NoblePixel Display: Smart Mini-LED Budget

A 4K monitor this size and with this kind of technology is never going to be cheap, but the Innocn model is far more affordable than anything you’ll find from bigger names. But are there too many trade-offs, or is the 27M2V the perfect mid-range gaming monitor?

INNOCN 27M2V Mini LED Monitor

9/ 10

The Innocn 27M2V Mini LED monitor has plenty of strengths, like its max 160Hz refresh rate, 4K resolution, and low input lag. Not everything about the monitor is great, but the downsides are easy to live with, like slightly clunky OSD navigation or the plastic but sturdy build quality. You’ll find monitors with better specs and more options, but they’ll cost you far more than the Innocn will.

Brand

INNOCN

Resolution

3840x2160

Refresh Rate

160Hz

Screen Size

27-inch

Ports

2x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x USB-C, 2x USB-A 3.0, 1x 3.5mm Audio Jack

Display Technology

IPS, mini-LED

Aspect Ratio

16:9

Pros

• Great color
• Excellent brightness in HDR or SDR
• 160Hz max refresh rate
• Good response times and low input lag
• Included stand is easy to adjust at any angle

Cons

• Some light haloing with light text on dark backgrounds
• OSD navigation isn’t great
• Plastic build

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Build and Design

If you look at the Innocn 27M2V, it’s easy to assume that it’s made from metal, thanks to the silver finish. That said, turn it around, and you’ll realize that if it was made out of aluminum, it would be far too heavy thanks to the design of the back of the monitor.

The build is entirely plastic, which is one of the aspects that helps keep the monitor’s price down. This also keeps the weight on the lower side, though this did lead to the monitor wobbling while I was typing, even on a reasonably sturdy desk.

The ports are located on the underside of the back of the monitor. That can be tough to reach, though the included stand’s adjustability makes accessing the ports easier than on some other monitors. The ports are clearly labeled, meaning you won’t have to guess where to plug a cable in.

The buttons to control the on-screen display (OSD) are located in the bottom-right of the monitor, where you’ll often find monitor controls. While the power button is illuminated, all the buttons are the same shape, making finding them by feel somewhat tricky.

Stand and Mounting

The included stand mounts easily on the back of the monitor in the same location where the 100x100mm VESA mount is found. Attaching the stand is easy: press the button, slot in the upper guide mounts, and let go of the button once the stand is attached.

As I mentioned above, the stand offers quite a bit of adjustability. You can adjust the height by 120mm, which is a fair amount of travel. You can also tilt the monitor forward and backward by 15 degrees, and even tilt the monitor on its side for a portrait orientation.

The monitor’s firmware handles switching between portrait and landscape orientation internally, so you shouldn’t have to adjust much on your computer. Even so, switching isn’t as easy as it could be. Even with the stand raised as high as possible, you can’t rotate the monitor on the stand. Instead, you need to lay the monitor down on its face and adjust the stand this way.

While that is a minor quibble, it’s easily made up for by how easy the height adjustment is. Just lightly push from below to raise the monitor or lightly pull from the top to lower it. Once you get it perfect, the stand holds the monitor in place with no other adjustments Needed.

Ports and Connectivity

Underneath the Innocn 27M2V, you’ll find plenty of ports to connect to any hardware you like. There are a pair of 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 ports and DisplayPort 1.4 with DSC. You’ll also find a DP Alt capable USB-C port that supplies up to 90W, or 65W in HDR mode.

Another pair of USB 3.0 ports works as a USB hub, effectively turning the monitor into a barebones dock if you connect via USB-C. You also get a 3.5mm for either headphones or running audio to an external set of speakers. The 27M2V also features a pair of built-in speakers that we’ll look at more in-depth later in the article.

Innocn markets this as a gaming monitor, and while gaming-centric monitors often focus on PCs, this will work fine with your PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S. With the dual HDMI connectors on the back, you could even plug in both consoles and your PC via DisplayPort or USB-C, switching via the monitor.

Setup

Setting up the Innocn is relatively easy. First, attach the stand, then plug in the device or devices you plan on using with the monitor. If you’re using separate speakers, now is the time to plug them in too.

While the monitor itself is on the thinner side, the included stand gives it a larger footprint. Looking at the depth, you’ll need around 10 inches for the monitor, though this may increase if you plan on angling the monitor. This larger footprint does help with stability, which you’ll appreciate if you adjust the height often.

There’s one final aspect of the setup process worth mentioning if you plan on using the monitor’s high dynamic range (HDR) capabilities. HDR is turned off by default. To enable HDR, open the OSD menu and navigate to “Game Settings,” then scroll down to the HDR menu option and set it to “Standard.” You can pressWin + Shift + B on Windows to activate HDR mode.

Features and Controls

While many monitors have shifted to rough joystick designs or other more intuitive control schemes, the controls are one area where the Innocn monitor is stuck in the past. These front-bottom mounted buttons make it too easy to select the wrong options and menus in the on-screen display (OSD).

You may never get used to the controls, but that shouldn’t be much of an issue, as there isn’t often much of a reason to dive into the OSD. You need to do it to enable HDR as mentioned above, and if you’re calibrating the monitor, you may be here a while, but you shouldn’t need to spend too much time outside of enabling options like AMD FreeSync.

Depending on where you place the 27M2V, one of the nicer features may be the light sensor for automatic brightness. As with many of these, this can be overly sensitive, and I found that I would get flashes of dimming or brightness simply from typing at my desk. That said, if your monitor spends half the day in the sun and the rest in the shade, the sensor is handy.

Many of the other features are more game-specific, like the built-in crosshair overlay. Others like the refresh rate display make it easier to track down issues in getting variable refresh rates to work as intended.

Display Performance

As confusing as the controls may be and however plasticky the body may be, the display panel is the star of the show here. This is a 3840 x 2160 panel lit by a Mini LED array that approaches the contrast of OLED without the associated cost, with a contrast level listed at 1000:1. You get a maximum refresh rate of 160Hz and 600 nits of brightness, with a peak of 1,200 nits.

Add a 1ms claimed response time (we’ll look at this more later) and you’ve got what seems like a nice panel for gaming, and it is. The monitor covers 100 percent of sRGB and 95 percent DCI-p3, which means excellent color for gaming and videos. The accuracy isn’t the best out of the box, but with some time and the right tools, you can calibrate the monitor well enough for content creation work.

Using the OSD, you can choose between 60Hz and 120Hz refresh rates. For anything higher, you’re going to need to enable variable refresh rate by activating FreeSync on the monitor. You can find this setting in the Game Settings section of the OSD.

While the blacks don’t get as black as you’d expect from an OLED panel, they get admirably close. Similar to a quantum dot panel, the only real clue that you have that it’s on when displaying a black screen is a soft backlight (that you’ll have a hard time noticing in daylight).

Thanks to the Mini-LED backlight array—which means the monitor can selectively brighten or dim areas of the screen, rather than the whole panel at once—I didn’t notice much in the way of backlight bleed. While larger white text on a black background had a slight haloing effect, it wasn’t overly noticeable.

Gaming Performance

Gaming is the main focus of this monitor, so to ensure rapid response, it has four response time modes: off, normal, fast, and ultrafast. Normal and up are overdrive modes, aiming to compensate for input lag. For the most part, you can stick with normal, though the fast and ultrafast modes can impart too much overshoot.

AMD FreeSync is supported, as mentioned above. All you need to do is enable it in the OSD. While this isn’t an officially certified monitor for Nvidia G-Sync, I’ve seen reports of people making it work. In my case, I didn’t get G-Sync working, but this was with a laptop, which is typically more fussy to work with.

Regardless of which variable refresh rate mode you’re using, the upper limit is 160Hz, but you’ll rarely see it. In most cases, you’ll find the monitor tops out at 144Hz. This is plenty fast for most people, but if you’re looking for higher rates, they don’t tend to pop up here, for whatever reason.

Firing up Diablo IV, the colors looked great, and the refresh rate had the frame rates feeling smoother than ever. The feel was similar in Exoprimal, with zero tearing as the squad made its way through wave after wave of invading future dinosaurs.

Built-in Speakers

Though they’re common in similarly sized TVs, speakers are still a relative rarity in gaming monitors. The Innocn 27M2V features a pair of built-in speakers, but while they’re functional, they’re about as barebones as you might expect given the price.

The thin nature of a modern monitor doesn’t leave much room for large speakers or much space for sound to reverberate. While the speakers sound roughly as good as those you’d find in a TV of the same size, that’s not saying much about them. TVs often use digital signal processing to improve the sound, but that doesn’t seem to be present here.

Of course, it’s better to have the built-in speakers and not need them than wish they were there and not have them. That said, you need to use either your PC’s volume or the OSD to adjust volume, and the general feel is that the sound is more of an afterthought than anything you’ll want to spend much time using.

Should You Buy the Innocn 27M2V?

The Innocn 27M2V isn’t cheap, but it’s relatively affordable for a 4K gaming monitor, especially one with as many features as it has. While it isn’t super accurate out of the box, you can easily calibrate it for photo or video work with the right tool, and if you’re gaming, you won’t need any tweaks.

The menu buttons are annoying, the build is plastic, and there’s a slight janky to the experience, but to get rid of those cons, you’d have to spend considerably more. The Innocn 27M2V is a fantastic deal.