E-sports displays often represent the latest technological trends, and display manufacturers often display their new products and new technologies with e-sports displays. For example, the initial 120Hz/144Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, to the later 360Hz refresh rate, Nano IPS/Fast IPS, OLED panel... We have reviewed OLED displays in the first two issues, although the performance in all aspects is very good, but due to cost reasons, so that the price of OLED e-sports displays at this stage is high. However, there is also a "compromise" scheme between LCD and OLED - Mini LED. Mini LED in brightness, uniformity, color performance are excellent, has begun to be widely used in various display manufacturers of high-end products. Recently, the titan legion, which focuses on high cost performance, has brought a Mini LED esports display of less than 3,000 yuan - 27A6MR, is such a low price at the expense of quality and color? We had a taste of it.
Product parameters
Operating system: 27 inches
Screen ratio: 16:9
Panel type: Fast IPS
Resolution: 2560×1440
Response time: 1ms
Viewing angle: 178°/178°
Brightness size: 1000cd/㎡
Contrast ratio: 1000:1
Refresh rate: 165Hz
Interface types: HDMI 2.0×2, DisplayPort 1.4×1, 3.5mm audio×1
Reference price: 2999 yuan
Full of lines
E-sports displays seem to be the most fierce field of "play" by major display manufacturers, although users choose a monitor will not simply "look at people", but a good-looking skin bag is a plus point that affects the choice. Compared with the previous products, the Titan Legion adopted a new exterior design for the 27A6MR, its overall appearance is mainly silver gray, and the external line sense is very strong. For example, in its base, bezel corners, brackets and other areas, the design of the cut angle is adopted, so that the appearance of the display is very linear.
I noticed that the Titan Legion 27A6MR has a thicker body than the regular gaming monitor we've reviewed in the past, and it's still designed with an external power supply, why? We analyzed that this is mainly the backlight module of the display panel needs to leave enough space for heat dissipation, because the Mini LED is small, and more LED backlights can be accommodated at the same size, and more backlight means that there will be more heat generation, which puts forward higher requirements for the thermal design of the display.
▲ From the side, the fuselage is relatively thick, which is mainly due to the heat dissipation of the backlight module.
At the same time, the back of the Titan Legion 27A6MR is designed with RGB gaming backlights, and there is a light strip on the left and right sides of the back, and light effect embellishments are added to the four corners. The lighting effect can be set through the OSD menu, the OSD button is located at the bottom of the bottom right of the display, using the traditional one-word arrangement design, if you use the five-dimensional navigation key will be more convenient.
▲The design of the back is more hard-hitting style, and the middle left and right sides and four corners are designed with e-sports lighting effects.
In addition, in terms of interface, the Titan Legion 27A6MR has two HDMI 2.0 and a DisplayPort 1.4 interface, and is also equipped with a 3.5mm audio output interface, which is not equipped with the USB Type-C interface on the previous models, which is enough for daily use.
The interface section is equipped with two HDMI 2.0 and a DisplayPort 1.4 and a 3.5mm audio.
Equipped with a light sensor, the brightness of the screen changes with the environment
The Titan Legion 27A6MR is equipped with an ambient light sensor on the top right of the display, which can make the brightness of the screen change with the change of ambient light, and its principle is the same as the automatic adjustment of the screen brightness on the phone. When the screen brightness is automatically adjusted with the ambient light, it will not cause visual fatigue in the eyes because the contrast between the screen brightness and the ambient brightness is too large. This function is not currently used in many products, only on some high-end products. We have previously reviewed similar products, some of which are set in front of the lower bezel of the display, and it is set at the top because it can sense light more directly, because the indoor lights are illuminated from top to bottom.
▲ Titan Legion 27A6MR designed with a light sensor on the top.
Of course, if the user is accustomed to fixed brightness, it is also possible to turn off the auto-sensitivity function in the OSD menu.
A new esports-inspired menu
Open the OSD menu, Titan Legion 27A6MR brings a new menu interface, compared to the previous menu is more esports style, the overall layout is more intuitive, the functions are clear at a glance. As a gaming-oriented monitor, its preference in the menu is "Game Settings". With this setup, the 27A6MR offers three game modes of RTS/RPG, FPS, MOBA, and a standard mode. Features such as Adaptive-Sync (FreeSync), shadow balancing, response time, refresh rate, and game crosshairs are also available.
▲The OSD buttons use the traditional one-word arrangement of buttons.
Of course, features like HDR that enhance the look and feel of your game must also be available. It supports HDR 1000 (non-Display HDR certification), which can improve contrast in the game, making the black screen deeper and the brightness screen brighter without being overexposed. It can be seen that the 27A6MR, as the latest product of the Titan Legion, is more abundant in terms of game features than previous products.
The Titan Legion 27A6MR provides a separate "LocalDimming" switch, which is actually its partition dimming function, after opening this function, in addition to the active web window brightness is relatively bright, the brightness of other areas is relatively low.
▲ Titan Legion 27A6MR adopts a newly designed esports style OSD menu.
▲The Titan Legion 27A6MR can turn auto-sensing on or off via the menu.
The Titan Legion 27A6MR provides a separate "zone dimming" switch.
In addition, the display also provides functions such as "Picture Settings", "Color Settings", and "PIP/PBP", which can adjust brightness, contrast, profile mode, gamma, color temperature, and dual screen. In terms of non-gaming features, the 27A6MR is also very comprehensive, and it can be seen that it has made a big upgrade in terms of functionality.
High resolution +165Hz
For e-sports monitors, resolution is a parameter that is valued by players, in my opinion, the higher the resolution, the better, after all, playing games at high resolution requires a stronger graphics card to play well. The Titan Legion 27A6MR features 2560× 1440 resolution and a 165Hz refresh rate, which is standard with mainstream esports monitors and a good balance. From the perspective of image quality, the 1440p resolution on 27 inches can have a more delicate picture quality than the 1080p resolution and the performance requirements are not as high as 4K monitors.
In terms of experience, although the 165Hz refresh rate is not as silky as the 240Hz or 360Hz refresh rate, it can already feel the smoothness of the picture in daily use. I experienced the Titan Legion 27A6MR through the game "Eldon's Ring of Law", and I can really feel the smooth experience when playing the game, the characters are running, jumping, wielding weapons, and the picture quality of the skills is very coherent and smooth, without the slightest feeling of dragging mud and water.
At the same time, after I turned on the NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatible in the graphics card driver, there was no tearing, flickering, stuttering, etc. in the game screen. In addition, unlike the MPRT 1ms response time used by many esports displays, the Titan Legion 27A6MR is a true GTG 1ms, and the faster grayscale response time can reduce visual smear and see a smoother picture.
Higher brightness and wider color gamut coverage area
The Titan Legion 27A6MR uses a FAST IPS panel from AUO Optoelectronics, and the FAST IPS panel is also based on IPS panel technology. Compared to ordinary IPS panels, FAST IPS achieves faster response times by reducing liquid crystal layer thickness and optimizing voltage. Usually fast IPS liquid crystal molecules deflect about 4 times faster than ordinary IPS, which is why it is called FAST.
To enhance the color performance of the Titan Legion 27A6MR, it also features a Mini LED backlight. Compared with ordinary LED displays, the use of Mini LED backlight can be crammed under the same module more frontal backlights, more backlights can make the panel brightness more uniform, while the brightness will be higher. In particular, with the drive controller, it is possible to achieve a zone adjustment backlight. The Titan Legion 27A6MR has 384 dimming zones, each of which can precisely adjust the brightness, and the picture quality performance is more layered.
In addition, the 27A6MR has a native color point depth of 8 bits, and with FRC dithering technology, the color depth can reach 10 bits. However, the display defaults to 8 bits of color depth, which requires manual turn-on of 10 bits. The higher the color depth, the richer the color displayed.
The Titan Legion 27A6MR nominally has 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut coverage area, from the subjective experience, its color performance is indeed more pleasing to the eye, you can clearly feel that its color is very full. We analyzed the colours with the help of professional testing equipment , the Spyder X Elite and the DisplayCAL color calibration software.
After we warm up the display for at least 1 hour, in the standard mode and color temperature customization settings, the brightness is adjusted to the highest, through the data displayed by spyder X Elite, its sRGB, AdobeRGB, DCI-P3, NTSC color gamut coverage area reached 100%, 99.9%, 96%, respectively, this data and the official nominal value is not much different, within the error range, the color saturation is very high. In addition, the 27A6MR has a maximum color deviation of 1.8 (the least accurate) and an average of 0.66, which is excellent for color accuracy.
▲SRGB, AdobeRGB, DCI-P3, NTSC color gamut coverage area reached 100%, 99.9%, 96%, respectively.
▲ The Color Deviation of the Titan Legion 27A6MR has a maximum color deviation of 1.8 (the least accurate), and the average value is 0.66, and the color accuracy is excellent.
The brightness of the Titan Legion 27A6MR reached 770.2cd/m, the brightness under the dark field was 0.6558cd/m, and the contrast ratio was 1156.7:1, its brightness was nearly double that of our ordinary monitors, which showed that the brightness of Mini LED was very obvious. At the same time, the color temperature of the display is relatively stable, the overall color temperature curve is very stable, the average value is about 6200K, slightly lower than the standard value of 6500K, but the error is not large.
▲The color temperature of the Titan Legion 27A6MR is relatively stable, and the average value of 6200K is slightly lower than the standard color temperature of 6500K.
Write at the end
The Titan Legion 27A6MR can be said to be a "price butcher", pulling the price of the High Mini LED display from more than five thousand yuan to less than three thousand yuan. In fact, from our experience, it did not choose to shrink in quality and performance in order to highlight the cost performance, but what we saw was that it was comprehensively improved in terms of appearance design and internal function. At the same time, we also hope that in the follow-up Titan Legion can bring more Mini LED products, so as to achieve full popularization.