Image: Dough
Knead a high-refresh-rate gaming monitor with the deep colors and incredible response time of OLED? Dough is rising to the occasion. Today, itโs announcing the Dough Spectrum OLED, a 27-inch screen that attempts to beat LG at its very own game.
You see, today โ December 12th โ is the day that LG is opening preorders for its new $999 LG UltraGear 27GR95QE-B, a 27-inch OLED monitor at 240Hz and 2560 x 1440 resolution shipping this January. But Dough is promising to put the very same LG panel into a glossy monitor with more desirable features โ as long as youโre willing to wait until July and trust a company with a spotty track record.
Where LGโs monitor only offers a pair of unspecified HDMI ports, a DisplayPort, and a two-port USB 3.0 hub under its matte finish screen, Dough is upping the ante with HDMI 2.1 with variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low latency mode (ALLM) to natively support game consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X, plus a one-cable USB-C charging, data, and video solution for your laptop. The Spectrum OLED will offer 100W USB-PD charging, DisplayPort 1.4, and a decent 10Gbps USB 3.1 connection over that single USB-C cord.
Plus, Dough says its monitor will have a built-in KVM switch thatโll let you route your mouse and keyboard to a second computer as well โ you can point two USB-A ports and two USB-C ports, all at 10Gbps speeds, to either of two USB-C connected computers you plug into the monitor. Doughโs promising a dedicated KVM switch button and both split-screen and picture-in-picture modes.
That all sounds amazing, particularly for the companyโs $649 / โฌ749 starting price โ but here are a few reasons Iโm not putting my own money down.
First, you should know this isnโt just a glossy screen, which is an intriguing proposition by itself; it might be a rather dim screen, too. Whether youโre buying this panel from LG, Dough, or Asus โ yes, Asus may soon have a version as well โ itโs rated for a typical brightness of just 150 nits, which isnโt typically sufficient in a brightly lit room. While OLED screens donโt typically get all that bright, 150 nits is dim even for them: 150 nits is roughly how bright a 65-inch LG OLED TV gets when itโs been severely artificially dimmed by LGโs own software to prevent burn-in.
That said, it sounds like youโll have some ability to tweak. Dough CEO Konstantinos Karatsevidis tells me the company โwill offer settings to unlock max brightness of the panel for a short time (gaming session) and then go back to presets.โ Specifically, youโll be able to turn it up to 400 nits using the monitorโs on-screen display, and Iโm eager to see what that looks like in practice. And, Dough says itโll offer a two-year burn-in warranty, which could give you peace of mind while youโre doing that tweaking โ even if two years really isnโt enough time to notice burn-in on most modern OLED panels. (It took four years for my LG TV.)
Second, while Dough is advertising a number of certifications, including VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400, you should know that nothingโs been certified yet โ itโs currently a prototype. โWe are almost done producing our tooling as well as first motherboard samples. We can already light up our monitor in our final shell, but now itโs time for certifications and debugging,โ says Karatsevidis. Dough isnโt even showing us the back of the monitor yet.
Third, it doesnโt come with a monitor stand; itโs an extra $99. You do get a built-in 100 x 100 VESA mounting spot, though, so thatโs money in your pocket if youโve already got a VESA monitor arm.
Lastly, thereโs the companyโs track record: Dough, nee Eve, has been good about building high-quality products for reviewers but less good about shipping them to customers. Karatsevidis says a July 2023 window gives the company more time to deliver.
Dough is counting on a certain amount of FOMO to get you in the door regardless of your hesitations, and the chief tactic is this: it increases the prices of its products quite a bit before they hit shelves. The early-bird, crowdfunding-esque $649 / โฌ749 price will increase to $1,099 / โฌ1,199 by the time it hits Amazon and co. Hereโs the image from the companyโs slide deck where it explains that logic:
Is this enough to convince you? Iโm genuinely super curious, so please drop a note in the comments below, and hopefully weโll be able to bring you an early hands-on or even a review before the price jumps too much. I solemnly swear to include WAY more Dough puns.
Again, this wonโt be the last monitor with this 27-inch 240Hz QHD OLED panel โ if the upcoming Asus is half as intriguing as this one, weโll be sure to let you know. We expect a whole bunch of awesome new monitors at CES as well, like these giant curved OLED screens from LG and MSI and an 8K ultrawide from Samsung.
Correction, 11:40am ET: Dough says the stand, not the monitor, has the cast aluminum alloy frame.