair Xeneon to that of my aging 55” LG C9 OLED TV, and besides the size difference, both panels were pretty neck-to-neck in terms of image quality, with the 27QHD240 being slightly brighter.

Blurring and ghosting were a non-issue, which is pretty common with OLED displays. Since the LEDs can turn on and off individually, the technology inherently inhibits any sort of blurring or ghosting to occur when compared to traditional LCD panels which use different zones of backlighting that turn on and off. And thanks to the 240Hz refresh rate, and AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync compatibility, screen tearing was of no concern as well, presenting a buttery smooth visual experience at all times.

Coming to the monitor’s HDR performance, this is where the Corsair slightly misses the mark. The 27QHD240 claims a maximum brightness of 1,000nits but only when just three percent of the display is lit (in pure white color). The brightness drops to 800 nits at 10 percent, and 450 nits at 25 percent, with a maximum of 140 nits when the entire screen is filled with a bright, white HDR test video.

As you can tell, 140nits is simply insufficient in order to provide the level of luminance detail that HDR is meant to deliver, and as a result, games that feature bright and vibrant color at all times might appear to be slightly dull and hazy. However, to the naked eye, this might not always be the case. Playing Exoprimal on PC, watching a few episodes of Secret Invasion, and playing dozens of HDR demos on YouTube, the lack of brightness is hard to notice. The panel still serves up fantastic image quality and punchy colors, with some washed out areas in particular scenes which render normally in SDR mode.

Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 as a Daily Driver

The monitor features an odd RWBG subpixel layout which might make some small objects and fine fonts appear to be blocky. However, in my over one week of use, I did not come across any such issue in games, or while using it on my Windows 10 PC.

The brightness of the monitor was sufficient for daily use. I have the brightness set to 50% when not consuming serious content in order not sear my eyes out, but I do have the curtains drawn in my room at all times (it's hot here, man!) so the lower brightness always works better for me when I am just browsing or working on long text documents such as this one. However, the 450nits of SDR brightness should be ample enough even in a brightly lit room.

However, like most OLED monitors, the dynamic brightness management might be an odd experience at first. The screen noticeably fluctuates in brightness as you minimize and maximize windows as the panel scrambles to achieve the desired level of brightness. But I have kind of gotten accustomed to it by now, and very rarely notice it happening.

A peculiar thing I noticed with the monitor is that sometimes the monitor auto shuts itself, and I have to manually power it back on whenever it happens. The first time it happened, I thought I was going crazy because I did not remember turning off the monitor from the power button. I am not sure why this happens, but it could possibly be an OLED burn-in protection system employed by Corsair (which, if true, is still quite odd).