Review: ASUS PQ321 Ultra HD 4K 31.5-inch Monitor

We have a confession to make (well, several actually, but all the rest date back to our college days, and some secrets are best left untold). Reviewing monitors isn't as fun as it once was. It's not that we've grown jaded over the years, but plain and simple, the monitor market has become stale, lacking the kind of 'gee-whiz' innovations that tend to excite us. Panel makers seemed to stopped pushing the envelope once they developed 30-inch In-Plane Switching (IPS) screens, and for the longest time, that's where the high-end has sector been stuck, as if caught in quicksand with no rope in sight, or so we thought.

Out of all the monitor manufacturers out there, it was ASUS that showed up to the panel party with rope in hand, marching through the muck and mire tugging the first consumer 4K display ahead of the competition. And for adding bragging rights, the ASUS PQ321 True 4K Ultra HD measures a just a little bit bigger than current flagship models with a 31.5-inch LED backlit panel, giving monitor enthusiasts yet another reason to upgrade.


...Boasting a 3840x2160 display resolution, this 4K display floods your eyeballs without four times as many pixels as that of a standard Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) display. To squeeze that many pixels into a 31.5-inch form factor, the PQ321 uses what's called Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) rather than traditional amorphous silicon for the active layer of its LCD panel.  Continue on to our full review here...