Today we're reviewing a $350 QD-OLED gaming monitor, the Dell Alienware AW2726DM. This is a very interesting offering and possibly the cheapest OLED gaming monitor on the market, making it very inexpensive for this class of panel hardware.
But it's also not quite the same as many of the other QD-OLEDs we've tested before. Some compromises have been made to hit this price point, and those trade-offs are what we'll be examining throughout this review.
On the surface, there's a lot to like about the Alienware AW2726DM. This is a 27-inch monitor with a 2560 x 1440 resolution and 240Hz refresh rate, which is similar to other QD-OLEDs from the last couple of years. It supports adaptive sync technology, 99% DCI-P3 coverage, and fast rated response times.
But a couple of things stand out on the spec sheet. First, there's no VESA DisplayHDR certification. Pretty much every other QD-OLED has at least DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification, but not this one, even though it still supports HDR. That's a bit unusual. Then there's the brightness spec, listed at just 200 nits. That's lower than the typical 250 nits we usually see from QD-OLEDs.
Brightness
Let's kick off the testing with a look at SDR brightness. After calibration, our unit produced just 189 nits of brightness, which is slightly below Dell's advertised figure, but still within a typical margin. When Dell says this is a 200 nit monitor with lower brightness than other QD-OLEDs, they mean it.
Other 240Hz panels we've tested, including the 280Hz panel used in the Alienware AW2725D, produce around 250 nits of brightness in SDR mode. This new lower-cost model is about 20% dimmer, with performance most comparable to the first generation of 1440p OLED gaming monitors, such as the LG 27GR95QE and its first-gen WOLED panel.
The best SDR brightness currently available from an OLED monitor panel comes from Tandem WOLED displays like the Gigabyte MO27Q28GR, but those monitors start at around $600, which is nearly twice the price of this Dell. A less favorable comparison is against entry-level LCDs like the MSI 275QF and ASRock PG27QFT2A. It's common for those IPS panels to deliver between 350 and 400 nits of brightness, which is noticeably higher than what this Alienware QD-OLED can achieve.
The big question is whether 189 nits of brightness is sufficient. If you mostly use your display in a moderately lit indoor room, it should be fine for most people at maximum brightness. But some users prefer displays with a much brighter image even in moderate lighting conditions, in which case the AW2726DM may feel a bit underwhelming.
In brighter rooms, especially if you have a large nearby window with sunlight pouring in, less than 200 nits really won't cut it. SDR brightness could become a genuine issue depending on your setup.
Minimum brightness, however, is quite normal at 30 nits, so the lower end of the brightness range is similar to other QD-OLED options. The display also uses a uniform brightness configuration by default, with no option to disable it.
Color Accuracy
While brightness is not amazing, the screen delivers decent factory SDR performance in greyscale. Color temperature is essentially perfect, gamma performance is solid, and the average deltaE is low, so this aspect of performance is nicely accurate.
Default Color Performance
However, Dell ships the monitor with the full color gamut enabled in SDR mode, so standard sRGB or Rec.709 content is expanded to fill the wider gamut and appears oversaturated. This can cause skin tones to look slightly too red when watching YouTube videos, though this behavior isn't unique to this monitor. Most QD-OLEDs operate this way out of the box.
What Dell has removed from the AW2726DM is the sRGB mode. On the higher-end AW2726D, Dell offered a Creator preset with a Color Space setting that allowed the display to switch into an sRGB configuration. On this lower-cost QD-OLED, the Creator mode has been omitted entirely, so there is no hardware-level sRGB emulation option.
Default ACM Color Performance
You can still achieve much more accurate SDR colors with no oversaturation by using Windows 11's Auto Color Management feature. However, this only works on a PC. Without an sRGB mode built into the monitor itself, you won't get the same benefit on external devices that lack color management support.
The results using ACM are very good, though. Greyscale performance remains strong, while saturation accuracy improves significantly and the ColorChecker deltaE average falls below 5. That's the threshold we use to determine whether a monitor offers good factory calibration, and while this result relies on a software setting in Windows, we're happy that buyers at least have the option available. Performance can be improved further through a full calibration and a few setting tweaks.
HDR Performance
HDR on the AW2726DM is quite interesting. On every other QD-OLED we've tested to date, at least two base modes have been offered: a True Black mode, which delivers the best accuracy but caps peak brightness at around 450 nits, and a Peak 1000 mode, which sacrifices some accuracy to push brightness above 1,000 nits.
Each manufacturer tweaks these modes slightly, but the overall configurations are usually very similar, and 1,000 nits of brightness is always achievable.
On this new $350 QD-OLED, there is no Peak 1000 configuration. There are a couple of HDR modes available, but none exceed 400 nits of peak brightness. This is a major compromise Dell has made and clearly creates segmentation within its lineup. The higher-tier models offer 1,000 nits of HDR brightness, but this entry-level QD-OLED does not, so users who want brighter HDR performance will need to spend more.
Another interesting aspect of HDR performance is how the display handles tone mapping. HDR signals include metadata containing information about the content's brightness and the mastering display's color volume. The monitor then decides how to tone map content when attempting to display brightness levels beyond its actual capabilities.
This metadata doesn't matter too often on gaming monitors because most displays we've tested use source-side tone mapping. In that scenario, the PC or game engine handles most of the tone mapping duties. PC games often include HDR brightness controls, so the monitor itself doesn't need to perform much tone mapping, and HDR metadata is often ignored.
With the AW2726DM, however, the HDR modes appear to apply a significant amount of tone mapping depending on the mastering display metadata being sent to the monitor. If the metadata indicates a maximum brightness of 400 nits, EOTF tracking is very accurate, but there's a hard cutoff at 400 nits.
This is the behavior you get when content respects the display's reported peak brightness in Windows, which in this case is listed as 408 nits. Many games do respect this value and adjust their HDR output accordingly, though not all games do.
If the mastering display brightness is set to 1,000 nits or higher, which is far more common, especially for video content, the monitor applies substantial tone mapping. There's a much smoother roll-off at higher brightness levels to avoid clipping highlight detail, but also significant overbrightening throughout the mid and lower portions of the range.
In this situation, HDR content loses a lot of its depth and impact, though aggressive highlight clipping is reduced.
This means HDR accuracy on this monitor can vary considerably. If content is designed around a 400 nit brightness target and reports that properly to the monitor, the results look reasonably good. But once heavy tone mapping becomes necessary, we're much less impressed with how the display looks.
The main issue here is that the AW2726DM delivers very low brightness in HDR mode, which we'd describe as insufficient for a truly impactful HDR experience. Because it's an OLED panel, many other aspects are handled extremely well. You still get per-pixel control and deep true blacks, which provide stunning contrast and excellent shadow detail. But the brightness side of the HDR experience is extremely underwhelming.
Full-screen HDR brightness is very similar to SDR mode, topping out at 186 nits. This isn't dramatically lower than other QD-OLEDs, but it's still disappointing that the panel can't reach the 250 nit full-screen brightness level we normally see. 10% window brightness also trails other QD-OLEDs.
It does provide higher brightness than SDR mode, so HDR content does gain some extra punch, but at 380 nits we're looking at roughly 20% less brightness than a typical QD-OLED. This is also why the display lacks DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification, as its peak brightness falls short of the minimum 400 nit requirement for that tier.
2% window brightness is also limited to 380 nits, which is far below most competing OLED monitors. Most QD-OLEDs in their Peak 1000 modes exceed 1,000 nits, and even some older WOLED models surpass 700 nits. This is the most significant downside of this lower-cost model compared to other OLEDs.
Real-scene HDR brightness is understandably very low, averaging just 260 nits across our eight test scenes. That's 30% lower than the AW2726D in its True Black configuration and about 40% lower than a typical QD-OLED running in Peak 1000 mode. Since no test scene exceeded 400 nits of brightness, the overall HDR experience is relatively weak.
It's difficult to fully evaluate HDR performance on a product like this. Because SDR brightness is capped below 200 nits, the HDR mode still appears brighter in practice, and because this is an OLED display, contrast performance remains fantastic. It's also a wide-gamut monitor with 99% DCI-P3 coverage and 82% Rec.2020 coverage. So the HDR mode isn't nearly as ineffective as what we typically see from LCDs without local dimming.
A lot of HDR content still looks reasonably good and clearly better than SDR mode. But it's far from a great HDR experience, especially if you're expecting the usual performance associated with QD-OLED monitors.
Motion Performance
One area that hasn't seen any cutbacks is motion performance. This panel delivers the same speed and clarity as other 240Hz QD-OLEDs, with lightning-fast response times and an excellent refresh rate. If you're primarily interested in OLED technology for its motion performance, this lower-cost Dell model is a great option.
This QD-OLED is also significantly better than LCDs in its price range. Previously, spending $350 on a 1440p monitor typically got you an LCD with a refresh rate between 240Hz and 360Hz. Entry-level 240Hz LCDs have fallen in price recently and now sit closer to $220, so this QD-OLED still carries a premium. But it's important to remember that QD-OLEDs are substantially faster.
The best LCDs currently available deliver average response times of around 4.5ms at their maximum refresh rates. OLEDs sit below 0.3ms, giving them roughly a 1.5x motion clarity advantage at the same refresh rate. In practice, a 240Hz OLED delivers motion clarity roughly comparable to a 360Hz LCD, except the OLED only requires games to run at 240 FPS rather than 360 FPS.
Another advantage of OLED technology is consistency across refresh rates. Response time performance remains virtually unchanged whether you're gaming at 240Hz, 120Hz, or 60Hz. LCDs typically become slower at lower refresh rates, with average response times increasing substantially, along with potential issues like overshoot and inverse ghosting.
OLEDs avoid these problems entirely, and when comparing OLED and LCD panels at the same refresh rate, the OLED consistently delivers superior clarity.
Cumulative deviation measures the balance between speed and overshoot, giving us a good indication of overall motion performance. OLEDs are in an entirely different class in this metric. If HDR performance isn't a major priority for you, the AW2726DM is a fantastic choice for competitive gaming.
We also found this display to have very low input lag. Processing delay sits below 1ms, while the 240Hz refresh rate and ultra-fast response times allow it to update faster than most 240Hz LCDs. Higher refresh rate versions of this QD-OLED panel are even faster, but if you're looking for something with high levels of responsiveness, this is a brilliant choice.
It's Still a QD-OLED Panel
Outside of the brightness-related compromises, this is essentially the same QD-OLED panel we've seen in many other monitors. That means it still uses the triangular RGB subpixel layout, which can produce slight pink and green fringing around text. It doesn't look too distracting in practice, but text clarity still isn't quite as good as a typical 27-inch 1440p LCD.
The screen coating is also the same glossy finish we've seen across many QD-OLEDs. It has great clarity and looks very nice in darker rooms, but has a tendency to reflect ambient light in brighter rooms. This can hurt black levels, making them look grey or slightly purplish in certain situations.
Power consumption is slightly lower than on other OLED monitors we've tested, which likely reflects the panel's lower brightness capabilities. We run all tests at 200 nits, and this monitor can't quite reach that level. During gaming, however, power usage is fairly similar to LCD models, so it shouldn't present any real issue.
Ports and Design
Port selection is extremely basic on this monitor, which is another area where Dell has clearly cut costs. You're getting the bare minimum here: one DisplayPort 1.4 with DSC and two HDMI 2.0 ports.
Because the HDMI ports do not support HDMI 2.1-class bandwidth, they are limited to just 120Hz instead of the full 240Hz, which is disappointing, though clearly another cost-saving measure. There are also no USB ports, which means no firmware update support, and no audio interfaces either.
The OSD is controlled through a directional toggle on the rear of the panel. It's a fairly basic interface with a limited feature set, including the usual color controls and a couple of gaming-oriented options such as a refresh rate counter and shadow boosting.
As mentioned earlier, this model omits Dell's Creator mode, which previously included an sRGB setting, and it also removes AlienVision, Dell's gaming-assist feature that offered crosshairs and other display processing options. Overall, this is the most stripped-back feature set we've seen on a Dell OLED monitor.
The OLED care controls are also quite limited. OLED panels remain susceptible to permanent burn-in, making them less ideal for prolonged static desktop use. Dell has implemented several OLED care features that slightly shift the image and dim the display in certain scenarios, but users have no control over these functions, as they are always enabled. On the plus side, Dell still includes a three-year burn-in warranty.
The design is another area where Dell has clearly reduced costs compared to its more recent Alienware OLED monitors. This is a very basic design that relies heavily on simple black plastic across most exterior surfaces.
The stand uses a flat square plastic base paired with a functional plastic pillar, while the rear panel features a simple central housing for the internal components. You still get the thin OLED panel aesthetic, but it lacks the sleekness and premium build quality of Dell's higher-end Alienware OLEDs.
Despite the more affordable and simplified design, functionality remains solid thanks to a height-adjustable stand. The monitor also supports tilt and pivot adjustment. Entry-level displays often sacrifice ergonomics with fixed-height stands, so it's good to see Dell retaining proper adjustability here.
Who Is It For?
The Dell Alienware AW2726DM is a very interesting QD-OLED gaming monitor. At just $350, it's the cheapest QD-OLED gaming monitor currently on the market, but that does mean multiple cutbacks compared to other 240Hz OLEDs we've tested over the last couple of years.
This display isn't as bright as competing models in either SDR or HDR mode, some features have been removed, such as the sRGB mode, and the port selection is extremely basic.
Because of these reductions, the AW2726DM isn't simply a cheaper version of other 1440p 240Hz QD-OLEDs. This is not the equivalent of a monitor like the MSI 273QP X24 at a lower price point. It's a genuinely different product with deliberate segmentation and meaningful trade-offs designed to hit an all-time low MSRP.
If you want a QD-OLED that delivers the full brightness capabilities we've come to expect from this panel technology, you'll still need to spend more on a higher-end model.
But Dell isn't being deceptive with this monitor or hiding its limitations. The lower brightness specification is clearly listed on the product page. But it's extremely important to understand how this model differs from the rest of the market.
There are now countless 27-inch 1440p 240Hz QD-OLEDs available, many of which offer nearly identical performance and brightness characteristics. It would be easy to assume this new Alienware model is simply another iteration at a lower price, but that's not the case.
So, are the brightness reductions a deal breaker? In SDR mode, brightness sitting slightly below 200 nits isn't ideal, but it's not terrible either. In many rooms, this display will still be perfectly usable.
HDR mode is where the compromises become much more noticeable. The lack of a Peak 1000 mode and brightness topping out below 400 nits significantly hurts the HDR experience. This is by far the monitor's biggest weakness compared to other QD-OLED options. In fact, we'd argue it falls short of delivering a truly impactful HDR experience because of it.
Despite the brightness limitations, this is still a substantially better gaming panel than most 1440p 240Hz LCDs.
At the same time, despite the brightness limitations, this is still a substantially better gaming panel than most 1440p 240Hz LCDs. You still get per-pixel control and deep true blacks, resulting in excellent contrast in both SDR and HDR modes. Yes, the HDR mode lacks the brightness component that usually defines premium HDR, but it still offers a wide color gamut and excellent shadow detail, both of which are difficult to find on LCDs without local dimming. Dell has also done a respectable job calibrating the monitor from the factory, even without an sRGB mode.
As a QD-OLED, it also delivers fantastic motion performance at 240Hz, with ultra-fast response times, high responsiveness, and low input lag. You need a very high refresh rate LCD to approach the level of motion clarity this OLED provides, so if you prioritize speed and image clarity in fast-paced games, this monitor is a great choice.
Whether this is a good buy at $350 ultimately depends on what you're looking for. If your main goal is HDR gaming, we'd probably skip this model. True HDR QD-OLEDs are available starting around $500, which is a significant step up in price, though those models do occasionally go on sale closer to $400. We'd wait for those deals instead.
Alternatively, there are some strong 1440p mini-LED LCD options with local dimming that deliver a much better HDR experience, although they still can't match OLED-level motion performance.
But if you're primarily focused on SDR gaming, want the exceptional speed of OLED technology, or are willing to accept a compromised HDR experience, the AW2726DM is a great buy. LCDs in this price range simply can't compete with the motion clarity, black levels, or contrast this QD-OLED offers.
Even with all the compromises, it still looks noticeably better than the 240Hz IPS LCDs we've used. So while this may not represent the full QD-OLED experience, it's still one of the best gaming monitors available at this price point.
More broadly, we're really happy to see OLED monitors get even cheaper. OLED remains one of the best display technologies for gaming monitors, and at $350, this is the most accessible one yet. So kudos to Dell for bringing OLED gaming to a much wider audience.
Shopping Shortcuts:
- Dell Alienware AW2726DM 27" QD-OLED on Dell
- Alienware AW2725DF 27" QD-OLED on Amazon
- MSI MAG 273QP X24 on MSI
- Alienware AW3425DW 34" QD-OLED on Amazon
- Asus ROG Swift PG27AQWP on Asus
- MSI MAG 272QP X50 500Hz QD-OLED on MSI
- LG 45GX950A on Amazon
- Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDM on Amazon
- MSI MPG 321URX on Amazon, Newegg