Nvidia was finally ready to launch G-Sync Pulsar at CES 2026, and we've already done some hands-on testing to tell you how it works and the motion clarity it provides.
Pulsar is the most advanced strobing tech for LCDs so far, combining all the innovations we've seen over the years into a single technology that allows everything to work simultaneously. You get backlight strobing on the level of ULMB2, it works with adaptive sync variable refresh rates, and it uses a cutting edge rolling scan to provide elite clarity from the top to bottom of the screen.
TL;DR: This is the best and clearest backlight strobing technology that we've used so far.
What is G-Sync Pulsar?
So let's take a step back and explore exactly what G-Sync Pulsar is. The fundamental underlying technology here is backlight strobing, a technique that LCD monitors can use to improve motion clarity.
On a normal LCD, the backlight is lit at all times, but this creates clarity issues when objects move quickly across the screen. This is because LCDs are sample-and-hold monitors, which hold images on screen until the next update. During fast motion, your eyes end up tracking objects that aren't actually moving continuously, and this causes blur.
Backlight strobing attempts to solve this by pulsing the backlight on and off. The backlight only briefly turns on when the image on screen has updated; the rest of the time it shows black. This hides most of the "hold" part of LCD operation and stops your eye tracking objects that aren't moving. Thanks to visual trickery and the magic of the brain, the flicker effect is hidden, and your eyes perceive motion as if it's almost continuous – with much less blur.
This is what G-Sync Pulsar tech is built on, but Nvidia has taken it multiple steps further. Traditional backlight strobing technology has a number of limitations.
First, it pulses the backlight at a fixed rate, so it doesn't work with variable refresh rates. Second, it pulses the entire screen at once – but due to LCD scanout, the image isn't updated on screen all at once, so clarity with strobing enabled changes between the top and bottom of the screen.
This has made backlight strobing a technology that is only useful in specific scenarios, typically when gaming at a locked frame rate that matches your monitor's refresh rate, and when you're largely focused on the center of the screen. Nvidia has taken significant steps to alleviate these issues with Pulsar.
The first innovation is getting backlight strobing to work correctly with variable refresh rates, a.k.a. adaptive sync. Other brands have tried this over the years; we've tested implementations from Gigabyte, MSI, and others, but normally what happens is that clarity falls away significantly at lower refresh rates. This makes it almost useless if you actually want to utilize the entire refresh rate range.
Typically, there's only a narrow window where these "strobing sync" technologies actually improve clarity, and occasionally the clarity benefits even at the maximum refresh are not amazing.
Nvidia has worked super hard on G-Sync Pulsar to optimize the variable refresh implementation so that it actually works properly and gives a significant clarity benefit over a much larger range of refresh rates.
The second innovation is rolling scan. Instead of pulsing the entire backlight at once, Pulsar uses a backlight that is split into multiple horizontal sections. Then, the strobing pulse is synchronized to the LCD scanout, pulsing the backlight only in the section that has just updated.
With precise timing to allow the LCD to settle as much as possible before the pulse occurs, this creates a clear strobed image from the top to bottom of the screen with minimal strobe crosstalk artifacts.
Like with adaptive sync strobing, Nvidia is not the first company to implement something like this. BenQ did it first with DyAc 2, which split the backlight into zones and synchronized the pulse to the scanout for excellent top-to-bottom clarity.
However, DyAc 2 did not work with variable refresh; it remained a fixed refresh technology. Nvidia is the first to get both of these features working together, allowing for rolling scan strobing and variable refresh strobing to work simultaneously.
Nvidia is also continuing to use things that made their previous strobing technologies like ULMB 2 work well. This includes variable LCD overdrive and various timing and pulse width optimizations.
Testing G-Sync Pulsar
So how well does G-Sync Pulsar work? To find out, we tested it on a brand new Asus ROG Strix Pulsar XG27AQNGV, which is set to be available right away. It's a 27-inch 2560 × 1440 IPS LCD with a maximum refresh rate of 360Hz.
Enabling Pulsar is as simple as having G-Sync enabled in the driver, then enabling Pulsar in the monitor's OSD. The only available setting is "Pulsar low FPS," which we'll talk about in a moment, but other than that, the feature is designed to just work without the need to adjust anything.
And… it works really well.
We're super, super impressed with Pulsar considering we haven't been big fans of backlight strobing before. We just haven't liked the trade-off of needing to turn off adaptive sync, ensure we've got a steady locked FPS at a refresh rate that strobing supports, and deal with all of that just to get a bit of extra clarity.
With Pulsar, it really does just work with variable refresh – no flickering as the refresh rate changes, no ugly artifacts or issues associated with trying to run strobing and VRR at the same time. It happily strobes away and adjusts the strobe as the refresh rate changes.
This makes it so much easier to just hop into a game and start playing with strobing enabled. Take Battlefield 6 as an example. We fired up a game, optimized a few settings for high FPS, and were getting around 170 to 200 FPS in-game with VRR enabled.
This worked perfectly with Pulsar turned on. We didn't have to change a single thing on the monitor, strobing provided genuine clarity benefits at these refresh rates despite being well below the monitor's maximum 360Hz refresh rate, and it honestly looked fantastic and felt fantastic to play.
Previously, with other strobed monitors, if we wanted to play this same game, we'd have to first configure the game and monitor to the same refresh rate. That meant optimizing settings to lock Battlefield 6 at, say, 240 FPS – which would require turning settings down – then locking the monitor at 240Hz, disabling VRR, enabling strobing, and ensuring that FPS lock was held during gameplay.
This can be a fiddly process, because any mismatch between FPS and refresh rate can prevent you from getting the clarity benefits of fixed-refresh strobing. Alternatively, we could use a monitor that has a strobing-sync implementation, such as the Gigabyte M27Q3, but then we'd only get a very limited clarity benefit in the ~200Hz range, and at times the level of strobe crosstalk in these modes can actually make the screen look worse with strobing enabled.
All of this fiddliness is eliminated when strobing and VRR work properly together, and that's what G-Sync Pulsar provides. This is the first time ever that we could recommend enabling a backlight strobing feature the vast majority of the time.
UFO Motion Clarity Tests
This wouldn't be a proper backlight strobing examination without some Blur Busters UFO test results. The normal browser-based TestUFO doesn't support VRR, so we combined it with a utility called SmoothFrog to allow us to run the UFO test at any refresh rate we liked in a VRR configuration. These are the results.
First up, here's Pulsar at a range of refresh rates, run at a high speed of approximately 1,920 pixels per second. We have Pulsar off, as well as Pulsar on at 360Hz, 240Hz, and 96Hz. The 360Hz and 240Hz images are particularly clear, and while 96Hz isn't quite as clear as those higher refresh rates, this is still an excellent result for strobing at such a low refresh rate – as we'll see in a moment with a few other configurations.
The reason the image isn't quite as clear here relates to the 25% duty cycle, which means a longer pulse width at lower refresh rates. In real-world use, you get fantastic clarity at pretty much all of the supported refresh rates, and the difference between the 360Hz and 96Hz results is hard to spot.
Here's a closer look at the benefit Pulsar provides at lower refresh rates. The clarity improvement at both 240Hz and 96Hz relative to turning Pulsar off is significant. So even though the 96Hz result isn't crystal clear, it's a huge uplift compared to not using Pulsar at all.
Now let's look at why Pulsar is so good compared to other strobing-sync implementations. Here, we're comparing Pulsar to the Gigabyte M27Q3 using Aim Stabilizer Sync. At 360Hz to begin with, there are already artifacts on the Gigabyte image, including much more strobe crosstalk – the double-image effect you can see – and red fringing due to a slow red phosphor in the backlight.
When we move down to 240Hz, the M27Q3 still looks okay. It's obviously not as good as Pulsar, but you might be wondering why we think Pulsar is so impressive relative to this Aim Stabilizer Sync implementation when this is how it performs at 240Hz with VRR.
That's because Pulsar works well across a much larger refresh rate range. Here are the results at 96Hz. Aim Stabilizer Sync is barely an improvement over the image with strobing disabled, whereas Pulsar remains relatively clear with a huge improvement in clarity. This is all with variable refresh enabled, so you can drop into a game at around 100Hz and get these benefits on a Pulsar monitor right away.
Another key advantage Pulsar provides is excellent clarity across the entire screen, from top to bottom. If we look at the results captured at the top, middle, and bottom of the screen, there's very little difference in clarity. The rolling-scan pulse implementation works extremely well, which is great for games that have important UI elements around the edges. These won't be blurry in motion on a Pulsar display.
When comparing this to ULMB 2 on the Asus PG27AQN, we see a very different result. ULMB 2, which does not use a rolling-scan pulse, produces relatively good results at the top of the screen, but strobe crosstalk is significantly worse at the bottom, creating a noticeable amount of blur. In contrast, Pulsar looks basically the same at the top and bottom of the screen. You'll also notice red fringing on the older 1440p 360Hz ULMB 2 panel in the PG27AQN, which isn't an issue on the new Pulsar panel despite otherwise similar specifications.
Here's DyAc 2 running on the BenQ XL2586X, which also uses regional backlight pulsing. Like Pulsar, you get essentially the same clarity results at the top, middle, and bottom of the screen with DyAc 2. However, DyAc 2 requires a fixed refresh rate, and as you can see from the results, it's not as well optimized on that 540Hz TN panel as Pulsar is on the latest 360Hz 1440p IPS – there are more double images. Some parts of the image are a little clearer, but overall the Pulsar result is better while also working with VRR.
Next, let's look at Pulsar compared to the best strobing implementations available in other monitors, all running at their absolute peak configurations for maximum clarity. In our opinion, this is a clear upgrade over ULMB 2 on the PG27AQN, making this the best monitor for 1440p strobing yet. Some aspects of ULMB 2 are a little sharper, but ULMB 2 has more noticeable strobe crosstalk and that panel suffers from red fringing. Text is still highly readable on the new Pulsar monitor in this extremely fast motion test configuration, even if it's not quite as sharp as ULMB 2 in isolation.
DyAc 2 on the XL2586X also doesn't perform as well, with more strobe crosstalk, so again we prefer how Pulsar looks. The most competitive alternative is ULMB 2 on the TN-based Asus PG248QP at 540Hz. Pulsar has less strobe crosstalk and delivers the benefits we've discussed throughout this review – such as VRR support and elite clarity across the entire panel – but ULMB 2 on the PG248QP is very clear and benefits from reduced sample-and-hold blur.
Elite fixed-refresh strobing at even higher refresh rates will still sit at the top for raw clarity, but we think the associated downsides make G-Sync Pulsar the superior solution for most gamers, especially since the differences in practice are relatively small.
We'll also throw OLED into the mix here, running without black frame insertion. Pulsar is generally clearer than 540Hz WOLED panels, which are currently the fastest available at a 1440p resolution. This makes sense when comparing the effective refresh rates on paper.
With OLED, you get roughly a 1.5x boost compared to LCD, so 540Hz OLED is roughly equivalent to 810Hz LCD. With Pulsar, you get around a 4x boost in clarity, and while the baseline refresh rate is lower, that puts the effective refresh rate at 1,440Hz – higher than OLED. This lines up with what we see in the test results.
720Hz OLED is more competitive, with an effective LCD-equivalent clarity of around 1,080Hz, but even then we still think Pulsar at 360Hz looks clearer. On top of that, Pulsar delivers much better clarity at lower refresh rates, whereas OLEDs without any form of BFI suffer from the usual sample-and-hold motion blur at lower refresh rates. We're about to see 1,000Hz OLED implementations, though, which should make for a very interesting comparison, as effective clarity should be similar.
Here's a look at strobing with all of these configurations set to 240Hz. You can see Pulsar looks superior to a 240Hz QD-OLED, clearly better than strobing sync on the M27Q3, and competitive with ULMB 2. The PG27AQN is sharper and clearer in large parts of the image, but it also suffers from more pronounced red fringing and increased strobe crosstalk.
You can also run the XG27AQNGV in a ULMB 2 configuration by disabling G-Sync in the Nvidia App. This doesn't change motion clarity all that much at fixed refresh rates, so it doesn't match the ULMB 2 implementation on the PG27AQN.
That older mode included settings that allowed you to control pulse width to trade brightness for clarity, which isn't available on the XG27AQNGV when running ULMB 2.
How Does G-Sync Pulsar Actually Work?
So you've seen the results from G-Sync Pulsar, which are very impressive – but how does the technology actually work? Nvidia says it has been able to get strobing working with VRR through the use of a "compensation pulse." Essentially, during variations in frame rate, Pulsar strobes the screen twice – rather than the usual once – which helps avoid flickering.
A sudden drop in frame rate can cause the "off" portion of the strobe to linger on screen for longer than expected, leading you to perceive a dip in brightness as flicker, hence the need for this compensation.
Other manufacturers have tried a similar level of compensation, for example, Aim Stabilizer Sync on Gigabyte monitors strobes the screen multiple times per refresh cycle, but every additional strobe beyond the first increases blur.
G-Sync Pulsar is a more sophisticated implementation of this compensation strobe than Nvidia's description alone suggests, and this is why it's far more effective than other strobe + VRR solutions.
Looking at how the strobe behaves on an oscilloscope, we spotted much more dynamic behavior than expected. Pulsar adjusts the main strobe's width and amplitude depending on the refresh rate, producing consistent brightness output without brightness flicker.
In one example, we start at a 360Hz refresh rate, which shows more strobe cycles at a lower amplitude. As we decrease the refresh rate into the 200Hz range and then into the 100Hz range, the amplitude of the strobe increases and the pulse width is adjusted as well. If the strobe's width and amplitude remained constant at lower refresh rates, brightness would drop noticeably – so this behavior is essential.
The compensation pulse itself is especially interesting. This second pulse only appears during significant frame rate changes and then disappears over a second or two. If the frame rate is relatively consistent, Pulsar either doesn't use a compensation pulse at all – strobing the screen only once – or uses one that's extremely small.
When there's a large change in frame rate, Pulsar produces a larger compensation pulse, then gradually reduces it over time if the frame rate stabilizes. You can clearly see this in action when viewing light output on an oscilloscope. If we rapidly drop FPS from 240 to 120, the compensation pulse kicks in immediately, then decays over time. It's a clever solution.
The consequence of implementing a second strobe like this is that, during a large frame rate change, the screen becomes blurrier for about a second or so. After that, the image quickly "clears up" if the new frame rate is maintained without further large fluctuations.
This brief drop in clarity is extremely rare to notice in actual gameplay because it requires a massive and sudden change in frame rate, and it's a far more tolerable trade-off than flicker or brightness instability. It's also very difficult to capture on camera because it happens so quickly, we'd basically need a motion-controlled robot to demonstrate it properly.
Other Improvements and Wrap Up
So what else is there to know about G-Sync Pulsar? This is the first G-Sync implementation to move away from Nvidia's proprietary modules and instead use a MediaTek solution from a partnership announced some time ago.
This means the new wave of G-Sync monitors have a much better feature set, as everything is built on a more modern and robust display scaler. For example, we're finally getting HDMI 2.1 support at 40 Gbps – which, for some reason, is limited to 120Hz on this display when it should be capable of the full 360Hz, or at least 240Hz. Maybe that will be solved through a firmware update.
There's also a Pulsar Low FPS setting in the OSD, which controls the minimum refresh rate at which Pulsar begins strobing. By default, this is set to 90Hz, but you can manually lower it to 75Hz. Nvidia says 90Hz is optimal to avoid flickering, and below that it can't "guarantee" a flicker-free experience.
In our testing, transitioning in and out of this minimum refresh rate is quite smooth, with no real issues beyond strobing simply being disabled. Nvidia also says it plans to release a Pulsar firmware update that lowers the minimum strobed refresh rate to 48Hz for users to try, though it still recommends gamers use at least 75Hz, if not 90Hz.
The latest G-Sync monitors supporting Pulsar also introduce a feature called Ambient Adaptive Technology, which uses a sensor to automatically adjust brightness and color temperature based on the ambient lighting in your room. We briefly tried this out and it seemed to work well, though it's not something I'd personally use, as we prefer our display output to remain consistent regardless of lighting conditions.
Lastly, G-Sync Pulsar only works on Nvidia GPUs. Pulsar cannot be enabled on an AMD Radeon GPU and requires the latest Nvidia display driver on a GeForce GPU.
This is genuinely disappointing, as buying a display should never lock you into a single GPU brand. It echoes the bad old days when G-Sync variable refresh only worked with Nvidia GPUs, before broader support was eventually enabled. It doesn't seem like Pulsar should require this level of driver integration, as it's largely display-side, but we'll need more clarification from Nvidia eventually.
And that's G-Sync Pulsar... an impressive new backlight strobing technology that, in our opinion, is clearly the best solution currently available.
This is the first version of this technology we'd genuinely consider using on a regular basis, as it works extremely well with variable refresh enabled. Gamers chasing the best motion clarity (especially for multiplayer titles) should be very happy with these latest 1440p 360Hz displays that integrate Pulsar.
Even beyond Pulsar itself, the IPS LCD panel here is far superior to the TN LCDs that were routinely used for esports-focused strobing monitors in the past.
We'll be reviewing the Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV in full soon. However, you should be able to buy a G-Sync Pulsar monitor shortly, and not just from Asus, but also from Acer, AOC, and MSI, with four monitors forming the initial wave of Pulsar displays, all using the same panel hardware.