About two months ago, a viewer of the podcast that Ryan co-hosts on the This Week in Tech network, This Week in Computer Hardware, wrote in with some information that immediately excited the staff here at PC Perspective. Ryan for a long time has been of the opinion that the proliferation of 1080p displays, and prohibitive cost of high resolution monitors has been holding the industry back as a whole. With talk of 4K displays being introduced for consumers this year, a major topic on the podcast in the weeks prior to this viewer email had centered around why we haven't seen affordable 2560×1440 (or 2560×1600) displays.

This brings us back to the knowledge which the listener Jeremy bestowed upon us. Jeremy brought to our attention that various eBay sellers were reselling and exporting generic 27", IPS, LED backlight, 2560×1440 monitors from South Korea. What is remarkable about these displays however is that various models can be found for just around, or even under $350. Everyone listening, including Ryan and his co-host Patrick Norton became immediately interested in these monitors, and I went into research mode.

Continue reading our review of the 27-in Achieva Shimian 2560×1440 monitor!

As it turns out, even by the time we at PC Perspective had found out about these displays, there was already a cult following for these Korean monitors on various forums throughout the internet. Quickly we found out that these monitors were using the "A-" stock of LG LM270WQ1 27" panels. While the current Dell Ultrasharp 27" U2711 displays use a different revision of the LG panel (LM270WQ2) this is in fact the same panel the Apple uses in their 27" iMac and Cinema Display/Thunderbolt Display.

However, several questions about these monitors came up throughout our staff. What kind of quality could we expect from a "reject" LCD Panel? What about input lag? We also had several suspicions about the build quality of these monitors.