There is no shortage of competition for 27-inch high refresh rate gaming monitors, but the MSI Optix MAG272CQR is neither the best spec nor the best for your budget. However, the MSI Optix MAG272CQR is neither the highest spec nor the best for your budget. It falls somewhere in the middle of the pack, most notably in its curves. [MSI opted for a tighter 1500R instead of the more common 1.8m radial arc. This may be a bit controversial for hardcore gamers who want the highest possible uniformity for competitive gaming, but if you're that way inclined, you'll probably opt for a 240Hz monitor and not worry about anything else.

The Optix MAG272CQR appears to be designed for high-level gaming, but the key is not to compromise when doing other PC-related things. This balance makes a lot of sense, as most people don't have the luxury of dropping $400 (£400/$700 AUD) on a second gaming monitor and need to use their display of choice for the home office tasks we are currently faced with.

To accomplish this, the MAG272CQR has a resolution of 2560 x 1440, providing more clarity than a basic 1080p panel when viewing web pages or working on documents. Stretching into the expensive (and demanding) 4K realm for gaming is still a legitimate question mark; complementing the WQHD resolution of the VA panel is a modest peak brightness of 300 nits and an HDR-ready specification that allows for HDR gaming and video settings built into Windows.

This Optix screen technically only offers 8-bit color reproduction. This essentially involves dithering, which attempts to reproduce deeper tones by using software that splits the block into multiple shades of the available color. This produces an integrated effect similar to that of a 10- or 12-bit image. There is a noticeable difference between this and a true HDR offering, but it is dramatically less noticeable than a screen that does not utilize dithering.

With all the noise about 300Hz and 360Hz gaming monitors this year, one might be forgiven for thinking that 165Hz looks a bit last generation. True, but if you plan to play games at 1440p, you really don't need anything faster than 165Hz.

We played Total War Warhammer II at 1440p "low" settings using a PC with an Nvidia RTX 2080 and averaged only 100 fps. Nevertheless, a less demanding shooter would be able to pass this frame rate limit quite easily, even with a high-end GPU.

Some have expressed concern that this VA panel does not reach a response time of less than 1 ms, but since it is not designed for the most elite competitive gamers, we do not think this will be a major issue.

If you want to save a little money, you can get a monitor with similar specs from Samsung or ViewSonic for $150-200 less if you don't mind a few milliseconds of response time reduction, but to improve your online gaming performance If you really want to reduce pixel lag, there is no reason not to choose this monitor. It looks great, has tight curves, a solid, colorful panel, and the price isn't bad.