Product Review: The Alienware AW2523HF Is A Lightning Fast Gaming Machine At A Sensible Price Point.
This monitor was tested thoroughly as well as used PERSONALLY every day to complete this full in-depth review. Here is what I found after this process...
Pros:
360Hz Refresh Rate
Very Low Ghosting & Input Lag
Great Stand & Build Quality
Good Brightness
Plenty of Ports
Cons:
Lower Resolution
Lacking HDR Experience
No Wide Color Coverage
Size, Resolution, & Panel Type
The AW2523HF is a 24.5 inch e-sports centered gaming monitor with a resolution of 1920 by 1080p. This brings the PPI, or pixels per inch, how crisp and clear the panel is going to be to your eye, to about 90 pixels per inch. This means small text will have visible pixelation. Medium sized text may or may not have visible pixelation depending on your viewing distance.
Now, during gameplay does this matter as much? Well, the answer is no. You're going to need all the help you can get in order to push the very high frame rates that this monitor is capable of!
As for panel type this uses a Fast IPS panel, which means great viewing angles and great gaming performance.
Refresh Rate & Variable Refresh Rate
The Alienware AW2523HF has a refresh rate of 360Hz. This is absolutely meant to not just give you a visually fluid experience, but mainly to decrease input lag.
As for variable refresh rate, this has Freesync Premium. This panel also does work well with Nvidia G-Sync. It is not Nvidia Certified G-Sync Compatible, but it still works well. That being said, G-Sync only works through DisplayPort, unlike Freesync Premium which also works through the 2 HDMI's.
Brightness & HDR
This is rated at 400nits of brightness and after testing, I found this able to hit up to 450 nits, which is great! Overall, brightness is very good. If you're in a bright room, this will keep away reflections, and it does add to the vibrancy of the panel.
Now for the HDR. The overall performance with handling brighter scenes is good, but the HDR is just lacking. The overall brightness does decrease and is something I really would only use in a darker room.
With the lack of a larger contrast ratio, HDR is just something that isn’t especially awe inspiring on this panel. However, I don’t see many people caring about this, as this is a competitive panel and turning HDR on will increase input lag.
Colors & ACCURACY
Firstly, the Alienware AW2523HF covers 99% of the sRGB color gamut. This is good but doesn’t cover wider color gamuts like DCI-P3. Gaming in SDR is what this panel was designed for, which it does quite well.
Accuracy out of the box is pretty good, although the color temperature was too cool and the panel overall was not super vibrant in game. I fixed this for gaming, not content creation, by setting the color profile to custom, then turning up the saturation to 67% across the board.
Now, while this is not perfect, in game this looks much more natural and vibrant. I found that in the standard color profile to be too cool and drab.
Contrast Ratio & Backlight Bleed
The contrast ratio is exactly what you’d expect from an IPS panel at 1000:1. As for backlight bleed, my unit had none. Which is great!
One thing to talk about, is the matte finish. This is not the worst matte finish I’ve seen, but it definitely isn’t the best and does add a fair bit of the oil slick effect, especially on white parts of the screen. However, this is unnoticeable during gameplay.
Response Time, Ghosting, & Input Lag
The Alienware AW2523HF's response time hits a claimed 0.5ms GTG, but who cares. How does that translate into ghosting? Well, it’s pretty close to perfect with it being almost crystal clear. Fast or Super Fast is the best setting as Extreme does have a bit of pixel overshooting or inverse ghosting.
As for input lag, this is exactly what you’d expect from an e-sports grade gaming monitor. At 360Hz this has some of the lowest input lag we’ve ever seen.
If you are looking for a monitor that does it all, this isn’t even close, but if you’re looking for speed and performance above all, this does that extremely well while still giving you a pretty decent experience when outside of gaming.
Menu System & Controls
The menu system is controlled with a joystick on the bottom middle chin of the monitor, which is the perfect location and overall the best way to control it. The controls are super easy and very intuitive with almost no learning curve. As well, a dedicated power button with led is located on the right side which is super nice.
The menu system itself is good and functional, but it is quite pixelated and is nothing special in terms of design. Although, it does have a lot of different settings that you can control with most settings being easy to find and get to. It is functional, just not pretty. But overall, this gets a full pass.
Vesa Compatibility
Vesa compatibility is good being compatible with 100mm by 100mm Vesa mounts. As well, this is quite easy to mount as it only weighs in at 7.6 lbs!
Connectivity & Ports
Ports include: DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.0, one USB Type-B upstream, then 4 USB type A downstreams.
Two of the USB Type-A ports are located with all the other ports behind the monitor, and the other two are located under the chin of the monitor for easy access. Also, next to these two bottom USB Type-A's, is a second 3.5mm headphone jack with a secondary one on the back of the monitor with the display ports.
I do want to mention that even without the USB Type-B upstream plugged in, you still get power to those USB Type-A's which is great! This means if you want to charge your headphones, which I did quite a lot, you do not need that USB Type-B upstream plugged in. This isn't something that is common on most other monitors besides Dell Alienware, but it should be.
Stand & Build Quality
The stand and build quality for the Alienware AW2523HF is almost as good as you can get, which is classic for Dell Alienware.
The materials are beautiful and well put together. The stand has height, tilt, swivel and rotation to go fully vertical both to the left and to the right. It feels premium, it functions well, and it's easy to adjust it in any way you want.
The cable management is also pretty good. You do have to pull the power cable back a little bit so that it isn't visible, but overall it's fairly easy to completely hide all of the cables, which I do appreciate.
The overall design is very attractive and looks like it came straight from the alien mothership, so I’d say they did their job well!
Price & Value
The Alienware AW2523HF retails for $200 cheaper than the previous generation of this monitor, so they brought the price down considerably, which is great for us gamers on a budget! There's definitely a lot of value here. This is one of the best 360Hz monitors out there for a low price point.
Overall Verdict
So overall do I recommend the Alienware AW2523HF? Well, if you prioritize speed over everything but still want a fairly decent experience outside of gaming, then this is a great monitor for you and I absolutely recommend it!