This glows white when the monitor is on and flashes white when the monitor enters a low power state. There’s a very small circular power LED towards the bottom right, facing forwards. A dedicated KVM switch button is also located here.

The OSD (On Screen Display) is controlled by a joystick at the rear, towards the right side as viewed from the front. The screen itself is the main feature at the front, with a light to very light matte anti-glare finish that’s explored a little later. Including both elements the bezels are ~7.5mm (0.30 inches) at the top and ~8.0mm (0.31 inches) at the sides. The top and side bezels are dual stage, with a slim panel border that’s flush with the rest of the screen plus a slender hard plastic outer component. The bottom bezel is dark grey matte plastic, ~20mm (0.79 inches) with a blended grey Gigabyte logo centrally. The screen itself feels quite solid, although the stand base is hollowed plastic with a metal backplate – certainly less of a premium look and feel compared to the powder-coated metal stands of the brand’s AORUS models. The stand neck includes glossy plastic in the centre but is matte black plastic elsewhere. A slim glossy plastic band is placed between the two ‘steps’ of the stand. The black matte plastic stand base has a gently stepped appearance with low profile base. The monitor has a fairly subdued look for a gaming monitor, with dark matte plastic used extensively rather than eye-catching colourful elements. Some of the key ‘talking points’ for this monitor have been highlighted in blue below, for your reading convenience. As usual, though, don’t pay much attention to these specified response times. A 0.5ms MPRT (Moving Picture Response Time) is specified using the included strobe backlight setting.

The monitor supports true 8-bit colour and offers a 170Hz refresh rate plus 2560 x 1440 (WQHD) resolution. The monitor uses a 27” IPS (In-Plane Switching) type panel from Sharp, marking a noteworthy departure from the more commonly used panels from the likes of LG Display, Innolux and AUO. We put this model to the test with our usual suite, including desktop, movie and game testing. With its IPS-type panel, there’s also a focus on strong colour performance. But retaining a range of attractive features such as Adaptive-Sync support including AMD FreeSync Premium. The Gigabyte M27Q is an offering with this combination in mind, more budget-oriented than their AORUS models. The high resolution 27” 2560 x 1440 monitor space is certainly crowded, with this hitting the sweet spot for many users in terms of screen size, pixel density and performance potential.

Gigabyte m27q micro center