KTC M27P6 Mini-LED Gaming Monitor Review

We’re each searching for the champion bang for our buck, but uncovering it successful a gaming show tin beryllium a challenge. There are much options than ever, and aggregate options for immoderate acceptable of specs you could name. But with its ultra-bright mini-LED panel, full-array section dimming, and dual 4K/1080p resolutions, the KTC M27P6 sets itself isolated arsenic a show you need to cognize astir if you’re buying this year. At astir $500, it’s not the cheapest, but it whitethorn conscionable beryllium the champion worth gaming show you tin bargain close now.

KTC M27P6 – Design and Features

Before diving into the M27P6, a small inheritance connected KTC is successful order. If you’re similar me, you’ve astir apt seen KTC successful Amazon listings alongside different brands, similar InnoCn and Sansui. But, contempt the information that it doesn’t yet person the sanction designation of larger brands, KTC has been operating successful the inheritance for astir 3 decades. In fact, you whitethorn person utilized 1 of its panels already without knowing it, arsenic the institution is the archetypal instrumentality shaper (OEM) for a fig of ample brands, including household names similar ViewSonic.

That’s worthy highlighting due to the fact that you don’t typically deliberation “top-tier quality” erstwhile these listings amusement up. But from unboxing onward, the M27P6 shows itself to beryllium an awesome enactment that surpasses expectations astatine each turn. From physique prime to brightness, colour accuracy to contrast, it challenges immoderate of the champion monitors I’ve tested – including astatine slightest 1 that tips the scales supra $1,000. Few radical would see $450 to $500 a “budget” monitor, but with everything it offers and what you would typically pay, it stands retired arsenic 1 of the champion values truthful acold this year.

With that benignant of savings, you would typically expect to spot chopped corners and unsmooth edges. But from unboxing onward, the M27P6 exceeds expectations. One of the astir predominant areas brands skimp connected to little costs is the basal and the chassis that houses the monitor. That’s decidedly not the lawsuit here. The limb of the basal is made of integrative but holds its spot good and comes with the aforesaid scope of ergonomic adjustments you could expect from a flagship gaming monitor.

In practice, that means you're not sacrificing thing for its comparatively little cost. It comes with 5 inches of tallness adjustment, 45° of swivel, -5° to +20° of tilt, and tin beryllium rotated into representation predisposition to enactment arsenic a 2nd monitor. Stylistically, its achromatic colour and contoured plan reminds maine a batch of Alienware’s monitors. Instead of the accustomed tripod base, it uses a ample level sheet that, portion it does instrumentality up further table space, is slim and debased illustration capable that it's casual to enactment conscionable astir thing connected apical of it. So it doesn't meaningfully bounds thing with this design. It looks bully and doesn’t hint astatine each toward the monitor’s affordability.

Another country that tends to beryllium scaled backmost is connectivity, but again, KTC goes the other direction. The show comes with 2 HDMI 2.1 ports, 1 DisplayPort 1.4, a USB Type-C that supports some video and up to 65 watts of powerfulness transportation and adjacent includes an integrated USB hub with 2 USB 3.0 Type-A ports for peripherals, a Type-B to link backmost to your PC, and a headphone jack. The show besides has KVM functionality to rapidly swap peripherals betwixt 2 systems, specified arsenic a PC and console.

KTC has utilized a “fast IPS” sheet here, backed by a mini-LED backlight with 1,152-zone afloat array section dimming (FALD). OLED monitors person captured astir of the spotlight implicit the past mates years, but mini-LED is decidedly connected the emergence arsenic it becomes much affordable and higher prime implicit time. The M27P6 is an particularly bully illustration of this, arsenic it’s incredibly bright, offers fantabulous opposition with minimal blooming, and fantastic colors that look particularly vibrant acknowledgment to its quantum dot enhancement layer. For HDR gaming and movies, it truly doesn't get overmuch amended astatine this terms point, which makes the M27P6 particularly appealing.

Frankly, for the outgo of entry, the specs connected this show are much than a small impressive. KTC rates it arsenic offering a emblematic brightness of 1,400cd/m² successful HDR mode. Though arsenic I'll sermon successful the show section, it really exceeds that by a important borderline successful highest brightness. It's rated to screen 98% of the DCI-P3 colour space, 100% of sRGB, and 97% of Adobe RGB. In addition, it comes with 1 of the tightest mill calibrations I've encountered successful an out-of-the-box show careless of price.

As if that weren't enough, it's besides a dual-mode monitor, which means it tin tally astatine either 4K oregon 1080p solution astatine precocious refresh rates. In its 4K mode, it's capable to scope 160 Hz. When acceptable to 1080p, however, this jumps to 320 Hz. This tin beryllium highly utile if you play a assortment of games that span from single-player oregon slower-paced multiplayer titles to competitory shooters similar CS:GO. For astir gamers, 160 Hz is going to beryllium much than capable and allows the show to execute a precise creaseless framework complaint with bully responsiveness. For esports, 320 Hz each but eliminates question blur and maximizes responsiveness.

The show lacks immoderate authoritative certifications for AMD FreeSync oregon Nvidia G-Sync, but it works good with both. I chiefly usage the show with my Nvidia RTX 5090 but besides tested it with an AMD gaming laptop and didn’t observe immoderate glitches oregon inconsistencies connected either system.

If there's 1 country that does consciousness tally of the mill, it's the M27P6's OSD. It offers your accustomed scope of brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness settings, arsenic good arsenic a scope of antithetic representation presets for antithetic contented types. But its gaming options are reasonably limited. You person your modular on-screen reticle and shadiness equalizer. But, isolated from that, determination isn't precise much.

There are a mates of unexpected surprises, however. For example, adjacent though the show is DisplayHDR 1400 certified, it includes a DisplayHDR 600 mode. I was puzzled by this astatine first, but fixed however agleam the show tin get, it made consciousness the longer I utilized it. If you’re gaming successful a darker room, unclamping its highest brightness tin origin highlights to beryllium astir eye-searing astatine times.

I was besides pleased to spot that its section dimming tin beryllium turned connected successful SDR mode. While not everyone enjoys FALD successful SDR, I recovered that adjacent mounting it to Low resulted successful overmuch higher opposition for deep, astir OLED-like blacks. Standard and precocious effect successful sizable drops successful brightness successful SDR, but erstwhile near to low, blooming is hardly visible, truthful it’s worthy leaving connected each the time, successful my opinion.

Another precocious constituent of its configuration options is that everything tin beryllium controlled with software. While navigating its OSD with the joystick isn’t particularly cumbersome, the enactment to usage bundle and delegate keyboard shortcuts is ever a invited addition.

KTC M27P6 – Performance

As the earlier conception astir apt made clear, I recovered the KTC M27P6 to beryllium exceptionally awesome for its price. It whitethorn lone beryllium “budget” erstwhile compared against flagship gaming monitors, but that’s precisely it: it does comparison with those displays, similar the BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX, portion costing fractional arsenic much.

Let’s statesman with the mini-LED show and its backlight. I tested the show utilizing my Datacolor SpyderPro colorimeter. In SDR, I measured a highest brightness of 707 nits. In HDR mode, however, that jumped up to a highest brightness of 1,612 nits successful a 100% achromatic window. Decreasing the size of the model to astir 75%, it deed 1,762 nits, which was the highest I recorded. It’s 1 of the uncommon cases successful PC tech wherever a merchandise is over-delivering connected its spec sheet.

Local dimming is worthy utilizing for HDR astatine a minimum, but similar I mentioned earlier, I deliberation it’s worthy leaving it connected each the clip for the champion picture. With section dimming disabled, the M27P6 performs similar immoderate different IPS show and has a opposition ratio of astir 1,000:1. Blacks look much similar acheronian grey. But with section dimming connected high, I recorded a highest opposition of 6,834:1, offering overmuch deeper shadows and a importantly wider dynamic range. It’s not arsenic bully arsenic OLED with its quality to power the brightness of idiosyncratic pixels, but it’s besides not susceptible to pain successful oregon melodramatic shifts successful brightness depending connected however overmuch achromatic is connected the screen.

Mini-LED has its ain well-known drawback, however: blooming. Even with 1,152 section dimming zones, each tiny backlight needs to illuminate a radical of pixels alternatively of individuals similar OLED. Because of this, mini-LED monitors tin origin airy objects successful acheronian scenes to person an quality of glowing oregon “blooming” with spilled light.

The M27P6 isn’t exempt from this, but it offers capable section dimming zones that the antagonistic effects connected representation prime are mitigated. In gaming and movies, it’s lone truly disposable successful utmost circumstances wherever a agleam entity appears connected a genuinely achromatic background. These moments are usually fleeting and, though you whitethorn request to get utilized to them, weren’t thing I personally recovered precise distracting.

There are times erstwhile it’s much noticeable, but it’s mostly extracurricular of gaming, specified arsenic erstwhile you’re moving the cursor connected a acheronian grey background. On Low, it’s hardly noticeable portion modular is somewhat much so. Even connected high, however, it’s genuinely not atrocious and is 1 of the amended implementations of a mini-LED and FALD I’ve seen successful a gaming monitor.

Brightness and opposition some impress, but wherever it truly got maine was its colour accuracy. I look for an mean accuracy of Delta E < 2, which is mostly considered acceptable for nonrecreational colour delicate work. For gaming and content, astir users won’t statesman to announcement thing appearing disconnected until that Delta E mean jumps to greater than 3 oregon 4.

In its autochthonal mode, which is enabled retired of the box, the M27P6 measured astatine an mean Delta E of 2.69. Given that accuracy is also usually 1 of the qualities near connected the cutting country level connected galore affordable gaming monitors, I see this a bully effect that astir radical volition find enjoyable without immoderate further adjustments. Setting the show to its dedicated sRGB mode, however, dropped this to Delta E < 1.71. Its DCI-P3 mode dropped it to < 1.64. These are great results for immoderate monitor, and are particularly bully erstwhile you see that the M27P6 is chiefly aimed astatine gamers.

Its responsiveness isn’t going to rival immoderate OLED, but it’s going to beryllium perfectly good successful either of its 2 modes for astir gamers. In the BlurBusters TestUFO ghosting test, astatine 4K, we don’t spot the aforesaid level of clarity arsenic an OLED and there’s a spot of smearing. The results are bully for an IPS display, however, and it’s accelerated capable that ghosting isn’t a interest successful real-world gaming. In its 1080p mode, it’s somewhat better, highlighting the interaction of its faster 320 Hz refresh rate.

The quality to swap modes decidedly adds worth to the M27P6, though I would emotion to spot a single-mode 4K offering with these aforesaid specs and a little terms successful the future. Changing to 1080p mode is done with a toggle successful the OSD and tin beryllium tied to a keyboard shortcut if you opt for the bundle instead. The nonaccomplishment successful crispness is expected, but due to the fact that it’s dropping from 4K to 1080p, the caller representation is forced to agelong one-fourth of the pixels crossed the aforesaid 27-inches. Swapping amounts to an A/B examination that’s akin to smearing the representation successful a bladed furniture of Vaseline.

It doesn’t look great, but if you’re a competitory player, having the enactment to measurement its show towards looks oregon responsiveness is simply a bully diagnostic to have. Since there’s not an equivalent exemplary with lone 4K, you’re stuck paying for this diagnostic adjacent if you ne'er program to usage it.

After spending respective weeks with the monitor, I person to accidental that I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I hadn’t tried a KTC show earlier the M27P6 and wasn’t definite what to expect. It exceeded my expectations successful astir each way. The representation prime is great, whether you’re getting enactment done oregon playing games. Whether you opt to permission section dimming connected extracurricular of games comes down to idiosyncratic taste, but with section dimming enabled, it gets successful the ballpark of modern OLED monitors, and that’s saying something.

It does autumn abbreviated successful opposition and dynamic range, but it’s not huge, and what you suffer successful achromatic levels is made up for successful brightness and resilience against pain in. It’s conscionable not a concern. The achromatic levels are besides much better than IPS oregon VA tin supply connected their own, truthful you’re inactive looking astatine a amended HDR acquisition than modular gaming monitors tin provide. And portion blooming is inactive present, the precocious dimming portion number reduces its interaction truthful that astir radical should beryllium capable to easy unrecorded with it erstwhile it’s disposable and hide astir it erstwhile it’s not.

Christopher Coke has been a regular contributor to IGN since 2019 and has been covering games and exertion since 2013. He has covered tech ranging from gaming controllers to graphics cards, gaming chairs and gaming monitors, headphones, IEMs, and much for sites specified arsenic MMORPG.com, Tom’s Hardware, Popular Science, USA Today’s Reviewed, and Popular Mechanics. Find Chris connected Twitter @gamebynight.