KTC H27T22S Review: 1440p 180Hz IPS Gaming Monitor

The KTC H27T22S is a 27″ 1440p 180Hz IPS gaming monitor with a quick response time speed and a wide color gamut.

This is still a very popular combination of specs for a lot of gamers, and it has become more affordable than before, so let’s see how it performs in our tests!

Image Quality

Many gamers find 27″ 1440p high refresh rate IPS displays to be the perfect mixture of specifications – and here’s why.

You get a screen that’s neither too big nor too small, a resolution that looks sharp without being too demanding on your GPU, a high refresh rate for smooth gameplay and an IPS panel with wide viewing angles, consistent image quality with vivid colors, quick response time and smooth VRR (variable refresh rate) performance without brightness flickering that’s common for VA and OLED panels.

All that at an affordable price. The KTC H27T22S ticks all those boxes yet it has aggressive pricing, potentially making it one of the best budget gaming monitors available, but first, let’s see how it handles our tests.

We’re using the Datacolor SpyderX Pro colorimeter paired with DisplayCAL and ColorHCFR software for our tests.

First, we’ll see how accurate the image is out of the box when it comes to color accuracy, gamma and whitepoint.

Gamma tracking is excellent with 2.18 average (target is 2.2), so scenes will be just as bright or dark as the creator intended when viewing sRGB SDR content.

The color temperature in the default ‘Normal‘ mode is too high at 8340K, which adds a bluish tint to whitepoint. We recommend changing the color temperature mode to ‘Warm‘, which has 7066K. It’s still a bit colder than the 6500K target, but there’s no obvious bluish hue noticeable anymore.

The KTC H27T22S also has a low-blue light filter with four intensity levels (from 0 to 100 in 25 increments). Increasing it to 25 when using the Warm color temperature mode brings the color temperature closer to the 6500K target at 6300K.

In the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu, besides the default ‘User’ preset, you’ll also find Movie, Photo, ECO, Reader, RTS and FPS presets. However, these just have different brightness, contrast, and saturation settings, which are locked. Therefore, we recommend sticking with the default User mode as it has the most accurate settings and no locked adjustments.

Finally, the monitor has a wide color gamut with a 118.6% sRGB color gamut volume. This results in a bit of over-saturation when viewing sRGB SDR content, but it’s not intrusive and most users will prefer the extra color vibrancy and added shade variety.

Due to the larger color gamut than sRGB, this also means that some colors won’t be accurate. Red, in particular, has a high maximum Delta E of 5.69 (target is < 3), but the average Delta E is just 1.31 (target is < 1.5). So, apart from red being a bit more intense, the colors overall are accurate.

In the OSD menu, under ‘Display’ settings, you’ll also find the ‘Professional Modes’ tab with ‘Native’ (tested above) and ‘sRGB’ options.

The sRGB mode is intended to emulate the sRGB color space. In this case, it should restrict the monitor’s native 118.6% sRGB gamut down to around 100%. However, in our test, the mode is too aggressive as it reduces the gamut to just 84%.

The good news is that brightness and color temperature settings are fully adjustable in the sRGB mode. The monitor also has a USB port for firmware updates, so it’s possible that the accuracy of the sRGB mode could be fixed in the future.

As an alternative, you can use software clamping via AMD’s Custom Color option if you have a Radeon GPU, or via the novideo_srgb third-party tool in case you have an NVIDIA GPU. However, using this method alone reduced the color gamut down to 90%, which is definitely better, but still too aggressive.

Luckily, you can use our ICC profile with novideo_srgb (if you have an NVIDIA GPU) or the dwm_lut GUI tool to create a 3D LUT (works with AMD and Intel cards too). This will accurately clamp the gamut down to around 100% (98.9% sRGB coverage and 99.7% sRGB volume in our test).

You’ll find more information on how you can use these third-party tools for sRGB emulation in our article.

Overall, the image accuracy out of the box is very good and since the over-saturation is very minor, most users will prefer the native mode anyway.

For a full calibration, we used the ‘User’ color temperature mode and reduced red color channel to 49, green to 49 and blue to 43 to get 6510K for accurate whitepoint.

Gamma tracking has also improved to 2.22, the maximum Delta E is 1.23, and the average Delta E is just 0.34. You can download our ICC profile here.

Moving on, we measured a maximum brightness of 355-nits, which is more than bright enough even for well-lit rooms. The minimum brightness is also excellent at only 21-nits, meaning that the display can get dim enough for a comfortable viewing experience in a dark room.

Further, we measured a static contrast ratio of 1156:1, which is expected from an IPS panel display.

Blacks aren’t quite as deep as that of VA panels, which usually have a contrast ratio of around 3,000:1, but these panels have other drawbacks in this price range, including gamma/saturation shifts, slower response time and unstable VRR performance.

Next, here’s the brightness and contrast uniformity test result:

The left part of the screen is a bit darker than the rest (up to 25% darker when measuring 100% white in comparison to the center of the screen), however, this is common for most displays and not actually noticeable during actual use.

Lastly, we didn’t find any dead or stuck pixels and no excessive IPS glow or backlight bleeding. There were also no pixel inversion artifacts or frame skipping.

When doing Blur Buster’s UFO ghosting test, the flickering pattern of the sync track would remain visible on the screen for some time, but it disappears after playing other content. This is a common occurrence we detected on some displays, but it’s not a cause for concern as we didn’t encounter it during regular use and other testing.

HDR

The KTC H27T22S also supports HDR (High Dynamic Range). However, while it can accept the HDR10 signal and display it, there’s no proper hardware (full-array local dimming or an OLED panel) for a true HDR viewing experience.

Some HDR content (depending on implementation) can still benefit by providing you with correct wide color gamut mapping and smoother gradients with less banding thanks to dithered 10-bit color depth support.

Certain details in shadows and highlights of the image will be lost though, so we recommend largely sticking with the SDR mode.

Brightness remains the same as with SDR with a peak of 327-nits and 7444K color temperature.

Performance

For pixel response time speed and input lag testing, we’re using OSRTT. We’re also using Blur Buster’s UFO ghosting test with 960 Pixels Per Sec, shutter speed set to 1/4 of the refresh rate with fixed focus, ISO and color temperature (6500K). Before the tests, the monitor was calibrated and warmed up.

The KTC H27T22S has five response time overdrive modes: Off, Standard, Advanced, UltraFast and Auto.

At a fixed 180Hz refresh rate, the ‘Off’ mode is too slow as it’s just native panel performance, whereas ‘UltraFast’ pushes the pixels to change too fast, causing inverse ghosting (pixel overshoot).

The ‘Advanced’ mode is a bit better than the default ‘Standard’ mode as it increases the pixel response time speed without adding any noticeable overshoot.

At 180Hz, the ‘Auto’ mode works the same as ‘Advanced.’

The response time performance is excellent with a 4.57ms average GtG (gray to gray) pixel response time speed and 83.33% of transitions making it in time with the 5.56ms refresh rate cycle. The overshoot is very low at just 2.53%, which is not noticeable.

At a fixed 120Hz refresh rate, some overshoot starts to become noticeable when using the ‘Advanced’ mode as ‘Standard’ is already fast enough. Luckily, the ‘Auto’ mode at 120Hz has the same performance as ‘Standard.’

At 60Hz, overshoot is noticeable when using the ‘Standard’ mode and ‘Off’ is fast enough to keep up with the refresh rate. The good news is that at 60Hz, ‘Auto’ has the same performance as ‘Off.’

We also tested the overdrive performance with variable refresh rate enabled and found that the Auto mode behaves as variable overdrive and it’s quite well-optimized, which is impressive and rarely seen in monitors in this price range.

The variable refresh rate performance (AMD FreeSync Premium for Radeon GPUs, NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatible for GeForce cards) is excellent as well. VRR prevents screen tearing by synchronizing the monitor’s refresh rate to your frame rate. Most importantly, there’s no VRR brightness flickering that’s usually associated with VA and OLED panels.

You can set the overdrive to ‘Auto’ and get optimal response time performance regardless of your refresh rate and frame rate.

Here’s how the KTC H27T22S handles Blur Busters’ UFO ghosting test. As you can see, there are no noticeable trailing artifacts behind the fast-moving UFO, except for the UltraFast mode with pixel overshoot.

Next, you can see how a high refresh rate affects motion clarity. Even at 120Hz, you get a huge improvement in comparison to 60-75Hz. 180Hz is noticeably clearer and ensures a responsive gameplay experience.

Finally, here’s a comparison with some other monitors we tested. You can see how the KTC H34S18S, for instance, has some noticeable dark level trailing behind the UFO even though it has a faster 3.29ms GtG measured average response time speed. This is because it uses a VA panel with slower dark to bright pixel transitions.

The KTC H27T22S also supports Motion Blur Reduction (MBR) when you enable the MPRT option in the OSD menu. This technology uses backlight strobing to reduce the perceived motion blur caused by the sample-and-hold method of operation that LCD and OLED displays use.

The downside is that you cannot use MPRT and VRR at the same time on this monitor, and maximum brightness is reduced to 62-nits at 180Hz, 59-nits at 144Hz and 48-nits at 120Hz, which most gamers will find too dim. There are also no options to adjust the strobe length (trade-off between image clarity and brightness) and strobe phase (adjusting which part of the screen should be the clearest).

If you’re gaming in a dark room, ~50-nits might be acceptable and MPRT can improve motion performance in fast-paced games, although there’s a bit of strobe crosstalk (image duplication) at the top of the image.

This is expected on most MBR implementations except for the high-end eSports models, so it’s acceptable since the most important (middle) section of the screen is fairly clear. Note that for the best backlight strobing results in games, your frame rate should match the refresh rate. For instance, if you can only maintain 120FPS constantly, you should reduce the refresh rate to 120Hz and use MPRT.

Backlight strobing also introduces screen flickering that’s invisible to the human eye but can cause headaches after prolonged use to sensitive users. With MPRT disabled, the backlight is flicker-free.

Display latency performance is excellent as well with only 3.72ms of delay at 180Hz, 4.67ms at 120Hz and 9.19ms at 60Hz, which is imperceptible.

Features

At the rear of the monitor, there’s a directional joystick for quick and easy navigation through the OSD menu.

Besides the standard image adjustment tools (brightness, contrast, color temperature, various presets, etc.), the KTC H27T22S also offers some advanced settings, including sharpness, four gamma modes, aspect ratio (full, 16:9 or 4:3), automatic input detection and 6-axis hue/saturation.

Useful gaming features include Black Equalize (improves visibility in dark scenes by altering the gamma curvature), an on-screen timer, crosshair overlays and a refresh rate tracker.

The joystick can also be used as a hotkey for some of these settings by pressing it up, down, left or right. You can assign the following settings in the OSD menu: brightness, volume, mute, color temperature, Game Assist, presets, HDR, Black Equliaze and aspect ratio.

Other settings include the standard OSD menu adjustments (position, transparency, timeout, color, language), audio, factory reset and LED indicator. The menu also neatly shows the current refresh rate, resolution, firmware version and whether HDR and VRR are enabled.

We tested the monitor using the USA-1.0.1 firmware version.

KTC doesn’t offer a dedicated desktop application for OSD adjustments, but the monitor supports DDC/CI.

So, you can use a third-party application, such as ControlMyMonitor and ClickMonitorDDC to make some monitor adjustments using your keyboard and mouse.

Design & Connectivity

The KTC H27T22S has a tilt-only stand (-5°/15°), but the screen is VESA mount compatible via the 100x100mm pattern. So, you can easily mount it on a third-party stand for more adjustability and desk space.

The stand is made of metal and it’s quite sturdy, while the flat base allows you to place items on it, so you’re not losing a lot of desk space.

Next, the top and side bezels are ultrathin (~1mm with ~6mm black border before the image starts), while the bottom bezel is a bit thicker at 15mm with a 1mm border.

In the box, along with the screen, stand base and stand riser, you’ll also get a small screwdriver for the three screws that connect the stand. In addition, you get a warranty card, a user guide, an HDMI cable, a DisplayPort cable, a power brick and a power supply cable.

Connectivity options include two DisplayPort 1.4 inputs, two HDMI 2.0 ports (limited to 144Hz), a headphone jack and a USB port for firmware updates only.

Price & Similar Monitors

The KTC H27T22S can be found for as low as $150, which makes it the most affordable 1440p high refresh rate IPS gaming monitor available.

On top of that, it offers a wide color gamut, smooth VRR performance and a fast response time speed with variable overdrive, which is why we highly recommend it.

Note that there’s also the older KTC H27T22 model, but we find the H27T22S variant to offer much better value for the money.

Overall, the KTC H27T22S is the best budget 1440p gaming monitor. If you want a display that’s a step up, you should consider investing in the AOC Q27G3XMN with a 336-zone mini LED FALD backlight for proper HDR image quality, priced around $280 – though it has slower response time and not as smooth VRR performance.

The Acer XV271U M3 is another popular 27″ 1440p 180Hz IPS gaming monitor. It has an ergonomic stand, but it’s not as sturdy – for $200 on sale. So, if you want an adjustable stand, we recommend pairing the KTC H27T22S and a third-party stand for less than $200 and even better ergonomics.

For more options and information, check out our best gaming monitor buyer’s guide.

Conclusion

The KTC H27T22S is the best gaming monitor you can get for ~$150 thanks to its 27″ 1440p IPS panel with wide color gamut, high refresh rate, smooth VRR performance and fast response time with variable overdrive.

The main downside is one that affects all IPS panels and that’s the low contrast ratio. However, to get deeper blacks, you’d need to go with a VA alternative or invest in a more expensive mini LED or OLED display – all of which have their own disadvantages.

Further, the sRGB emulation mode is too aggressive, but given that the monitor only has minor extension over the sRGB color space, we don’t find it to be an issue as most users will prefer the added color vibrancy of the native mode anyway.

Finally, the stand is tilt-only, but it’s sturdy and doesn’t take up a lot of desk space. Moreover, the screen is VESA mount compatible, so we recommend taking advantage of that for a more clutter-free and ergonomic setup.

On the plus side, you get a respectable screen size with sharp details and text, plenty of screen space, wide viewing angles, vibrant colors, decent factory calibration and buttery smooth performance without any ghosting, tearing or similar visual artifacts.

What we like the most about the monitor is the excellent response time performance with a single overdrive experience, as well as the price – the KTC H27T22S is more affordable than most 24″ 1080p 144Hz IPS displays, which is why we highly recommend it.

Specifications

Screen Size	27-inch
Resolution	2560×1440 (WQHD)
Panel Type	IPS
Aspect Ratio	16:9 (Widescreen)
Refresh Rate	180Hz
Response Time	1ms (GtG)
Response Time (MPRT)	1ms (MPRT)
Adaptive-Sync	FreeSync (48-180Hz)
Ports	2x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.0
Other Ports	Headphone Jack, USB (firmware updates only)
Brightness	350 cd/m²
Contrast Ratio	1000:1 (static)
Colors	1.07 billion (8-bit + FRC) 122% sRGB
HDR	HDR10
VESA	Yes (100x100mm)