MSI Optix 27" QHD Curved Gaming Monitor

This monitor is simply... Brilliant.. Here is an extremely in-depth review of this beloved monitor (yes it has cons) Pros: - Beautiful display, crystal clear. - Extremely accurate colors - Contrast is impeccable. - Build quality is very strong and sturdy (was worried because of the small bezels). - The frequency and response time is out of this world. Cons: - VESA mount 100 x 100mm is very misleading. The manufacturer provides virtually zero guidance. You need to go to their website and then unzip a file to get their PDF manual (which is ridiculous, they link you to this page with a QR code on their one page pamphlet of a manual included in the box, I had to get on my laptop and find it because of the zip file). The holes on the back of the monitor are placed in an extremely poor spot, it’s not true VESA if I need to get longer screws to fit a VESA mount on the back. The plate of my mount won’t sit inside the hexagon shaped bezel where the stand sits (you can see this displayed in the manual and the pictures I posted), I’m guessing only VESA mounts with the corners missing the edges can actually fit inside. Be very careful with which VESA mount you choose. If this wasn’t such a great monitor, I’d take a star for that. - 1 or 2 grayed pixels. .. It did have a one or two lightly grayed pixels in the top left corner, but due to the pixel density of the 1440p screen (roughly 113ppi) it’s hardly noticeable. It looked like a dirty spec on white screens like Web Pages, Word, and Excel but only for a second and while I noticed it, it was very easy to forget about (honestly forgot about it completely but remembered for the purpose of this review as I couldn’t think of any other cons). You can take my review with a grain of salt as my primary use is for gaming. I just do some programming for school and fun, didn’t bother me with that either. Other reviews of monitors said this is an extremely little amount for bad pixels and honestly better to just bite the bullet than fight it because the next monitor could have even more. I’m not sure if this is acceptable or not but MSI doesn’t have major promises. I’d still give this product 6 stars if I could. Other thoughts: - The anti-motion blur (“fastest” response setting) creates a lot of ghosting on Windows.. I didn’t notice any of it in the heat of a game though. In fact, the “Fastest” setting reduces brightness and creates more ghosting than “Fast” setting, so I typically just use Fast for everything. It is by far the best. - Eye-saver setting really ruins color (with good reason), but I could see it being great for productivity, I can’t stand the color but I noticed INSTANT eye strain relief when I switched to it for web browsing. It was the strangest sensation. - SteelSeries GameSense doesn’t really have any compatibility at the moment and I didn’t have the patience to try and create custom profiles as it allows for... I can’t even see the LEDs while I’m gaming at a ridiculous pace like CS:GO and Overwatch. But it is cool to look at when you happen to notice or walk in to see your whole rig, with the LED lights synced up with your chassis (there is no setting for this, I had to sync it manually). - Overwatch and CSGO (CS:GO) look SPECTACULAR. The frequency and resolution are amazing. I have a GeForce 1080 Ti, and it’s pushing over 300 FPS at my settings, and still accomplishing roughly 110 FPS on highest (epic) settings on Overwatch. - The Freesync can’t work with GeForce but if you push over 144 FPS, it’s not noticeable. I noticed a tiny bit of stutter when it dipped below 100fps at higher settings, but it was still much better than 60hz, and would be improved further with an AMD card with Freesync. - My gameplay vastly improved at both games with hitscanning and twitch/flick shots, and I credit it highly to the new monitor. The response times are just ridiculous. I had a 24” 1080p 144hz AOC monitor before and could never achieve the beautiful fluid motion I have got with this monitor, it’s unreal. 10/10 would buy this monitor again, might even wait until it’s a better price for 3x displays.