Alienware’s AW2725Q is a Great 4K 240Hz QD-OLED Gaming Monitor Under $1,000

Alienware is no stranger to making top-tier gaming monitors. Its latest release, the AW2725Q, aims to be one of the best gaming monitors of 2025 with a 4K, 240Hz, QD-OLED panel, along with software configuration, eARC with Dolby Atmos support for speakers and soundbars, and a fresh new design for the brand. The only thing it lacks is DisplayPort 2.1, but at $899.99, it’s a great way to step into the best of what PC gaming has to offer.

Alienware AW2725Q – Design and Features

If there’s one thing you can say about Alienware, it’s that its products have a certain personality. Regardless of whether or not that strikes a chord with you, it’s hard to argue with the character built into most of its products. But with the recent Alienware Pro headset, keyboard, and mouse, it’s pushing into a more restrained direction and the AW2725Q follows suit. But with this push into a more minimalist design, it also manages to feel more refined and, in my estimation, more broadly appealing without sacrificing the image quality or performance worthy of a high-end monitor.

As we’ve come to expect from Alienware, the build quality is excellent across the board. This new model is designed to honor the brand’s 30th anniversary and highlight its sci-fi aesthetic while “evoking a new sense of mystery and transcendence.” I’m not sure about all of that – how mysterious and transcendent can the design language of a gaming monitor be? There’s no arguing with its sharp look, however.

From the small-footprint stand to the back panel of the monitor itself, the display is steeped in shapely contours. Curves are nothing special, but as a sci-fi fan, I absolutely see what they were going for. Everything but the face of the monitor is designed around its arcs, lending it the impression of an alien craft. Less Alien and more Passengers. And yes, because this is a flagship gaming monitor in 2025, there is a touch of RGB with a small glowing alien head on one side.

Design only goes so far, especially when most of it is around the back where you won’t usually see it, but rest assured that the monitor has the specs and performance where it counts. It uses the latest generation of Quantum Dot enhanced OLED panel for fantastic blacks and vivid colors, as well as excellent text clarity, and a suite of protections to preserve its panel. For everything from gaming to productivity, it aims to impress and does an admirable job of it.

The panel offers top-tier specs and in addition to its resolution and refresh rate, it also covers 99% of the DCI-P3 color space and is able to hit a peak brightness of 1000 nits. Due to the way OLED panel technology operates, it’s also incredibly fast with a rated response time of only 0.03ms, so ghosting and motion blur are never an issue. It’s VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certified and offers Dolby Vision HDR, and because of its size, it’s able to offer a high pixel density of 166 PPI. Everything looks crisp and text clarity is excellent. The screen features an anti-glare coating but it doesn’t hinder color reproduction like some matte finishes do. It’s a good middle ground if reflections are an issue in your space.

A concern for all OLED panels is heat. Since every pixel is independently controlled, heat buildup is a constant concern and one of the contributing factors to image retention (burn-in) over time. Every brand, Alienware included, has a vested interest in coming up with effective cooling solutions. One common way to address this is using external power supplies, removing one heat generating component from the unit itself. I was surprised to see that the AW2725Q doesn’t do this, so there’s no external power brick to manage in your setup. It has its own solutions for shedding those extra thermals, however, which include a graphite sheet behind the panel and a 360-degree ventilation system to draw and exhaust those thermals. Like all OLEDs I’ve tested so far, it still gets hot over time, though.

Like other OLEDs, the average brightness in SDR isn’t great. Alienware rates it for only 250 nits, though it’s usually not a problem if you position it away from direct sunlight (also a good idea to prevent the panel from overheating). Because of the exceptional dynamic range of brightness and contrast, I’ve found that most of the QD-OLED gaming monitors releasing this generation don’t feel dim in the same way that older OLEDs tended to. That said, while the brightness is acceptable, it does seem less bright to the eye than something like the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDM and if you’re coming from a quality LED gaming monitor, you’ll almost certainly notice the difference.

It offers plenty of ports, but the connectivity options are a bit odd. Altogether, it comes with two HDMI 2.1 ports (one of which supports eARC) and one DisplayPort 1.4 for video input. If you’re tech savvy, you may already know that this means that there is no way to run the display at its full resolution and refresh rate without Display Stream Compression (DSC). For most people that won’t be an issue, but there are cases where people might find this grating (such as the black screen when Alt+Tabbing from a fullscreen game).

The back panel also includes a USB hub for quick connectivity for external devices. This includes three USB 3.2 Type-A ports and a USB Type-C that’s able to deliver up to 15W of power to recharge your devices. It does not work as a video input, however, and there is no built-in KVM to quickly swap between PC and console, for example. Finally, there’s a USB Type-B port to connect the hub to your PC.

The included stand is of decent quality, but it didn’t exactly blow my socks off. It feels a bit plasticky though it is heavy enough to support the monitor throughout all of its angle adjustments. It offers four inches of height adjustment, -5 to +20 degrees of tilt, -20 to +20 degrees of swivel, and can rotate 90 degrees to be used in portrait orientation. I love the small footprint of the base and the included cable management channel is useful for keeping your setup tidy.

Alienware AW2725Q – Software and OSD

The AW2725Q allows you to configure its different options through a mix of its on-screen display and the Alienware Command Center software. Command Center is helpful, especially for assigning hotkeys to its Alienvision gaming settings, but it doesn’t mirror all of the options available in the OSD. To customize more than brightness, contrast, and a small selection of gaming features, you’ll need to navigate on the display itself using the included joystick tucked underneath the display.

The OSD is fully featured and offers a deep menu of different options. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that Alienware could stand to condense things down to make it easier to navigate. For example, sRGB and DCI-P3 color modes, usually standalone presets for quick and easy access, are both tucked inside a sub-menu within the Creator preset. gamma, which is a staple picture setting, is hidden below that. These aren’t things you’re likely to adjust very often after initial setup, but you need to explore to discover they’re available at all. Likewise, picture options are nested within their own presets, brightness and contrast are given their own menu, and HDR modes are hidden under the Display tab, below the aspect ratio setting.

Thankfully, there’s also a quick access menu to find the most common settings and gaming features. The cardinal points on the joystick can each be tied to personalized shortcuts, too, so if you know you’re going to need to adjust your brightness often, you can simply press in the direction for direct access to that value’s slider.

There are lots of options here, from picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture toggles, to three- and six-axis color mixers for manual calibration. You can configure the color of the power LED and illuminated alien head on the back of the display. There’s a self-diagnostic menu to troubleshoot problems, HDMI CEC to power up a set of speakers or a soundbar you have connected to its eARC port. You can even access a full, multi-page factory calibration report straight from the factory with measurements and graphs, all through the OSD.

For gaming features, it’s mostly the staples – and FPS counter, Dark Stabilizer to raise the shadows, a built-in timer. Though Alienvision deserves special mention; this is Alienware’s take on the on-screen reticle. It can be toggled in three modes: the standard reticle and two where the reticle is centered within a rectangle. The first boosts the brightness of anything displayed inside of it and gives you better visibility in the dark. The second, Chroma, is a bit of a mix between night vision and a thermal scope, highlighting objects in green. Both can be configured to take up more or less space, zoom in like a sniper scope, be opaque or translucent, and more.

It’s unfair for competitive shooters, without a doubt. It’s like turning a pea shooter into a sniper rifle with a single click. There are some situations where settings like these could offer legitimate help, such as when you’re going for an achievement in an especially hard level, and that’s what Alienware intended… right?

Alienware AW2725Q – Performance

The Alienware AW2725Q is an excellent monitor for the price. Though its SDR brightness leaves something to be desired, there is no mistaking the performance and fidelity that this display offers. For $899, it needs to live up to a certain standard, and it delivers while also demonstrating that you get what you pay for.

Beginning with responsiveness, my first stop was Blurbusters’ test UFO ghosting test. As you can see in the image above, there is no ghosting whatsoever. I captured the photo using a high-speed camera and ran the monitor at its full 240Hz refresh rate, and it’s crystal clear.

These results are echoed in games – not only is ghosting a complete non-issue, but motion clarity is noticeably enhanced. At 240Hz, in games that are capable of making the most of that refresh rate, you can discern additional detail even in fast movements. Now, whether or not this will make you a better gamer is a matter of skill; no monitor will make up for slow reaction speed, but it can raise your skill ceiling.

Analyzing its color gamut and tone response with my Datacolor SpyderPro colorimeter reveals good results. It covers the complete sRGB color space and 98% of DCI-P3. However, in subsequent tests, it bounced back and forth between 98 and 99%, so I’m comfortable saying that Dell’s rating is accurate. My sample demonstrated slightly elevated brightness compared to the Gamma 2.2 standard but tracks alongside its output curve well. Its performance is close enough that the differences are imperceptible to the naked eye.

In SDR, its brightness impressively exceeds the manufacturer’s rating. At 100% brightness, it reached 292 nits. Contrast, as we know from the panel type, is infinite, and blacks are as dark as they come. Moving over to HDR content, the monitor offers several different settings, including Game, Cinema, Desktop, DisplayHDR True Black, HDR Peak 1000, and Custom Color HDR. For sheer brightness, you’ll want to use the HDR Peak 1000 setting. In a 2% window, I recorded a brightness of 992 nits. For highlights that are even smaller, like glints from ocean waves or the sparkles of stars, I have no doubt that it would meet and likely exceed the 1000 nit rating; however, my repeatable testing tools don’t allow for such minute highlights. Every other setting seems to cap brightness between 500-700 nits, trading brightness for color balance.

Color Accuracy is excellent, too. In its default Game 1 preset, running at full brightness with gamma set to 2.2, it returned a Delta E average of only 1.61, making it accurate enough for professional color work. Of that, only a single hue, cyan, was far enough out that a professional colorist might be able to see a difference. This was easily reigned in with a manual calibration, but the AW2725Q is one of the best calibrated gaming monitors I’ve encountered from the factory, and you can confidently use it straight out of the box.

Interestingly, if you set it to the DCI-P3 or sRGB color spaces under the Creator profile, which should ideally be the most accurate, the opposite is true. Both returned average Delta E results greater than three. It’s still not bad, but it’s not what you would expect either. For content creation, avoid the Creator mode.

Overall, we come out with a very good score for the monitor and my own experience echoes this. After tweaking the picture settings to my taste, I found that the monitor looked great with beautifully vivid color rendition. Quantum Dot enhanced panels really excel at this and the same is true here.

But there’s a catch: the default picture settings lack the wow factor that many competing monitors, like the Gigabyte AORUS FO32U2 Pro, offer right out of the gate. In my case, that meant increasing both brightness and contrast, as well as turning up the saturation a touch (this was done after all of my testing). Setting contrast to 75% and brightness to its max brings the panel to life. Running at such high brightness isn’t ideal for an OLED panel, but it does feel necessary to get the picture to a place where it’s on even footing with other near-$1,000 OLED gaming monitors. This isn’t as much of an issue in HDR as it’s able to scale much higher as the picture requires it. This is even more true when Dolby Vision is enabled and scene-by-scene brightness and contrast shines through.

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