ASUS PB287Q 28-in 4K Single Stream 60Hz Monitor Review
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
The ASUS PB287Q will be available at leading retailers on June 10th, 2014 for $649 in the United States and $699 in Canada. ASUS originally announced that the MSRP on this display would be starting at $799, so we were ecstatic to find out that the price point was reduced to $649 in the US. That price makes it one of the most affordable 28-inch 4K displays on the market and it also has more features than some of the competing models. The main competition for this display would be the Samsung U28D590D that can be bought for around $680 shipped right now. The Samsung U28D590D is similar in the sense that it has 28-inch TN panel and single stream transport (SST), but it costs more, has a stand with less flexibility, no VESA mounting holes and no speakers. The arrival of the ASUS PB287Q will certainly shake things up and help drive 4K monitor prices down as others will have to reduce their prices to compete. We are also very glad to do away with tiling! ASUS will have a professional series version of this display coming out later this year that is fully calibrated to AdobeRGB, so if sRGB won’t cut it you might want to wait for that display to come out. In the past there is usually a $200 price difference between the sRGB and AdobeRGB models.
Performance of the PB287Q was great and this monitor is ready to tackle 4K gaming with its impressive response times. The ASUS GamePlus aiming reticules were found to be useful on some game titles and they dont introduce any processing overhead as the monitor is doing all the work. With the latest graphics drivers installed we had a pleasurable gaming experience and loved the smoothness in the gameplay that is offered by this monitor at 3840×2160. Intel, NVIDIA and AMD have all been working on driver improvements for 4K displays and they are finally starting to become acceptable. Most any gamer can now pick up a monitor like the ASUS PB287Q, update their graphics drivers and hookup a DisplayPort cable and get gaming at 4K. Just be sure that your graphics card supports DisplayPort 1.2 as that is needed for 60Hz operation. We talked with NVIDIA and was told that they support 4K SST 60Hz displays on all Kepler or better GPUs with GeForce 337.81 or newer drivers. AMD said that with the latest drivers they support 4K SST 60 displays on the Radeon HD 7000, HD 7000M, HD 8000 (OEM), HD 8000M (OEM), R7 and R9 Series. So, the support for single stream 4K is readily available as long as you have a fairly recent graphics card. To push games at 4K you’ll want to have a powerful discrete graphics card or two anyway!
At the end of the day we quickly fell in love with the ASUS PB287Q and this monitor should do very well once it hits the retail market in June. You get a ton of features for your the price point and it is hard to argue with that. Some will have a tough choice picking between a QHD and UHD monitor though. Right now you can get a QHD (2560×1440) monitor with an IPS panel for under $500, so you’ll need to spend about $150 more to get one of these UHD (3840×2160) monitors with a TN panel. It really depends on your usage model, but most people are happy with TN panels and they are the most sold LCD panel type. The ASUS PB287Q is a solid monitor and we easily recommend it if you wanted to try out a 4K panel!
Legit Bottom Line: The PB287Q 28-inch 4K Display is ASUS’ first foray into Single-Stream Transport (SST) displays and we think they hit a home run with it!
