Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “It tried so hard and got so far… – REDMAGIC 4K Gaming Monitor”.
Red magic makes phones, but can they make a gaming monitor? Normally we get these things right out of the box real quick, but this box is actually pretty neat, so we’re going to take a look at it uh. First of all, I’d like to point out. It is a mini, LED gaming monitor 27 in, if that wasn’t clear, it’s got gmage whatever that might be uh bunch of specs here and then on the side. Here we’ve got the red magic, uh logo. We got this cool black and white silver dude coming out of the monitor on the box and then on the bottom win more games.
That’S pretty good! It actually is a pretty decent display. It’S 4K, not 60, but 160. So, like 4K is finally seeing some pretty high refresh rates at reasonable prices which we’ll get to later. Ah there we go bada bing bada boom. We have a power, cable, external power source for those of you who really crave that all right, it’s not Gage! It’S GM 001 J looks to be the product name and inside this bag. Here we got a bunch of cables, uh, the usbb cable. We got a type- C cable, we’ll get to the I/O later, but this does have a 90 W power delivery on the USBC cable got our HDMI cable, probably 2.1. Does it say on here? Oh Mylanta: it does signal cable, zh, HDMI 2.1.
We got our display port cable 1.4, but you’re going to need this. If you want to do 4K, 160 we’ve got our user manual for the GM 001 J. It’S reporting some pretty decent numbers with a really low average Delta.
Based on what I’ve heard. I don’t quite believe that, but it is pretty good, so we’ll we’ll get to that later. On here’s our stand.
This is Beefy and I’ve never seen one. That’S this big uh, so I’m excited and then we got the other part of our stand. The bottom one nice note: we’ve got the two column support, So this thing’s going nowhere just like Spider-Man, okay, so there’s a cable cover in here. We just take this off, so you just pop it up. Take it off run your cables through this side right here and then you there you go, that’s actually pretty good and we’ve got our panel in the Box. I love the back of this thing.
It’S a cool triangle with I’m hoping RGB, but we’ll see it’s not too bad. It’S like 7 kilos when uh the stand is on. I figured this out.
It’S probably a headphone hanger. I really don’t know what else you would use this for and I’ll be honest. I don’t like that. It’S behind the monitor, instead of on the sides uh, because I don’t want to like reach around to put my headphones away, but I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Aside from that, I want to talk about the design because they call it Robo aesthetic hardcore attack.
Now to me, it just looks like a monitor. I admit I do like the cool triangle on the back um, but I don’t really get where the RO aesthetic is coming in, that cable cover comes off way too easily. By the way, I don’t know – maybe it’s just me, but uh – be careful if you’re handling this thing um. But let’s talk about all the other stuff.
We want to see like wow, okay hi to just wow. One thing I don’t like is the chin, especially now that I’m feeling it there’s this huge gap here and there’s this giant chin here. I don’t know why that is there, maybe there’s an IR remote or something, but there was one in the Box, so I don’t know what it’s for we’ll find out later. Maybe it’s for the OSD or something like that.
But what I love is not once, but both ways: baby uh, you might not think that’s a big feature, but some monitors can only pivot one way and if you really especially with the chin on the bottom here, if you want to make this vertical someday um, You really want to line everything up nicely. Imagine if your monitor is here and you’ve got to match this chin bar with, like your other, it’s going to look bad, so, thankfully you just go the other way yeah. I really don’t like this. Like weird crevice, that’s going on here, I don’t know if that’s where all the io is or something but uh it just feels kind of janky um.
And then I don’t like the chin. I know I mentioned that already, but I really don’t like the chin. Otherwise, it seems fine, we’ve read some reviews cuz. This is out already, and some people online are complaining about the build quality and all that I’m not going to say it’s like amazing or anything, but I don’t think it’s that bad. Although this top cap is kind of missing, I don’t know if it just got lost in Labs or what but uh we don’t have ours. As for I/O, we’ve got a couple of usba ports: usbb USBC with 90 W power delivery and display port as well as DP 1.4 right next to it, two HDMI 21s headphone jack and our power connector. I’Ve complained in the past about plugging things in from the bottom and how I like how LG and Corsair do it, where you just plug it straight into the back, and I’m going to complain about it here, especially because uh yeah. It’S got this whole cover thing and it’s going to be a massive headache to try to get cables in and out of there don’t like it, I’m going to plug it in and power it on. Take a look at this RGB on the back, but not before a word from our sponsor Rhino Shield. Their Black Friday sale is on now and you can save up to a whopping 55 % off. Rhino Shield is known for its protective monom material phone cases, which can be easily recycled check out their mod NX case with its super strong magnetic back satisfyingly, clicky buttons and protective shock, spread technology or the solid suit, with its grippy design, and check out their D.
Yoc function on their website, where you can upload your photos, use their library of stickers, add text and let your imagination run wild, follow the link below and check out the massive sale today minor correction: this is on a cable cover, so you can take this on Or off I still don’t really like it. Cuz it’s hard to get back on, get on there. Cable cover, yo check it out, it’s doing it, it’s got RGB and you know what the cool thing is. It’S not just like LEDs that shine. It’S actually covered in something it looks pretty cool, but it’s a little dim we’ll see in a second once I turn it around if it splashes off the back wall very well, um other than that.
I don’t know if I’m crazy about the segmentation on the pattern here, I kind of would prefer if this was just one giant diffused light source, but uh you know to each their own. Maybe someone out there likes it. I still don’t really get what the chin is for other than maybe a handle to pull the monitor down.
Uh on the back, we’ve got a navigation nipple for the OSD out of the box. It’Ll come calibrated for srgb DC ip3 and Adobe RGB, which is pretty handy so on most monitors. You press the button to go into the menu or you press the button to at the very least action on whatever you’re on in the menu with this.
It just turns it off and that feels really bad uh. I’M going to try really hard to not do that again, but there’s a good chance. It’S going to happen so, okay, so this is just a navigation, that’s good uh. Otherwise this looks like a pretty standard.
Uh OSD, you can change your color temperature Hue saturation brightness. All that one thing that we wanted to talk about is that this doesn’t actually get that dim, and so, while the vast majority of you won’t care about that, most people uh use their monitors at like at least 50 % brightness, if not Max, and they want Brighter as better um, but some people, especially like ones who are sensitive to light, want to keep their monitors dim or if they live in a cave or if they’re like me and they’re in the basement, with all the blinds closed and everything they want it. A little dimmer um, you can’t do that with this one, the lowest this monitor is going to get is 130 nits, which is kind of wild. You want to see at least 50 to 60. It’S got 1152 local dimming zones, which is fantastic on a screen.
This size only 27 in uh, the RGB is not doing anything on the back of this wall. So don’t expect it to like light up the back of your monitor or your gaming station, or anything like that. Now, with 160 HZ you’re usually going to have a pretty smooth experience. As for response time, we measured about 5.5 5 milliseconds uh. We recommend not turning on any overdrive.
One cool thing: I’m noticing, as I’m watching the frogs go across here, is you can really see the local dimming try to do its magic. I’M seeing a ton of flickering all up in here as it’s as the White Frog is passing across this gray background. It’S not a super pronounced effect, but it’s a bit of strobing that might bother some people depending on the game. They’Re playing.
This is just an IPS panel, but it’s not bad. There’S no like major Trails on any of the frogs, just a kind of like small blur on the back of them, which is pretty standard. One thing to note: is you probably want to keep variable refresh rate turned on because with it off, we actually noticed that there was more latency, but it went from 3.8 to 9.8 introducing about 6 extra millisecs of latency. It’S especially weird because the local dimming isn’t adding latency either we tested with it both on and off so just keep vrr on.
One of the problems with HDR with this Monitor and often with mini LED in general, is while it has all these dimming zones, because it’s trying to fight Bloom, it has trouble getting super bright in the 1 % uh window screen. So what you end up with is it’ll do crazy, full bright, but then, when you get to the 1 % 5 %, 10 % Windows like those pinpoints of brightness um, it’s more like 500 600 nits, which is okay, it’s still bright and HDR with local dimming Is still going to look a lot better than HDR without local dimming or SDR content in general, but it’s a ghee feature that OLED still wins in uh, for example, in this display we measured a 1 % window of 640 nits and then in HDR full screen. Brightness went all the way up to 1575 nits, which is pretty crazy. I can’t see much blooming just when I’m watching content on here.
Like that’s one thing, I’d like to point out: oh no, you can see it uh when my mouse is over a black spot. You can see it Bloom, however, with over 1100 zones it means that that blooming is going to be very minimal, so, instead of trying to light up a square, you know like this big, it’s going to be lighting up one like this big, and so that bloom Is going to be much less pronounced than it would be on a monitor with, say, 500 zones? I can make it out in person just barely those 1100 plus zones are really putting in some work, but if I kind of just you see how it gets a little bit wider around the Crosshair, it’s definitely noticeable in person, but it is pretty minor. Honestly, everything looks okay. I can definitely tell that it’s an IPS panel, the whole thing looks a little bit washed out compared to more High contract, displays like OLED or even VA, to be frank um.
It doesn’t look bad necessarily it’s just once you get used to a certain thing. Nothing else looks as good um. That being said, the colors pop they’re, pretty vibrant, the green, especially that was showing up right there. I really like these uh, the blue outline for the glory kill stuff. It looks great honestly, it’s okay, I’m not like crazy sold on this thing. I also think that 4K is just kind of wild like this is Doom. Maternal. The game is pretty old, yeah we’re getting 200 plus FPS uh an ultra nightmare, but it’s also Doom maternal.
Nothing else has come out. That’S like this optimized. The thing about this monitor, though, is it’s. 4K 160 color, accurate mini, LED 1152 dimming zones.
It’S a lot of features and it’s 869 769 right now on sale. It’S really hard for me to recommend something like this at this price range because is when you go up to about $ 11,000, you get the LG 240 HZ OLED, it’s only 1440p. I get it, however. Gaming at 4K is not easy, so unless you’ve got like a 3090 at least, if not a 4090 good luck getting proper frame rates on today’s games that keep coming out unoptimized at the sale price, it’s a bit more enticing.
But if this thing is only MSRP, I just can’t really recommend it. Unfortunately, either save up just a little bit more and get the LG or save money and get a $ 4 or500 uh 1440p gaming monitor, I think, you’re better off this short circuit, I’m ploof! This is the red magic 4K gaming Monitor and uh. It’S pretty cool if you want to check out another, pretty cool, monitor, uh check out the Alienware 500 HZ, pretty fast .