In the layout of high-end gaming displays, AORUS has never been absent. At present, it has 3 products focusing on the high-end market, such as FI32U with fast LCD panels, FV43U with quantum dot backlighting, and FO48U with OLED support. Among them, FO48U, as a flagship product, can be called "invincible" in the same price. So how much AORUS FO48U can "play", we will analyze it next.
Product parameters
Operating system: OLED
Size: 47.53 inches
Resolution: 3840×2160
Refresh rate: 120Hz
Contrast ratio: 135000:1
Response time: 1ms (GTG)
Brightness size: 130~150cd/m (typical), 800~900cd/m (maximum)
Pitch size: 0.274mm×0.274mm
HDR Support: Yes, HDR10/HLG
Viewing angle: 178°/178°
Color bit depth: 10bit
Input interface: DisplayPort 1.4 (DSC) ×1, HDMI 2.1×2, USB Type-C×1, USB 3.0×2, audio input/output × 1 group
Reference price: 9499 yuan
The size is comparable to a television
The AORUS FO48U is designed to be the same as the FV43U we've previously reviewed, and it also features a TV-like look. Usually the monitors we use are equipped with brackets, but due to the large size of the AORUS FO48U, in order to ensure the stability of the monitor, it uses the same tripod as many TVs. The stability of the tripod is better, but the function will also be limited, such as it does not support pitch angle adjustment, left and right rotation, lifting and other functions, you can only put it on the desktop or hang it on the wall like a TV. AORUS FO48U supports 300mm× 300mm VESA standard wall mount holes, users can buy a bracket that supports telescopic rotation, the price is usually within 200 yuan, more convenient to use.
Although the AORUS FO48U looks like a TV, it is more refined and designed than a TV. On the back of the display, it, like the FV43U, incorporates the design concept of "Victory Wings", and it can be seen from the back of the display that it has a rich line.
The AORUS FO48U incorporates the design concept of "Wings of Victory".
Interface types are abundant
The sound quality has been greatly improved
For user convenience, the AORUS FO48U will interface on the side of the display, which, like many television designs, is more convenient to plug and unplug. It is equipped with 2 HDMI 2.1, 1 DisplayPort 1.4 (DSC, Display Stream Compression display stream compression technology), 1 USB Type-C, 1 set of 3.5mm audio, and 2 USB 3.0 interfaces. The display to output 4K@120Hz images, the need for higher data bandwidth, the previous HDMI 2.0 interface transmission bandwidth of 18Gbps, and HDMI 2.1 bandwidth increased to 48Gbps, and also support DSC function, you can directly single-line output 4K@120Hz (require graphics card support HDMI 2.1, the latest graphics cards are currently supported). HDMI 2.1 also supports VRR (variable refresh rate) and ALLM (automatic low latency mode) as well as dynamic HDR.
The connector is located on the side of the monitor for easy plugging and unseating, and the types and number of interfaces are also abundant.
The AORUS FO48U has greatly improved its sound quality compared to the FV43U, from the previous two 12W speakers to two 15W and 1 20W speakers, which not only increases the power, but also increases the number. In contrast, some high-end gaming monitors carry less speakers than AORUS FO48U speakers. The speaker unit is designed to face forward at the bottom of the display, so that the sound can be better transmitted to the human ear, from the daily use, AORUS FO48U sound quality has been fully able to meet the majority of users' high-quality listening needs.
The speaker is located at the bottom of the monitor and also has a "little gold label" on it.
In addition, it offers a variety of sound effect modes, whether it is a game scene, or watching movies and concerts live, can let you have a more powerful audiovisual experience. Of course, if you are a "golden ear" user who pursues the ultimate listening experience, you can use it with a more professional Hi-Fi audio or high-end e-sports headphones.
Five-dimensional navigation keys, remote control, software 3 ways to control
The AORUS FO48U uses a five-dimensional navigation key for the keys, located at the bottom of the center of the display. This button design is more convenient to operate than the traditional one-word arrangement of independent function buttons, and only one button is needed to complete all operations. In addition, considering that the monitor size is larger, the player is usually farther away from the monitor, so it is also equipped with a remote control. The remote control allows you to switch the display on and off, switch signals, adjust the sound, and make other functional adjustments. The remote control is similar to the remote control of many TV boxes and is easy to use.
The AORUS FO48U is equipped with a five-dimensional navigation key located in the very bottom of the display just in the middle.
In addition, the AORUS FO48U also supports OSD Sidekick software control. The software is specially built by AORUS for its esports displays, which allows the display functions to be adjusted more intuitively. The software has four functional modules that can be set for regular displays, hotkeys, KVM, and other functions. For example, in the "Display Settings", you can quickly select the corresponding mode, adjust the brightness and contrast, turn on the crosshairs, and so on. If you want to create a personalized display mode, you can also customize the settings and save. In addition, for the crosshair assist function, you can also customize the style of the star alignment through the software, you can draw the crosshair into the pattern you want, more personalized and more playable.
The AORUS FO48U is equipped with a remote control.
The AORUS FO48U supports the OSD Sidekick software control platform and has many personalization features, such as the ability to adjust the crosshair style of the display.
The AORUS FO48U has built-in tactical skills, including AIM STABILIZER, BLACK EQUALIZER, PIP (picture-in-picture)/PBP (dual-screen), KVM, and more. Among them, stable aiming, black balance two major functions in the FPS game is very practical, such as in the "CS: GO", with the double mirror to quickly move the aim, the picture during the movement is very blurry, which is easy to lead to inaccurate, after turning on the stable aim, can reduce the degree of blurring, improve the hit rate. After the black balance function is turned on, the brightness of the black scene in the game screen is improved, and the bright scene will not be overexposed, making it easier for you to find enemies hidden in the shadows. PIP and PBP functions will not be unfamiliar to many readers, players can play the game on a monitor, let the main screen play the game, the sub-screen directly watch the game strategy.
It is worth praising that the AORUS FO48U supports KVM function, which is to integrate the keyboard ( Keyboard ) ( Video ) , mouse ( Mouse ) , so that users can control two access hosts through a set of keyboards and mice and a monitor. For example, the video production team of Microcomputer needs a computer to edit the video and another computer to render the video. In the past, these two computers needed two sets of keyboards and mice and two displays to control and display respectively, and now through the KVM function, only one set of keyboards and mice (access to the USB interface on the display) is required to simply switch, you can control the two hosts, which is more convenient to use. OSD Sidekick has many other features, such as hardware information status (Dashboard) display, game aids (GameAssist), etc., because of the length of the reason, I will not introduce them one by one.
OLED blessing
An innate advantage
The AORUS FO48U provides up to 120Hz refresh rates at 4K resolution, 135,000:1 static contrast ratio and 1ms response time, freeSync Premium and HDR10 and HLR formats. Among them, its ultra-high static contrast and ultra-low response time are the inherent advantages of the OLED panel used by the AORUS FO48U. We know that OLED is self-illuminating, when displaying black pictures, its pixels are actually completely off, when displaying darkfield pictures, its brightness is zero, so the contrast is infinite. The brightness of the traditional liquid crystal display is actually controlled by backlight, when the darkfield screen is displayed, it only lowers the brightness of the backlight, and cannot be completely turned off, which is why some liquid crystal displays will still have some brightness even if the brightness is adjusted to the lowest.
AORUS FO48U supports FreeSync Premium, which enables G-SYNC sync display through G-SYNC Compatible.
Similarly, based on the self-luminescence characteristics of OLED, AORUS FO48U can achieve 1ms GTG response time, which is because OLED does not need to control liquid crystal flipping like an ordinary liquid crystal display, it only needs to control the voltage at both ends of the diode, so that the conversion speed between grayscale and grayscale is faster, and the response time is lower.
Of course, OLED has advantages, and there are disadvantages. The problem of burning screen is the unavoidable short board of OLED at present, and the burning screen mentioned here is not really burned, which means that AFTER OLED displays a static picture for a long time, there will be an irreparable residual shadow on the screen. The reason for this problem is that the surface of the OLED light-emitting diode is also covered with an organic compound film, the service life of this film is limited, if some pictures are fixed for a long time, resulting in a reduction in the light transmittance efficiency of the organic film in this area, resulting in residual shadows, affecting the display effect.
In order to avoid this problem, AORUS FO48U has also taken some measures to reduce the possibility of burning screens. When used for a period of time, the monitor will pop up a prompt window to turn off the monitor. However, this kind of well-intentioned prompt sometimes affects the use, such as when the game is having fun, suddenly pop up the prompt message, so that you are a little caught off guard.
Excellent gaming experience
I experienced the tactical skills of AORUS FO48U through two games, Eldon's Law Ring and CS:GO. While playing CS:GO, I turned on the monitor's game crosshair assist and steady aiming features. Players who have played shooting games know that when using AK47, a firearm with a very large jitter in the game, the crosshair is easy to flicker and small when shooting continuously, resulting in the inability to accurately aim at the enemy, and after opening the crosshair assist, the crosshair is always a fixed size, which is very helpful for improving the hit rate.
In addition, in the game "Eldon's Ring of Law", thanks to the extremely fast response time of the monitor 1ms GTG and the high refresh rate of 120Hz, the scenes when running, jumping and fighting in the game are more fluid and the screen is very silky. Of course, if you want to play at a high frame rate under the 4K@120Hz, the requirements for the graphics card are not low, it is recommended to use it with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and above graphics card. In addition, the AORUS FO48U has a total of 50W of sound, which can convey the background music of Eldon's Ring of Law very well, further enhancing the gaming experience.
AORUS FO48U supports 4K@120Hz maximum via an HDMI or DisplayPort cable.
It is worth mentioning that AORUS FO48U supports HDR 10 and HLR formats, and fo48U can get a better experience when watching HDR videos and playing games. It should be noted that to turn on HDR, you need to turn on HDR in the Windows system, right-click on the blank space on the desktop, select "Display Settings" in the pop-up options, and then turn on the switch of "Play HDR games and apps". Of course, while not all videos and games support HDR, the good news is that most of the new games currently launched are starting to support the format.
Support 6-axis independent color grading
Has a super 95% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage
The official AORUS FO48U supports 6-axis independent color grading and has "10bit color depth and 98% DCI-P3 and 130% sRGB wide color gamut". Here we need to add that the 10bit color depth of AORUS FO48U is actually not the native 10bit, but the 10bit color depth achieved by the 8bit native plus FRC dithering technology. In addition, for "98% DCI-P3 and 130% sRGB wide color gamut", here we should understand it as the color gamut volume (the color to color space ratio displayed by the display), not the color gamut coverage area. Because the maximum color gamut coverage area can only reach 100%, only the color gamut volume can exceed 100%.
The AORUS FO48U supports 10-bit color depth and 8-bit native color depth, which can be increased to 10bit by graphics drivers.
AORUS FO48U uses a 47.53-inch OLED display panel, as we mentioned earlier, due to the innate advantages of OLED, it has higher contrast, showing a deeper black image and a brighter picture. Although it is a monitor positioned for esports games, AODUS gives the FO48U a more professional color performance. For players with high color requirements, it has a built-in 6-axis color adjustment function, so you can adjust the color of the monitor more personally. The so-called six axes refer to the six colors of R (red), G (green), B (blue), C (cyan), M (magenta), Y (yellow), and each color can adjust the color saturation and hue. Of course, these are only suitable for senior users with extremely high color requirements, and non-professional users can choose the default mode.
We used the Spyder X Elite color calibrator and DisplayCal color calibration software to analyze the AORUS FO48U. We warmed up the display for at least 30 minutes and tested it in "sRGB mode" with high color saturation, with sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, and NTSC gamut coverage reaching 100%, 89%, 97%, and 86% respectively. Its sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 color gamut volume is 140%, 96.5%, 99.2%, respectively, which is consistent with the official calibration data, indicating that the color performance of this monitor is indeed very good, has been comparable to high-end professional color displays.
AORUS FO48U's sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, and NTSC color gamut coverage areas reached 100%, 89%, 97%, and 86%, respectively.
In addition, at the highest brightness setting, the maximum brightness of the AORUS FO48U is 455.4cd/m, and the brightness measured in darkfield is 0, which is 0 because in the darkest state it is actually off, so the contrast result can be infinitely large. In terms of brightness uniformity, it can be seen by taking 9 test areas on the AORUS FO48U screen that its minimum brightness is 443.9cd/m, and the most luminous area is located in the upper left corner of the screen, and the maximum brightness difference is only 3%. This data is quite good compared to LED displays, and usually the brightness difference between excellent LED displays is about 5% to 10%.
The maximum difference in screen uniformity for the AORUS FO48U is only 3%.
How accurate is the color accuracy of the AORUS FO48U? At 51 colors, its ΔE has a maximum value of 1 and an average value of 0.43, which is in the ideal range, that is, its color accuracy is very high. In addition, in terms of the stability of color temperature, AORUS FO48U has no obvious fluctuation phenomenon from beginning to end, and has always been stable around 6500K, and the curve is very stable.
AORUS FO48U has a maximum ΔE of 1 at 51 colors, with an average of 0.43, and the color accuracy is very high.
The AORUS FO48U color temperature stability is excellent, stabilizing around 6500K from start to finish.
Write at the end: an gaming screen that rivals high-end professional monitors
From the e-sports energy to the display effect, the AORUS FO48U reveals a professional atmosphere. AIM STABILIZER, BLACK EQUALIZER, PIP (picture-in-picture)/PBP (dual screen), KVM, OSD Sidekick... It is very comprehensive in terms of e-sports performance, interactive experience, personalization, etc., and the functions that users want are almost not left behind. At the same time, six-axis color adjustment, 100% sRGB and ultra-95% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage performance make it comparable to high-end professional displays. More importantly, the price of AORUS FO48U is only more than 9,000 yuan, which is very capable of "playing" in the same price point products, and it is also worth priority comparing its own FI32U and FV43U.