Introduction

Today we’re reviewing Asus’ new flagship 32″ OLED monitor that was unveiled in June at Computex, the PG32UCWM which is part of their top-tier ROG Swift series. This is actually the company’s second Tandem WOLED monitor being launched in this size during summer 2026, following on from the ROG Strix XG32UQWMS we reviewed very recently. There’s two key areas of difference though here with this model. Firstly, since it’s part of their ROG Swift series it has some additional features, connections and extras compared with the ROG Strix model, including a different design too. We’ll compare differences more thoroughly in a moment.

Secondly, and this is a headline for the PG32UWCM, this model uses a new RGB-stripe version of the Tandem WOLED panel, removing the white sub-pixel from the normal RGWB panel that is featured in the XG32UQWMS. This is designed to help improve text clarity and make this version more suitable for office and professional applications, eliminating text fringing and artefacts. It also offers some differences when it comes to colour brightness and colour volume in HDR, although it does result in a less bright panel overall. This model has a lower SDR brightness and lower HDR certification tier as a result of the removal of the white sub-pixel and we’ll explore and compare performance in this review.

There’s loads of interesting things to test and compare here, so after a summary of the key specs for the screen and some info about the key panel updates, we’ll provide a brief comparison between the two new models so you can see where they sit in the Asus OLED range, and how they differ. Let’s get in to all our testing.

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Key Specs

• 31.5″ size (32″ class), flat format
• LG Display Tandem WOLED panel
• RGB-stripe sub-pixel layout
• TrueBlack glossy screen coating
• 3840 x 2160 “4K” resolution
• 240Hz native refresh rate
• 480Hz dual-mode at 1920 x 1080 (1080p)
• VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification, including peak brightness spec of 1000 nits
• HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR content support
• OLED Care Pro feature set with Neo Proximity Sensor
• Video connectivity: 1x DisplayPort 2.1 (UHBR 20), 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB type-C (DP Alt mode, 90W power delivery)
• Other connectivity: 3x USB-A data ports, 1x headphone
• Extra features: KVM switch, PiP/PbP support, ELMB motion blur reduction, VRR Anti-flicker
• Tilt, height and swivel stand adjustments

Panel and coating exploredTandem WOLED panel

One of the key benefits of this new model relative to previous PG series 32″ 4K WOLED screens like the PG32UCDP, and the other displays that have been released in the last couple of years, is that this is one of the first screens to be released to market in the 32” segment to use the latest Tandem WOLED technology from LG Display. We’ve seen this in many 27” monitors already, including some very good options from Asus themselves (e.g. XG27AQWMG), but this marks a shift in the 32” segment which a lot of people have been holding out for.

Both the recently reviewed ROG Strix XG32UQWMS (with RGWB pixel layout) and this ROG Swift PG32UCWM (with RGB-stripe layout) use Tandem WOLED panels, and this is a significant step forward in underlying panel tech. The differing pixel layouts of those two panels leads to some performance differences too which we will discuss throughout the review.

In general, the Tandem WOLED panels promise improvements in brightness, power consumption, contrast, colours and panel longevity compared with earlier-gen WOLED panels. However, many of those improvements are only really applicable for the standard RGWB panels, and these claims could be different or not realised here because of the removal of the white sub-pixel and shift to an RGB-stripe layout. We will cover those as we go through the review.

RGB stripe sub-pixel layoutImage courtesy of Dell

The other key change with this particular panel used in the PG32UWCM is that it’s the first WOLED panel we’ve tested to feature an RGB-stripe sub-pixel layout. In this version of the 32″ 4K Tandem WOLED panel LG Display have removed the white subpixel, which leaves you with just an RGB stripe which promises better text clarity and image sharpness as a result. This is the layout expected by Windows OS, and it should fully resolve the long-standing challenges with OLED panel text clarity. We will examine and compare text performance more later.

Improved text clarity
Reduced brightness

Reduced brightness specs

While Tandem WOLED panels are typically promoted as offering improvements in brightness compared with earlier gen panels, the draw back of removing the white sub-pixel is that it will have an impact on panel brightness.

Specs	XG32UCWMG	XG32UQWMS	PG32UCWM
Panel type	Previous gen WOLED	Tandem WOLED (RGWB)	Tandem WOLED (RGB-stripe)
SDR luminance	250 nits	330 nits	250 nits
HDR certification	True Black 400	True Black 500	True Black 400
Peak brightness spec	1300 nits	1500 nits	1000 nits

This version has a 250 nits SDR brightness spec and meets the VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 (TB400) tier and has a peak brightness of 1000 nits, while the RGWB version has 330 nits SDR luminance and meets TB500 with a peak brightness of 1500 nits. We’ll examine real world performance in SDR and HDR later but the specs suggest a reduced brightness compared with the RGWB version of the Tandem WOLED panel. It looks to be more on par with the general specs of previous-gen WOLED so the Tandem panel brings improvements, but those are then offset by the removal of the white sub-pixel.

• Further reading: OLED RGB-stripe Panels Explained – Should You Wait?

This is still a ‘Tandem WOLED’ panel

Note that despite the removal of the white sub-pixel from the panel deisgn, this remains a “Tandem WOLED” panel as the “W” in “WOLED” represents the white colour of the light that the panel produces, and is not related to the inclusion of a white sub-pixel.

Black depth, contrast and ambient light handling

One thing which remains consistent with this RGB-stripe version of the panel is the improvements offered for black depth and contrast in more well-lit rooms. This is inherent to the Tandem WOLED panel, and not impacted by the RGB-stripe design.

Tandem WOLED (left) vs previous Gen WOLED (right) – dark roomTandem WOLED (left) vs previous Gen WOLED (right) – bright room

In a dark room the blacks are basically the same, but as ambient light increases the Tandem WOLED panel retains its black depth better and blacks stay blacker. This is an improvement with the new Tandem WOLED panel still.

Tandem WOLED (left) vs Penta Tandem QD-OLED with BlackShield Film (right) – dark roomTandem WOLED (left) vs Penta Tandem QD-OLED with BlackShield Film (right) – bright room

For comparison we can also compare the Tandem WOLED panel against a latest-gen QD-OLED panel, one featuring their new BlackShield film in fact. That BlackShield film helps QD-OLED in these tests, but it still remains quite a long way behind a Tandem WOLED panel in brighter room conditions.

Measured black depth in a range of ambient light conditions as per our previous detailed articlePanel coating

This screen features Asus’ ‘TrueBlack glossy’ screen coating, like many of their other recent OLED monitors. It provides a super clear and sharp image with a 0% haze rating. It’s the same glossy coating we’ve seen on their other OLED monitor recently, including the XG32UQWMS (Tandem WOLED) and previous 32″ 4K OLED models from last year like the XG32UCWMG. So no changes there.

While it provides a really sharp and clear image and helps make the whole image “pop”, you need to be more mindful of your ambient light sources, as it can create mirror-like reflections. Be careful if you have light sources and windows facing the screen at all, as reflections and glare are more of a challenge than on matte anti-glare coated screens.

Power consumption

Tandem WOLED panels offer power consumption benefits relative to previous gen WOLED, or at least they draw the same power but reach higher brightness levels with it. But that doesn’t follow through to this RGB-stripe version of the panel, and the reason again is because of the missing white sub-pixel.

Macro photos of the sub-pixel structure lit up when viewing an all white image

When displaying an all white image for instance most of the heavy lifting on the RWGB panel is done by the white subpixel, with the others not needing to be lit much at all. It’s the same in a lot of dynamic content, HDR, gaming etc. The white sub-pixel can take care of a lot of the brightness output, and lighting up one sub-pixel is easier than lighting up all 4.

Conversely on the PG32UCWM there is no white sub-pixel, and so when showing the same white background, all 3 red, green and blue sub-pixels need to be lit up in an “additive” approach to reach white. This means higher power consumption.

As an example we measured the power consumption of each screen when showing an all white image at 120 nits and 200 nits:

	XG32UCWMG	XG32UQWMS	PG32UCWM	PG32UCDM3
	Previous gen WOLED	Tandem WOLED (RGWB)	Tandem WOLED (RGB-stripe)	Penta Tandem QD-OLED
Manuf spec (W)	44	<30	<55	<42
At 200 nits (W)	59.5	53.3	101.5	83.5
At 120 nits (W)	41.4	40.5	72.6	56.2

You can see the power consumption of the RGB-stripe panel is around 80 to 90% higher in this example than the RGWB version of the Tandem WOLED panel. Real world power consumption will vary depending on the content shown of course, your brightness level etc, but this is a reasonable proxy for lots of office use and white backgrounds, and gives an indication of the additional power consumption of the RGB stripe panel.

Panel longevity and lifespanNote this is the claim from the RGWB Tandem WOLED panel used for the XG32UQWMS

When Tandem WOLED is promoted it is usually alongside claims about panel longevity and lifespan. The RGWB version of this panel that’s used in the XG32UQWMS is promoted as having an expected 60% longer OLED lifespan than previous gen WOLED panels in terms of luminance decay over time, as shown in the product page positioning above.

That stat is not promoted here though for the PG32UCWM at the moment, and that is likely because it’s not as straight forward because of the RGB-stripe structure of the panel and the removal of the white subpixel. Asus tell us that the panel was designed around maintaining the same lifespan target as the RGWB version rather than trading lifespan for image quality or RGB-stripe performance so there are still improvements expected compared with previous-gen WOLED.

Removing the white sub-pixel allows the RGB sub-pixels to have a larger aperture ratio, and the overall brightness ceiling is also lower on this model. So while power consumption is higher in certain scenarios, the emitters themselves are not being driven proportionally harder we are told.

Having to light up all 3 pixels to produce white instead of letting the white sub-pixel do most of the work could also potentially reduce lifespan of the RGB sub-pixels or lead to colour / luminance degradation over time although this is probably an unknown at this stage.

Heat management is also an important factor and Asus have switched to a new internal power supply on this model which helps keep overall chassis thermals stable. They are now using a GaNFET technology on this new model which is supposed to produce less heat compared with their previous internal power supplies used on some other models, and potentially help extend the lifespan of the panel.

Photo from Computex 2026 comparing old internal power supply heat output vs new GaN power supply heat outputComparison with XG32UQWMS

The PG32UCWM and XG32UQWMS are both new Tandem WOLED screens being launched by Asus in summer 2026, but the two vary in three key areas:

• Feature set – The PG model offers a wider range of connectivity including full-speed DP 2.1 and a USB type-C connection which are missing from the XG model. As a result of the latter it also supports a KVM switch function, and has an additional USB-A data port too. It supports Dolby Vision HDR as well as HDR10, which is missing from the XG model.
• Sub-pixel layout – The PG model uses an RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED panel which is a sub-pixel structure that can help improve text clarity, but at the same time the removal of the white sub-pixel (still present in the XG model’s RGWB panel structure) means it isn’t as bright in SDR or HDR usage and there may be considerations around power consumption and lifespan to take in to account.
• Design – the PG offers the familiar ROG Swift stand design with the wide 3-pronged foot, and includes a couple of RGB lighting features too. It also includes the new transparent plastic rear enclosure which looks really nice. The XG model has a smaller and simpler foot and an overall more basic design. This aspect is very much down to personal taste and preference.

We will compare actual performance and talk about some of these features and differences throughout the review.

XG32UQWMS designDesign and Features

The PG32UCWM comes in a mostly familiar ROG Swift series styling, with a 3-side borderless panel and an overall thin edge around all 4 sides. This border measures ~9mm along the sides, ~8mm along the top, and ~12.5mm along the bottom edge. There is a small “chin” on the bottom edge of the screen where the OSD control joystick is located on the back, with an ROG logo on the front that glows red normally, but can be disabled from the OSD menu if you want.

The stand is thick and sturdy with a matte black plastic finish arm, and dark grey metal feet. This provides a wide and stable base for the fairly large screen, without being too deep as well. There is a cable tidy hole in the arm of the stand too. Some people like this stand design, others don’t. If you want a smaller stand and foot, and a more simple and less gamery design, then the ROG Strix XG32UQWMS offers that.

The back of the screen is encased in a new transparent plastic design where you can see some of the component inside. This looks very nice and futuristic we think, but the overall design is dark/black, unlike their 27″ 540Hz PG27AQWP-W which also had a transparent back but had a silver design.

There’s an ROG logo lighting feature on the back, as well as a logo projector from the bottom of the stand. Both can also be disabled from the OSD menu if needed.

There’s a good range of ergonomic adjustments from the stand with tilt, height and swivel, but there’s no rotate on this model. They’re all really smooth to operate, and easy enough to move. The screen remains very stable on the desk and the whole design feels strong and sturdy with practically no wobble.

On-screen menu

The OSD is controlled primarily through a small joystick toggle on the back of the screen’s “chin” section on the bottom edge. There are also two pressable buttons, one either side of the joystick. One gives you quick access to the dual-mode (“Frame Rate Boost”) function by default, while the other is the power on/off button. You can edit the left hand button via the menu to have a shortcut for something else though if you want. A nice touch is that if you press the power button, it prompts you to confirm you definitely want to turn the screen off, to avoid those accidental power-offs.

Asus have added their new quick-launch menu as well when you first press the joystick toggle, giving you quick access to various settings, and these can be customised in the menu to some degree as well for different options.

There is also some quick access to key settings via the directions on the joystick which you can customise in the menu, or if you press the joystick in you can enter the main menu. Navigation is quick, snappy and intuitive thanks to the joystick controller.

OSD Menu
Joystick toggle controller
Quick and snappy
Intuitive to use
User updatable firmware
Software application

There were a decent range of settings and options available too. The screen supports user-updatable firmware (we updated to the latest MCM102 available at the time of testing).

DisplayWidget Center

There’s also support for Asus’ DisplayWidget Center software, which we explored in our detailed article here, and which is useful for configuring your screen, or making use of additional features like auto-switching modes depending on the app or content you’re viewing, setting up hot key shortcuts, or activating automatic firmware updates. Do check that out if you own any Asus monitor.

Connectivity

The PG32UCWM offers 1x DisplayPort 2.1a (with UHBR20 bandwidth), 1x USB type-C (with DP Alt mode, 90W power delivery and data), and 2x HDMI 2.1 video connections, along with a headphone jack and 3x USB-A data ports. This model has an integrated power supply, so there’s no need for an external brick like on some earlier models in their range.

With DP 2.1 (UHBR 20) available, the screen can be powered at its full spec (4K 240Hz, 10-bit) without needing to use DSC if you have a compatible graphics card, such as an RTX 50 series.

Confirmed the screen is running in UHBR20 mode (4x 20Gbps lanes) from a DP 2.1 GPU

DSC can be disabled from the OSD menu if you wish, although there’s very little practical benefit in doing so to be honest. Older systems with DP 1.4 connections will use DSC to power the full spec. If you were to disable DSC you’d be limited to 97Hz refresh rate for 4K, 10-bit.

OLED Care

One challenge with OLED panels in general is the inherent risk of image retention and burn-in. It’s a technology more suited to dynamic and changing content, which is why these are largely positioned as gaming and multimedia screens. There is more of a risk of image retention if you are using these screens for lots of static desktop and office use though. Display manufacturers provide a range of measures to help mitigate that risk, and maintain the panel over time and we will talk about the OLED Care measures in a moment.

Asus include a 3 year warranty with the monitor, including burn-in cover which gives some added peace of mind around usage and image retention risks. This is the same as on their other recent OLED monitors.

To help mitigate the risks of image retention Asus provide an impressive and expanded set of OLED care options within the OSD menu under their ‘ROG OLED Care Pro‘ features. Familiar options include the pixel shift / screen move which moves the image slightly a few pixels at a time periodically (you can no longer turn this off on their new screens oddly). There’s also a screen saver which dims the screen if there is no change to the image for an extended period of time. There’s also an image cleaning cycle which will run automatically from time to time, or you can run manually in the menu if you want.

OLED Care and Warranty
Warranty period	3 years
Burn-in cover
Screen saver
Pixel / screen shift
Logo dimming
Taskbar detection
Motion / proximity sensor
Other OLED care features	Outer dimming control Global dimming control

An ‘auto logo brightness’ section includes options for ‘logo detection’, as well as ‘taskbar detection’ and ‘boundary detection’. Boundary detection dynamically detects the boundary of the black bars and reduces the brightness and also slightly shifts the pixel of the near borders.

Neo Proximity Sensor

Asus include their Neo Proximity Sensor on this screen as well. This is a highly sensitive TOF sensor which allows users to set their preferred usage distance. When the user steps out of range, the monitor will switch to a black image (i.e. turn off the pixels) to reduce the risk of burn-in, and restores on-screen content when you return to it. You can also customize the detection distance quickly and easily. They’ve also added a few additional customisation options to the new screen which are handy.

• Additional reading: Helping Avoid OLED Burn-in and Flicker – Exploring the Latest Asus OLED Technologies for 2025

Brightness and Contrast

For this testing we disabled the OLED care features in the OSD menu as those can have a small impact to screen brightness in certain situations. We would recommend enabling as many of those features as possible to mitigate risks of burn-in, although you may need to experiment for your particular usage to ensure none are distracting or problematic.

The screen offers a ‘uniform brightness’ setting which keeps the luminance consistent regardless of the content shown. That’s the most suitable option for desktop apps and office use, avoiding any kind of ABL dimming. It reaches 250 nits maximum in that mode which is on spec, but puts it quite a way behind other modern OLED panels. At the lowest setting it can reach down to 20 nits which makes it well-suited to dark room conditions.

It’s basically the same maximum luminance as the older gen XG32UCWMG from last year, so not a terrible result by any means. But we’ve seen some Tandem WOLED panels reach a fair bit higher. The RWGB version of this same panel (XG32UQWMS) reaches 326 nits max, and some smaller 27″ models (e.g. PG27AQWP-W) reach as high as 381 nits.

250 nits is still perfectly fine for many users, but if you’re used to using a screen at very high brightness levels, or coming from an LCD with a high brightness spec then you may have more of an issue.

If you disable the uniform brightness setting the screen can reach up to 431 nits in some scenes, giving you a bit of a boost but with ABL now active. You could maybe use this for dynamic content like videos and games if you wanted a bit of a boost.

Perceived brightness

We should also keep in mind that the perceived brightness of OLED monitors is greater than traditional LCD monitors thanks to their higher contrast ratio, something we explored in our detailed article. We shouldn’t rely only on luminance measurements to compare between these different technologies and consider real-world brightness.

Based on the principles explained in our article, this OLED monitor would have the same approximate perceived brightness as a traditional LCD that reaches ~440 nits luminance. We can’t give it a TrueBright certification tier as that’s reserved for Samsung Display QD-OLED panels, but the same principles apply.

SDR PerformanceDefault setup – wide gamut mode

The screen comes out of the box in the ‘Racing’ preset mode, with the wide gamut colour space active and with ‘Uniform Brightness’ mode disabled. For these tests we disabled all OLED Care features and switched from the power saving mode (which has limited OSD options) to the performance mode.

Gamma tracking was reasonable overall and we measured a 2.17 average with a bit of variation across the greyscale. The RGB balance and colour temp on the middle graph were very good which left us with a good overall greyscale accuracy and a dE 1.5 average.

With the very wide native wide colour gamut active here, the accuracy of sRGB colours was poor, with a dE 4.8 average measured. This is normal for any wide gamut screen and to be expected and we will look if we can improve sRGB / SDR accuracy in a moment.

The native colour gamut of this panel matches the DCI-P3 reference much more closely (108% relative coverage) and so the accuracy of DCI-P3 colours is much better, with dE 1.2 average measured.

It’s interesting to compare the colour gamut of this new panel against other panel technologies. At 135% relative sRGB, this RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED panel sits in between the previous-gen WOLED (128%), and the RGWB Tandem WOLED panel (150%). It’s a little more vivid and colourful than previous gen WOLED screens, but doesn’t quite reach the same colour gamut coverage as the version which retains the white sub-pixel for some reason. It’s a quite close to coverage of the QD-OLED panel (141%) too which is probably the most similar as it also has only red, green and blue sub-pixels.

sRGB Emulation Modes

There are actually two ways to achieve an sRGB emulation mode as we’ve seen on other recent Asus OLED monitors. There’s an ‘sRGB Cal’ preset mode (which carries a specific factory calibration shown in the report in the OSD menu). That mode is available in the ‘Game Visual’ menu where nearly all settings are locked down, or there’s also a colour space setting that can be used from within the other presets, for instance the default ‘Racing’ mode which leaves all other settings accessible. We will test both approaches.

sRGB Colour Gamut option (in Racing preset)

The Racing > sRGB colour space mode offered similar gamma and greyscale performance as the native wide gamut mode; to be expected given we’ve only changed the colour space settings. There’s some slight improvements to the gamma though which is good.

The main change though now was the clamping of the wide native colour space back close to the sRGB reference, now measured at 98.2% absolute coverage and removing the over-coverage from the native mode which was great. As a result of this smaller active colour space, the accuracy of sRGB colours was now very good as well, with dE 1.2 average measured.

sRGB Cal mode

The sRGB Cal mode in the ‘Game Visual’ menu provides an alternative approach for sRGB / SDR clamping. This mode is pretty much locked down when it comes to OSD menu controls, including the whole ‘color’ section of the menu being greyed out. You can still adjust brightness at least, but we’re fully at the mercy of Asus’ factory calibration here for this mode.

This mode offered the same colour temp and greyscale as the other modes, but the gamma has been configured to the slightly different sRGB gamma curve, instead of the 2.2. That has a positive impact on shadow detail which we will test in a moment.

We had basically the same colour space clamping and colour accuracy in this dedicated preset mode as in the Racing > sRGB gamut configuration. The other approach gives much better flexibility in settings and controls, which are all locked down in this mode other than brightness – which you can thankfully adjust.

Both modes offer very similar colour accuracy and gamut clamping, but this sRGB Cal mode offers better shadow detail as it’s configured to the sRGB gamma curve. You’ve got a choice in which mode you want to use, depending on if you need to tweak other settings at all.

DCI-P3 Emulation mode

This mode is similar to the native wide gamut mode in terms of gamma, colour temp and greyscale performance, but clamps the native gamut back closer to DCI-P3, with only a very minor amount of under-coverage at 98.1%. This results in improved colour accuracy for DCI-P3 colours which were now very good with dE 1.2 average. This is a decent useable mode if you want to more closely match the DCI-P3 colour space.

Adobe RGB clamping

Note that there’s no Adobe RGB emulation mode provided by Asus, so if you want to work specifically with content in that colour space, such as for professional and photography applications, you will need to be able to profile the screen yourself using a calibration tool. We’d like to see Asus add this as an additional option in the menu on future monitors.

There isn’t quite full coverage of this colour space available from the panel, reaching ~94% absolute coverage but it’s fairly close, and you’d need to be able to cut back on the over-coverage (~116% relative coverage) for more accurately working with this colour space.

Shadow Detail

We explored and tested the near-black shadow detail which can sometimes be a challenge on OLED panels, even though they have a true 0 nits black depth and ~infinite contrast. We explored the reasons for this and the challenges that display manufacturers face when calibrating OLED panels in our detailed article here.

For these tests screen was configured to 200 nits white luminance, and we tested the screen in several colour space modes, as well as at different refresh rates.

Shadow detail was weak on this screen in the native mode as we’ve seen on some OLED panels in the past. The gamma was factory calibrated at a 60Hz refresh rate which is common, and so performance was a little better at that refresh rate, straying further from the target luminance for darker shades at the higher 240Hz refresh rate. We explored that topic in more detail in our article here. This meant that near-black shades were a bit brighter at lower refresh rates due to the gamma shift, which made darker content a bit easier to see.

In the sRGB Cal preset mode the gamma is actually configured to the sRGB gamma curve, which as you can see is pretty accurately calibrated at 60Hz, and ever so slightly lower at 240Hz. The shadow detail and overall brightness of darker content was substantially improved in these modes which was great news. This is one reason to use the sRGB Cal mode if you want to work with SDR content more commonly.

Shadow Boost setting

Asus provide a ‘Shadow Boost’ setting in the menu which can adjust darker scenes quite well in SDR. It’s not available in HDR mode. There’s 4 levels available and levels 1 – 3 make the near-black luminance slightly higher in turn without raising the black point. You get slightly better shadow detail as well with RGB 6 visible for levels 1 and 2, and RGB 5 visible for level 3, but there’s a bit more of a change in the other darker tones from RGB 6 – 16 too. The ‘dynamic’ mode makes a more noticeable and drastic difference, raising the luminance of darker shades noticeably which may be useful for some very dark gaming situations potentially. You can see RGB 2 in that mode which is very good.

Calibration

Calibration and profiling can produce some very good overall results and could be useful though if you wanted to operate the screen within its native wide gamut mode, but then map the colour space back to something else like sRGB or Adobe RGB for instance for colour-aware applications (e.g. Photoshop). You would need a suitable calibration device and software for this, or you could also try our calibrated ICC profile.

The screen was profiled to 2.2 gamma, 6500K colour temp and to the sRGB colour space. The screen was left in its native wide gamut mode, but this profile will be used in colour-aware applications to map back to sRGB in this instance. Overall the calibrated results were excellent as you’d hope. In fact, we’ve often had trouble on WOLED panels getting this level of colour accuracy for some reason (e.g. on the XG32UCWMG), it’s been common to see higher dE errors and perhaps it’s related to the white sub-pixel usage. There’s no such issue here though.

Best Settings Guide

• On our Patreon Insider tier and above you can find our full ‘Best settings guide’ for this screen which includes all our recommended calibrated settings and ICC profile for SDR mode, as well as other best settings guidance for other configurations, modes, HDR, gaming and everything else.
• Please note that you have the option to either join our Patreon on a subscription basis, which will also open up access to other locked posts on our page; or you can purchase just the single post for these best settings as a one-off if you’d rather.
• If you only want just our standard SDR settings and calibrated profile, that is available via our ICC database (without all the other best settings guide).

General and OfficeResolution and Scaling

The fairly large screen size of 31.5″ provides a decent size upgrade from common 27″ screens, and this combined with the 3840 x 2160 “4K” resolution gives you a higher pixel density at 140 PPI. This 4K resolution is probably still a bit too high to use at native scaling (100%) for some people on a screen even of this pretty large size, although some people may find it ok. Text is small but if you’ve got good eye-sight and are up close then it’s still reasonable and does provide you then with a massive screen real estate and very sharp picture.

Other people will probably want to use operating system scaling to ensure fonts and text are a more sensible and readable size though. 150% is unnecessarily large despite being the “recommended” option detected by Windows, with 125% scaling offering a nice balance on a screen of this size we think. That gives you comfortable text size which is very similar to a 27″ 1440p screen, but does give you the equivalent desktop real-estate area of a 3072 x 1728 resolution. So that’s quite a nice jump up from common 2560 x 1440 resolution screens in this approximate size range. The extra pixel density of the 4K resolution will provide a very sharp and clear image for all uses including office and general applications. Just make sure that your software will support scaling effectively as it can sometimes be a bit difficult to get it right.

Keep in mind that not all Operating Systems and applications handle scaling the same. More recent versions of Windows tend to handle it all better, and recent versions of Mac OS are pretty solid as well. Some applications and games don’t handle scaling correctly and so you can end up with some things with very minute text and fonts and some things which don’t scale completely in every place. Keep this in mind if you’re selecting any super high resolution display as it could be an important factor. You need to ensure you have the necessary operating system and applications to handle scaling effectively for your needs. It does make life a bit more complicated than if you just ran at a native resolution and 100% scaling. If you have the necessary software and operating system then the 4K resolution provides a very sharp and crisp image though.

Sub-pixel Layout and Text Rendering

LG Display WOLED panels have always included an additional white sub-pixel alongside red, green and blue; used to boost panel brightness. It’s that added white sub-pixel which causes challenges for Windows systems which expect just a standard RGB layout, leading to text and image clarity issues. This was further exacerbated on earlier generation WOLED panels where the red, green and blue sub-pixels were also in the wrong order. The layout of the sub-pixels used to actually be red-white-blue-green (RWBG) which was not ideal. Later on from around 2024 onwards LG Display improved that by switching to the correct order, still keeping the white sub-pixel in there, but changing the order to be more optimal. The newer WOLED panels, like the Tandem WOLED panel used in the XG32UQWMS, have a red-green-white-blue (RGWB) layout instead which helps improve text clarity a fair bit. Still not perfect because of the extra white sub-pixel, but better.

For the PG32UCWM, LG Display have started to produce panels with a true RGB-stripe layout, removing the white sub-pixel from the panel design which should help improve text clarity. We set the screen up side by side with the XG32UQWMS (with RGWB layout) and tested a range of different office apps and text situations.

We have commented in the past on how we felt the text clarity was already very good on RGWB panels of this size, thanks to the updated layout and the ~140 PPI pixel density of the panel. For most people we think that it should be perfectly fine. However, there are improvements here with the RGB stripe design and that’s evident in side by side comparisons. The text looks a little sharper and crisper, and you avoid any remaining fringing artefacts completely now. Some edges of coloured cells in Excel for instance can still show fringing on the RGWB panel, but it’s eliminated here. It’s the same sharp text clarity now as an equivalent pixel density LCD.

For those who are particularly sensitive to text fringing, or concerned about using an OLED screen for lots of text and office work, then this offers improvements.

Coating

We talked at length earlier about the coating, and our advice would be to consider your ambient lighting conditions and positioning before deciding which coating is right for you. There’s no doubt that the new TrueBlack coating provides a super sharp and clear image, removing any minor grain we’ve seen from previous glossy WOLED panels (like the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP for instance). It offers improvements in black depth as well compared with matte AG coatings, but the downside is that reflections can be more problematic and distracting, as there’s no anti-glare or anti-reflection coating on this screen. That’s perhaps more of an issue for daytime office application usage or brighter office environments.

Panel uniformity

Luminance uniformity was mediocre, with the edges of the panel being a little darker than the central area, mostly along the bottom edge. This shouldn’t be noticeable during any dynamic content like gaming and videos, but may be a bit more apparent if you’re working with full screen office apps or colour blocks. Results could vary between samples.

Dark content uniformity / grey banding

OLED panels, especially Tandem WOLED, can be impacted by noticeable banding artefacts and a “dirty screen effect” when viewing darker content. This might be in dark games, or dark mode apps, and it’s a topic we’ve explored at length in the past. Each display was configured to a consistent 0.2 nits luminance for this full-screen grey test, and the photos captured are as representative to what we see visually as possible.

Grey uniformity / grey banding – 240Hz

Interestingly the grey banding issue seems to be much less noticeable on this Tandem WOLED panel with an RGB-stripe layout than on the RGWB version. At the native 240Hz refresh rate it’s very slight which is great news. We wouldn’t say it’s completely eliminated, but it seems to be better, and more similar to the earlier gen WOLED panels in these tests. This could be down to the RGB stripe sub-pixel, perhaps the white sub-pixel causes additional challenges at low luminance levels which would make sense, or it could vary between samples / age etc. Early signs from this testing are positive though it seems.

Grey uniformity / grey banding – 60Hz

As with other WOLED panels we’ve tested, the banding issue is reduced even further at lower refresh rates. It’s very hard to see at all in these tests.

Grey uniformity / grey banding – 480Hz

On the other hand, the banding and dirty screen effect becomes more pronounced at higher refresh rates like the 480Hz dual-mode operation. Again it’s a bit better than the RGWB version of the panel.

Viewing angles

We’ve seen some people asking us about the viewing angles on the Tandem WOLED panels so we’ve included some photos here of 3 different panel options showing a white background, calibrated in each case to D65 white point and 200 nits luminance.

The viewing angles of Tandem WOLED do seem to be a little worse than previous gen WOLED, showing a slightly more noticeable colour tone shift on these all-white images as you move away from a central viewing position. The appearance of white also looks a little different as you can see, down to the panel structure and spectral distribution we believe.

The colour tone shift is a little more pronounced on the PG32UCWM than on the XG32UQWMS, and this is related to the colour filter structure and the loss of the white sub-pixel. To maximize aperture ratio, the black matrix is kept fairly narrow on the panel and so at wider viewing angles, some light can “spill” into adjacent colour filters, which can introduce a slight colour shift, especially on white backgrounds where it’s easier to spot.

This is not really noticeable we don’t think from a head on viewing position, you mainly see the colour tone shift as you move to the sides. It’s also not visible during normal dynamic content, gaming etc, it’s more of a potential consideration if you’re working with lots of full screen white documents or something. Perhaps, depending on your viewing position, you might see a small shift towards the edges of the screen. It’s very slight though we would say.

Flicker-free performance

Flicker
Flicker free verified
PWM / flicker frequency	n/a

Office features

	Features	Notes
USB type-C connectivity (DP Alt mode)
USB type-C power delivery		90W
Daisy chaining support
KVM switch
PiP and PbP support
USB data ports		3x USB-A
Easy access USB data ports
Integrated speakers
Audio output / headphone out		1x connection on back
Mic input
Integrated webcam
Ambient light sensor
Motion sensor		Neo Proximity Sensor
Stand adjustments		Tilt, height, swivel (no rotate)
VESA mount support		100 x 100mm via provided bracket
Integrated power supply		Integrated GaNFET
Tripod socket
Firmware updates		Also via DisplayWidget Center
Fan-less design		Custom heatsink

This model has a wide range of additional features that make it well-suited to a range of use-cases, not just for gaming. There’s a USB type-C connection which offers a high 90W power delivery, integrated KVM switch and support for various PiP/PbP modes for handling multiple video inputs. If you want to know more about what all these productivity features are, check out our article and guide here.

There are 3x USB data ports and a headphone connection along with a versatile stand, along with a motion sensor which helps with OLED Care and avoiding image retention. Note that there’s no integrated speakers on this screen although a headphone connection is available.

Blue Light and Eye Care Modes

Blue light output
Blue peak wavelength	452 nm
Blue light portion	27.56%
Low blue light modes available
Low blue light mode temp	Level 1 = 6135K Level 2 = 5944K Level 3 = 5771K Level 4 = 5651K (82 nits)

The native panel spectral distribution is shown above at a calibrated 6500K white point, where the blue peak is at 452 nm. Asus provide a ‘Blue Light Filter’ setting in the OSD menu with 4 levels available. Each mode makes the image slightly warmer, with the maximum level 4 setting also having a locked brightness setting (82 nits luminance).

HDRPixel level dimming

Being an OLED panel, the PG32UCWM is well equipped to handle HDR content with its per-pixel level dimming allowing for true blacks, a basically infinite contrast ratio and the avoidance of all blooming and halos. In these regards it can easily surpass any Mini LED backlit LCD monitor. However, it cannot reach the same luminance levels as Mini LED screens, and carries a “peak brightness” spec of 1300 nits, which will then also lower as the content on your screen changes and the APL increases which is normal on this technology. This is one key area where Mini LED screens can look brighter and deliver a more impactful HDR experience.

HDR format support and certification

Note that this screen is certified under the VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 tier, the same that was used for the previous gen WOLED screens like the PG32UCDP and XG32UCWMG in Asus’ range, but lower than the new True Black 500 tier monitors being launched at the moment. Usually the shift to Tandem WOLED offers upgrades to brightness, like with the XG32UQWMS we reviewed recently, but because of the removal of the white sub-pixel, it’s stuck back at True Black 400.

This Asus model supports both HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR content, the latter could be useful for consoles and external media devices which support that format.

Black depth and ambient light handlingTandem WOLED (left) vs Penta Tandem QD-OLED with BlackShield Film (right) – dark roomTandem WOLED (left) vs Penta Tandem QD-OLED with BlackShield Film (right) – bright room

We talked about this a bit earlier, but the WOLED panel maintains better contrast and black depth in the presence of ambient light than alternative QD-OLED panels, which show raised blacks that start to go grey as ambient light increases, especially where those light sources are in front of the screen. Some improvements have been made with 2026 ‘QuantumBlack’ coated QD-OLED panels, but they still remain behind WOLED in this regard. The ambient light handling and the black depth of the panel is especially good here thanks to the Tandem WOLED panel, which is better in this regard than earlier-gen WOLED panels too.

The glossy ‘TrueBlack’ glossy coating used on this screen also helps with black depth retention, as it doesn’t diffuse light across the panel like a matte AG coating would, but on the flip side you do need to be more mindful of mirror-like reflections with this coating and the screen is not as well suited to brighter viewing environments.

Improved colour volume

The switch to an RGB stripe panel design also promises improvements in colour volume for HDR, but we will explore this in loads more detail a bit later in this section.

HDR Modes and Operation

There are 4 HDR modes available within the OSD menu – Gaming, Cinema, Console and True Black 400. Most settings are locked by default, including for brightness, contrast and the whole colour menu. Asus provide an option called “adjustable HDR” which once enabled allows you to make adjustments in those other areas if you want to make tweaks.

Peak white luminance measurements

Out of the box the 4 HDR modes behave exactly the same for peak white luminance and that is because the Gaming/Cinema/Console modes are all set to 70 brightness by default. The True Black 400 (TB400) mode is set to maximum 100 brightness, but only reaches ~470 nits maximum in that mode. With the other modes set to a more limited 70 brightness, they only reach the same.

We expect most people will want to use the screen at its maximum brightness for HDR, so having pushed the brightness setting up to the maximum 100, we measured the peak white luminance again in each mode. The Gaming, Cinema and Console modes performed the same in this test, but vary compared with the TB400 mode which cannot be increased further as it is already set to a 100 brightness by default.

In most situations the two approaches delivered the same peak white luminance, although the Gaming/Cinema/Console modes pull away for the darkest, low APL scenes <10% APL where they can reach a higher peak luminance. We measured up to 940 nits in those modes which was a bit shy of the advertised 1000 nits, but close. The TB400 mode capped out at ~470 nits when brightness and so cannot reach the higher levels for bright highlights in darker scenes.

This is a familiar pattern, but doesn’t tell a complete picture as we need to evaluate other areas for real-world performance, beyond simple white measurements.

Out of interest we can also compare the peak white luminance measurements with other 32″ OLED options in the Asus range, and you can see that in these tests the PG32UCWM comes out bottom, suffering because of the removal of the white sub-pixel which has long been relied on for brightness boosting. Before you draw any conclusions though, we need to explore other brightness metrics and tests.

EOTF measurements

The EOTF tracking varies a very small amount between each of the 3 higher brightness modes (brightness set to 100 in each) but they are all very close to one another. They show some over-brightening of the EOTF in both dark and light shades in the darker overall scenes (low APL) which we believe is introduced to try and avoid panel dimming in brighter scenes. This has the effect of increasing brightness in darker scenes a bit, but mainly we found it just served to increase the peak brightness of small highlights, without causing a major change to the overall scene. This seems to work really well. In the brighter scenes (high APL) the EOTF tracking is very good, slightly darker than intended across the greyscale but not by very much at all.

You can see that the TB400 mode remains overall more accurate in terms of EOTF tracking in dark scenes, showing none of the over-brightening, although it cannot reach as high a peak brightness. It’s basically the same as the other modes in brighter scenes which shows that those other max brightness modes perform very well in brighter scenes without the panel dimming we see on some competing screens.

With the removal of the white sub-pixel from the panel design we wondered whether the screen would behave more like a QD-OLED panel, showing significant panel dimming in brighter scenes and leaving the bright modes visually darker than the TB400 mode, but that is not the case here. In fact none of the available modes seem to perform in that way. The modest over-brightening in darker scenes helps to avoid the panel dimming issue and works very well here we thought. You get the same brightness as the TB400 mode in all scenes, then a boost in brightness and peak highlights in dark, low APL scenes. Exactly what you’d hope for.

If we lower the brightness setting back to the default setting of 70 in the Gaming/Cinema/Console modes you can see that those modes now offer very similar accurate EOTF tracking as the TB400 mode.

The difference is that in the very darkest scenes, the max 100 brightness setting boost the overall luminance a little, making the scene a bit brighter in general but also significantly improving peak bright highlights in those scenes. In most other scenes, including brighter overall situations, it’s very hard to see any visual differences if you alter the brightness setting between the default 70% and maximum 100%, you don’t lose any detail or tonal values which is great news. We felt there were overall positive changes by using the max 100% brightness setting with no real visual trade-offs.

Real-world brightness

We also measured a range of real-world HDR scenes and found that the luminance was basically the same in every scene in this comparison. That includes when using the TB400 mode, the Gaming/Cinema/Console modes at their default 70 brightness, and using those modes with brightness pushed up to 100 maximum.

As we observed earlier, changing that brightness control doesn’t seem to cause significant shifts in the overall scene brightness visually, it only really seems to impact the very darkest scenes with small bright highlights where the brightness is increased, making a noticeable change to highlights especially. This shows that the Gaming/Cinema/Console modes can reach the same brightness as the TB400 mode in brighter scenes, as well as being able to offer a higher peak luminance where needed.

We can also compare the real-scene brightness against some other 32″ 4K WOLED panels. In the darkest scenes the PG32UCWM is actually a little brighter, offering around 7% higher luminance than the previous Gen WOLED (XG32UCWMG) and around 3% higher than the RGWB Tandem WOLED panel (XG32UQWMS). That’s a result of the slight over-brightening of the EOTF we measured earlier.

However, those are outliers and in most other scenes the PG32UCWM ends up around 9% lower luminance than the previous gen WOLED, and around 14% lower luminance than the RGWB Tandem WOLED. That’s to be expected, we knew there’d be a hit to brightness with the removal of the white sub-pixel but it’s not too drastic. You can see a difference in side by side real-world comparisons too.

Interestingly the QD-OLED panel offers very comparable brightness to the Tandem WOLED (RGWB version) in most scenes, a strong performance from the latest QD-OLED panel.

Colour brightness and volumePhoto from Computex 2026

We can also examine colours in HDR mode where we need to look beyond just the standard 2D chromaticity measurements and typical CIE colour space diagrams, and one way to do this is to consider colour volume and perceived colour brightness in different scenes. In HDR the colour performance across the whole range of luminance is very important, and the range of reproducible colours at different luminance levels needs to be considered. This is where the concept of colour volume comes from. Basically the higher the volume the better.

The impact of the white sub-pixel on colour volume

We’ve explored this topic at length in the past, but without making it super complicated here, we should say that on WOLED technology panels where a white sub-pixel has been added to the panel design alongside the usual red, green and blue sub-pixels, this is used to help increase overall panel brightness, but it can impact the saturation of colours, their vividness, and ultimately the colour volume in certain scenes.

To put it simply, in dark overall scenes with a low APL, where the screen pushes up to the maximum overall brightness levels, the white sub-pixel comes in to play more to help reach the peak brightness capabilities, and this can cause some washout of colours and lead to what is sometimes referred to as “volumetric collapse”. In brighter overall scenes with a higher APL you don’t need the white sub-pixel as much or sometimes maybe not at all, as the red, green and blue sub-pixels can reach high enough luminance on their own and colour volume is better.

In practice what this usually results in is bright colour highlights in mostly darker scenes end up looking less colourful and saturated and often less bright than on competing technologies such as QD-OLED panels, where a white sub-pixel is not used at all. Think red brake lights on a car at night, fireworks on a night sky, or neon lights in a dark city scene for example.

RGB-stripe panel brings colour volume improvements

The reason for talking about this is that the new RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED panel promises improvements in colour luminance and colour volume for HDR, and Asus advertise a 27% improvement in colour volume on their product page. Having spoken to Asus we confirmed that this is relative to a previous gen WOLED panel as used in their XG27AQDMG Gen 2 which we reviewed quite recently as well.

Note that they also promote a 25% improvement in colour volume when moving from the previous gen WOLED panel to the Tandem WOLED panel used for the XG32UQWMS (with RGWB sub-pixel layout), and so this suggests there is only a small incremental improvement with the shift to RGB-stripe. It’s not another 27% improvement on top of the Tandem WOLED panel according to their specs.

Colour volume measurement challenges

The challenge with colour volume measurements is that there’s no agreed industry standard approach for this, with varying competing philosophies and testing approaches and ongoing debate about how this should be defined.

We confirmed with Asus that the “27% larger colour volume” spec comes from LG Display and based on a specific colour volume framework defined by Dolby which we are working through a bit more so we can provide the most appropriate and relevant results. We’ll look to add those results in to this review in the near future once we’ve confirmed a few points.

In the meantime we are going to use another commonly recommended method to give a more complete evaluation, using a new data presentation approach called Gamut Rings, which itself has been adopted by the IEC, ICDM and CIE in 2021, although there may still be questions about standardised measurement and reporting conditions for its application to HDR displays.

We measured the colour volume of both the old and the new model in a couple of scenarios, one in dark scenes with a 1.5% APL and the other in bright scenes with a 25% APL. Note that we’ve refined our testing approach here to use a more consistent APL test for both cases.

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CIE l*a*b* colour volume measurements – Gamut rings

This is based on a commonly accepted approach which is CIE l*a*b* where colours are measured relative to the peak white luminance of the display, along with a more recently introduced presentation approach called gamut rings which helps present the data in a more visually useful way for interpretation and comparison using a 2D diagram. This gets around challenges with previous 3D diagram presentation very nicely and at least makes presenting and comparing the measurements a lot simpler. Shout out to Masaoka-san for the creation and development of gamut rings.

In terms of interpreting the gamut rings, and again keeping this as simple as possible, the more coloured in the rings are, and the less grey areas there are, the higher the colour volume is. We can view these gamut rings relative to different colour spaces when the data is measured, but we’ve provided them here relative to BT.2020 again, and we’ll list the peak white luminance measurement too as calculations are always relative to that. The diagrams can be compared along with the volume % calculations shown next to each.

• In dark low APL scenes the colour volume has improved compared with previous gen WOLED, from 31% coverage of BT.2020 to 69%, a relative improvement of 125% compared with the old panel! Colour volume is now very close to a QD-OLED panel which you would expect given the removal of the white sub-pixel.

• In brighter high APL scenes the colour volume has increased from 47% BT.2020 to 70%, a relative improvement of 47% even in these scenes.

Colour volume considerations

The new RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED panel is certainly capable of offering higher colour volume across a wider range of colours, and along with the removal of the white sub-pixel this results in significantly improved colour volume measurements. We do need to be a bit careful about considering colour volume in isolation, as on their own these figures might imply there’s drastic differences between the RGWB panels and the RGB panels.

We think it’s most useful to use colour volume to compare between like for like panels, so it provides a fairer view comparing the two RGWB panels to one another, or comparing the two RGB panels to one another. When you start mixing the two, it becomes a little more complicated and “murky”.

Let’s explore that further in the following section.

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XCR colour brightness

Alongside the colour volume measurements we can also include measurements for XCR colour brightness, a topic explored in our detailed article here. As a brief explanation about these measurements this section includes:

1. A scale and score based on perceived ‘brightness’ of the display instead of a raw ‘luminance’ measurement. This uses the XCR model developed by Samsung Display and accounts for both the luminance of the colours but also the colourfulness which is impacted by the colour gamut. XCR and its importance is explained in a lot more detail in our article.
2. The scores are now directly related to how you would perceive and feel the brightness of the display. Where a score is twice as high as another score, it means it should appear approximately twice as bright. You can’t treat luminance measurements in the same way as our article explains.
3. We will include measurements and brightness scores for colours, not just for white. More important for real-world HDR experience and content.
4. Evaluation of the performance and brightness of these colours as the APL changes, including for “peak brightness” capabilities at the smallest APL. This shows where colours remain bright as well as just white measurements, or where you can sometimes get washout issues, or colours which cannot reach as bright as you might expect.

1% APL colour brightness measurements

It’s interesting to first of all measure the colour brightness (XCR score) for each screen for low APL scenes, those being very dark scenes with bright highlights. White brightness is included too, but it’s really the colour brightness we’re interested in here. Remember, these XCR scores are a combination of luminance measurements and colour gamut, representing a perceived brightness score for better comparison.

You can see there’s improvements in colour brightness with the shift from a previous gen WOLED panel to Tandem WOLED (RGWB version), but even further improvements with the RGB stripe version of the Tandem WOLED panel used for the PG32UCWM. White is brighter on the RGWB version because of the extra white-sub pixel, and that screen has a 1500 nits peak white luminance spec, compared with the 1000 nits of the RGB-stripe version.

Note that the PG32UCWM colour brightness measurements are also a little higher than the QD-OLED monitor used for comparison (the latest 32″ 4K QD-OLED PG32UCDM3 from Asus).

In practice what this means is that in very dark, low APL scenes, the two RGB structure panels offer brighter and more vivid colours, without the washout caused by the white sub-pixel on the RGWB panels. It’s only really evident in those kind of scenes with bright colour highlights like neon lights at night, car brake lights in the dark etc.

50% APL colour brightness measurements

In brighter HDR scenes (50% APL) the results are much closer for colour brightness. Previous gen WOLED and the new RGB stripe Tandem WOLED are very similar in these scenes for colour brightness. There are some improvements going to the RGWB Tandem WOLED panel though. Not drastic, but noticeable in side by size. That Tandem WOLED panel and the QD-OLED panel look pretty similar to one another in these scenes for colours and overall brightness.

Colour brightness comparisons across multiple different scenes

If we compare the average colour brightness across a range of scenes you can see that the PG32UCWM offers very similar colour brightness to the previous gen WOLED panel in the vast majority of scenes. It’s only in the very darkest scenes with bright colour highlights where the RGB stripe panel offers a noticeable improvement and more vivid colours.

Compared with other RGWB Tandem WOLED panel, it’s also a little better in the darkest low APL scenes, but it’s a little closer. In other scenes the RGWB Tandem WOLED panel is overall brighter.

Photo from Computex 2026Dolby Vision HDR

A quick note on Dolby Vision support as well. It’s very difficult to properly measure this mode since the necessary HDMI tunnelling for DV pattern generators is not supported on OLED monitors for some reason. It seems that each of the 3 Dolby Vision modes (Dark, Bright and Gaming) are locked with brightness set to 70 in the menu, and no setting to adjust this and so peak brightness only reaches ~470 nits as with the other modes we tested earlier. There doesn’t appear to be a mode which pushes up to 1000 nits peak for DV.

The tone mapping should be dynamic based on the DV content, and we’d expect similar behaviour to what we saw with HDR 10 mode in terms of how this is handled with nice accuracy given the lower absolute brightness. Greyscale, RGB balance and colours should remain consistent too.

You can switch to DV mode via the menu when you might need it. Dolby Vision HDR support and content from a PC is very limited and complicated to get working, so you’d almost certainly stick with the HDR10 mode for PC connections. If you’re connecting an external device like an Xbox Series X, or perhaps a streaming media device of some sort, those can support Dolby Vision more readily, so you can switch to that mode here if you want to use it.

EOTF and greyscale measurements

Most people will probably want to use one of the Gaming/Cinema/Console modes at their maximum brightness setting, to reach the brightest overall HDR experience. They’re all pretty similar from what we can tell and we’ve compared the EOTF tracking in detail already.

We should also consider the greyscale which shows a good overall RGB balance and a colour temp which is only slightly too cool by about 3%, but very close to the D65 / 6500K target.

Shadow detail was moderate at the native 240Hz refresh rate with the first visible greyscale shade being RGB 5. As with other WOLED panels we’ve tested in the past, the gamma varies depending on the refresh rate and so you get variations in shadow detail for different fixed refresh rates, and during VRR situations too. Shadow detail improves a bit (RGB 3) for 60Hz devices for example.

HDR colour accuracy

The colour gamut in HDR mode seems to be clamped back slightly compared with SDR mode, but it was very close and we had a good match to the DCI-P3 colour space used for a lot of HDR content. Colour accuracy was very good overall with dE 0.7 average, if we ignore the 100% primaries from Rec.2020 which this panel cannot reach.

Gaming

The PG32UCWM is well-suited to gaming thanks to its OLED panel, high resolution and high refresh rate. Powering 4K at up to 240 fps will be a challenge for many systems, so keep that in mind when considering any monitor of this spec. The OLED panel is also well-suited to HDR gaming thanks to its excellent hardware capabilities and amazing contrast.

Refresh Rate

(at native resolution)	Refresh Rate
Maximum Refresh Rate DisplayPort	240Hz native 4K 480Hz dual-mode 1080p
Maximum Refresh Rate USB type-C	240Hz native 4K 480Hz dual-mode 1080p
Maximum Refresh Rate HDMI	240Hz native 4K 480Hz dual-mode 1080p
VRR range	48 – 240Hz / 480Hz
AMD FreeSync certification	FreeSync Premium Pro
NVIDIA ‘G-sync Compatible’ certified	Pending
VESA ‘AdaptiveSync’ certification
ClearMR certification tier

The screen has a native 240Hz refresh rate which is supported by adaptive-sync for Variable Refresh Rates (VRR) from compatible systems. At the time of testing, certification under the NVIDIA ‘G-sync Compatible’ scheme is still pending, but it has already passed the AMD ‘FreeSync Premium Pro’ and VESA AdaptiveSync certification schemes.

Dual-mode support

The dual-mode function (called ‘frame-rate boost’ by Asus) is an interesting option that some people may enjoy, allowing you to drop your resolution down to 1080p (1920 x 1080) in order to double your refresh rate up to 480Hz. This setting allows you to quickly and easily switch between different settings to suit different game genres. So, you can prioritise resolution and image detail for graphically impressive and slower games like RTS etc, or prioritise speed, frame rates and motion clarity for faster, competitive FPS games for example.

It’s a pretty decent feature we think that some people will find useful, and something that sets these WOLED panels apart from the QD-OLED alternatives, which don’t have a dual-mode function available. We’ll look at the motion clarity performance for this mode more in a moment.

Macro photo suggesting integer scaling in dual-mode operation, but it’s not quite

Correction: originally when we published this review we has said that the 1080p dual-mode operated with perfect integer scaling, as shown in the microscope photo above from a single black pixel – 1 image pixel covering exactly 4 panel pixels. However, thanks to some feedback from readers, we’ve identified that actually this isn’t quite operating with integer scaling, and further testing approaches have revealed this. Our apologies for any confusion here, it’s the first time the above test hasn’t really obviously shown non-integer scaling, and we’d mis-interpreted it. We’ve incorporated some more detailed tests in to our methodology for future monitors to avoid any confusion.

However, we can’t help feel like this focus on integer scaling from some sources might be chasing something here that’s actually not ideal or optimal for visual performance. It sounds in principle like it would be better, but we’re not convinced it is.

If we use full GPU-driven integer scaling and run tests at 1080p (including verification via the more advanced test patterns that integer scaling is being used), we don’t think the image looks better – in fact we think it looks quite a lot worse. Text becomes really jagged and looks a lot less clear and crisp. A little smoothing and blurring we think is probably preferred here. Obviously you don’t want loads or blur or softening unnecessarily, and most of the time the determining factor is really just how low the dual-mode resolution is anyway relative to the screen size, but running in pixel perfect, 100% accurate integer scaling we don’t think looks better. You may disagree, but that’s our take on it right now.

Gaming Features

	Other Features
OLED VRR Anti flicker
Black Frame Insertion (BFI)
Dual-mode support	1080p @ 480Hz
Gaming extras	FPS counter Crosshair Sniper Timer Stopwatch Display Alignment Shadow Boost
Emulated gaming sizes	24.5″ and 27″ emulation modes Square – full, equivalent, pixel by pixel modes

Smart Pixel upscaling

Notably Asus have added a new “Smart Pixel” feature in the menu which offers 4K upscaling for lower resolution games and inputs. This has 3 levels available and seems to apply a sharpening filter to the image, working quite nicely for lower resolution modes and inputs to sharpen the image. This works in 1080p dual-mode and for external consoles and other devices well, and provides some nice visual improvements.

Response Times

As discussed in our detailed article about Response Time Testing – Pitfalls, Improvements and Updating Our Methodology we are using an improved and more accurate method for capturing G2G response times and overshoot, based on figures that are more reflective to what you see visually on the screen in real-World usage. Our article linked above talks through why this is better and how we arrived at this improved method in much more detail.

The above G2G response times are consistent at all refresh rates, including 240Hz, 120Hz and 60Hz, when using the dual-mode 480Hz mode, and during VRR situations with changing frame rates. Thanks to the OLED panel the response times are super-fast and near-instant. All transitions can keep up easily with the frame rate demands of even the 480Hz mode.

Quite unusually for an OLED panel we did measure a bit of moderate overshoot on transitions from black to grey. We’ve seen a few OLED screens do this in the past, but in practice it wasn’t visible at all, so overall there was nice and clean pixel transition times.

Motion Clarity

We captured some pursuit camera photos of the screen at it’s native 240Hz refresh rate, as well as when using the dual-mode function at 480Hz. These can be compared it against other modern OLED panels with other refresh rates supported. These photos are designed to capture real-world perceived motion clarity and gives you a good indication of how the screen looks in real use, beyond G2G response time measurements.

At its native 240Hz refresh rate the screen offers the exact same excellent motion clarity as other 240Hz OLED monitors. Asus provide a dual mode function which allows you to double your refresh rate to 480Hz which improves motion clarity and other gaming performance metrics nicely, but comes at the cost of resolution.

You have to drop down to 1080p which doesn’t look great on a 32” sized screen, but is probably ok for a lot of faster, lower resolution gaming situations still if you need it. We prefer more modern dual mode options like the 27” 5K monitors which run at a more reasonable 1440p in dual mode. The drop from 4K to 1080p on a large 32” screen is quite drastic. However, you get not only improvements in motion clarity but also improved frame rates, reduced stroboscopic effect, and improved system latency too.

If we consider faster gaming scroll speeds then this is where you can start to see the differences between 240Hz and the higher refresh rates more clearly and so there are certainly benefits for competitive gaming situations using the 480Hz dual mode.

VRR Flicker

All OLED monitors can show flicker and gamma fluctuations in VRR situations and this is something we studied and tested in detail in our article here. Asus have included their OLED Anti-flicker feature on this screen to give you a mode that will hopefully help reduce flicker, should you experience any in your usage. Remember that just because a screen can show flicker, doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily experience it during your usage and from your system. Please see our detailed article for loads more information about this issue on OLED monitors.

In native 240Hz mode the VRR flicker was overall very good we thought. It’s moderate/high in very dark scenes but low in other situations which was good. Being a WOLED panel the flicker is caused by the variable gamma which changes as refresh rate varies, and so the trick with WOLED panels is to try and keep frame rates as consistent as possible, regardless of what frame rate you achieve.

If you enabled Anti-flicker it shortens the VRR range a bit from 48Hz minimum to 145Hz minimum, below that is a small “dead zone” where it’s turned off and then LFC is used for <120Hz. This reduced VRR range reduces the potential max severity of the flicker a little bit for large frame rate swings and improves the already good performance as a result.

In dual-mode there is a much wider VRR range in play and so the gamma varies more significantly with anti-flicker disabled, being more pronounced in darker scenes, leading to more potential flicker. Again it depends how variable your frame rate is, these are the most extreme scenarios tested here and it won’t be as bad is your frame rates are more consistent. The anti-flicker setting reduced the total VRR range a bit, but still leaves you with a wide active range for gaming and there’s still some fairly pronounced gamma shift in extreme frame rate swings, leading to dark scene flicker.

Lag

Read our detailed article about input lag and the various measurement techniques which are used to evaluate this aspect of a display. The screens tested are split into two measurements which are based on our overall display lag tests and half the average G2G response time, as measured by our oscilloscope. The response time element, part of the lag you can see, is split from the overall display lag and shown on the graph as the green bar. From there, the signal processing (red bar) can be provided as a good estimation of the lag you would feel from the display. We also classify each display as follows:

Lag Classification (updated)

• Class 1) Less than 4.17ms – the equivalent to 1 frame lag of a display at 240Hz refresh rate – should be fine for gamers, even at high levels
• Class 2) A lag of 4.17 – 8.33ms – the equivalent of one to two frames at a 240Hz refresh rate – moderate lag but should be fine for many gamers. Caution advised for serious gaming
• Class 3) A lag of more than 8.33ms – the equivalent of more than 2 frames at a refresh rate of 240Hz, or 1 frame at 120Hz – Some noticeable lag in daily usage, not suitable for high end gaming

There is an extremely low lag measured at 1.0 ms total display lag, and leaving us with basically no signal processing lag. This was also the same at 480Hz dual mode and equally remained very good for a fixed 60Hz input at only ~1.8ms, a decent improvement over many monitors. We couldn’t seem to get our lag testing setup working for 120Hz ELMB measurements annoyingly, but we’d expect a few milliseconds of lag penalty when using that mode like on other Asus OLED’s we’ve tested.

ELMB / BFI Mode

Like other recent Asus OLED monitors, the PG32UCWM has an added BFI (Black Frame Insertion) mode for blur reduction. Asus call this ELMB (Extreme Low Motion Blur) and it’s the alternative to a strobing motion blur reduction backlight you might find on some LCD monitors. Rather than the backlight being strobed off and on rapidly (because there is no backlight on an OLED panel), a black frame is inserted periodically in to the image instead. This is a useful feature to boost the motion clarity in gaming if you can’t power the full 240Hz properly.

ELMB activation and operationELMB operating at 120Hz, with a black frame every 8.33ms
horizontal scale = 5ms

ELMB is available when using a fixed 120Hz refresh rate only on this screen, with the panel operating at its native 240Hz behind the scenes and a black frame being inserted every 120Hz. There’s no support for any other refresh rates and you can’t use this function at the same time as VRR, or in HDR mode unfortunately. We’d like to see HDR support added in the future as some competing brands offer that.

It’s a bit clunky to operate still as you have to first disable VRR in the menu (and Uniform Brightness mode if you were using that), switch your refresh rate in Windows to 120Hz, and then enable ELMB in the menu. Then you’d have to reverse those steps if you want to return to normal 240Hz VRR operation.

Motion Blur Reduction Mode
Motion Blur Reduction mode / BFI
Refresh rates supported	120Hz (in native mode) 240Hz (in dual-mode)
60Hz single strobe operation
Blur reduction available with G-sync/FreeSync VRR
Available in SDR mode
Available in HDR mode
Viable with games consoles
Brightness capability (SDR, max refresh rate supported)
Independent brightness level
Brightness adjustable
Maximum luminance (nits)	239

ELMB Performance

On this screen the luminance can be adjusted up to 239 nits which is very good for an OLED panel, and very close to the XG32UQWMS which also has a Tandem WOLED panel, but with the added white sub-pixel included. This does operate with a dynamic brightness and ABL dimming (not uniform brightness) though, and so the brightness drops depending on your content – down to 132 nits for full screen white for example. The brightness setting is remembered independently between the on and off modes which is useful, and you can adjust brightness if you want to lower it at all.

Above is the perceived motion clarity of the screen at 120, 240 and 480Hz when running in normal mode, and then also at 120 and 240Hz with ELMB enabled. You can see that the motion clarity looks the same at 120Hz with ELMB as it does at 240Hz with the mode turned off. Likewise it looks the same with 240Hz ELMB as at 480Hz native. This is to be expected given the 50:50 duty cycle of the BFI function.

Motion Clarity Equivalence
120Hz ELMB = 240Hz regular

This clarity is the same across the entire screen though thanks to the super-fast response times of the OLED panel, you don’t need to worry about which area of the screen is the cleanest and clearest, like you do on an LCD screen with a strobing blur reduction backlight.

The great thing about ELMB mode is that it can be a short-cut to improved motion clarity. For instance if your system is only powerful enough to run 4K at 120Hz, you could turn ELMB on and get a boost to 240Hz-like motion clarity for free. Same thing if the device you’re gaming on can only support 120Hz maximum, like on a modern games console for example. If you’re using dual-mode and playing at 1080p resolution, you can also short cut your way to 480Hz-like motion clarity, even if you can only power up to 240Hz. It’s a potentially very useful feature and it’s great to see it offered. A few improvements to the operation and settings would be welcome though.

Console Gaming

The screen has a native 3840 x 2160 “4K” resolution, allowing for excellent support of modern games console features and capabilities. The OLED panel is well-equipped to handle HDR gaming as well.

	Console Gaming
Native panel resolution	3840 x 2160 “4K”
Maximum resolution and refresh rate supported	4K @ 120Hz
4K at 24Hz support
4K at 50Hz support
HDMI connection version	2.1
HDMI-CEC auto switch
VRR (variable refresh rates)
Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM)
HDR10 support
Dolby Vision HDR support
Blur reduction mode available
Integrated speakers
Headphone connection
Ultra high speed HDMI 2.1 cable provided

There was excellent console support from this screen. 4K 120Hz works fine along with support for features like VRR and 4K 24Hz / 50Hz content (for stutter-free movie playback). You can use the ELMB function at 120Hz which is potentially useful for boosting motion clarity in gaming to 240Hz-like levels, which we will discuss ed in the previous section. This model can support both HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR formats and it should auto detect the relevant input source from a console.

Note that there are no integrated speakers on this model unlike some competing screens, and so you’ll need to connect headphones or some kind of external soundbar/speaker system when using a console. That’s one potential gap for the PG32UCWM if you’re looking to play console games or connect other external devices but that’s pretty much the only thing missing.

Conclusion

There’s a massive amount of information to take in here we know, so we will try and summarise the key areas as best we can.

The PG32UCWM is another excellent OLED monitor from Asus and offers a range of changes and updates that make this a unique offering right now. The headline is the use of the new RGB stripe Tandem WOLED panel, the first time we’ve tested this in the monitor space. It has some positives, but also some drawbacks to keep in mind. The main benefit is the perfect text quality, eliminating any remaining fringing or text clarity problems that the 32″ 4K WOLED panels might have. We think this was already very good on the RGWB panels, but it is improved here and for those concerns or especially sensitive, it will be very welcome. Looking at it from this point of view it’s finally a 32″ OLED panel which could be considered fully suitable for office and productivity work. Obviously consideration is still needed around burn-in risks though.

Colour volume in HDR and the brightness of colours in very dark scenes is also improved with the removal of the white sub-pixel, and the panel behaves more like a QD-OLED panel in that regard now. Grey banding issues have also improved here, seemingly related to the removal of the white sub-pixel. Some general benefits of the Tandem WOLED technology also carry over, including the improved black depth and ambient light handling.

However, removing the white sub-pixel does have some drawbacks. The Tandem WOLED panel structure helps it retain brightness to a degree, but it’s a bit darker in SDR and HDR then the previous gen panel. The RGWB version of the Tandem WOLED panel, and the latest QD-OLED offerings, can get brighter still. HDR performance is very good though with a peak mode that maintains the brightness of the True Black mode, while being able to push up to the higher peak brightness without excessive panel dimming which is great news.

Power consumption is also quite a lot higher, and there are some open questions around panel lifespan and longevity now that the white sub-pixel isn’t there to take some of the strain. Colour gamut isn’t quite as wide as the other Tandem WOLED panels, but still improved compared with earlier gen WOLED. Viewing angles also seem to be a little worse, but realistically that’s not a problem for the vast majority of uses we don’t think.

Beyond the panel changes the screen packs the usual extensive set of features, connections and extras. 32″ 4K 240Hz remains a really impressive panel spec, motion clarity is great, dual-mode may be useful to some gamers, input lag is super low etc. The TrueBlack glossy coating looks great (in the right lighting conditions), there’s a massive range of extras and OLED Care features and even the new GaN power supply is a welcome update.

Should you choose this model or the XG32UQWMS with the RGW stripe version of the Tandem WOLED panel? Really we think this can be answered depending on a few considerations. The XG32 has a more simplistic design and a smaller feature set, and will have a lower price point as well. The key omissions are the USB-C port and KVM switch function do decide if you need either of those. The XG gets brighter for SDR and HDR if you favour that, but isn’t quite as sharp and clear for text work as the RGB stripe panel. The white sub-pixel inclusion helps with brightness, but there’s some washout of colours in very dark HDR scenes, but to be honest the overall HDR experience felt more punchy on that screen than the PG32. Power consumption is lower and lifespan is probably better, but the uniformity and banding artefacts may be worse. It depends on your priorities overall. We will try and provide a more thorough comparison of the key Asus 32″ models at some point soon as well if you’re still undecided.

The PG32UCWM is available to pre-order in the UK now at ~£1,100 GBP and the global retail price is listed as $1,299 USD, although we’ve not yet seen it to buy in North America. You can keep an eye on pricing and availability for your region using our affiliate link above.

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