Koorui 4K monitor review

If you typically work on a laptop, adding a second monitor can make you more productive. I’ve been testing out supplemental monitors for my work life and I’m obsessed with finding a great quality 4K monitor for a reasonable price. Of course, Apple and Samsung offer beautiful and super fancy monitors to expand your set up, but they cost as much as your mortgage. So can you find solid quality and still get away with a decent deal from a less popular brand?

KOORUI is one of those budget brands worth considering since it offers a  4K 27-inch monitor for about $225US. In this review I’ll try the monitor out here in my home office see what the screen quality is like for both written work and video editing. I’ll check out any special features it offers and wrap things up with the pros and the cons and let you know if I think I can recommend this monitor to you.

Set up & Assembly

The monitor arrives in three pieces; the stand is made up of two parts, and simply slides together. Then the stand should slip into a slot in the back of the monitor. When I assembled mine it looked and felt like I had it correct, but when I set it on my desk, the monitor detached from the stand and fell to the floor. The result was a review-ending shattered screen.

Now, I’m more than willing to take the blame for potentially improperly assembling the stand or not locking it correctly into place. But since I’ve reviewed probably about 25 different monitors in the last couple of years and this is the first time the stand has not engaged properly with the display panel, I’m not entirely convinced it’s me.

I’m not going to deduct any points for this; instead I’ll use it as a warning for you. If you are assembling this monitor be very very careful that it’s done correctly and carefully. Also, anytime you lift the monitor up the bottom of the stand may detach from the arm; just be sure you’ve got both hands on the precious part; the screen.

Since I bought my monitor from Amazon, I filed a complaint with the company and was able to get a replacement.

Design

The KOORUI 4K 27-inch monitor has a sleek look with thin 8mm bezels on each side except for the bottom bezel which has a chubbier rail. For the asking price, definitely nothing to complain about there because you can buy two or three of them and place the next to each other for a near seamless ultrawide experience!

Worth noting is that the stand is on the basic side as you cannot adjust the height, tilt or angle. If you want to break free from that limitation, you can buy a monitor arm that supports VESA 100mm and mount it that way.

Connectivity

On the ports side, KOORUI offers two HDMI 2.0 ports and a standard-sized DisplayPort. There’s also an aux jack for connecting wired headphones or desktop aux speakers, since the monitor does not offer built in speakers (or of course get audio via our laptop if you’re going that route).

Display Panel

One of the key strengths of this budget 4K display is the fact that it is an IPS one. IPS or In-Plane Switching panels generally offer a good viewing experience for both work and gaming. The display has wide viewing angles with good color accuracy and decent visibility during daytime.

For this KOORUI display specifically, you get 99% sRGB coverage and 90% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage making this a good budget monitor for hobby designers and casual Photoshop users, but maybe not something for professional work. Blacks are quite deep with its 20000000:1 contrast ratio so movie watching should be fine as long as you aren’t spoiled with OLED and Mini-LED TVs.

The KOORUI 4K 27-inch monitor also supports HDR10 which can widen the monitor’s color gamut for more vivid colors, but don’t expect too much here as HDR10 is the most basic tier of the technology. You won’t be able to take advantage of Dolby Vision content and you won’t get those blistering high brightness levels HDR600 and higher-end monitors offer.

The real selling point of this KOORUI monitor it its 4K resolution which means more pixels for better detailed media and extra screen real estate to work with.

My tests

I use this monitor as a supplemental work monitor connected to my Apple MacBook Pro. I do a pretty even split of working with documents, spreadsheets, as well as more visual work like photo and video editing. I actually found this monitor was pretty crisp, clear, and colorful. It was easy to read text off the screen, and I found the colour in my videos to be fairly true to life.

In order to maximize the screen real estate of a 4K monitor, you must configure your display scaling to 100% which, when factoring in the 27-inch screen size, gives you 163 DPI or dots per inch. While you can view more than 90 rows on a maximized Excel spreadsheet, the text and overall user interface will be too small even if you are sitting close to the screen. 150% scaling is the sweet spot giving you an effective screen resolution of 2560×1440. If that confuses you, think of this product as a 27-inch 1440p monitor with finer text which helps a great deal if you do a lot of reading. Watching 4K movies on this monitor is a nice extra treat, but you may have difficulty noticing any improvements over standard 1080p video given its screen size.

Viability as a Gaming Monitor

While I’m not a gamer and did not test this monitors gaming ability out, I asked writer John Ruiz to dig in on this. Here’s what he found:

With the most expensive gaming monitors pushing insanely high 540 Hz refresh rates, many gamers already consider 144 Hz and 165 Hz monitors as “budget” which puts the KOORUI 4K 27-inch monitor at a slight disadvantage because if you upgrade your computer and suddenly want a higher refresh rate, you need to replace the monitor.

But that doesn’t mean that the KOORUI 4K 27-inch monitor shouldn’t exist because it targets a very specific audience, and it isn’t just gamers. If you are a gamer and you enjoy first-person shooters, you should gravitate towards a 1440p high-refresh rate monitor even if you think your computer can’t handle it because at least you futureproofed that component. The HP X27Q is a perfect example as it is one of the best 1440p 27-inch 165 Hz monitors under $200. But if you do more work than gaming, the KOORUI monitor makes a lot more sense and should be in your shortlist if you have a tight budget.

PC master race folks will scoff at the idea of a 4K 60 Hz gaming monitor, but I say don’t listen to them because a lot of games look gorgeous at 4K even at 60 Hz and you don’t need a super powerful computer to enjoy those experiences. I’m talking about all those indie games and platformers. Planet of Lana, for instance, is a beautiful indie title that shines at 4K. Steam offers a huge library of games with low system requirements even at 4K and still play smooth at 60 Hz.

One might also argue to buy a cheap 4K HDR TV instead which might give you a larger screen for a reasonable price. But if you plan on gaming or video conferencing, the KOORUI 4K 27-inch is still the better buy because of the OverDrive response time feature which reduces ghosting and blurring.

Overall review

KOORUI 4K Monitor 27-inch offers terrific value for the sub-$200 price and will treat your eyes well if you plan on doing work or Web browsing —or even some gaming on the side. If you never used a 27-inch 4K monitor before, you will likely be very happy with the purchase after setting it up.

On the pro side the monitor is relatively slim with a wide screen and narrow bezels putting the focus on your work. The clarity and 4K resolution make it really easy on the eyes for pretty much any work task. It’s got most of the ports and connections you’ll need for your work life and with a VESA mount you can safely connect it to a monitor arm.

On the con side, I’m not a fan of the stand that it comes with at all; I’m convinced it’s an inferior design that allowed my monitor to come crashing to the floor. And I do tend to walk on eggshells around it ever since. Plus the fact the stand essentially doesn’t move or adjust at all may create some limitations or problems with your set up. Some folks may be annoyed at the lack of built-in speakers, but I find most monitor speakers to be substandard anyway so this is not a huge downside for me personally.

If you are worried about KOORUI as a brand, the company does back its monitor with a generous 3-year warranty making this a much safer pick than some other lesser-known brands.
In short, if you don’t have the extreme needs of a graphic designer or filmmaker, this is a fine supplemental monitor for work purposes. It also seems like it checks a lot of the boxes for gamers on a budget too. I can definitely recommend the Koorui 4K monitor for your home.

Also Read:

1. Samsung 32-inch 4K UHD Monitor Review
2. Huawei MateView 4K monitor review
3. Review: Samsung UJ59 4K monitor – a surprising win at a budget price!
4. Review: ViewSonic 32-inch 4K monitor, Model VX3276-4K-MHD

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