It takes a lot of effort to stand out from the crowd in the saturated land of QD-OLED gaming monitors, but Alienware has done it with the AW2527HX. With a comparatively small 24.5in diagonal and 1920×1080 resolution, it’s already quite a different beast from commonplace 27in 2560×1440 screens, but it has plenty of other weapons in its arsenal too.
Built in close collaboration with the esports afficionados at Team Liquid, a lot of its features specifically target professional FPS players. Let’s start with that QD-OLED panel, which is a real rarity in an esports monitor. For decades, buying a screen that can properly display fast action without ghosting has typically meant going with a panel based on ageing twisted nematic (TN) tech.
These screens are fantastic for gaming, as they’re so amazingly responsive, but they also have poor viewing angles compared to IPS screens, as well as washed out colours. Meanwhile, QD-OLED screens may have nailed response times, while also offering superb contrast, viewing angles, and colour reproduction.
However, they’ve been dominated by 27in and 32in panels with high resolutions, which is great for the average gamer, but less ideal for competitive esports players. The latter are used to peering at smaller, 25in screens, and want the fastest frame rate and refresh rate possible, with the former being much easier to achieve at 1920×1080 than 2560×1440.
A new panel
For some reason, it’s taken a long time for anyone to develop a 25in FHD QD-OLED esports monitor, but Alienware has finally done it, with this 1920×1080 screen that runs at 560Hz. The panel itself is built by Samsung Display, but in close collaboration with Alienware, which has provided feedback on it. That said, this panel is not going to be exclusive to Alienware, unlike some previous designs, so there’s nothing to stop other monitor makers producing similar screens in future.
Based on a 5th-gen Penta Tandem QD-OLED panel, it also features an RGB Stripe subpixel layout. This means the red, green, and blue elements that make up a pixel are positioned in a row, rather than in a triangular shape, as with previous QD-OLED designs. This prevents the weird purple and green fringing around black text on white backgrounds, which has been a thorn in the side of OLED monitors until recently. Even if you’re not a gamer, this is a great-looking screen on the Windows desktop, but really competitive players will benefit most from it.
The AW2527HX is set up and running Counter-Strike 2 when I try it out at the IFA tradeshow in Berlin. CS2 is running steadily at 560Hz, and the display is incredibly responsive, with no visible ghosting – Alienware is quoting a 0.03ms grey-to-grey response time, and we’ve certainly seen some amazing results from QD-OLED screens when it comes to responsiveness. As an extra check, I quit out of the game to run the BlurBusters UFO test, and motion is crystal clear at 560Hz.
Unlike a TN screen, blacks are deep and true, and colours are full rather than seeming washed out – even in the brown and orange tones of CS2. One of the big differences between this screen and a TN model, though, is the viewing angles. You can move all around it, even viewing it from extreme edges, and it’s all clear without any of the over-exposure effect you can get on TN screens.
The difference in quality between this monitor and TN esports panels is so substantial, in fact, that Alienware has equipped it with a TN emulation mode. You can select this feature in the on-screen display (OSD), and it washes out the colours like a TN panel. Why? Because, according to Alienware, many esports players have now clocked up so many hundreds of hours playing on TN screens, that suddenly moving to the deep contrast and full colours of a QD-OLED screen can prove distracting in action.
Minimising distractions
This is a theme throughout the design of this monitor – anything that could possibly pull your eyes away from action in the middle of the screen has been carefully moved so it won’t draw your eyes. There isn’t even an Alienware logo on the front for this reason, although there is a glowing alien head on the back to show off the brand without distracting you.
Likewise, there’s a pull-out headset stand, but it flips out from the back, rather than to the side, so you can’t see it. All the connections are also mounted on the back, and they deliberately point outwards rather than downwards, so there won’t be any cables dangling in your field of view. You plug in your wires, route them through the stand’s cable-tidying loop, and you shouldn’t see them.
You get a decent range of options here as well. Two HDMI 2.1 inputs are available for wide device compatibility, as well as a DisplayPort 2.1 socket with UHBR13.5 support. The latter gives you over 50Gbps of bandwidth, meaning you can run this screen at 1920×1080 with a 560Hz refresh rate without the need for compression. Meanwhile, a basic USB 3.2 5Gbps hub rounds off the connections, along with an audio jack.
Like many monitors, there aren’t even any buttons on the front, with the OSD controlled with a joystick on the back. Here you’ll also find a dedicated esports button, which instantly switches the aspect ratio. I press it, and the resolution changes to 1280×960, but not with black bars on either side.
Instead, it deliberately stretches this resolution over the 16:9 panel, so everything is wider. The reason, again, is down to the preferences of esports gamers at Team Liquid, who argue that wider targets are easier to hit.
Basically, if your monitor is set up right, you should only see the panel surrounded by a super-thin bezels in front of you, without anything to distract you.
Full tilt
The final key piece of the AW2527HX formula is its stand, which offers a large amount of flexibility. There’s the usual height, swivel and tilt adjustment, but to larger extremes than normal. Alienware told me it basically had to go back to the drawing board on its stand design to get it right.
For a start, there’s a massive 155m range of height adjustment available, with marked measurements to help you get the exact height you want. Likewise, there’s the option for up to a 45-degree tilt, which seems really extreme, but there’s a reason for it. Alienware’s product marketing manager, Vincent Seajun Kim, shows me how it works. The screen’s height is brought down so it’s close to the desk, and then tilted back, with half the keyboard then poking out from under it.
This, he tells me, is how many esports players like to set up their monitors, so they’re standing and peering straight down into the middle of the screen. That might be a niche feature for most gamers, but it’s important Alienware nails all these details if it really wants its display to appeal to the esports crowd.
Importantly, under all the competitive gaming features, it also looks as though there’s an excellent everyday monitor. With a 1920×1080 native resolution, you won’t need to spend big on a GPU to get your games running at a decent frame rate on this screen, and it will happily sit on a smaller-than-usual desk as well. Picture quality also looks excellent, with high contrast and full colours, with Alienware claiming it will reproduce 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut.
There’s no price and specific release date for the Alienware AW2527HX yet, but the company expects it to go on sale in the first quarter of 2027. In the meantime, if you need a new screen, check out our guide to buying the best gaming monitor for your needs.
