Prime Day deals on Monitor caught my eye last year (opens in new tab), and swore to myself that if I had a little extra cash to burn (and if it ever came up for sale again), I would treat myself to it. Aorus FO48U (opens in new tab) It’s a 48-inch 4K 120Hz beast of OLED gaming monitors, and the last thing you need to complete your small office/gamer dad’s den.
I currently do all my work and gaming on my very good 32″ ROG 4K gaming monitor, so I was looking for something to put in my home office specifically for gaming. I wanted something that doubled as a bigger TV so I could get away from my day writing about smells in VR, so I could get away from my desk after hours playing games and streaming movies. It is. (opens in new tab).
I’ve never owned an OLED gaming monitor before, but every time I’m asked to review it, I can feel a great deal of jealousy asking myself, “Oh, I want my game to look that good.” Often. OLED has it all: image quality, incredible response time, and excellent viewing angles. The biggest barrier has always been price. Because even the cheapest OLED of this size and specs will sell for around $800-$900.
After using the FO48U for a while, I think I made the right choice. The first thing I did was go back to Fornite, the first game I’ve played since moving to Unreal Engine 5. (opens in new tab)My Master Chief looked like he had beaten a bunch of soccer players with a giant gravity hammer. games are displayed.
Of course, I was on the sports anime kick and had seen too much Blue Lock with lots of bright colors and effects. Watching HBO’s The Last of Us slowly, the contrast in TV is striking. Being an OLED, it displays near-perfect black with little to no blooming around bright objects on the screen. It makes two wildly different viewing experiences equally great.
I hesitated, LG 48GQ900-B (opens in new tab), and the hugely popular LG OLED C1 TV, which often ranks at the top of the best gaming TV pages. All three are pretty similar in specs, image quality and have similar glass panels and the deciding factor in the end was Aorus supporting his DisplayPort (which supports G-Sync and FreeSync) I was prepared. This works better than the HDMI 2.1 port on my gaming PC, two of which are the PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch.
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The LG OLED C1 is also a TV, so all the streaming apps I use are on the Nvidia Shield Pro or gaming consoles, so it comes with a lot of smart TV features that frankly I don’t need. No need for a bloated TV OS that needs to be connected to WiFi. On the other hand, if I’m looking for something to put in my living room, the C1 probably has the upper hand. is not. what can I say? Looks still matter.
Another feature of the FO48U is some of the extra features not available on LG (and other gaming TVs), which for me as a PC gamer are a black equalizer, a dashboard displaying important PC information (FPS , CPU/GPU temperatures, etc.) and a KVM switch if you decide to mount this on top of your current monitor for a grand workstation setup.
As with any OLED display, the Aorus’ only real drawback is the risk of permanent burn-in from static images. This means that even if you’re using it as a second PC display, you should simply keep it off when not in use.
The only real downside to the Aorus, as with any OLED display, is the risk of permanent burn-in from static images. This means that even if you’re using it as a second PC display, it should be turned off when not in use.
I also wish there were more HDMI ports than just two HDMI 2.1 inputs. This makes it difficult to choose when to connect two game consoles at any given time. The FO48U’s front speakers are also not good enough.
Glad I got past my disability shopper trepidation to show you the graphics power of all gaming hardware and, more importantly, treat myself with something great to pull me away from my work desk. Even though sleek-looking 1440p 240Hz displays start showing up at CES, I don’t think it’s the right choice for me and the kind of games I play, and 4K 120Hz is a good place for me. I’m stuck with that because I don’t think I can put the huge one back in the box.
