Deep purple is the new black, or, if the classic gaming brand Alienware had its way, it would be. Alienware’s new AW2725Q 4K, 240Hz QD-OLED monitor with its twilight hue blends into the shadows of my faux gaming setup in my office like an extraterrestrial on the prowl, only to drown me in vibrant colors from its beautiful screen. The Dell-owned brand’s latest $900 monitor is excessive, expensive, and subdued, especially compared to last year’s large, wide, curved models. In many ways, that’s to its benefit. It’s a little overkill in others unless you plan to pair it with the latest and greatest graphics cards.
Alienware AW2725Q 4K QD-OLED
It is a beautiful-looking monitor with crisp visuals and solid built, though it comes for a pretty penny.
Pros
- Crisp images and beautiful colors form QD-OLED
- High refresh rate and color accuracy
- Easy setup and solid build, though it’s the minimum for this price
Cons
- Expensive
- Relatively low brightness
- Dolby Atmos settings cause drop in display fidelity
The company’s new monitor takes a page from last year’s ultra-expensive, curved AW3225QF (a new version of that monitor, the AW3425DWM, with the same purple aesthetic Alienware dubbed AW30). With its 32-inch curved display, that monitor was already a fine-looking, solid desktop piece offering 4K at 240Hz refresh rates. The new, 27-inch, square AW2725Q is a more simple offering that’s not any less pricey at $900. That’s cheaper than last year’s $1,200 32-inch curved display, but when spending close to $1,000 on a monitor, you want everything you can get from a display, right?
Alienware first announced this monitor during CES 2025, just as many other display makers announced their 4K, 240Hz devices. The latest Alienware monitor makes a case for itself by offering deep, deep color with the help of QD-OLED at its size. It sits at 166 PPI or pixels per inch. The size of the display usually impacts pixel density. For instance, a phone will usually sit at between 500 to 600 PPI on an OLED display. Still, that is rather dense for OLED. Alienware claims the PPI comes from a precise QD-OLED printing method during manufacturing, but all I can say is that the clarity on the screen is really nice. It’s especially pleasant for those games awash in contrast with pretty, bright colors like Avowed or Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
Alienware’s AW2725Q Is a Superb Though Somehow Subtle Screen Experience
For those not in the know, QD-OLED is a type of display that runs parallel to the QD-mini LED, AKA QLED. It takes a typical OLED panel but adds a layer of small semiconductor nano-crystals, the titular “quantum dots,” enhancing the color of the OLED’s self-emitting display layer. If OLED already offers quality black levels, contrast, and color density, the QD technology is supposed to make it look even better.
As typical among display aficionados, few can agree whether the QD aspect of QD-OLED does anything typical OLEDs don’t already provide, especially on a smaller screen size than a larger television. All I can say is that the colors on Alienware’s 27-inch monitor are constantly stunning. Even when not in the game, I would find myself staring at my PC’s default desktop wallpaper, distracted by the deep sunset hues radiating from the display.
The monitor supports Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, plus it has the .03 ms gray-to-gray response time typical of OLED. It’s a certified DisplayHDR True Black 400 for vivid screen content. What’s more, the display is also surprisingly glare-resistant. Shining my phone’s flashlight directly at the screen doesn’t reduce the visual quality much. I also experienced minimal reflections from the display. Even though this is the type of monitor you’ll always sit directly in front of, it has wide viewing angles, where the color does not diminish even sitting 70 degrees away from the screen.
The display’s stated brightness is 250 nits at SDR. That’s not great, especially considering your price for this monitor. It goes up to 1000 nits with HDR, but that comes with problems. Trying to mitigate brightness with the Dolby Vision on PC dramatically changes the contrast of whatever I was playing and washing those beautiful colors out. We noticed it with the AW3225QF, which also seems to be the case here. You can change these settings through the OSD (on-screen display) menu or Alienware Command Center Software.
OLED burn-in is always something to consider for any display of this type. It’s especially important if you’re dropping $900 on a monitor you should be hoping to use for years down the line. Alienware claims it’s solved any immediate issues with an “AI algorithm” that regulates electrical current per pixel so that no portion of the screen suffers more than another. Of course, that’s not something we can verify on our own. Instead, Dell does offer a free panel replacement under warranty.
Alienware’s 27-inch QD-OLED Feels Premium, Though $900 Is a Hard Pill to Swallow
The AW2725Q has two HDMI 2.1 ports (one with eARC), a single DisplayPort 2.1, three USB-A, and a single USB-C for passthrough power up to 15 W. That might prove helpful if you want to make charging your mouse or phone a little more convenient. It’s all standard for monitors of this size, even with the glowing Alienware logo on the back. The stand is the quality you expect from the Alienware brand, even if it’s mostly plastic on top of a metal frame. It can tilt from -5 to +20 degrees and swivel from -20 to +20. The stand only raises and lowers four inches, which you need for most desktop setups.
This kind of monitor is made to pair with a similarly-expensive desktop PC. I’ve been using the AW2725Q for my most recent GPU reviews. A 240Hz display could help show off your games at their prime when paired with frame generation capabilities of the latest AMD Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT GPUs. However, if we’re being honest, the high refresh rate is a boon to the lucky people who manage to get their hands on the latest high-end Nvidia RTX 50-series. Four-times multi-frame gen allows you to play some games at over 150 FPS. For the $2,000 Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, that graphics card can put out well over 200 FPS with 4x frame gen in a game like Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing turned on. And yes, it looks amazing on the AW2725Q.
Will you actually be able to tell the difference between a game running at 140 FPS versus 240 FPS? Probably not. Frame Gen is only really beneficial for people who play single-player games. Multi-frame gen’s impact on latency is enough that any person looking to compete in multiplayer would have it turned off anyway. Pro gamer tournaments normally rely on 240Hz monitors. Anything more than that is overkill. It just means that only those spending too much on their desktop setup will experience their games at the absolute peak of what’s currently available.
So, for anybody else, the price is still hard to swallow. Alienware also has a $550 27-inch QD-OLED that maxes out at 1440p resolution. If you aim for 1440p gaming with your new graphics card, that’s an option. If you’re not dropping $2,000 on a graphics card, it’s hard to justify spending as much as your GPU on a monitor. Still, if you desperately need a new monitor to pair with your GPU, Alienware’s latest will make your content sing.
Read the full article here
