 If you were shopping for a new monitor a few years ago, the general rule was that gamers would buy TN panels for their higher refresh rates and fast pixel response times, while creative types would get IPS type panels for their accurate colors and wide viewing angles. Fast forward to today, and IPS refresh rates have climbed from 75 to 110 and even 144 Hz, and now LG is claiming to have also closed the pixel response time gap with the 27GL850, a 1440p 144 Hz IPS monitor with an advertised 1 millisecond pixel response time, by developing a panel with a new high-speed liquid crystal layer that promises TN levels of speed. If they pulled that off, it's an industry first and it's a huge deal. But is it marvelous, or is it marketing? The main effect of pixel response time is the motion blur or the trail behind moving objects. And in order to show you guys exactly what the motion blur is like on this monitor, we turned to Blurbuster's excellent guide on how to build your own inexpensive Pursuit camera. The idea is to put a camera on a slider and then try to move it at exactly the same speed as the objects on screen. That way you can capture only the aspects of motion blur that are caused by the display and not those that are caused by the image persistence of the human eye. Sliding the camera at the right speed takes a few tries, but they built in this easy way to tell if you did it right. If these lines slant backwards, you were too slow. Forwards means you were too fast, and if they align vertically, then you deserve a high 10. So, here's our results. And admittedly, the image is still not crystal clear. But maybe we just need some context for this. Let's compare with a couple of other monitors then, starting with another UltraGear 120Hz gaming monitor from LG that's advertised as having a more typical IPS response time of 5 milliseconds. So, hmm. There's no real difference in the amount of detail that we can see in our UFO. But where there is a difference is in the amount of ghosting visible on the trailing edge of the ship as the pixels struggle to switch colors quickly enough. Now, we also compared the 27GL850 to a 1 millisecond TN panel, the ASUS PG258Q. And again, we get a similar level of detail between the two. But interestingly, the ASUS has a different visual artifact on the trailing edge called Corona, or inverse ghosting. This particular artifact is the result of pixel overdrive, a technique that uses higher voltages to make the pixels switch colors faster. Now, the goal of overdrive is to reduce ghosting, but it often comes with a side effect called overshoot, where the pixel briefly switches beyond the target color and then has to come back, causing this bright inverse ghosting. In the 27GL850 settings, which you navigate with the nipple joystick, still my favorite for on-screen displays, you can actually adjust how aggressive the pixel overdrive is. The results we've shown you so far were from tests that used the fast setting. When we crank it up to faster, we get Coronas again, just like the TN. And these look really bad in-game. Like, I would never, ever put this monitor, or for that matter, pretty much any monitor, on fastest, because it makes it look way worse with no real benefit that I can see. The good news is that, to me, the next setting down feels fantastic already. Like, it's really snappy with barely any overshoot artifacts. But that made me wonder, why would LG include this faster setting at all? Surely, they must know as well as I do that it just looks bad. Well, here's one theory. Back when this monitor was announced at E3 2019, the community was already wondering whether LG's 1 millisecond claim was something that the display could achieve reliably, or something it could only do under special circumstances, and with overdrive absolutely cranked. So, we think that this option is only here so that they could put 1 millisecond on the box, even if no one, ourselves or LG, would actually recommend using that setting. But, that's not to say that I don't love this monitor. I think it's a great monitor. And not even just because of the response times, which do play really clean. It also has a 144Hz native refresh rate, very decent color accuracy out of the box, thanks to LG's use of NanoCell tech, which you can learn more about in this video, and it's got variable refresh rate in the form of adaptive sync. Now, some of you might remember that this monitor was advertised as having G-Sync hardware in it when it was first announced. But, as you can plainly see, the G suffix has since been dropped from the product name. Now, the monitor still does have a G-Sync sticker on it, because it received the G-Sync compatible label from NVIDIA. So, you'll have variable refresh rate, regardless of which graphics team you play for. But you'll miss out on some of the extras that would have come with a G-Sync hardware module and full certification, like an unlimited variable refresh window and 165Hz overclocking. Which I guess brings us perfectly then to the 27GL850's downsides. The first is the lack of HDR. Now, technically speaking, this monitor does support HDR, in that it can accept an HDR10 input source, and you can flip HDR on in Windows. However, the peak brightness is just 350 nits, so it doesn't even qualify for VESA's lowly DisplayHDR 400 certification. Similarly, it doesn't have any local dimming to deepen the dark parts of the scene. Now, honestly speaking, I'm not that bothered, because HDR on PC still has some software issues, and even premium full-array local dimming HDR monitors, like the one I have at home, can still suffer from halos and poor viewing angles due to the chunky dimming zones. Moving to the outside, the I.O. is also just okay. One DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and a small hub with two USB 3s, and a spot-free microphone. So it's fine, but I'd be a lot more jazzed if there was a USB-C to enable a single cable connection to my laptop. Finally, there's the stand. The height adjust feels really smooth, it's got tilt, and even the less common pivot, but curiously, it doesn't swivel. I mean, this is not a deal-breaker for me, because you can just turn the whole thing, and usually you would sit right in front of your monitor, so it'll be perfectly aligned and everything. It's just... and there's no RGB! For gamers, another weirdo mission. Okay, I was mostly kidding about that last one. Because on the whole, these little concessions did result in a significantly lower price tag. The pre-order price for this puppy is $499, which, given the feature set, feels very reasonable. So overall, I think this is a great monitor with all the core features that a gamer cares about, and even a few that they don't. So thanks for watching, guys! If the video sucked, you know what to do, but if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit the like button, or check out the link to where to buy what we featured in the video description. Also check out our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and cool underwear like this! We have underwear now! He's doing it! He's doing it! Woo! Underwear!