LG is known for making monitors with ergonomic arm mounts instead of traditional stands. Ergo Dual simply increases the number of monitors per arm mount. Coming with two 27-inch IPS panels and a sturdy ergonomic arm, this monitor package is a gravity-defying stunt that you’ll expect to maximize screen real estate while minimizing desk clutter.
As you can imagine, this becomes one very large and heavy contraption. And there are a lot of good things to note here – the best of which is value for money – let’s not state the obvious.
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LG Ergo Dual 27QP88D-B2 review: What do you get for your money?
The LG Ergo Dual is priced at £550. This gives you two 27-inch IPS displays, each with 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, and 5ms G2G response time. No adaptive sync or HDR support here.
The same ports are selected for these twin monitors. It has two DP 1.4 ports (one upstream and one downstream), one HDMI 2.0 port and one USB-C 3.0 port for video. The upstream DP port can carry the video signal between monitors so you can create a daisy chain so you don’t have to connect both to your PC or laptop. Then there are two USB-A 3.0 ports and 3.5 mm headphone jacks per monitor to round things out.
The muscular arm that lifts these two monitors has 150mm of height adjustment, 335-degree horizontal rotation, and 210mm of telescoping. Both monitors can be rotated 90 degrees into portrait mode, rotated 90 degrees in one direction (depending on the side), and tilted 30 degrees forward and 35 degrees backward. What’s more, by rotating the bar on which the monitors are mounted 90 degrees and stacking them, the originally 5,120 x 1,440 (21:9) monitor can be turned into a 2,560 x 2,880 (16:18). 1.
LG Ergo Dual 27QP88D-B2 review: What works?
In many ways, the LG Ergo Dual is the most ergonomically friendly monitor I’ve ever tested. No need to struggle here. The arm mount, even with his two 27-inch monitors attached, is definitely infinitely more adjustable than a basic stand.
Not only is the arm mount itself flexible, but as you can see in the photo above, both monitors are attached to the bar and can be positioned horizontally or vertically. The bar can be stretched at both ends to minimize the space where the panels meet. You can also lock the sliding portion of the bar at specific intervals.
The monitor is connected to this bar via a ball and socket mount. This allows the screen to swing 90 degrees in one direction, and he can position one monitor at a 90 degree angle to the other. Useful if you are working. Want to share or lend your second screen to someone else?
The LG Ergo Dual uses daisy-chaining via DP to reduce cable clutter, but since it has two power supplies and both monitors have exactly the same port layout, it can be used on different laptops or PCs to each monitor very easily. The joint also rotates 90 degrees to portrait orientation, so you can have one monitor in landscape orientation, the other in portrait orientation, or both in portrait orientation.
The port roster is more than enough for most people. In addition to carrying video signals, the USB-C port delivers 65W of power to connected devices. This is enough to charge most laptops. There are also a total of four USB-A ports, which is a very healthy number. However, if you want to use both sets, you’ll need to connect your laptop/PC to both USB-C ports.
LG has done its best to keep the Ergo Dual as clean and unobtrusive as possible. This is still undoubtedly a gigantic device, but it is not ugly, the matte black finish is simple and understated, the panels are both slim, at its thickest he is 45.4 mm. Build quality is generally good. The monitor itself doesn’t creak or bend, and the various adjustable elements move with minimal fuss.
The monitor itself is surprisingly simple, perhaps showing how LG has kept the price down. But importantly, the 27-inch IPS panel performs well and, importantly, has minimal panel-to-panel variability. Out of the box, both panels hit just over 100% of the sRGB color gamut. This is 106.4% and 105.4% respectively, corresponding to 75.4/74.7% DCI-P3 and 73.3/72.7% Adobe RGB. When tested against the sRGB gamut, both monitors returned an average delta E color dispersion score of around 1.2. This shows that these monitors are color accurate to his sRGB.
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Brightness and contrast peak at 390cd/m² and 1,025:1 respectively, which is good enough for office use (these are averages for both monitors combined, but they vary little). In default mode, both monitors returned good color temperature readings (around 6400K each), but red/blue tints are noticeable in other color presets, so unless you want to reduce blue light, leave the defaults It is recommended to use it as is.
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LG Ergo Dual 27QP88D-B2 Review: What’s Better?
Backlight uniformity is less impressive. As ever, this varies from product to product, but in the review sample I received, he showed moderate variability in one of the two panels. It’s not a bad thing, just a slightly darker section along the top right edge, but it’s a bit frustrating when you’re dealing with two monitors that seem to be the same.
However, my main concern is something more practical in nature. As already mentioned, the LG Ergo Dual is huge and unwieldy. It requires a fair amount of DIY setup and is very difficult to handle. I’ve built many monitors in his Expert Reviews, but none have bothered me more than the LG Ergo Dual.
Our photos show how difficult it is to get two monitors side by side. The arm is pretty strong, but at the ends of the long bar he just balances two panels, making fine-tuning virtually impossible without a spirit level and a monitor. considerable patience. Joined at the base he is an inevitable drawback of choosing a single point of attachment as opposed to two arms.
On the other hand, the size and weight of the arm makes even fixing it to a desk a cumbersome and arduous task. The screwdriver must be disassembled to use many screws. I was also disappointed to find that the casing that hides the joint between the arm and the bar was a brittle plastic that didn’t fit snugly. And of course, you should keep a screwdriver handy when swapping from horizontal to vertical or vice versa. No quick release mechanism.
In an office environment, I can understand that someone with experience might install the LG Ergo Dual, but I’m still worried that users will struggle with its size and weight every day. At 17kg including the stand and 23.5kg in the box, it is unthinkable to handle it alone.
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LG Ergo Dual 27QP88D-B2 Review: Should You Buy?
The LG Ergo Dual is an ambitious and often successful experiment in maximizing screen real estate in creative ways. Both panels are perfectly fine, and the design, on paper at least, is more versatile than ergonomic arm-mounted ultrawide monitors such as the LG Ultrawide Ergo. Even better, you can get the LG Ergo Dual at a very attractive price.
My only reservation is that in their quest for the ultimate ergonomic monitor, LG has neglected the user experience a bit. That’s probably unavoidable, but it’s still frustrating enough to keep the Ergo Dual from being an outright recommendation. Worth it. Note that it’s a tricky thing to set.
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