Many have ditched computer monitors in favor of large-screen TVs when it comes to gaming. With today’s immersive titles, there’s no screen that’s too big. Gaming on a TV has a few drawbacks, though. Nearly all of them top out at a 60Hz refresh rate and don’t have G-Sync or FreeSync for fighting screen tears, and input lag is often too high to compete with the best gaming monitors.
The 55-inch Alienware AW5520QF answers the call with a large display, FreeSync and one more huge thing: an OLED panel. Nowhere else can you find an OLED monitor with gaming-ready specs, like the AW5520QF’s 120Hz refresh rate, FreeSync and RGB. Best of all, it has panel response fast enough to completely eradicate motion blur, and input lag is low too. But with a few things missing, you may reconsider before spending a mind-blowing $4,000 for this display over other, less expensive 4K gaming monitors.
Alienware AW5520QF Specs
Until LG managed to bring OLED panels to the mass market, the technology was something found only in lab prototypes. Note, OLED stands for organic light emitting diode, with the emphasis on light-emitting. As a self-emissive technology, OLED has the ability to address the brightness of each individual pixel from its peak output to complete black. LG uses the catchphrase “infinite black” to describe it, and the term is accurate. OLED manages better blacks than the best plasmas (plasma is dead, long live plasma) for a contrast effect that is well beyond anything LCD can deliver. And that goes for zone-dimming panels too. Even the Asus ProArt PA32UCX mini-LED monitor with its 1,152-zone backlight can’t match the black levels seen in a rank and file OLED monitor. While the AW5520QF’s peak brightness (130 nits for standard content, 400 nits for HDR) is nowhere near that of a premium LCD display, its black levels will quickly make you forget that. The image quality here is beyond stunning.
At $4,000, it’s strictly a premium product, but it has capabilities shared by no other computer monitor or TV.
Unpacking and Accessories
The AW5520QF is packaged like a TV and should be unboxed with an assistant. The panel’s upper half of is incredibly thin and difficult to handle with one pair of hands. Bundled accessories are minimal--just a two-piece stand and a large wall-mount bracket adapter. You get IEC power, HDMI, DisplayPort and USB 3.0 cables, plus a remote featuring 16 buttons.
Product 360
The AW5520QF cuts a striking pose from the front with nothing but screen showing. The bezels are just 8mm, which in a 55-inch panel means it’s invisible from a normal viewing distance. The bottom strip is less than 1 inch wide and jet black, so it blends into the panel seamlessly. The anti-glare layer is fairly shiny and picks up reflections from computer lighting or other specular sources. You’ll want to use this monitor in a dark room because it isn’t very bright.
There are a group of control buttons on the bottom-right of the panel that pull up a small series of icons that control specific functions or open the full on-screen display (OSD) or you can use the included remote. You’ll want to use the remote often considering the distance you’ll need to place between yourself and the monitor in order to take in its massive screen.
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On the left side are two USB ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack and an HDMI input. The back of the monitor has a large snap-on panel that hides the inputs and wiring (see the last photo in the album above). Everything exits neatly behind the large base.
Speaking of assembly, the AW5520QF comes with two heavy-cast pieces, one for the tabletop base and another to interface with a wall mount. All the necessary hardware is included, and it only took us a few minutes to put it together.
Once you’re up and running, you can enjoy a nice RGB lighting effect. A large strip crosses the back of the component bulge with an Alienware logo backlit in the same color. There are different effects available in the OSD.
Inputs include three total HDMI 2.0 ports and a single DisplayPort 1.4. Audio can come from two built-in 14-watt speakers or out through a 3.5mm or S/PDIF optical jack.
OSD Features
The OSD looks like that every Dell or Alienware monitor we’ve seen before and offers a reasonably complete set of gaming features and picture controls. There are a few omissions that surprised us, though.
Game Enhance Mode offers a set of aiming points, a frame counter, countdown timers and alignment marks for multi-monitor setups (imagine a three-screen array of AW5520QFs. That’d cost you a cool $12,000!). You can toggle FreeSync on or off here, and we confirmed that when it’s on, PCs using an Nvidia graphics card will view the monitor as G-Sync compatible even though it’s not officially certified as so (here’s how to run G-Sync on a FreeSync monitor). G-Sync also worked with HDR content. The Dark Stabilizer option is meant to make shadow detail easier to see, but when we tried it, it elevated mid-tones instead and didn’t improve image quality.
There are eight preset picture modes for different game types or desired color temps. You also get three fully adjustable Game modes, along with a Custom Color mode. None of them offer gamma presets or color gamut options. The AW5520QF runs in its full native DCI-P3 gamut all the time. This is great for HDR content, but color purists will find it over-saturated for games mastered in the sRGB space. The lack of gamma options isn’t a huge deal, but our testing showed the gamma curve is a tad light. A couple of darker options would be nice, given the monitor’s enormous dynamic range.
The AlienFX lighting menu lets you change the RGB lights on the strip and Alien logo around back. You can control the color and brightness depending on your preference and room environment. It looks cool from the back, and around the front you can see a slight glow on the desktop.
Custom Color mode offers white point gain and bias sliders, along with hue and saturation controls for all six colors. In the Display menu, you can set the brightness and contrast. Even though there is no backlight, the Brightness sub-menu sets the output level, while Contrast sets the highlight clipping point.
For HDR signals, there are four modes in the Smart HDR sub-menu. The most accurate one is Reference, and there’s also Movie, Game and Desktop.
Setup and Calibration
The AW5520QF has four user-adjustable color modes: Game 1, 2 and 3 and Custom Color. For our testing, we used Custom Color mode. Selecting that mode takes you right to the gain, bias, saturation and hue sliders. We tweaked grayscale tracking to a high standard and used the color saturation sliders to set color luminance to neutral. There are no gamma presets available, but the default SDR luminance curve is close to 2.2. Also absent are color gamut options; DCI-P3 is the one and only available choice. We measured every mode in hopes of finding an sRGB setting but were unsuccessful.
The AW5520QF doesn’t need calibration if you choose the Standard preset, but our adjustments below produced visible improvements. Here are the settings we used. Note that these are for SDR only. HDR has four preset modes but no calibration controls.
Recommended Settings (SDR)
Gaming & Hands-on
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We’ll start with a conclusive statement: the AW5520QF delivers the best image and best gaming experience of any monitor we’ve ever reviewed. This is based on two things that OLED does better than LCD: contrast and motion processing. The games’ universe is so much more real than anything an LCD monitor can muster. And with completely blur-free motion available, it truly feels as though you’re in the game, not just looking through a window.
OLEDs are well-known for their incredibly deep blacks. You’ll see in our tests that the panel’s black levels are so low (lower is better) that they can’t be measured. That means contrast is not just a little better than the best LCD display; it’s an order of magnitude better. Place the AW5520QF next to any LCD monitor, and you’ll see the difference immediately.
Second, motion processing is an entirely different thing in the OLED world. Where LCDs sample each frame and hold it on the screen until the next frame is drawn, OLEDs flash the image thousands of times per second. That’s like the effect of an LCD’s backlight strobe (also known as blur reduction, ultra-low motion blur/ULMB etc.) but much faster. The result is no blur whatsoever. There are smooth LCDs for sure, but they won’t compare to an OLED.
We could see the impact of the AW5520QF’s high contrast even when viewing the Windows desktop. Our background is a beach scene with a blue sky and the ocean stretching out to the horizon. Its depth and clarity were mesmerizing on the OLED monitor. App windows rendered with extreme sharpness. We could clearly read black text on a white background from across the room. The screen uses a grid polarizer to prevent light spread between pixels like an LCD does, but it’s much thinner and has less impact on resolution. Pixelation? Invisible. Though pixel density is just 80 pixels per inch (ppi), you’d swear it was 180ppi because the pixel gaps are much smaller than those of an LCD panel.
We started playing Tomb Raider and immediately noticed the healthy dose of extra color afforded by the DCI-P3 gamut. Although the game is designed for an sRGB screen, it didn’t look overblown or cartoonish. Flesh tones and other natural colors, like that of grass and sky, were a bit too rich but not to where one would complain. The picture was inaccurate, but we didn’t mind because we couldn’t stop looking at the incredible blacks. Shadow detail was strong, yet dark areas came across with a lot more impact. Highlights looked bright, despite the AW5520QF’s low peak output in SDR mode.
For HDR, we turned to Call of Duty: WWII. Its menu has an ingenious set of luminance adjustments where you can set the white and black thresholds using on-screen test patterns. Once dialed in, the image was just gorgeous. It’s hard to imagine getting any closer to playing an interactive movie. The game’s characters look like the actors who voice them. There was no mistaking which soldier was played by Josh Duhamel.
Both titles played as though the screen were an extension of the hand. Input lag is low, and while more highly-skilled gamers might notice a difference in latency between this and good 240Hz monitors, the AW5520QF will feel comparably swift to the typical gamer.
The AW5520QF has FreeSync, not FreeSync 2 HDR. That means if you have a PC running an AMD graphics card, it won’t play HDR games to the fullest effect impossible, including with optimized tone mapping, as it would with FreeSync 2.
Nvidia users will have a similar experience. Although the monitor is not certified as G-Sync Compatible, our testing shows you can, in fact, run G-Sync on the Alienware (check out our instructions for running G-Sync on a FreeSync monitor). HDR and extended color work fine, but you won’t get that last nth degree of quality that’s possible with a G-Sync Ultimate monitor. Are these deal-breakers? When you consider the incredible contrast available here, we say no.
Since the AW5520QF will likely be used for movie-watching in addition to gaming, we did a little of our own. The demo material from the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD Benchmark was stunning, especially in the scenes with brightly colored objects filmed against black backdrops. The screen completely disappeared into our dark room, leaving only the object floating in front of us. Films like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows provided a cinematic experience beyond what one could see in the best movie theater. The only bummer is there is no support for Dolby Vision (Asus’ ProArt PA32UCX and PQ22UC are the only PC monitors with Dolby Vision at the time of writing). The Alienware will only display HDR10 material, which looks less detailed compared to Dolby Vision. It’s important to set your output source to 400 nits to properly tone-map highlights to the correct level (our OPPO UDP-203 Blu-ray player has this setting).
It’s hard to assign a value to how much better an OLED looks than an LCD. There’s no way to state a percentage or even to easily compare contrast numbers, since the AW5520QF’s blacks are immeasurable. Suffice it to say that once you see one of these things in action, you won’t care how much it costs.
Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level
Comparisons to the AW5520QF, the first real OLED gaming monitor, are difficult. Our entire database consists of LCD monitors. So to put the Alienware’s performance into perspective, we selected the best HDR screens we’ve reviewed. Fellow BFGD HP Omen X 65 Emperium is an obvious choice. Then we have the more diminutive 27-inchers,Acer’s Predator X27 and Asus’ ROG Swift PG27UQ. All three of the aforementioned monitors have a 384-zone full-array local-dimming (FALD) backlight. Finally, we have Asus’ ProArt PA32UCX, a 32-inch professional mini-LED monitor with a 1,152-zone FALD backlight. That last monitor isn’t really intended for gaming, but its image quality is incredible and offers some insight into what the very best displays available can do.
Alienware rates the AW5520QF as hitting up to 130 nits brightness in SDR mode with 400 nits possible in HDR. Our sample just about met that number. That doesn’t sound like a lot of light, but a large screen can look good with less output. While we prefer 200 nits for desktop computer monitors in normal use, a large panel works equally well at around 150 nits. That being said, we recommend a dark(ish) room for the AW5520QF. You’ll want to fully appreciate its image quality without distracting light coming from above and around you.
Black levels proved impossibly low for us to measure. Try as we might, we could not get our meter to register any light at zero-signal levels. There is no dynamic contrast in play here that artificially shuts down the panel; this is the panel’s native state. OLEDs can turn pixels off frame-by-frame, something no LCD can do.
Resulting contrast (3rd chart) is theoretically infinite. The next best panel here is the VA-based HP, which sports a best-in-class 4,463.6:1 static ratio without zone dimming engaged. There is no question that OLED is the king of contrast. Nothing else comes close.
After Calibration to 200 nits
Calibration with our recommended settings (see page 2) cost us a few nits of brightness (112.7 nits versus 127 nits), but it’s worth that small sacrifice for supreme color accuracy. No dynamic contrast or zone dimming was engaged for this test.
When measuring the intra-image contrast of FALD panels, the numbers are no different with zone dimming on or off. After our recommended calibration settings, the AW5520QF still showed a black level that was so low it was immeasurable. This is unmatched performance.
The AW5520QF’s different picture modes present a variety of white points and color interpretations. The best accuracy without calibration is in the Standard mode, which is the default. If you want to calibrate, there are three Game modes and Custom Color mode. We used the latter for our tests.
Grayscale and Gamma Tracking
Standard mode is a good choice for SDR content. It has no visible grayscale errors, and the gamma runs close to 2.2. We wish it were a tad darker, though. There is so much contrast available that a true 2.2 or 2.3 curve would increase image depth. But that’s picking nits.
Calibrating the Custom Color (2nd chart) mode takes all the grayscale errors below 1 Delta E (dE). This is professional-level performance, but for $4,000, it should be. Gamma is still a little off the mark, however. We wish there were additional presets, since we’d rather see a higher value. That would enhance color saturation and refine highlight detail.
The AW5520QF is mid-pack among our comparison sample in both grayscale and gamma. However, the differences are small, so you’d be hard-pressed to see a difference when looking at the monitors side by side.
Once calibrated, the Alienware could use a tweak to its gamma. An OLED screen should measure no lower than 2.2 at any brightness step. This monitor looks amazing but isn’t performing at its full potential. This is a small thing, but for $4,000, it should be perfect.
Color Gamut Accuracy
We measured all the AW5520QF’s image modes, and none of them render an sRGB color gamut. DCI-P3 is the native spec, and the monitor covers nearly all of it. That’s great for HDR-enabled material, but most games and videos are mastered to sRGB or Rec.709. There’s no reason Alienware couldn’t include the appropriate preset; users should have a choice. While the extra color looks fine in most cases, it isn’t accurate.
he out-of-box errors are measured against the sRGB gamut, and our adjustments actually increased the dE value slightly. You need sRGB for most games, since that is their mastered color gamut. This monitor is reasonably close to sRGB in terms of average error but DCI red and green are oversaturated by sRGB standards; the AW5520QF is too expensive to omit that option. Either way, you won’t see a problem, since anything below 3dE can’t be seen with the naked eye. When compared to DCI-P3, the error is just 1.26dE, an impressive result.
Comparisons
The AW5520QF came in last among our comparison sample in the sRGB gamut test, but the other monitors are impressive in their near-perfect rendering of sRGB and Rec.709. The AW5520QF doesn’t have those gamut options.
In the gamut volume calculation, Alienware managed to beat the Asus PA32UCX pro monitor. In fact, 94.35% is the largest DCI-P3 volume we’ve ever measured. Combined with the AW5520QF’s phenomenal contrast, the picture quality is quite something. Obviously, with nearly 140% coverage of the sRGB gamut, you won’t want to use this OLED for color-critical sRGB work without a color profile present to reign in the gamut.
The AW5520QF features four HDR modes. The sole image controls they have is contrast, which only serves to adjust the highlight detail clip point. It’s best left at its default setting of 75%. We measured all four modes and determined that Reference was the most accurate. It’s aptly named because the errors are quite small.
HDR Brightness and Contrast
Contrast is the most important factor when considering any HDR display. While LCD monitors with FALD backlights do an excellent job at rendering deep blacks and bright whites, they can’t come close to the image depth of an OLED. LCDs have a brightness advantage, though. All the LCD panels here top 1,000 nits brightness with HDR, with the PA32UCX nearing the 1,500-nit mark. That adds depth and dimension and makes an image that holds up better under ambient lighting. But the AW5520QF, when viewed in a dark environment, is on a completely different level. To achieve the 406-nit peak we measured, we used a 5% window pattern. Again, we were unable to measure the black level, so HDR contrast is theoretically infinite.
Grayscale, EOTF and Color
The AW5520QF’s HDR grayscale accuracy is superb with only a few errors over 2d that are invisible to the naked eye. The tone-map clip point is just over 50%, and our test shows that luminance tracks almost exactly to standard. It doesn’t get much better than this.
The monitor has nearly full coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut, which is borne out by our HDR color test. Inner points are a little over-saturated, but tracking is linear to the triangle’s perimeter. There are no significant hue errors. The AW5520QF can’t quite get to the full Rec.2020 gamut, but it tries by over-saturating at every target point. Only the Asus PA32UCX comes anywhere close to rendering this enormous gamut.
Viewing Angles
The common belief about OLEDs is that they have perfect viewing angles with no light falloff or color shift to the sides. The AW5520QF doesn’t meet that expectation. While brightness is reduced only by a small amount, when viewing from the sides, there is a visible green shift. Why? Because it uses a grid polarizer. Its effect isn’t as significant as the one installed in an LCD, but it is there nonetheless. While these photos are far better than any LCD can boast, OLED is not perfect when it comes to off-axis viewing.
Screen Uniformity
Since the AW5520QF has an immeasurable black level, we had to use a 10% field pattern, which is very dark gray, not completely black, for this test. Obviously, there are no issues here. The AW5520QF is one of the best screens we’ve ever tested in this regard. There are no visible issues anywhere on the panel. And the gray patterns look perfect at every brightness level.
Pixel Response and Input Lag
If you’re paying $4,000 for a gaming monitor, it needs to perform at high speed. Though the AW5520QF’s refresh rate is just 120Hz, it has no trouble keeping up with the 144Hz competition. It should be noted that an 8ms screen draw doesn’t mean the X27 and PG27UQ have lower motion blur. Since OLEDs flash the image at a rate of around 2,000Hz, there is no part of the image that remains on the screen between refresh cycles. LCDs use the sample-and-hold method, meaning they’re never black unless a backlight strobe is used. The bottom line is you will never see motion blur on an OLED unless its specifically rendered by the content.
In our input lag test, the AW5520QF beat all the LCDs here with an impressive 32ms of total control latency. While a 240Hz screen will be quicker, 32ms is more than quick enough for all but the most competitive players.
Are BFGDs worth clamoring over? On one hand, the proliferation of large-screen TVs into the gaming world is real. More players are turning to 4K TVs and away from desktop computer monitors. There’s just no substitute for square inches. But when you do this, you give up fast refresh rates, low input lag and adaptive sync.
The AW5520QF has one thing over every computer display we’ve reviewed: image quality. Its contrast and color are far better than any LCD panel available. But these things are not without cost, and we don’t mean the dollar sign.
The most obvious issue is brightness. Where the top HDR-enabled LCDs are hitting 1,000 nits or more, the AW5520QF manages just 400 nits. The only way to get its best image quality, you’ll need to use it in a darker room. There’s also the question of gaming technology. While it delivers great motion processing and low input lag from its 120Hz refresh rate, it doesn’t support FreeSync 2. That isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but it really should be included in a $4,000 monitor.
There’s also no sRGB gamut option. While many are satisfied applying as much color as possible to their games and videos, color purists will prefer a more accurate presentation. Alienware has removed that choice. Another thing missing are gamma presets. Although you can calibrate the AW5520QF (see our recommended settings) to a high standard, the lack of gamma options is puzzling. And while we’re at it, $4,000 should buy better audio. The built-in speakers are okay but an external soundbar, like the HP Omen X 65 Emperium includes, would be more appropriate at this price.
It’s worth nothing that at the time of publication, the monitor was even on sale for $2,850, but that’s still more than twice that of OLED TVs of similar size. Plus, at that price it still costs more than a TV and leaves out a tuner and streaming interface. Keep in mind, you can now find LG OLED TVs with G-Sync Compatibility.
Still, the AW5520QF undeniably offerings the best-looking images we’ve ever seen. Playing games on an OLED is an entirely different experience. We couldn’t tear ourselves away from this monitor, and that is perhaps the best indicator of all. If you can afford one of these, you really should treat yourself; you won’t regret it.
The 55-inch Alienware AW5520QF answers the call with a large display, FreeSync and one more huge thing: an OLED panel. Nowhere else can you find an OLED monitor with gaming-ready specs, like the AW5520QF’s 120Hz refresh rate, FreeSync and RGB. Best of all, it has panel response fast enough to completely eradicate motion blur, and input lag is low too. But with a few things missing, you may reconsider before spending a mind-blowing $4,000 for this display over other, less expensive 4K gaming monitors.
Alienware AW5520QF Specs
Until LG managed to bring OLED panels to the mass market, the technology was something found only in lab prototypes. Note, OLED stands for organic light emitting diode, with the emphasis on light-emitting. As a self-emissive technology, OLED has the ability to address the brightness of each individual pixel from its peak output to complete black. LG uses the catchphrase “infinite black” to describe it, and the term is accurate. OLED manages better blacks than the best plasmas (plasma is dead, long live plasma) for a contrast effect that is well beyond anything LCD can deliver. And that goes for zone-dimming panels too. Even the Asus ProArt PA32UCX mini-LED monitor with its 1,152-zone backlight can’t match the black levels seen in a rank and file OLED monitor. While the AW5520QF’s peak brightness (130 nits for standard content, 400 nits for HDR) is nowhere near that of a premium LCD display, its black levels will quickly make you forget that. The image quality here is beyond stunning.
At $4,000, it’s strictly a premium product, but it has capabilities shared by no other computer monitor or TV.
Unpacking and Accessories
The AW5520QF is packaged like a TV and should be unboxed with an assistant. The panel’s upper half of is incredibly thin and difficult to handle with one pair of hands. Bundled accessories are minimal--just a two-piece stand and a large wall-mount bracket adapter. You get IEC power, HDMI, DisplayPort and USB 3.0 cables, plus a remote featuring 16 buttons.
Product 360
The AW5520QF cuts a striking pose from the front with nothing but screen showing. The bezels are just 8mm, which in a 55-inch panel means it’s invisible from a normal viewing distance. The bottom strip is less than 1 inch wide and jet black, so it blends into the panel seamlessly. The anti-glare layer is fairly shiny and picks up reflections from computer lighting or other specular sources. You’ll want to use this monitor in a dark room because it isn’t very bright.
There are a group of control buttons on the bottom-right of the panel that pull up a small series of icons that control specific functions or open the full on-screen display (OSD) or you can use the included remote. You’ll want to use the remote often considering the distance you’ll need to place between yourself and the monitor in order to take in its massive screen.
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On the left side are two USB ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack and an HDMI input. The back of the monitor has a large snap-on panel that hides the inputs and wiring (see the last photo in the album above). Everything exits neatly behind the large base.
Speaking of assembly, the AW5520QF comes with two heavy-cast pieces, one for the tabletop base and another to interface with a wall mount. All the necessary hardware is included, and it only took us a few minutes to put it together.
Once you’re up and running, you can enjoy a nice RGB lighting effect. A large strip crosses the back of the component bulge with an Alienware logo backlit in the same color. There are different effects available in the OSD.
Inputs include three total HDMI 2.0 ports and a single DisplayPort 1.4. Audio can come from two built-in 14-watt speakers or out through a 3.5mm or S/PDIF optical jack.
OSD Features
The OSD looks like that every Dell or Alienware monitor we’ve seen before and offers a reasonably complete set of gaming features and picture controls. There are a few omissions that surprised us, though.
Game Enhance Mode offers a set of aiming points, a frame counter, countdown timers and alignment marks for multi-monitor setups (imagine a three-screen array of AW5520QFs. That’d cost you a cool $12,000!). You can toggle FreeSync on or off here, and we confirmed that when it’s on, PCs using an Nvidia graphics card will view the monitor as G-Sync compatible even though it’s not officially certified as so (here’s how to run G-Sync on a FreeSync monitor). G-Sync also worked with HDR content. The Dark Stabilizer option is meant to make shadow detail easier to see, but when we tried it, it elevated mid-tones instead and didn’t improve image quality.
There are eight preset picture modes for different game types or desired color temps. You also get three fully adjustable Game modes, along with a Custom Color mode. None of them offer gamma presets or color gamut options. The AW5520QF runs in its full native DCI-P3 gamut all the time. This is great for HDR content, but color purists will find it over-saturated for games mastered in the sRGB space. The lack of gamma options isn’t a huge deal, but our testing showed the gamma curve is a tad light. A couple of darker options would be nice, given the monitor’s enormous dynamic range.
The AlienFX lighting menu lets you change the RGB lights on the strip and Alien logo around back. You can control the color and brightness depending on your preference and room environment. It looks cool from the back, and around the front you can see a slight glow on the desktop.
Custom Color mode offers white point gain and bias sliders, along with hue and saturation controls for all six colors. In the Display menu, you can set the brightness and contrast. Even though there is no backlight, the Brightness sub-menu sets the output level, while Contrast sets the highlight clipping point.
For HDR signals, there are four modes in the Smart HDR sub-menu. The most accurate one is Reference, and there’s also Movie, Game and Desktop.
Setup and Calibration
The AW5520QF has four user-adjustable color modes: Game 1, 2 and 3 and Custom Color. For our testing, we used Custom Color mode. Selecting that mode takes you right to the gain, bias, saturation and hue sliders. We tweaked grayscale tracking to a high standard and used the color saturation sliders to set color luminance to neutral. There are no gamma presets available, but the default SDR luminance curve is close to 2.2. Also absent are color gamut options; DCI-P3 is the one and only available choice. We measured every mode in hopes of finding an sRGB setting but were unsuccessful.
The AW5520QF doesn’t need calibration if you choose the Standard preset, but our adjustments below produced visible improvements. Here are the settings we used. Note that these are for SDR only. HDR has four preset modes but no calibration controls.
Recommended Settings (SDR)
Gaming & Hands-on
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We’ll start with a conclusive statement: the AW5520QF delivers the best image and best gaming experience of any monitor we’ve ever reviewed. This is based on two things that OLED does better than LCD: contrast and motion processing. The games’ universe is so much more real than anything an LCD monitor can muster. And with completely blur-free motion available, it truly feels as though you’re in the game, not just looking through a window.
OLEDs are well-known for their incredibly deep blacks. You’ll see in our tests that the panel’s black levels are so low (lower is better) that they can’t be measured. That means contrast is not just a little better than the best LCD display; it’s an order of magnitude better. Place the AW5520QF next to any LCD monitor, and you’ll see the difference immediately.
Second, motion processing is an entirely different thing in the OLED world. Where LCDs sample each frame and hold it on the screen until the next frame is drawn, OLEDs flash the image thousands of times per second. That’s like the effect of an LCD’s backlight strobe (also known as blur reduction, ultra-low motion blur/ULMB etc.) but much faster. The result is no blur whatsoever. There are smooth LCDs for sure, but they won’t compare to an OLED.
We could see the impact of the AW5520QF’s high contrast even when viewing the Windows desktop. Our background is a beach scene with a blue sky and the ocean stretching out to the horizon. Its depth and clarity were mesmerizing on the OLED monitor. App windows rendered with extreme sharpness. We could clearly read black text on a white background from across the room. The screen uses a grid polarizer to prevent light spread between pixels like an LCD does, but it’s much thinner and has less impact on resolution. Pixelation? Invisible. Though pixel density is just 80 pixels per inch (ppi), you’d swear it was 180ppi because the pixel gaps are much smaller than those of an LCD panel.
We started playing Tomb Raider and immediately noticed the healthy dose of extra color afforded by the DCI-P3 gamut. Although the game is designed for an sRGB screen, it didn’t look overblown or cartoonish. Flesh tones and other natural colors, like that of grass and sky, were a bit too rich but not to where one would complain. The picture was inaccurate, but we didn’t mind because we couldn’t stop looking at the incredible blacks. Shadow detail was strong, yet dark areas came across with a lot more impact. Highlights looked bright, despite the AW5520QF’s low peak output in SDR mode.
For HDR, we turned to Call of Duty: WWII. Its menu has an ingenious set of luminance adjustments where you can set the white and black thresholds using on-screen test patterns. Once dialed in, the image was just gorgeous. It’s hard to imagine getting any closer to playing an interactive movie. The game’s characters look like the actors who voice them. There was no mistaking which soldier was played by Josh Duhamel.
Both titles played as though the screen were an extension of the hand. Input lag is low, and while more highly-skilled gamers might notice a difference in latency between this and good 240Hz monitors, the AW5520QF will feel comparably swift to the typical gamer.
The AW5520QF has FreeSync, not FreeSync 2 HDR. That means if you have a PC running an AMD graphics card, it won’t play HDR games to the fullest effect impossible, including with optimized tone mapping, as it would with FreeSync 2.
Nvidia users will have a similar experience. Although the monitor is not certified as G-Sync Compatible, our testing shows you can, in fact, run G-Sync on the Alienware (check out our instructions for running G-Sync on a FreeSync monitor). HDR and extended color work fine, but you won’t get that last nth degree of quality that’s possible with a G-Sync Ultimate monitor. Are these deal-breakers? When you consider the incredible contrast available here, we say no.
Since the AW5520QF will likely be used for movie-watching in addition to gaming, we did a little of our own. The demo material from the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD Benchmark was stunning, especially in the scenes with brightly colored objects filmed against black backdrops. The screen completely disappeared into our dark room, leaving only the object floating in front of us. Films like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows provided a cinematic experience beyond what one could see in the best movie theater. The only bummer is there is no support for Dolby Vision (Asus’ ProArt PA32UCX and PQ22UC are the only PC monitors with Dolby Vision at the time of writing). The Alienware will only display HDR10 material, which looks less detailed compared to Dolby Vision. It’s important to set your output source to 400 nits to properly tone-map highlights to the correct level (our OPPO UDP-203 Blu-ray player has this setting).
It’s hard to assign a value to how much better an OLED looks than an LCD. There’s no way to state a percentage or even to easily compare contrast numbers, since the AW5520QF’s blacks are immeasurable. Suffice it to say that once you see one of these things in action, you won’t care how much it costs.
Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level
Comparisons to the AW5520QF, the first real OLED gaming monitor, are difficult. Our entire database consists of LCD monitors. So to put the Alienware’s performance into perspective, we selected the best HDR screens we’ve reviewed. Fellow BFGD HP Omen X 65 Emperium is an obvious choice. Then we have the more diminutive 27-inchers,Acer’s Predator X27 and Asus’ ROG Swift PG27UQ. All three of the aforementioned monitors have a 384-zone full-array local-dimming (FALD) backlight. Finally, we have Asus’ ProArt PA32UCX, a 32-inch professional mini-LED monitor with a 1,152-zone FALD backlight. That last monitor isn’t really intended for gaming, but its image quality is incredible and offers some insight into what the very best displays available can do.
Alienware rates the AW5520QF as hitting up to 130 nits brightness in SDR mode with 400 nits possible in HDR. Our sample just about met that number. That doesn’t sound like a lot of light, but a large screen can look good with less output. While we prefer 200 nits for desktop computer monitors in normal use, a large panel works equally well at around 150 nits. That being said, we recommend a dark(ish) room for the AW5520QF. You’ll want to fully appreciate its image quality without distracting light coming from above and around you.
Black levels proved impossibly low for us to measure. Try as we might, we could not get our meter to register any light at zero-signal levels. There is no dynamic contrast in play here that artificially shuts down the panel; this is the panel’s native state. OLEDs can turn pixels off frame-by-frame, something no LCD can do.
Resulting contrast (3rd chart) is theoretically infinite. The next best panel here is the VA-based HP, which sports a best-in-class 4,463.6:1 static ratio without zone dimming engaged. There is no question that OLED is the king of contrast. Nothing else comes close.
After Calibration to 200 nits
Calibration with our recommended settings (see page 2) cost us a few nits of brightness (112.7 nits versus 127 nits), but it’s worth that small sacrifice for supreme color accuracy. No dynamic contrast or zone dimming was engaged for this test.
When measuring the intra-image contrast of FALD panels, the numbers are no different with zone dimming on or off. After our recommended calibration settings, the AW5520QF still showed a black level that was so low it was immeasurable. This is unmatched performance.
The AW5520QF’s different picture modes present a variety of white points and color interpretations. The best accuracy without calibration is in the Standard mode, which is the default. If you want to calibrate, there are three Game modes and Custom Color mode. We used the latter for our tests.
Grayscale and Gamma Tracking
Standard mode is a good choice for SDR content. It has no visible grayscale errors, and the gamma runs close to 2.2. We wish it were a tad darker, though. There is so much contrast available that a true 2.2 or 2.3 curve would increase image depth. But that’s picking nits.
Calibrating the Custom Color (2nd chart) mode takes all the grayscale errors below 1 Delta E (dE). This is professional-level performance, but for $4,000, it should be. Gamma is still a little off the mark, however. We wish there were additional presets, since we’d rather see a higher value. That would enhance color saturation and refine highlight detail.
The AW5520QF is mid-pack among our comparison sample in both grayscale and gamma. However, the differences are small, so you’d be hard-pressed to see a difference when looking at the monitors side by side.
Once calibrated, the Alienware could use a tweak to its gamma. An OLED screen should measure no lower than 2.2 at any brightness step. This monitor looks amazing but isn’t performing at its full potential. This is a small thing, but for $4,000, it should be perfect.
Color Gamut Accuracy
We measured all the AW5520QF’s image modes, and none of them render an sRGB color gamut. DCI-P3 is the native spec, and the monitor covers nearly all of it. That’s great for HDR-enabled material, but most games and videos are mastered to sRGB or Rec.709. There’s no reason Alienware couldn’t include the appropriate preset; users should have a choice. While the extra color looks fine in most cases, it isn’t accurate.
he out-of-box errors are measured against the sRGB gamut, and our adjustments actually increased the dE value slightly. You need sRGB for most games, since that is their mastered color gamut. This monitor is reasonably close to sRGB in terms of average error but DCI red and green are oversaturated by sRGB standards; the AW5520QF is too expensive to omit that option. Either way, you won’t see a problem, since anything below 3dE can’t be seen with the naked eye. When compared to DCI-P3, the error is just 1.26dE, an impressive result.
Comparisons
The AW5520QF came in last among our comparison sample in the sRGB gamut test, but the other monitors are impressive in their near-perfect rendering of sRGB and Rec.709. The AW5520QF doesn’t have those gamut options.
In the gamut volume calculation, Alienware managed to beat the Asus PA32UCX pro monitor. In fact, 94.35% is the largest DCI-P3 volume we’ve ever measured. Combined with the AW5520QF’s phenomenal contrast, the picture quality is quite something. Obviously, with nearly 140% coverage of the sRGB gamut, you won’t want to use this OLED for color-critical sRGB work without a color profile present to reign in the gamut.
The AW5520QF features four HDR modes. The sole image controls they have is contrast, which only serves to adjust the highlight detail clip point. It’s best left at its default setting of 75%. We measured all four modes and determined that Reference was the most accurate. It’s aptly named because the errors are quite small.
HDR Brightness and Contrast
Contrast is the most important factor when considering any HDR display. While LCD monitors with FALD backlights do an excellent job at rendering deep blacks and bright whites, they can’t come close to the image depth of an OLED. LCDs have a brightness advantage, though. All the LCD panels here top 1,000 nits brightness with HDR, with the PA32UCX nearing the 1,500-nit mark. That adds depth and dimension and makes an image that holds up better under ambient lighting. But the AW5520QF, when viewed in a dark environment, is on a completely different level. To achieve the 406-nit peak we measured, we used a 5% window pattern. Again, we were unable to measure the black level, so HDR contrast is theoretically infinite.
Grayscale, EOTF and Color
The AW5520QF’s HDR grayscale accuracy is superb with only a few errors over 2d that are invisible to the naked eye. The tone-map clip point is just over 50%, and our test shows that luminance tracks almost exactly to standard. It doesn’t get much better than this.
The monitor has nearly full coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut, which is borne out by our HDR color test. Inner points are a little over-saturated, but tracking is linear to the triangle’s perimeter. There are no significant hue errors. The AW5520QF can’t quite get to the full Rec.2020 gamut, but it tries by over-saturating at every target point. Only the Asus PA32UCX comes anywhere close to rendering this enormous gamut.
Viewing Angles
The common belief about OLEDs is that they have perfect viewing angles with no light falloff or color shift to the sides. The AW5520QF doesn’t meet that expectation. While brightness is reduced only by a small amount, when viewing from the sides, there is a visible green shift. Why? Because it uses a grid polarizer. Its effect isn’t as significant as the one installed in an LCD, but it is there nonetheless. While these photos are far better than any LCD can boast, OLED is not perfect when it comes to off-axis viewing.
Screen Uniformity
Since the AW5520QF has an immeasurable black level, we had to use a 10% field pattern, which is very dark gray, not completely black, for this test. Obviously, there are no issues here. The AW5520QF is one of the best screens we’ve ever tested in this regard. There are no visible issues anywhere on the panel. And the gray patterns look perfect at every brightness level.
Pixel Response and Input Lag
If you’re paying $4,000 for a gaming monitor, it needs to perform at high speed. Though the AW5520QF’s refresh rate is just 120Hz, it has no trouble keeping up with the 144Hz competition. It should be noted that an 8ms screen draw doesn’t mean the X27 and PG27UQ have lower motion blur. Since OLEDs flash the image at a rate of around 2,000Hz, there is no part of the image that remains on the screen between refresh cycles. LCDs use the sample-and-hold method, meaning they’re never black unless a backlight strobe is used. The bottom line is you will never see motion blur on an OLED unless its specifically rendered by the content.
In our input lag test, the AW5520QF beat all the LCDs here with an impressive 32ms of total control latency. While a 240Hz screen will be quicker, 32ms is more than quick enough for all but the most competitive players.
Are BFGDs worth clamoring over? On one hand, the proliferation of large-screen TVs into the gaming world is real. More players are turning to 4K TVs and away from desktop computer monitors. There’s just no substitute for square inches. But when you do this, you give up fast refresh rates, low input lag and adaptive sync.
The AW5520QF has one thing over every computer display we’ve reviewed: image quality. Its contrast and color are far better than any LCD panel available. But these things are not without cost, and we don’t mean the dollar sign.
The most obvious issue is brightness. Where the top HDR-enabled LCDs are hitting 1,000 nits or more, the AW5520QF manages just 400 nits. The only way to get its best image quality, you’ll need to use it in a darker room. There’s also the question of gaming technology. While it delivers great motion processing and low input lag from its 120Hz refresh rate, it doesn’t support FreeSync 2. That isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but it really should be included in a $4,000 monitor.
There’s also no sRGB gamut option. While many are satisfied applying as much color as possible to their games and videos, color purists will prefer a more accurate presentation. Alienware has removed that choice. Another thing missing are gamma presets. Although you can calibrate the AW5520QF (see our recommended settings) to a high standard, the lack of gamma options is puzzling. And while we’re at it, $4,000 should buy better audio. The built-in speakers are okay but an external soundbar, like the HP Omen X 65 Emperium includes, would be more appropriate at this price.
It’s worth nothing that at the time of publication, the monitor was even on sale for $2,850, but that’s still more than twice that of OLED TVs of similar size. Plus, at that price it still costs more than a TV and leaves out a tuner and streaming interface. Keep in mind, you can now find LG OLED TVs with G-Sync Compatibility.
Still, the AW5520QF undeniably offerings the best-looking images we’ve ever seen. Playing games on an OLED is an entirely different experience. We couldn’t tear ourselves away from this monitor, and that is perhaps the best indicator of all. If you can afford one of these, you really should treat yourself; you won’t regret it.
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