Asus PB287Q Review

The PB287Q is a 28″ 4K (UHD) screen from ASUS. This gives you a massive 3840 by 2160 pixels to play with providing you with ample screen space and crystal clear graphics. The ASUS also provides 10-bit and a fast 1ms response time.

4K is the latest buzz in monitor tech, well, before 8k comes along at least. In reality you probably need to be an enthusiast to want to kit yourself out with the latest in high resolution monitor tech. The screens are pricey, there isn’t a great deal of 4K specific content out there right now and you’ll need some hardcore GPU power to be able to run games at 4k.

That said, the PB287Q is reasonably priced compared with the competition. If you are keen to get into 4k or just looking to future proof then this Asus could be the choice for you.

Build Quality

The overall look of the PB287Q is rather uninspiring, it looks a lot like the corporate bought monitors we have at the office! The uniform bezel isn’t the chunkiest but neither is it an ultra thin elegant design. The stand is very standard, and very square in appearance. There’s nothing wrong with it though, just a bit boring.

Despite that, the stand does its job well and allows the full range of movement you would expect from a premium monitor – you can change the height, pivot, tilt and rotate it into portrait view if that floats your boat. The adjustments are easy to make, you won’t feel like your going to break the monitor each time you try to manipulate it.

It comes with DisplayPort and 2 x HDMI sockets, which unfortunately aren’t all that easy to reach. At least monitor setup is something most of us only do once.

Performance

If you go for this monitor it will be because you are looking for top notch image quality. The PB287Q puts more than 8 million pixels and more than one billion colours infront of your eye balls. It’s amazing to think your brain can take all that in!

It’s not perfect, it doesn’t look so great when the sun is shining at the screen so watch out if you have a bright room – at least it’s easy to swivel it round! It’s also a TN panel which traditionally suffers from colour degradation at extreme viewing angles.

Gamers will benefit from the fast 1ms response time, but do remember, to get good performance on a 4K screen you will need a top range graphics card (or two). The max refresh rate is 60hz, but given that most mortal PCs will struggle to output 4k frames at that rate that’s plenty to be getting on with.