From the moment it hit the scene six years ago, the PlayStation 5 was billed as the 4K console for the new era. Whether or not the console really met that promise is up for debate. The games you played were supposed to run without hindrance at that top-end resolution (though mostly with the help of upscaling), which only helped propel us into the age where 4K TVs are the norm. Sony, surprisingly, decided the best move for its first screen since it pushed the 3D Bravia TV was a 1440p LCD monitor for your desktop.
PlayStation’s “27-inch Gaming Monitor with DualSense Charging Hook” is an odd, overly long name for an odd, relatively small screen. What you get for $350 is a fast IPS LCD display with an arm that swings down, allowing players to plant their PS5 controllers in to charge when not in use. Other than the white-and-black aesthetic, the lone PlayStation icons in front and behind, and the ability to hit the necessary 120Hz max refresh rate on PS5, the hook is the monitor’s only nod toward its progenitor. It doesn’t connect with the PS5 to add any mood lighting when you’re gaming. It is—simply put—a gaming screen.
PlayStation 27-inch Gaming Monitor with DualSense Charging Hook
This monitor is built with PS5 gamers in mind, though you should mainly consider it if you want an easy way to charge your controllers.
- Charging hook keeps controllers topped up
- HDR tone-mapping for PS5
- Refresh rate for both PS5 and PC
- Extra ports
- Sturdy base
- Includes backup speakers
- Charging hook feels underbaked
- No tilt capabilities
- Ugly cable management
- Annoying switch to change level
The 27-inch PlayStation monitor arrives at a transition point for Sony’s headlining gaming brand. After several years spent pushing formerly exclusive titles to PC, Sony has rapidly backpedaled from its PC expansion plans. Despite the halt of its PC ambitions, the company still plans to launch a set of portable desktop speakers on Nov. 12. Combine this monitor with existing accessories like the Pulse Elite headset, and you’d supposedly have a full gaming desk setup for console and computer. With the TV beckoning you back to its couch-based comforts, what place could a PlayStation monitor have in your gaming life?
And yet it’s the hook that matters. The hook will set you free. The hook helps alleler’s awful battery life. So before you go about knocking this screen, know that this is the one and only reason that PlayStation got me hooked on this monitor
Okay, let’s talk about the hook
To get the obvious out of the way, this monitor’s whole schtick is centered around this single gimmick. The hook arm can lock in place facing downward or tuck up behind the screen either to the left or right. If you plan to actually connect your monitor to your PC or PS5, you end up shoving it up to the right, where it won’t be in the way of your HDMI cables.
Each DualSense controller comes with a bottom port that can charge the controller when not in use. Plugging it into the monitor’s hook charges the controller—though not at some blistering, previously unseen rate. Sony sells a $30 DualSense Charging Station with these same pin connections for up to two controllers. However, that’s just another accessory clogging up a desk when it doesn’t need to.
I’ll admit that I found it especially helpful for my personal gamer lifestyle. I constantly forget to charge my DualSense when not in use. I regularly only get around five hours of gameplay on my now five-year-old PS5 DualSense that shipped with the box. The DualSense Edge controller with its smaller battery can barely get through a little more than three hours before it loses functionality. Playing on the PlayStation 27-inch monitor, I found I was rarely at a loss for a controller, which I constantly am when gaming on my TV.
I still wonder if PlayStation couldn’t have developed something that was better form-fitted to the DualSense. There’s no magnet or latch to hold the controller in place. It simply sits there, glowing red to show it’s charging. An accidental nudge when reaching across your desk will dislodge the controller from its cradle.
The charging arm is purely built for controllers, and that’s yet another missed opportunity. The PlayStation Pulse Elite headset includes the same pin connections as the DualSense for charging. The problem is the monitor does not raise high enough to allow access to the headset. If you mount the monitor on your wall, you could have a new way to charge several peripherals thanks to its VESA compatibility. I don’t know what type of person plans to mount a 27-inch LCD to their wall, but you do you.
The hook required other design considerations from Sony. For one, this monitor doesn’t have any tilt capability on its included stand. The monitor can indeed swivel an approximate -70 to 70 degrees, though to raise and lower it more than an inch, you need to disengage a lock on the back of the monitor’s stand. The lock is supposed to prevent you from accidentally slamming the hook into the table, though it means you’re required to stand up, reach behind the screen, and press a button just to lower the display by around five inches.
Why can’t a PlayStation monitor support more PlayStation things?
The main benefit of the PlayStation monitor is that it does indeed work with a PlayStation. Hey, I hear you saying that we could say that about practically every other gaming screen available. Still, you can be assured that your games will look good thanks to the HDR auto-tone mapping and support for variable refresh rate (VRR) that can hit the PS5’s max 120Hz refresh rate.
On PC, this fast IPS display manages to max out at 240Hz and supports AMD FreeSync, which syncronizes the monitor’s refresh rate with the in-game frame rate. That feature should nullify any risk of screen tearing or any other issues caused by a fluctuating frame rate. Specs-wise, I don’t have many complaints. I am still a little confused how this screen is supposed to enhance the PS5 experience.
I went out of my way to figure out other reasons why this monitor works better with a PS5. Alongside the two HDMI 2.1 and single DisplayPort 1.4 inputs, the 27-inch PlayStation screen includes two USB-A ports, Ethernet, a single 5Gbps USB-C, and a headphone jack. Can you use the monitor to expand the number of ports on your PS5? I tried plugging in the PlayStation Link dongle for the Pulse Elite headset into the monitor, but no dice. It doesn’t work with a wired keyboard or mouse, either. We’ve reached out to PlayStation to see whether or not PlayStation Link can work with the monitor, and we’ll update this review when we hear more. Still, as it stands, the extra ports merely exist as a hub to charge some extra devices on your desk.
I’m not going to knock Sony for including extra I/O, though the entire display feels like a bundle of missed opportunities. All the more so given that the only way the screen allows you to manage your cables is with a flip-out cable clip sitting along the monitor stand. Without any cables, the 27-inch monitor looks elegant, especially with that flat base that will let you stack whatever you want on top. It just looks a bit of a mess if you plan to plug both your console and PC in at once.
So… how pretty is it?
The monitor provides a single thumbstick in the back, which you use to navigate the monitor’s sparse menus. You’ll find the brightness settings right up front, and you can go ahead and push that to 100%. For LCD, you want to maximize the luminance to dampen any glare from ambient light. Other than changing the HDMI input or disabling the charging hook, there are not many other settings you need to worry about.
PlayStation declined to provide its own brightness values for its display. Using a colorimeter, I measured the display at just above 350 nits at peak SDR brightness in the center of the display and just below 300 nits toward either end of the display. That’s very typical for this kind of IPS LCD, especially around this price point. I don’t have the space or the gear to go through proper testing of the screen’s color accuracy or HDR capabilities.
That being said, playing HDR-enabled games when plugged into a PlayStation 5 Pro looked damn pleasing to the eye. I ran through several hours of Ghost of Yotei, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer beta, trying to push the graphics and ray tracing capabilities of each game. The extra HDR tone mapping provided deeper contrast and brighter highlights, something that can help add to the ambiance in a game like Sucker Punch’s samurai hack-and-slash, Ghost of Yotei.
That being said, this monitor won’t provide the pure inky blacks of an OLED display. Some shadows may appear a deep, deep gray rather than true black. I also found that the PlayStation 27-inch monitor can be susceptible to glare, especially in natural light. My office includes large floor-to-ceiling windows. The natural sunlight threading through the office diffused on the screen instead of reflecting, though that means it can disrupt your pure gaming experience outside ideal gamer gopher hole conditions.
All IPS displays share a problem of screen viewing angles. The PlayStation monitor is better than most for odd-angle viewing, but it’s not the best. At a 60-degree angle from the front of the screen, I started to lose clarity, but even standing completely perpendicular with the monitor, I wasn’t forced to squint to read text.
What you’re really wondering is how much of a difference 1440p will make compared to 4K. A 2,560 x 1,440 resolution display has nearly half the number of pixels that a 3,840 x 2,160 monitor does. You can see that difference in pixel density in gameplay, even when comparing a cheap 4K monitor like an older Gigabyte GS27U that maxes out at 165Hz. Scenes just seem slightly more detailed when you push it to that 4K standard.
Most people who need a low-key monitor for their desk may not feel as stringent about their demands for pixel density. At $350, the PlayStation monitor’s visuals are exactly where they need to be to grant a good experience.
What are you really looking for in a monitor?
This display does leave me wondering if the $900 PlayStation 5 Pro, with its recent updates to PSSR, is perfectly situated to be PlayStation’s own 1440p monitor. The console’s upscaling capabilities took a giant leap forward earlier this year, which especially made it better for 4K gaming. However, that will actually depend on the game you’re playing.
Take Ghost of Yotei, for example. On Ray Tracing Pro graphics settings, the console aims for a resolution between 1080p and 1440p while targeting 60 fps. On a big TV, you’re actually losing detail with the same setting. You would have to play the game in Performance mode to get 60 fps and an upscaled 4K experience. Resident Evil Requiem, one of the first titles to make use of the PS5 Pro’s enhancements, looks incredible on the monitor with ray tracing enabled. That game is running at 1080p with temporal upscaling enabled to make a picture look closer to what it should at higher resolutions when running natively.
Still, it’s hard to call PlayStation’s 27-inch Gaming Monitor “premium.” It’s a solid and fast IPS LCD display that just so happens to charge your DualSense controller. I haven’t even bothered to mention the screen’s sound quality until now, since it’s just… fine. I’ve reviewed a half dozen monitors this year all of them costing hundreds of dollars or even over $1,000, and none of them even bothered to include speakers.
The PlayStation display’s sound quality is thin but loud enough to fill the desk space. It has just enough bass to give a punchy game like Gears of War: Reloaded enough so that you’re not reaching for a pair of headphones immediately. You’ll still inevitably want something better.
As a gamer who swaps between consoles and PC all the time, having the monitor at my desk was honestly a boon to my gamer lifestyle. I get strange looks from friends and colleagues when I tell them I prefer the DualSense to an Xbox controller. I enjoy the responsive adaptive triggers in the few games that use them. I prefer to have my joysticks on the same plane rather than swapped with the D-pad. Having an easy charging solution mollifies my one big complaint with the PS5 gamepad.
Still, there are many other monitors that could offer something else without the hook. Alienware now sells a 1440p QD-OLED monitor for the same price as this PlayStation LCD. The Sony monitor is brighter overall, but that’s just one example of the kind of competition that is out there.
This monitor is not so much an odd duckling as it is a very specific monitor for a very specific type of gamer. It just so happens that the underbaked charging hook was exactly what I was looking for.
