 Since Gigabyte launched their gamer-focused Aorus sub-brand back in 2014, the company has expanded the product line from laptops and peripherals to motherboards and video cards, and now finally to what is apparently the world's first tactical monitor. Whatever that means. The product page is actually a fascinating specimen. The bezels are portrayed as unrealistically thin. There's a couple of, I think, somewhat misleading statements. And then there's this. What is active noise canceling in a monitor? Are you kidding me? Well, as it turns out, they're not. And we're gonna find out exactly what that means after this message from our sponsor, GlassWire. With GlassWire, you can instantly see your current and past network activity, detect malware, and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device. Use offer code LINUS to get 25% off GlassWire at the link below. I'm gonna be upfront with you. The active noise canceling feature is the reason that this monitor made it to our studio. It just raised so many questions for me when it hit my inbox. So we're gonna start with what's up with that. The monitor has three microphones on the front that actually listen to the ambient noise in your room. So then, my first thought was, maybe it would use them to try to add ANC to whatever headphones you happened to be wearing if they were plugged into the audio passthrough port. But no, it's actually kind of the opposite. The ANC isn't there to help you hear content better. It's meant to help others hear you better. So what you do is you plug your microphone into the monitor's 3.5mm jack. Uh, no dice if you use a USB mic, by the way. Oops. And then, you use AORUS's Sidekick software to specify what kind of mic setup you have and how much noise canceling you want to apply. So then, does it work? Actually, yes, the monitor was able to cut out our office's HVAC noise. And it actually sounds pretty good with my HyperX Cloud 2s. But other mics I tried had a significant trade-off to voice quality, regardless of whether we set it to very low or very high. So whether you'll end up using this feature probably depends on your mic and your room. But I'm guessing a lot of people, especially the ones that watched our budget mic roundup a little while back, are gonna end up leaving it off. That doesn't mean this review is over, though, because as it turns out, the noise canceling is only one of several gamer-focused features that are actually pretty cool. Mostly. Like the Sidekick software itself, which, provided you have the monitor connected via USB, gives you access to all the options that you'd normally find in the on-screen display, except way less cumbersome. So yes, the monitor still has the joystick nipple, which still is a lot easier than discrete buttons on the back with no labels. But if you're watching this channel, I probably don't have to explain to you guys why a keyboard and mouse is just plain better than anything else. And there's also added functionality, like being able to bind just about any setting to a hotkey. It's super cool and something that I hope gains mainstream adoption, even if there is a slight input delay. This is also where you find the rest of the gaming features, like another one that's done right, the on-screen reticle. Now, you might think that using one of these counts as cheating. And you'd be correct. But hey, at least if it's built into your monitor, you can get away with it. And what sets the AD27QD apart is that, unlike other monitors with this feature, the stock crosshairs are visible without being distracting or blocking your view. Plus, if you're not happy with it, you can actually draw your own completely custom one and go ahead and put that on there. So it could even just be a tiny little dot, if that's what you're into. Next, we've got a couple of more maybe features. So there's screen overlays for vital stats that you can customize. The display's refresh rate and timers and counters that you can bind to hotkeys and then use for things like tracking an opponent's attack cooldown in a MOBA or reminding you to scout in an RTS or counting your headshots in an FPS. Or I mean, a million other ad hoc things a gamer could do, but that I suspect few would do. Maybe I'm wrong. Hit me up in the comments. And then there's the aim stabilizer, which appears to be EORUS's name for motion blur reduction. Now, the marketing claims that it removes in-game motion blur like from weapon recoil to help you see better. But in practice, it appears to be simply the same backlight strobing that's been present on gaming monitors for years now. And like those features, it effectively reduces smearing, but it also reduces maximum brightness, introduces some strobing crosstalk, and it can't be on at the same time as FreeSync. Then finally, there's some features that are just bad, like super resolution, which is just gross sharpening, and black equalizer, which claims to increase visibility in dark areas without overexposing the bright areas, but appears to be the usual crank the gamma approach to this function, one that we wouldn't recommend. Let's get back to FreeSync, though, because all these tactical gaming features aside, this is actually just straight up a solid monitor in its own right. It's 2560x1440, 144Hz, and it's got a FreeSync range of 48 to 144Hz with low frame rate compensation, which you can actually see at work right here. So the frame rate is below the FreeSync range, which means that our low frame rate compensation inserts duplicate frames, and the panel refreshes at double the FPS. This does improve the perceived smoothness. Oh, and by the way, yes, that is the NVIDIA Pendulum Test. Thank you for asking. Because even though this monitor is not, at the time of writing, on NVIDIA's new white list of FreeSync monitors that are G-Sync certified, a quick update of our NVIDIA 10 Series graphics card drivers to version 417.17 does allow us to turn it on, and it appears to be working pretty well. Another pleasant surprise is actually the color accuracy. Now, this monitor isn't designed for professionals that do color-critical work. It's still an 8-bit panel plus FRC, nor is it a top-of-the-line HDR monitor with full array local dimming. But it does have VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification, so it is technically an HDR monitor, even if the peak brightness is just 400 nits, and, perhaps more importantly, it has excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space with, wow, like really, wow, color accuracy that's just about as close as the human eye can discern. So that is a total bonus for something that's being built as a gaming monitor. As for the industrial design, it's got a sharp, kind of aggressive look with a matte black anodized finish, the stand assembles with just one screw and is very robust, articulating on all four axes, and we even saved the best for last. It's got RGB panels on the back so that you can configure individually. I mean, so what if the user can't see them and most people put their monitor against a wall? They're gonna know they're there. In conclusion, then, for $600, AORUS's first foray into monitors delivers performance commensurate with other offerings in this price range and with a handful of extras for gamers that push me into yes territory. We recommend this monitor even if the product page did lie about the thinness of the bezels, but we are not endorsing that behavior. It's gross. We've all got our everyday grooming routines, showering, brushing your teeth, and of course, shaving. At least we should. 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And our community forum, which you should totally join. Oh, this one's not new. Well, this one's like, it's like sub-new. It's like more than new, because it's not out yet. But this hoodie is awesome. Oh yeah, check that out. LTTstore.com.