ViewSonic Elite XG320U – Review 2021

In the past two years, Fast IPS (FIPS) panels have taken over the premium gaming monitor segment, becoming the de facto choice in upscale releases like ViewSonic’s $999.99 Elite XG320U. It’s billed as a top-of-the-line 4K gaming panel for consoles thanks to the inclusion of HDMI 2.1 ports, but our time with the 32-inch, feature-filled Elite XG320U was as transcendent as it was frustrating, with superb color-testing results, but low standard brightness levels that left us running the monitor in HDR mode while gaming and watching content. If you prefer consuming your games or movies in HDR (whether from a gaming console or your desktop PC), you’ll find the XG320U one of the best 4K gaming monitors in its price range. If HDR isn’t in your plan, though, go with a better-rounded option, such as the $799 Gigabyte Aorus FI32Q, instead.

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Every Bell, All the Whistles

First, the base specs: The Elite XG320U is a 32-inch-diagonal monitor with a 3,840-by-2,160-pixel native resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate (overclockable to 150Hz), built around a LED-backed FIPS panel. It evolves its display tech up from some of the older VA-based models we’ve seen in the rarified 4K/144Hz space like the Acer Predator XB3, using more current display technologies that improve image quality and make gaming performance more responsive.

The monitor is mounted on the same base we’ve seen on several Elite models now, and it remains friendly for gamers who prefer to tilt their keyboard left or right for less traditional hand placements during intense esports play. Adjustability overall was average, with -5 to 20 degrees of vertical tilt, wide 178-degree viewing angles (both side-to-side and up-and-down), and a swivel range of -30 to 30 degrees.

The display cannot pivot 90 degrees between landscape and portrait modes. Pivoting the monitor means losing a lot of valuable horizontal screen real estate usually reserved for gaming or watching movies/TV shows, so unless you need your coding or Twitter windows to be really clear and crisp, consider a less expensive 1080p monitor to fill in on the side instead.

ViewSonic’s recently overhauled onscreen display (OSD) menu system is controlled by a five-way joystick in the center of the unit, next to the power button on the right and an input shortcut button on the left. The OSD offers the usual mixture of customization and tuning options for both gamers and content creators. These include a six-way color and saturation calibration toolset, as well as a host of gaming goods, though anyone who relies on a hardware-based crosshair to nail their precision shots should look elsewhere. (That feature is not supported here.)

This panel also has its share of “Didn’t know I needed that!” features. If you use a wired gaming mouse, oftentimes it can be tricky to keep the cord in place during frenetic play sessions. Much like we saw in the MSI Optix MPG341CQR, the ViewSonic Elite XG320U comes with two mouse bungees (one for either side) installed on the underside of the panel cabinet. You can hook up your mouse cord to a bungee, which will keep the cord set at a specific length to prevent it from tangling or getting caught on things.

Of the same theme is a headphone holder that pops out from the left side of the monitor housing. It’s these little added touches that continue to elevate ViewSonic’s Elite brand beyond the standard.

As for ports, there’s almost nothing left out, with the XG320U offering two HDMI 2.1 inputs, one DisplayPort 1.4b input, and one micro-USB port…

Also here are three USB 3.0 Type-A ports (plus one USB 3.0 Type-B upstream port for feeding the other USBs), and a 3.5mm headphone jack for use with the HDMI audio pass-through.

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Testing the ViewSonic Elite XG320U: Fast, Beautiful, and Accurate

As we mentioned earlier, this 4K display boasts a FIPS panel with a native peak refresh rate of 144Hz, and the monitor allows for an overclock of up to 150Hz. Rated for HDR 600, the XG320U supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. To start, we should mention that the numbers you see below are representative of a second Elite XG320U test unit we received from ViewSonic. The first one we got had some firmware issues, which resulted in flickering, OSD menu glitches, and black screens during certain gaming usage scenarios. The replacement unit exhibited none of this.

We put the XG320U through our standard gaming-monitor test regimen using a Datacolor SpyderX Elite colorimeter. Here’s what we recorded…

First up is a pass of two separate peak brightness tests; one run in SDR (standard brightness), and the second run in HDR (high dynamic range brightness). This test measures the peak white and black level of the monitor (and therefore, the contrast ratio), at four respective brightness levels: 0%, 25%, 50%, and 100%, set manually by us using the OSD during the run.

Testing the display in the default picture mode with an SDR signal, the Elite showed a peak brightness of just 215.9 nits (it’s rated for 400 nits) and a black level of 0.36 nit, which works out to a contrast ratio of just 600:1, well below its rated 1,000:1.

Hitting rated brightness targets has been a problem for several FIPS displays we’ve reviewed thus far, like the Corsair Xeneon 32QHD165 and the Gigabyte Aorus FI32Q, and it doesn’t look to be an easy solve if we’re to take the frequency of the issue up until now as an indication. FIPS panels have been promised as the best combination of all panel types, but there are still a few key areas in which a TN, VA, or standard IPS panel might be better suited to the job.

Once HDR testing kicked off, things returned to expectations, however, with the HDR 600-rated display hitting just above that brightness level, at 602.9 nits on our SpyderX Elite meter.

Things really got interesting for the monitor once we kicked off color gamut testing. Its 100% coverage of both the sRGB and Adobe RGB gamuts is more than good—it’s chart-toppingly great. Our DCI-P3 coverage result of 95% is also good news for content creators and content consumers alike.

Coming off those superb results, the ViewSonic Elite XG320U achieved an out-of-the-box Delta E (dE) reading of 1.14 in our color-accuracy testing. This is higher than we’ve seen in some leading options like the Corsair Xeneon 32QHD165 (a lower number is better with dE), but still excellent, and a figure that could be kicked down even further with some careful hand calibration.

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ViewSonic Elite XG320U: Media and Gaming Performance

And so, onward to video-playback and games testing. With our 4K Costa Rica test footage (output at 4K to match the monitor’s native resolution), the panel looked quite good for its rating. HDR 600 is just above the baseline of HDR 400, and in that tier the Elite fills its role with verve. Colors were vibrant and popped off the panel during our test footage run, and I also played a few movies through popular streaming services, which also looked quite good.

Next, I booted up Red Dead Redemption 2 with HDR turned alternately on and off to see how the monitor handled it. The HDR picture in games was just within expectations for an HDR 600 screen and looked just as good as the Costa Rica video, while SDR performance was expectedly under the norm, given our so-so brightness results above. Colors were more washed-out than we would have liked without the necessary contrast ratios required to make them pop.

For testing traditional input lag (the amount of time between when a monitor receives a signal and when the screen updates), we use an HDFury 4K Diva HDMI matrix. Given a 60Hz test signal, the Elite joins a growing list of displays we’ve tested lately that return results below 1 millisecond, and our detector can’t measure exactly how far below. But that’s a good showing.

To see how that low input lag felt in action, I tried a few rounds of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valorant, and Overwatch. In each of these, the ViewSonic felt snappier than any 4K monitor I’ve played on yet. The “4K” is a caveat of its own, though. Though the most competitive esports hounds will keep their resolution low (which is to say, decidedly not 4K) to play at the highest tiers of speed, personally I didn’t mind playing a game of CS:GO at 4K resolution (especially on a GPU that can sustain at least 150fps in 4K). Playing at 4K may seem a little self-defeating, at first, but competitive players may not want to completely dismiss this ultra-quick 4K display out of hand. Thanks to FreeSync Premium Pro (we test-played the panel with a Radeon RX 6800 XT card in our testbed), there was very little screen tearing, and the low input lag added up to a high-performance experience throughout.

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A Nearly Stellar 4K Gaming Display

After a series of Editors’ Choice award wins in its growing family of Elite gaming monitors, ViewSonic adds another strong effort in the XG320U. It falls just short of the medal round, though. The low default SDR brightness levels, combined with some troubles testing the first unit we received, take a bit of the score off what is otherwise a top-notch gaming and content-watching experience in HDR.

When the ViewSonic works as it should (read: hits its HDR brightness targets), it’s a fantastic new entry into the growing line of capable 4K gaming monitors that push refresh rates to levels that exceed the needs of the most popular gaming consoles. For console owners, the monitor slots in perfectly as a 4K/120Hz option alongside segment slayers like the LG CX OLED series of high-refresh 4K TVs. However due to the low brightness result we saw in SDR testing, you may find yourself wanting to use the XG320U in HDR-enabled mode only, which could lead to eyestrain over time.

Even though trying to find a graphics card that can power a PC at anything above 60fps in 4K resolution feels like a bit of a fool’s errand these days, if you’ve got the GPU or gaming console to back it up, the ViewSonic Elite XG320U is a powerful and capable (if underwhelming in SDR) entry into the world of high-speed 4K gaming displays.