// WIRED US/UK — HARDWARE & GADGET
Alienware 27 QD-OLED (AW2726DM) Review: A $350 Winner
.jpg)
Alienware made the first major OLED gaming monitor, known as the AW3423DW. It was a glorious piece of new technology, but it was also expensive at $1,400 (or $1,550 when adjusted for inflation). Three years later, you can buy this new Alienware OLED monitor, the AW2726DM, for just $350.
It's in some ways superior to the elder AW3423DW, yet it's 75 percent cheaper. That dramatic decrease in price might have your spidey senses tingling. You'd be right to wonder if Alienware value-engineered it to oblivion, but I'm happy to report that this is an affordable gaming monitor that makes its cuts in the right places.
Not all OLED panels are made equal. That's one of the keys to understanding how Alienware brought the price down so much on the AW2726DM. Despite being a 27-inch QD-OLED with a native resolution of 2560 x 1440 and a 240-Hz refresh rate, this isn't the same kind of OLED that more expensive gaming monitors use. While Alienware doesn’t mention the panel used, it appears to be an older panel with a “triangle” sub-pixel layout, which is where some of the compromise comes into play.
This type of QD-OLED arranges pixels in a way that’s different from LCD, which can cause issues when viewing small text. You may notice “color fringing” visible as an odd burst of green or purple filling the negative space between letters.
The AW2726DM just isn’t a sharp display, and it’s not great for viewing small text. As mentioned, it has a resolution of 2560 x 1440—or 1440p. This provides a pixel density of about 110 pixels per inch. By comparison, a standard 27-inch 4K monitor delivers about 165 pixels per inch.
However, sticking to 1440p feels like the right call for a monitor at this price point. As PC gamers likely know, increasing a game’s render resolution from 1440p to 4K comes with a huge performance penalty, and midrange GPUs struggle to handle demanding games at 4K.
Still, it’s QD-OLED, and all QD-OLED panels have two things going for them: Incredible contrast and superb color performance.
You might be familiar with OLED’s contrast advantage if you’ve bought a TV sometime this decade. OLED pixels are self-emissive, meaning the pixels themselves create light. That’s different from an LCD panel, which requires a backlight that shines through the pixels. OLED’s self-emissive technology provides a lot more control over how the image is lit, and the result is an image with far more contrast and depth than what LCD can achieve.
Samsung’s QD-OLED also uses quantum dots, a very cool tech that requires its own article to explain. Quantum dots generally provide great color, and the AW2726DM is no exception, as it reaches 98 percent of DCI-P3 and 94 percent of AdobeRGB. Those numbers are close to the top of what’s available from any monitor in 2026, regardless of price.
In the real world, the contrast and color translate to a vivid, realistic image with a sense of depth you won’t find from LCD alternatives. Games generally look colorful, rich, and alluring.