Gigabyte Aorus FO48U 48" 4K OLED Review

Today nosotros're checking out the Aorus FO48U, the latest OLED monitor from Gigabyte... or should we say Television set?

It's 48 inches in size, which inappreciably counts as a normal monitor, but is likewise a tad minor for a modernistic Boob tube. Another style to describe this, information technology's just a big gaming brandish with a 4K resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and OLED engineering for that sweet, sweetness HDR goodness.

The Aorus FO48U is a particularly interesting display because it uses the aforementioned panel as the highly regarded LG C1 OLED that we reviewed a few months back. We looked at how the LG C1 performed as a computer monitor and while that'due south not its ideal use example, it's a very impressive content consumption brandish that'southward slap-up for gaming. The FO48U offers an culling to LG's model, with a few more PC specific features.

The large ane is the addition of DisplayPort, which makes it more compatible with today'southward graphics cards. The LG C1 requires HDMI 2.ane for 120Hz operation, then that restricts it to RTX 3000 and RX 6000 serial GPUs, besides equally current generation consoles.

The Aorus FO48U supporting DisplayPort 1.four with DSC makes it easier to utilise with previous-gen GPUs that back up that tech, but didn't cease up getting HDMI 2.i, like Nvidia'southward RTX xx serial.

Gigabyte also offers KVM switch functionality, assuasive y'all to utilise a single keyboard and mouse with multiple input devices, a corking improver that's becoming standard across the company'southward lineup. The OSD is actually very similar to other Gigabyte monitors, so other features similar their dashboard and cheat crosshairs are likewise there.

With Gigabyte taking a bigger focus on monitor functionality with their 48-inch OLED, this ways there are no TV features at all. The LG C1 comes with a full set smart TV options and app back up, interesting prototype processing features like AI upscaling and dissonance reduction, and a TV tuner. The FO48U has none of that -- some might prefer not to accept any internet connected features on their TV and just want it to exist a dumb brandish, just there's no doubting the feature listing suffers equally a result.

The FO48U as well takes a backwards step on HDMI inputs. Yes, we exercise get DisplayPort, but there's only two HDMI 2.1 ports instead of iv on the LG C1, and the HDMI two.1 ports are express to just 24 Gbps. This means to achieve 120Hz at 4K it needs DSC over HDMI, which causes limits for some devices like the PlayStation five. That'southward a bit of a neglect, not to offer the total 48Gbps unfortunately.

Blueprint and Features

It terms of how it looks, this is very much a Boob tube, with zero ergonomic adjustment possible as the brandish is held up by ii short, fixed leg stands. The build quality is expert overall, with an expansive drinking glass console on the forepart, metal legs, and reasonable apply of plastic and metal on the rear.

Like the LG, the top section of the display is very sparse to highlight the thinness of OLED, though this balloons out in the middle and lesser to fit in the components. The inputs are all located on the left side of the display.

Running along the bottom is a speaker array, which looks fine and are the basic sort of Boob tube speakers you normally look to receive (and should probably merely be a fill-in audio source). In that location is a directional toggle for controlling the OSD along the bottom edge, and Gigabyte also includes a basic IR remote (that looks a lot like a Burn TV remote) if you're using the FO48U more like a Telly.

Before getting into the operation section of the review, it's important to bring up some of the things we talked about in our LG C1 review on what it'southward like to apply a 48-inch OLED every bit a monitor. This is huge monitor and information technology does crave a big desk. The FO48U is 25 cm wider than a 34-inch ultrawide at 107 cm wide, and 68 cm tall, so at normal desk viewing distances it seems massive and might be larger than your field of view. Yous'll desire to sit dorsum further than normal to use information technology. I'd recommend at least a 1 meter/3 feet viewing distance, whereas for other monitors 60 to 70 cm is more advisable.

Pixel density is the same as you get on a 32-inch 1440p monitor, which is fine and gives you a lot of screen real manor. Nonetheless the RGBW pixel layout does affect text clarity for desktop use. At 100% resolution scaling it'due south non as sharp as a standard RGB console (like a normal IPS monitor), even after a run through Windows' ClearType utility. This display is not designed for fine-text rendering in desktop applications only it'due south more of a content consumption monitor.

The panel uses a glossy finish with an anti-reflection coating, which does deliver increased clarity and a "wow" cistron that you lot only get with sleeky finishes. I think this generally looks dandy in darker environments, simply in rooms with a lot of back lighting, the coating is less effective than the more matte anti-glare coating yous get on other monitors.

The Aorus FO48U is much more likely to reproduce clear, defined, mirror-similar reflections rather than the less obvious lengthened reflections from anti-glare monitors. LG's anti-reflection blanket used with their OLED panels is one of the all-time as far as cut downward on the possible reflections from a glossy stop, simply information technology still wasn't plenty to fully alleviate the issue in my brightly lit office, especially with the lower brightness of an OLED display.

In that location's also the serious run a risk of permanent fire-in with an OLED panel, peculiarly if yous plan on using this display as a desktop monitor where there volition be lots of static content. Linus recently did a video explaining his experience with an OLED as a desktop productivity monitor where he experienced burn-in rather quickly, so I would exist cautious of using the FO48U that way. Linus did present what I experience is a worst instance scenario for OLEDs and his specific use instance was highly at gamble for burn-in -- more than and then than with typical usage -- but in that location's no doubt that OLEDs are at risk while LCD monitors are not.

The Aorus FO48U doesn't have quite as many burn in protection features as the LG C1. The C1 has automatic logo dimming and pixel shifting capabilities. Now, pixel shifting isn't great for desktop utilise, but it's not included at all on the Gigabyte model.

Gigabyte does implement automatic dimming subsequently periods of inactivity, somewhen culminating in a built-in screensaver later xv minutes, though this merely applies when the content on screen doesn't change at all. This is handy when you lot're away from your PC, simply won't necessarily salvage it for actual use with static desktop apps. On a positive notation, Gigabyte does include automatic pixel refreshers similar the LG.

While this all might audio a fleck scary, my personal experience using OLEDs over the last few years -- my main Boob tube is an LG OLED -- suggests that burn down-in is unlikely if you're using the display for content consumption and gaming, fifty-fifty after several years. My Television receiver has no burn down-in fifty-fifty though I spotter a lot of sports on information technology with static logos. This is generally what other people take experienced, too, with the latest panels. However I would recommend against ownership the FO48U for heavy all-twenty-four hours desktop productivity usage, a bit of desktop utilise mixed in with gaming and video playback isn't going to be a big issue, merely lots of static content is an result and something to be mindful of.

Display Functioning

In terms of response time operation, because the FO48U is an OLED panel, information technology's extremely fast and doesn't crave overdrive settings. The automatic brightness limiter did go far a flake more hard than usual to gather these numbers but we found a suitable workaround that's very accurate, which was basically to make the exam window small.

Gigabyte Aorus FO48U - 120Hz, 100Hz, 85Hz, 60Hz

As such what yous'll see here at 120Hz are results very similar to the LG C1 OLED, in that the boilerplate response time is around 1.5ms using our strict test methodology, with nada observable overshoot, and ludicrously good cumulative divergence of below 100, which indicates near instant response behaviour.

This behavior is held at lower refresh rates, so whether you're running the brandish at a stock-still 120Hz, fixed 60Hz, or with adaptive sync variable refresh rates, performance is ever excellent and so the monitor has a single overdrive mode experience. Well… it would have one anyway equally at that place'due south no overdrive modes, merely y'all know what I mean, performance is neat across the refresh range and fantastic for PC gaming.

Compared to other monitors, the FO48U destroys LCD panels under the all-time conditions. Performance is very similar to the LG C1 then y'all're not missing out at that place at all, while overall response times are several times better than even the best LCD monitors. The motility clarity as a event is unparalleled and this is ane of the major reasons to get an OLED instead of an LCD.

Information technology gets better looking at boilerplate functioning across the refresh range, where the FO48U is even further ahead of the LCD pack. Not only is overshoot completely negligible on average, response times are outstanding, so at any refresh charge per unit you tin can be sure movement performance is every bit good equally yous can go.

Just it's non simply almost response times, cumulative deviation is as well important to getting an idea how fast the FO48U and OLED panels are. These displays aren't simply fast, but they are fast over the vast majority of the transition with very fiddling lingering delay at either end. This leads to exceptionally good cumulative deviation, as the transition behavior is very close to the ideal instant square-border response. LCD panels are laughable in comparison as seen in the huge delta between them and the top of the table OLEDs.

120Hz functioning is excellent either for PC gaming or use with electric current generation consoles. No other display I've tested comes close to the motility performance on offer here at the aforementioned refresh rate. It's similar at 60Hz, though response behavior is limited by the refresh charge per unit itself, which causes motion blur inherently with a sample and hold brandish. However this is clearly as expert as it gets from modernistic displays at 60Hz.

Input lag is a non effect with the FO48U, coming in at under 1ms of processing delay, and a total delay in the chain equivalent to 240Hz monitors due to its extremely fast transition times. This means that while the FO48U doesn't feel every bit smooth equally a 240Hz monitor as you are only seeing half the amount of refreshes, the actual filibuster to getting the prototype into your eyeballs is just as fast. All the same the FO48U has no inherent delay advantage over the LG C1, which in its PC configuration also has very low input lag, so removing all those TV features hasn't given Gigabyte any leg up.

Ability consumption is very high, typically double that of an LCD due to its size. And that'south at a lower brightness level likewise, equally the FO48U tin't actually hit 200 nits for a full screen white window that we exam with for ability consumption. Information technology's actually dimmer than the LG C1 as we'll bear witness subsequently in this review, which causes the discrepancy between the Gigabyte and LG models. Merely basically OLED is not as efficient of a technology as LCD for displaying bright images, so power consumption is high.

The FO48U does support backlight strobing, or in this example black frame insertion as the OLED console doesn't technically accept a backlight. Unfortunately it doesn't work with adaptive sync simultaneously; the Aim Stabilizer feature is but accessible at stock-still refresh rates, though both 120Hz and 60Hz functioning is supported.

While the 120Hz mode is very similar visually to the LG C1'due south OLED Motion Pro feature, in that it delivers perfect strobing with an extremely clear image, in that location'south an issue with the 60Hz implementation. At 60Hz, it looks like the FO48U is double strobing which causes ii images on the screen at the same fourth dimension. This is ugly and looks bad, so the LG variant has the superior backlight strobing implementation every bit it's really usable at 60Hz.

Colour Performance

Color Space: Gigabyte Aorus FO48U - D65-P3

Color functioning is generally very skilful from the FO48U and other OLEDs based on LG'due south panels. The brandish is wide gamut and optimized for P3, with a very high 97% coverage of that gamut in our testing. However it's not as wide as the best LCD panels of today, which offer full Adobe RGB coverage also. The FO48U covers less than 90% of Adobe RGB, leading to a total Rec. 2022 coverage of 70% - that's a adept result, but non the best I've seen, though nevertheless sufficient for HDR use.

Default Color Functioning

Gigabyte Aorus FO48U - D65-P3, tested at native resolution, highest refresh rate
Portrait CALMAN Ultimate, DeltaE Value Target: Beneath two.0, CCT Target: 6500K

Ane of the primary issues with the LG C1 was terrible out of the box calibration, particularly for greyscale. That'south less of an issue with the Gigabyte model. The default mode isn't perfect and both the gamma and colour temperature charts are a little wonky for sRGB usage, leading to only mid-range deltaEs -- simply this is miles better than how the C1 comes configured.

Unfortunately while the C1 defaults to an sRGB colour infinite for SDR usage, the FO48U does not, so colors are oversaturated out of the box, fifty-fifty with the color infinite style set to "auto". This is more in line with typical monitor performance, though it's not accurate and the way the LG OLED handles things is better. This isn't the terminate of the globe just when you check performance up against other displays the FO48U is only mid table in both of our tests, in fact greyscale performance could probably do with more optimization.

With that said, the FO48U does come with an sRGB fashion, which improves functioning significantly. Greyscale performance is more accurate to the sRGB gamma curve, although it did adapt color temperature negatively and this can't be changed -- over again it'south dumb that some displays don't allow white indicate aligning in their sRGB style. However it does effectively clamp the gamut and then overall deltaE operation is pretty good and this mode in full general is very usable for regular SDR content.

Calibrated Color Performance

Gigabyte Aorus FO48U - D65-P3, tested at native resolution, highest refresh rate
Portrait CALMAN Ultimate, DeltaE Value Target: Below 2.0, CCT Target: 6500K

When it comes to calibrating the FO48U, this brandish acts by and large similar a monitor, so it really lacks the advanced scale features of the LG C1. The C1 gives you much greater control over white point and greyscale adjustment, and you can tweak all sorts of values straight in the hardware, and so you don't need to rely on ICC profiles. In fact you can even use special paid software like Calman for LG to enhance the scale further. None of this is available with the FO48U, so its scale options are much weaker.

You tin achieve great results with a calibration pass in Portrait Display's Calman software, but we're talking about a pure software solution that relies on ICC profiles and app compatibility. So while the results are decent, the FO48U suffers from less robust hardware calibration support.

Peak brightness from a full white window is awful, and remains the major issue with OLED technology and why I wouldn't recommend using this display for desktop usage. Not only is the FO48U dimmer than the C1 for full white images -- which affects desktop apps -- it as well has a more aggressive automated brightness limiter. The ABL feature ways that the FO48U increases display brightness when the content on the screen has a lower average picture level, in other words, if there'south more black or night areas on the screen, the brighter white areas will become. This is most noticeable when resizing app windows on the desktop, if you make a bright browser window larger, effulgence will drop, and vice versa.

There as well appears to be no manner to get around this. On the LG C1, you could either make the display even dimmer, which tended to end the ABL from activating, or use the service menu to disable the feature in some firmware versions. The FO48U's ABL is e'er active and more noticeable in utilize. I don't call up this is a big bargain for content consumption as it'southward not that visible in videos or games, but when using this brandish as a desktop monitor it's annoying.

Minimum brightness is unbelievable though, this is not a joke, when the brightness level is set to 0, the display tops out at one nit. I'm not sure how useful that is in practice, but that's very dim.

Dissimilarity is infinite with the FO48U as the OLED console is cocky lit, and so each private pixel has the capability to fully switch off to display black. This is far superior to whatever LCD monitor I've tested, and blackness levels are even darker than the best VA LCD panels. The glossy panel helps accentuate this in most viewing environments, leading to spectacular visuals. Information technology's besides one reason why OLEDs tin get away with lower peak effulgence for content consumption, as the deep blacks still produce a high contrast experience that your centre can adjust nicely to.

Viewing angles are superb and I find the FO48U and other OLEDs to be highly viewable even at crazy angles. Uniformity was also very solid with my unit of measurement. At times OLEDs tin be a flake iffy with uniformity simply my FO48U was actually ameliorate than my C1 in this regard leading to strong results.

Ane of the big selling points to ownership an OLED like this is the HDR experience. The FO48U offers a truthful HDR presentation, hitting all major criteria, including the large 1 in dissimilarity. As I've been talking about, self-lit panels are capable of incredible contrast ratios, which is the entire benefit to HDR and why OLED is especially well suited to HDR -- at least in dissimilarity to near of today's LCD monitors.

In existent world HDR content, whether that's games or videos, the FO48U has no blooming like you would see with an LCD with full array local dimming. Vivid and night areas can peacefully coexist on the screen simultaneously with no crossover, leading to admittedly stunning HDR visuals. Combined with deep blacks and a lot of depth to shadow detail, I call back the FO48U looks not bad in most HDR content.

But the one area where this display suffers is once over again in brightness. OLEDs practice compensate for this to some degree past their aught black levels, but a full screen white image topping out at 123 nits can simply take you and so far. This pales in comparison to the best LCD monitors of today. There'due south besides really no capacity for this display to produce a bright total screen flash for something like an explosion, which is disappointing.

The main outcome with the FO48U's HDR operation is minor window brightness. The LG C1 does pretty well here, reaching 775 nits which means that vivid highlights on the screen are genuinely quite vivid. The FO48U doesn't fare nearly as well in its default HDR mode, but reaching 555 nits. Yes this is better than SDR performance, just it'south hardly impressive and well behind the C1 that uses the same panel.

The FO48U does include an "HDR Vivid" mode which increases effulgence in the aforementioned test and gets closer to what the C1 can do, but it completely destroys accuracy. Darker tones are too bright in this mode, and the white indicate is strongly tinted blueish, so it seems this mode is trying to cheat a loftier brightness level for the sake of testing. We oasis't used this fashion in our charts for that reason as it doesn't wait expert in practice. In real earth usage the FO48U is dimmer than the LG C1 and that'south simply the reality of it.

Brightness vs window size is a piddling better for the FO48U, which performs similarly to the C1 down to a window size of 25%, and eventually closes the gap at smaller window sizes like 2%. Fundamentally though, HDR brightness is on the weaker end of the scale and while I still think it looks great for HDR in general, information technology'southward not as keen equally the LG C1.

Obviously the main reward hither though is the dissimilarity ratio. While LCDs meridian out at around 12000:1 in our worst case unmarried frame contrast tests, OLEDs are still capable of space contrast so they expect far better and don't suffer from blooming issues.

HDR accurateness is acceptable, the FO48U is a trivial bright when displaying darker tones and the aggressive ringlet-off can hurt the level of detail in bright scenes as the roll-off point is quite early in the EOTF curve. Simply overall it'due south not likewise bad. So for color tracking, results are okay every bit well, this display isn't unnecessarily oversaturating colors in the HDR manner which is a good affair for the visual presentation.

Hot or Non?

Overall, the Gigabyte Aorus FO48U is one of those displays where if you had it in isolation and you didn't compare it to many other products, we think you'd be very happy with it. At that place is no doubting information technology looks excellent when displaying content, whether that'south movies or games in either its HDR or SDR modes, and that's all down to the utilize of OLED.

Blacks are deep, contrast is infinite, and response times are lightning fast, to the point where it embarrasses LCD panels in motion clarity.

Unfortunately for Gigabyte though, the Aorus FO48U isn't as good as LG'south C1 OLED that we reviewed earlier. Despite both using essentially the aforementioned LG OLED panel or a close variation of it, the C1 has more features with meliorate performance in some key areas. On the flip side, Gigabyte don't accept many unique features of their ain that are worth caring almost.

While the FO48U is substantially the aforementioned as the C1 in areas similar response times, contrast and color gamut, the C1 is noticeably brighter in HDR content, to the tune of 100-200 nits brighter. That'south a big deal on an OLED console where effulgence is less than astonishing. And sure, both panels accept poor full screen white effulgence that makes desktop employ less than stellar, but in the HDR mode the C1 looks better.

The LG C1 also has a less aggressive automobile-effulgence limiter, though both panels are still annoying in how brightness changes depending on the content.

The LG C1 is a far more than characteristic rich display. Information technology comes with four total bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports (versus two 24 Gbps ports on the Gigabyte), information technology has a total assortment of Tv functionality including smart TV apps, a TV tuner, AI upscaling, denoising and more. It supports Dolby Vision where the FO48U only supports HDR10 and HLG. Information technology has a much ameliorate range of hardware scale features. It has a better black frame insertion mode. And and so on top of that, it's got a decent prepare of features to brand it compatible with PCs and gaming setups, including a depression latency mode, allowing information technology to match other gaming monitors.

The Aorus FO48U counters that with a DisplayPort connector, a KVM switch, and some gaming-specific OSD features. That's not anywhere near enough to brand up for the big list of omissions. For example, nosotros'd rate Dolby Vision support equally far more important than having DisplayPort. The reality for Gigabyte is they are competing against a Television receiver giant that has refined their offering for gamers over several iterations now. Thus launching a get-go-gen OLED offering with key feature omissions isn't going to cut it.

Of course, this can exist salvaged with a competitive price point: the Aorus FO48U has to be several hundred dollars cheaper than the LG C1 to make sense. But that's non the case and the actual delta can differ depending on the region. In the U.s.a., the MSRP of both products is the same, and ofttimes the LG C1 is cheaper due to discounts and promo pricing. In Australia, the retail cost is less than the LG model, but the C1 frequently receives discounts to nullify that gap. This makes it hard to recommend the Gigabyte model fifty-fifty though it's far from a poor performer.