KTC H27E6 Review: 1440p 320Hz IPS Gaming Monitor

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The KTC H27E6 is a 27″ 1440p IPS gaming monitor with decent response time, wide color gamut, VRR, MBR and a fully ergonomic stand.

The best part is that it has a high 300Hz refresh rate (overclockable to 320Hz in the OSD menu) yet it goes for the same price as the competing 240Hz models!

Here’s how it handles our tests.

Image Quality

The KTC H27E6 monitor is based on an IPS panel with specified wide 98% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, 178° wide viewing angles, dithered 10-bit color depth (8-bit + 2-bit FRC), 450-nit peak brightness and 1,000:1 static contrast ratio.

It has a 2560×1440 QHD resolution, which results in a decent pixel density of roughly 109 PPI (pixels per inch) on the 27″ screen. This means that you get plenty of screen real estate with reasonably sharp details and text. 1440p is also considerably easier to drive than 4K UHD, allowing for higher frame rates.

Next, the 178° viewing angles ensure that the colors remain accurate and consistent at basically any angle.

We’re using our Calibrite Display Pro HL colorimeter and DisplayCAL to test how the monitor performs out of the box and if there are any settings you can make to improve the image quality.

In the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu, under the ‘Display’ settings, you’ll find several ‘Preset’ options: User (Default), Movie, Photo, ECO, Reader, RTS and FPS.

Options other than ‘User’ just have different brightness, contrast, hue/saturation and Black Equalize values pre-set that cannot be adjusted by the user. So, for full customization, we recommend using the most accurate default ‘User’ mode.

If you scroll a bit further in the ‘Display’ section, you’ll find the ‘Professional Modes’ options, including Native, sRGB, Display P3 and DCI-P3.

These modes (except Native) only lock contrast, gamma, hue/saturation and Low Blue Light settings and they clamp the monitor’s native color gamut down to sRGB or DCI-P3 color space.

Color Gamut

The KTC H27E6 has an impressive sRGB color gamut volume of 162.2%, resulting in exceptionally vibrant and saturated colors. While we measured 94.8% DCI-P3 coverage and KTC specified 98%, this is due to different colorimeters and testing methodologies.

The monitor even has a wide Adobe RGB color space coverage of 98.5%, which makes it suitable for professional color-critical work that involves printing. Sadly, there’s no dedicated Adobe RGB gamut clamp, but you can use our ICC profile to clamp the gamut to any color space using 3D LUTs.

Image Accuracy

The wide color gamut in the Native mode will make everything oversaturated when viewing SDR content since Windows doesn’t have proper color management. This results in a high maximum Delta E of 9.45 (color deviation from the target, less than 3 is considered good), while the average Delta E is 3.81 (target is < 1.5).

The default gamma (2.2) is also a bit higher than intended at 2.03 average (target is 2.2), which makes the brighter parts of the image a bit brighter than intended.

There are five gamma options in the OSD menu: Off, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4. ‘Off’ and ‘2.2’ have the same results.

Selecting the ‘2.4’ gamma option brings the average to 2.2, but the sRGB tone curve isn’t followed exactly, now making darker tones a bit darker than intended.

So, the choice between using gamma 2.2 or 2.4 comes down to personal preference here. If you want a bit darker image, go with 2.4, and if you want a brighter image, go with 2.2 – it will also make it easier to distinguish details in darker scenes.

The default ‘Normal’ color temperature preset has a high 7823K color temperature (target is 6500K), which results in a noticeable cold/blue tint to the whitepoint. We recommend changing it to ‘User’, which is more accurate at 6439K.

In the sRGB mode, the color gamut volume is clamped down from the native 162.2% to 93.7% with 91.9% sRGB color space coverage. While we prefer to see at least 95% sRGB coverage, this is still an acceptable result.

When using software clamping via AMD’s Custom Color option or novideo_srgb for NVIDIA GPUs, the gamut is clamped to around 77%, so we don’t recommend this method here.

It’s good enough for everyday use in SDR if you want reasonably accurate colors, but for professional color-critical work, you’ll need a colorimeter anyway.

Sadly, you cannot adjust the gamma in this mode and the default ‘2.2’ mode behaves similarly as in Native mode at 1.98 average. Color temperature is also a bit different; this time, the default ‘Warm’ mode is closest to 6500K at 6271K, a bit lower than the target, but there’s no noticeable tinting to the whitepoint.

Due to the somewhat aggressive gamut clamping and subpar gamma tracking, the average Delta E is 2.45, while the maximum is 4.05.

You can set the ‘Black Equalize’ setting to ’30’ to fix the gamma completely in the sRGB mode with an even lower average Delta E of 1.5, but it further increases the maximum Delta E to 4.66. The ‘Black Equalize’ feature alters the gamma curvature, but also affects color accuracy.

The Display P3 mode has similar results with 6300K color temperature, 1.97 average gamma, 2.47 average Delta E and 4.13 maximum Delta E, while the DCI-P3 volume is clamped down to 95.5% from 114.9% with 91.7% coverage.

Finally, the DCI-P3 mode has a gamma of 2.34 (target is 2.6 in this mode) while the Delta E and color gamut are the same as with the Display P3 mode. The color temperature target is 6300K and here the ‘Normal’ mode is closest at 6468K.

Other settings should be left at default values. Use brightness to your liking. Color Range should be set to ‘Full Range.’

Calibration

For full calibration, we used the ‘User’ mode with ‘Native’ color mode and ‘User’ color temperature option with red, green and blue channels left at the default for 6532K.

Now, the monitor covers 99.3% of the sRGB color space with low average Delta E of 0.48, the maximum Delta E of 3.12, while the gamma accurately tracks the sRGB tone curve with a 2.18 average.

We used a brightness setting of 20/100 for 123-nits. You can download our ICC profile here.

Brightness & Contrast

In the ‘User’ color temperature mode, the KTC H27E6 has a high maximum brightness of 480-nits, and a respectable minimum brightness of 27-nits.

This makes the monitor suitable for exceptionally well-lit rooms, as well as dark rooms. Note that in the default ‘Normal’ color temperature mode, peak brightness was quite a bit lower at 387-nits.

We also measured a contrast ratio of 1552:1 at 200-nits, which is a great result for an IPS panel display since they typically have a contrast ratio of around 1,000:1 or as low as 700:1.

Blacks still won’t be as deep as that of VA panels with a higher contrast ratio (typically around 4,000:1) or that of OLED panels and mini LED monitors with local dimming.

Additionally, all IPS monitors suffer from IPS glow, which is an expected drawback of the panel technology characterized as visible glowing around the corners of the screen. However, it’s only noticeable at certain viewing angles and when displaying content at a high brightness setting in a dark room. So, it’s manageable.

With proper brightness settings and some ambient lighting behind the screen (such as the monitor’s RGB lighting), IPS glow was not visible at all on our unit at a normal viewing distance, even in a dark room.

HDR

The KTC H27E6 also supports HDR (High Dynamic Range).

However, since it doesn’t have an OLED panel or a mini LED backlight with full-array local dimming, we don’t consider it a proper HDR display. It cannot simultaneously display really bright and dark elements.

HDR content will still benefit from 10-bit color depth for improved gradients and proper DCI-P3 color mapping, but some details in shadows and highlights of the image will be lost. Peak brightness remains the same at 480-nits.

While you may prefer the way some HDR content looks over SDR on this monitor, it’s not a ‘true’ HDR viewing experience nor close to the creator’s intent.

Performance

The KTC H27E6 has a maximum native refresh rate of 300Hz. In the OSD menu, you can enable the ‘Overclock’ option, which allows you to bump up the refresh rate to 320Hz.

Such a high refresh rate ensures buttery-smooth motion clarity for a more enjoyable and responsive gaming experience. While the difference between 240Hz and 320Hz is very subtle, it is there – and you also get lower input latency.

For latency and response time testing, we’re using OSRTT. Before the tests, the monitor was calibrated and warmed up.

There are five response time overdrive modes: Off, Standard, Advanced, Ultra Fast and Dynamic Overdrive. Here’s how they perform at fixed refresh rates of 60Hz, 120Hz and 320Hz.

At 60Hz, only the ‘Off‘ mode doesn’t cause overshoot. Luckily, it’s fast enough. At 120Hz, Standard introduces some visible overshoot, making ‘Off‘ a better option with 63.33% refresh rate compliance.

At 320Hz, the best mode is ‘Advanced‘ since ‘Ultra Fast’ has too much overshoot.

Sadly, even with the Advanced mode, the pixels aren’t quite fast enough to keep up with the refresh rate (3.125ms refresh window) with a 4.05ms average GtG response time, meaning that only 46.67% – 50% of all pixel transitions make it within the refresh rate window and there’s even minor overshoot noticeable with 5% average error.

At 300Hz, refresh rate compliance is a bit better at 56.67%. Since the difference in motion between 300Hz and 320Hz is not really noticeable, you may want to consider running the monitor at 300Hz for a bit less ghosting artifacts.

Overall, there’s minor ghosting noticeable behind fast-moving objects, but most users will find it tolerable or even negligible. Most importantly, there’s no dark-level smearing associated with most high refresh rate VA panel displays.

Here’s how these response time measures look in Blur Busters’ UFO ghosting test at 320Hz using the 960 Pixels Per Sec test with the camera’s shutter speed set to 1/4 of the refresh rate with fixed focus, ISO and color temperature.

If you want a 27″ 1440p gaming monitor with a faster pixel response time speed and similar refresh rate, you’d have to invest in one of the OLED variants or the ASUS PG27AQN with a 360Hz IPS panel and the Dual-Layer Voltage Driver, but these options go for ~$650.

Another option with faster response time speed is the BenQ XL2566K with a 1080p 360Hz TN panel, but it doesn’t have as good image quality due to its TN panel and lower resolution.

Therefore, the KTC H27E6 is still a viable option if you want a gaming monitor with a 27″ 1440p IPS panel for a good balance of performance, image quality and price.

Here’s how the KTC H27E6 compares to several more gaming monitors in Blur Busters’ UFO test.

There’s also the ‘Dynamic Overdrive’ mode that’s supposed to apply the best overdrive setting depending on your frame rate when using variable refresh rate (VRR). At 60Hz, it has the same performance as ‘Off’, at 120Hz, it’s ‘Standard’, and for 240Hz and over, it uses ‘Advanced.’

However, as soon as you reach around 70FPS, it switches to ‘Standard’, which adds noticeable overshoot, even more than it does at 120FPS, and ‘Advanced’ is too aggressive for 240FPS.

Instead, to avoid overshoot, we recommend using ‘Off’ for 60FPS – 180FPS and ‘Standard’ for 180FPS – 320FPS. If you’re mainly gaming at around 300FPS or more, you can dial it up to ‘Advanced.’

This means that there’s no single overdrive option best for VRR gaming, which is typical for such a high refresh rate gaming monitor in this price range.

When using VRR, be it Adaptive-Sync, AMD FreeSync, HDMI 2.1 VRR or G-SYNC Compatible, the monitor dynamically changes its refresh rate to match your frame rate (at 75FPS, you get 75Hz, etc.) in order to eliminate screen tearing at virtually no lag penalty.

The KTC H27E6 offers smooth VRR performance for tear-free gameplay up to 320FPS and no VRR brightness flickering common for VA and OLED panels.

The monitor also supports MBR (Motion Blur Reduction). This feature uses backlight strobing to reduce the perceived motion blur caused by sample-and-hold display operation. It cannot be used at the same time as VRR on this monitor and it sacrifices image brightness while active.

Further, MBR causes flickering that’s invisible to the human eye, but sensitive users might experience eye strain or headaches after prolonged use.

To enable this feature, you’ll need to disable ‘FreeSync/G-Sync” and turn on ‘MPRT’. The minimum supported refresh rate is 120Hz, and it works all the way up to 320Hz.

As you can see in the image above, MPRT does improve motion clarity, but there are some image duplication visual artifacts from strobe crosstalk.

It’s definitely usable, so it’s worth experimenting with different refresh rates – for optimal performance, your frame rate should match the refresh rate. So, if you can only maintain 240FPS, for instance, you should drop the refresh rate to 240Hz if you wish to use MBR and cap your frame rate in-game or via RTSS to 240.

However, at 320Hz, it sacrifices too much brightness at only 34-nits. At 300Hz, you get a lot more reasonable 96-nits, 95-nits at 240Hz, 193-nits at 144Hz and 267-nits at 120Hz.

Next, here’s a look at display latency performance.

With ‘FreeSync/G-Sync’ disabled in the OSD menu, display latency is 15.07ms at 60Hz, 6.40ms at 120Hz and 2.08ms at 320Hz.

Once you enable it, the display latency is greatly reduced at lower refresh rates – 8.81ms at 60Hz, 4.79ms at 120Hz and 2.18ms at 320Hz. So, even if you don’t plan on using VRR, you should enable this option in the OSD menu, and then disable VRR in your GPU drivers if you don’t wish to use it.

The KTC H27E6 latency performance is excellent as there’s no perceptible delay between your actions and the result on the screen.

Moving on, we didn’t find any dead or stuck pixels, no frame skipping, excessive backlight bleeding or IPS glow, no pixel inversion artifacts and no image retention.

The KTC H27E6 also has a flicker-free backlight (unless MPRT is enabled) and a low-blue light filter with 4 options (measured 6343K, 6069K, 5828K and 5611K) to ensure a comfortable viewing experience.

Finally, looking at the brightness and contrast uniformity, there’s a subtle vignette effect as the edges of the screen have a bit lower brightness in comparison to the center of the screen, in particular, the left side of the screen of our unit was around 15% darker.

However, this result is within expectations for an LED-backlit gaming display with these specs and price range, and it’s not noticeable during everyday use.

Features

The KTC H27E6 has a directional joystick for quick and easy navigation through the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu.

Besides the typical image adjustment tools (brightness, contrast, color temperature), the monitor also offers some advanced settings, including sharpness, aspect ratio (full, 16:9, 4:3 and a 24.5″ mode), gamma (from 1.8 to 2.4), 6-axis hue/saturation and automatic input detection.

The 24.5″ aspect ratio mode simulates the 24.5″ screen size by putting black borders around the screen. Many Competitive FPS players prefer ~24″ sized screens as they can see the entire image without having to move their eyes or neck as much as they’d need to on a bigger screen.

For some reason, color depth is limited to 6-bit at 320Hz and you cannot use VRR when 24.5″ mode is enabled over DisplayPort, but you can use MPRT and 8-bit color at 300Hz. Over HDMI, you can use 24.5″ Mode with 10-bit color at 320Hz as well as VRR and MPRT.

In the 24.5″ Mode, the monitor uses 1:1 pixel mapping with a 2322×1354 screen resolution, resulting in a crisp image quality.

There is no 120Hz pre-set option at this resolution or 2560×1440, so if you plan on connecting a console to the monitor and using the 24.5″ mode, you may be limited to 1080p 120Hz. We don’t test monitors with consoles, so we can’t confirm this.

We also measured low display latency using the 24.5″ mode of 2.40ms at 320Hz, 7.3ms at 120Hz (via custom resolution) and 13.96ms at 60Hz.

Other gaming features include Black Equalize (improves visibility in dark scenes, from 0 to 100 in increments of 10), on-screen timer, a refresh rate tracker and crosshair overlays (‘Game Assist’).

As for the other settings, there are RGB Lighting (off, breathing effect or static red, green or blue), OSD options (language, position, timeout, etc.), power LED indicator, audio, USB (firmware) upgrade and DCR (dynamic contrast ratio), which should be disabled (default) for best image quality.

KTC doesn’t offer any desktop application for OSD adjustments, but the monitor supports DDC/CI, so you can use a third-party application, such as ControlMyMonitor, to make the following settings using your keyboard and mouse:

When not in the OSD menu, pressing the joystick up, down, right and left also summons a quick menu for certain functions. These can be assigned in the settings (brightness, volume, mute, color temperature, Gamma Assist, preset, HDR Black Equalize and Aspect Ratio).

Design & Connectivity

The stand of the monitor is robust and offers full ergonomic support, including 130mm height adjustment, +/- 90° pivot, -5°/20° tilt, +/- 45° swivel and 100x100mm VESA mount compatibility.

The KTC H27E6 design involves a combination of matte black and white (grayish white) plastics and aluminium. The stand is flat, which we always like to see as it allows you to place items on it, and doesn’t take up a lot of desk space. There’s also a cable management bracket.

Next, the screen has a light matte anti-glare coating that diffuses reflections without making the image too grainy. The bezels are ultra-thin (~1mm) at the top and at the sides, while the bottom bezel is a bit thicker at 15mm with black borders before the image starts (~2mm at the bottom and 5mm at the top/sides).

On the rear of the monitor, there’s RGB lighting with the breathing effect (cycles through red, green, blue, yellow, magenta and cyan). It can also be disabled or set to static red, green or blue color.

While we mentioned that there’s no VRR brightness flickering in games, if you’re playing a game with fluctuating frame rates and VRR is enabled, the RGB lighting can appear as if it’s flickering with the breathing effect since its intensity changes with the refresh rate. You can avoid this by setting the RGB lighting to a static color.

The LEDs are powerful enough to reflect off the wall for atmospheric ambient lighting!

Connectivity options include two HDMI 2.1 ports, two DisplayPort 1.4 inputs, a headphone jack, an external power supply and a USB port for firmware updates.

In the box, along with the monitor and its stand, you’ll get a DisplayPort cable, the external power supply, a power cord and a warranty card/quickstart guide.

Price & Similar Monitors

The KTC H27E6 usually goes for around $260, which is excellent value for the price considering that it’s more affordable than 27″ 1440p 240Hz IPS models.

Around this price range, you can also get a 27″ 1440p 180Hz VA monitor with 1152-zone mini LED FALD, the AOC Q27G40XMN, for proper HDR image quality, though it doesn’t have as high refresh rate, wide viewing angles or smooth VRR performance.

For more options in this price range, such as ultrawide models, check out our best gaming monitors under $300 buyer’s guide.

If you want a better 27″ 1440p display for competitive FPS games, you’d have to invest around $650 in an OLED model or a high-end IPS panel with notably faster response times, such as the Philips 27M2N8500 or the ASUS PG27AQN.

As far as 1080p 360Hz models go, the Dell AW2523HF has a similar pixel response time speed as the H27E6, so the extra 40Hz is not worth the drop in resolution. For a 1080p 360Hz experience worth the sacrifice in image quality, you should consider the $550 BenQ XL2566K with a fast TN panel and excellent backlight strobing implementation.

Conclusion

Overall, the KTC H27E6 is an excellent gaming monitor for the price.

Thanks to its low input lag, high refresh rate, decent response times and smooth VRR performance, it ensures fluid gameplay, while its 1440p IPS panel with a wide color gamut and respectable factory calibration ensures vibrant image quality and makes it suitable for color-critical work.

You get a more than high enough brightness, good contrast ratio for an IPS panel, exceptionally rich colors, a viable backlight strobing feature and a great design considering the price. While there’s no single overdrive experience, it can be easily adjusted according to your frame rates.

Specifications

Screen Size	27-inch
Resolution	2560×1440 (WQHD)
Panel Type	Fast IPS
Aspect Ratio	16:9 (Widescreen)
Refresh Rate	300Hz (320Hz OC)
Response Time	1ms (GtG)
Response Time (MPRT)	1ms (MPRT)
Adaptive-Sync	FreeSync Premium (48-320Hz)
Ports	2x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.1
Other Ports	Headphone Jack, USB 2.0
Brightness	450 cd/m²
Contrast Ratio	1000:1 (static)
Colors	1.07 billion (8-bit + FRC) 98% DCI-P3
HDR	VESA DisplayHDR 400
VESA	Yes (100x100mm)