Gigabyte M32U Monitor Review

The Gigabyte M32U is identical to the smaller Gigabyte M28U. It has a slightly understated design, with thin bezels on three sides and a flat base that supports the monitor well but takes up a bit more space overall. The back of the monitor has a bit more flash to it, with a glossy section near the top but no RGB bias lighting or other gamer aesthetic.

The Gigabyte M32U has good overall build quality, nearly identical to the Gigabyte M28U and the other Gigabyte monitors we've tested. It's entirely plastic, with no metal components, which is a bit disappointing, but the plastic seems to be decent quality. There's a little bit of flex on the back panel, but otherwise, it's pretty solid. We noticed a strange clicking noise occasionally when the black frame insertion feature is enabled at the same time as the variable refresh rate feature and the framerate changes. We haven't seen other reports of this issue, so it could just be our unit.

The Gigabyte M32U has good ergonomics. Unlike the smaller Gigabyte M28U, it can swivel in either direction, which is great, but everything else is the same. Other than a glossy section at the top and the Gigabyte logo and model number, the back of the monitor is a bit plain. There's a cutout in the stand for basic cable management. If you want something with even better ergonomics, then check out the Dell U3223QE.

The flat stand supports the monitor well but takes up a bit of space. There's a bit of wobble, but it's not too bad.

You can control the OSD using the joystick button at the back of the monitor, similar to most LG monitors. There's also a dedicated button for the KVM switch.

• User manuals
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-B upstream cable
• 3 different power cables (Type B, I, and J)

As expected for an IPS monitor, the Gigabyte M32U has mediocre contrast, so blacks look gray in a dark room. Contrast can vary between individual units, but this is close to the upper limits of what we expect from an IPS panel. Unfortunately, the local dimming feature can't improve the contrast ratio at all. If you want a 4k monitor with a much better contrast, then look into the Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 S32BG75.

Unfortunately, although the Gigabyte M32U has a local dimming feature, it's terrible. In most content, it doesn't appear to do anything. It's edge-lit, with approximately 16 dimming zones, so even when the local dimming is working, because each zone is so large, transitions are very noticeable and distracting.

Enabling the Local Dimming features locks out a few settings. It enables DCR, which noticeably changes the gamma curve and locks the brightness at maximum.

The Gigabyte M32U has very good peak brightness in SDR. There's some variation in peak brightness with different scenes, but it's not too noticeable. Very small highlights are dimmed a bit, but with regular content, it's not noticeable. It's brighter than the Gigabyte M28U, but this difference is in line with Gigabyte's advertising.

These measurements were taken after calibration, in the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode, with the backlight at max and local dimming enabled. The peak brightness can change depending on which mode you're using. If you want something brighter, then check out the Dell G3223Q.

The Gigabyte M32U has just alright peak brightness in HDR. It's bright enough that most games look good, but it's not bright enough for a true cinematic experience. Small highlights in some scenes aren't bright enough to stand out. On the other hand, there's very little difference in peak brightness with different scenes, which is great. Unfortunately, the peak brightness doesn't track the EOTF very well, as near-black areas are brighter than they should be, and all other scenes are a bit too dim. The brightness cuts off sharply at the monitor's peak brightness, causing a loss of fine details in bright areas. If you care about HDR brightness, then check out the Cooler Master Tempest GP27U, which gets much brighter in HDR.

These measurements were taken before calibration, with HDR enabled, with local dimming on.

As expected for an IPS panel, the Gigabyte M32U has a decent horizontal viewing angle. At a wide angle, the image appears washed out, but most people won't notice any issues. This is especially important if you often share your screen with someone sitting beside you or if you like sitting close to the monitor.

The Gigabyte M32U has a very good vertical viewing angle, so the image remains accurate even if you're sharing your screen with someone standing beside you.

The Gigabyte M32U has great gray uniformity. There's only a bit of dirty screen effect near the center, which isn't enough to be distracting when browsing the web or playing games with large areas of similar color.

Unfortunately, the Gigabyte M32U has just passable black uniformity. There's quite a bit of cloudiness throughout the screen, and significant backlight bleed along the top and bottom edge. Local dimming helps to reduce the cloudiness of the screen to the left and right of the test cross but doesn't reduce the amount of backlight bleed, which suggests that the local dimming isn't fully turning those zones off.

The Gigabyte M32U has excellent accuracy out of the box. Gamma follows the sRGB curve but levels out close to 2.1 above a 20% stimulus, so most scenes are a bit too bright. The white balance is great, and the color temperature is very close to the calibration target. There are no significant issues with any color, but reds are oversaturated a bit.

Out of the box, the most accurate picture mode is the sRGB mode. Unfortunately, this mode brings some limitations; all settings except for the brightness are locked down and can't be changed, including the color temperature and overdrive setting, which is locked to 'Smart OD'. If you prefer a picture mode with unlocked settings, the 'Custom 1' mode delivers the second-best results, but colors are oversaturated.

After calibration, the Gigabyte M32U has outstanding accuracy, with no noticeable issues at all. White balance and colors are nearly perfect, and any remaining inaccuracies aren't noticeable without a colorimeter. Gamma is much closer to the sRGB target curve, except for a slight dip in really bright scenes. Despite how accurate it is out of the box, the M32U might be worth calibrating for some people, as it allows you to achieve fantastic accuracy without the limitations of the sRGB mode.

The Gigabyte M32U has an outstanding SDR color gamut, but it's not as good as the Corsair XENEON 32QHD165. It can display the entire sRGB color space used by most current desktop and web content, so you shouldn't notice any issues there. For professional content creators, it has great coverage of the Adobe RGB color space. It has limited coverage of greens in that color space, which might disappoint some users.

The Gigabyte M32U has outstanding SDR color volume, thanks to the outstanding SDR color gamut. Like most IPS monitors, it can't display dark saturated colors very well due to its low contrast ratio, but this isn't that noticeable unless you're in a very dark room.

The Gigabyte M32U has a good HDR color gamut. It has great coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by most current HDR content. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is mediocre, and it can barely display a wide color gamut.

The Gigabyte M32U has great HDR color volume. It's limited by its incomplete HDR color gamut, and like with SDR content, it can't display dark saturated colors well due to the low contrast ratio.

The Gigabyte M32U has decent reflection handling. The matte finish helps to reduce the intensity of direct reflections, but it's not quite as effective as the Gigabyte M28U.

Thanks to the high pixel density, the Gigabyte M32U has superb text clarity, even in apps that don't support ClearType or if you choose not to run the wizard.

The Gigabyte M32U has fantastic gradient handling. There's almost no banding in any shade.

Although advertised as an 8-bit panel, this model accepts a 10-bit signal and displays it well, so it's most likely using dithering to approximate a 10-bit panel. It's also known as 8-bit + FRC.

The Gigabyte M32U has a fast refresh rate, great for gamers. Thanks to the inclusion of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports, there's no difference in the supported formats between DisplayPort and HDMI, as long as you're using a source that supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. If you're using a graphics card that only supports HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, the supported formats are a bit different over HDMI. You can read more about what to expect and what's supported in the additional review notes we posted for the Gigabyte M28U, which are also valid for this monitor. Unlike the Gigabyte M32UC, there's no optional overclock to 160Hz.

This monitor supports FreeSync variable refresh rate technology over both HDMI and DisplayPort, and although it's not officially certified by NVIDIA, it also works well with their G-SYNC Compatible mode.

The Gigabyte M32U has an incredible response time, resulting in crystal-clear motion with almost no noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects. Like most monitors, it has an adjustable Overdrive setting. We recommend the 'Picture Quality' setting, as it delivers the best overall performance with the least amount of overshoot. 'Balance' is slightly faster, but there's significantly more overshoot that may bother some people. If you prefer inverse ghosting over motion blur, go with that mode instead. The 'Speed' setting delivers the fastest rise/fall time, but there's terrible overshoot and significant inverse ghosting, so we don't recommend it.

The M32U features a 'Smart OD' mode that's advertised to automatically select the best overdrive mode, so you don't have to worry about switching modes if you switch sources or switch to a lower refresh rate. At both 144Hz and 60Hz, it appears to be in the 'Balance' mode, so we're not sure if it's doing anything.

The Gigabyte M32U has an excellent response time when gaming at 120Hz, like when gaming on a PS5 or Xbox Series X. The overall performance is nearly identical to when gaming at the max refresh rate, but there's a bit more overshoot, especially in dark areas. The recommended Overdrive setting is still 'Picture Quality', for the same reasons as at the max refresh rate.

The Gigabyte M32U has a very good response time at 60Hz, a bit better than the Gigabyte M28U. We recommend the 'Off' Overdrive setting, as it performs the best overall at 60Hz, but if you're looking for a set-and-forget setting that works well at any refresh rate, 'Picture Quality' is almost as good at 60Hz as at the max refresh rate. There's more noticeable overshoot in each mode than at the max refresh rate, but it's not too bad with the 'Picture Quality' setting. We didn't notice the same strange overshoot behavior that we noticed on the M28U, which is great.

The Gigabyte M32U has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI), to help reduce blur. Unlike most monitors, the M32U supports BFI even with the variable refresh rate (VRR) feature. With VRR disabled, BFI is only available at 120Hz or 144Hz.

Unfortunately, the BFI feature is a bit buggy. The first time we tried it with VRR, the backlight strobing continued to function as low as 10Hz, but below 55Hz, it flickers in multiples of the framerate. Unfortunately, the backlight kept fluctuating and it was borderline unusable, as shown in this slow motion video filmed between 54 and 55Hz. Note that even though it's not that noticeable in real life, the slow-motion video is intended to demonstrate the effect, not how it looks in person.

After experiencing this issue, we power cycled the monitor and restarted the PC, and the BFI feature behaved more like the other Gigabyte monitors we've tested. Below 85Hz, the backlight simply stops strobing, and there are no distracting backlight fluctuations.

The Gigabyte M32U has a completely flicker-free backlight, which is great.

The Gigabyte M32U has outstanding low input lag, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience. It's important to update the firmware on the monitor to F06 or higher, as there's an issue with input lag out of the box.

The Gigabyte M32U has superb screen real estate and a very high native resolution, resulting in a high pixel density and superb text clarity. It's also an excellent choice for multitasking. If you prefer something similar with a smaller 27-inch screen, consider the Gigabyte M27U.

The Gigabyte M32U supports all formats supported by the PS5. Since its HDMI ports require display stream compression (DSC) in order to support the highest bandwidth signals, the PS5 is limited to 4:2:0 when gaming at 4k @ 120Hz, as the PS5 doesn't fully support DSC. This isn't noticeable with most content, but if you prefer something that looks a bit better with the PS5, check out the LG 32GQ950-B instead.

This monitor supports all formats from the Xbox Series S|X. Strangely, unlike the Gigabyte M28U, 1440p @ 60Hz has to be forced from the Xbox display settings.

Unlike most other Gigabyte M Series monitors, the Gigabyte M32U has two HDMI 2.1 ports, making it a great choice for PS5 and Xbox Series S|X console gamers. Although the Gigabyte M32U supports HDMI 2.1, like most of the other HDMI 2.1 monitors we've tested, it's limited to 24Gbps. It requires Display Stream Compression (DSC) 1.2a for anything that requires higher bandwidth, introducing some limits on the supported resolutions depending on the source device. You can read more about the supported resolutions here. This article is from our Gigabyte M28U review, but it's also valid for the M32U. For a monitor that supports the full 48Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, check out the LG 27GP950-B or the LG 32GQ950-B.

There's also one USB-C port; it supports a few advanced USB-C features, including DisplayPort Alt Mode and 15W fast charging for supported devices. The power delivery feature is too low to fully charge most laptops, but it'll extend the battery life a bit. The USB-C port allows you to use the monitor as a KVM switch (keyboard, video, and mouse), so you can view and control two sources with a single set of input devices, great if you're working from home and want to use a business and personal computer at the same desk.

There are no issues at all using this monitor with recent Macs.

The Gigabyte M32U has a few additional productivity and gaming features. It also supports Picture-in-Picture or Picture-by-Picture, allowing you to display two sources at once, but this feature isn't available in HDR or if FreeSync is enabled. Some of the other features include:

• Virtual Crosshair: There are four virtual crosshairs to choose from. Unlike software virtual crosshairs, these can't be detected by your games.
• Frame Counter: Displays the current number of frames per second received from the source.
• Black Equalizer: Adjusts gamma to make it easier to spot other players/enemies in shadows.
• KVM: The main feature of Gigabyte's M Series monitors, the KVM button at the back of the monitor allows you to quickly switch from controlling one device to another, with just one keyboard and mouse, by connecting them to the back of the monitor instead of your PC.
• Dashboard: This feature allows you to display vital statistics from your computer, including CPU and GPU temps, fan speeds, memory usage, etc.