You could build one hell of a PC for £2,699.99 (a little over $3,400 in US currency), or spend it all on the new Asus ROG Swift PG35VQ, one of the most expensive and potentially best gaming monitors on the market.
While the price is sure to be a prohibiting factor for many people, the specs are drool-worthy for sure. This new display boasts a large 35-inch curved VA panel with a 3840x1440 resolution and quantum dot technology. According to Asus, it supports a "cinema-standard" DCI-P3 90 percent color gamut.
Big and expansive colors are just the tip of the iceberg, though. This monitor has an overclocked 200Hz refresh rate, which is double the previous generation PG35Q, and HDR support. It's the real deal, too—the backlight can hit an eye-searing 1,000 nits at peak brightness (500 nits typical), and is DisplayHDR 1000 certified.
That is the point where HDR content really shines (literally) and pops. VESA has less stringent certified standards in place (DisplayHDR 600 and 400) with lower brightness requirements, but there is a significant difference in HDR visuals at lower brightness levels compared to the select few monitors that can hit 1,000 nits.
Full array local dimming (FALD) is also part of the package, with 512 independent LED zones. This is a key technology to hitting a higher brightness level and for more even distribution, versus displays that use edge lighting. It also typically lends itself to deeper blacks and better black uniformity, though not quite on the level as an OLED panel.
There is a downside to FALD. On displays that use this type of lighting, they typically suffer from bloom, to some extent. This is most noticeable when there is a bright image on top of a black background, like white text on a black screen. Lighting around the area spills out. This is also known as the halo effect.
In my experience, this is not a big deal for the vast majority of content. One way to test this is with the LG Chess HDR demo. The scenes in the demo tend to exaggerate the effect compared to real-world content, but it's a good way to see if bloom exists, and to what extent.
This is also a G-Sync Ultimate monitor, a tag Nvidia reserves for G-Sync displays that are both G-Sync certified and can hit 1,000 nits. On the connectivity side, it has a DisplayPort 1.4 connector and an HDMI 2.0 port, along with a 3.5mm mini-jack.
The ROG Swift PG35VQ is available to preorder at OverclockersUK and is expected to ship soon. I have not found a preorder listing in the US yet, but imagine that availability will not be far behind.
