The people saying "pay more for something better" don't know what they're talking about. I looked through all the major monitor review sites I could find, and this seems to be the best 144hz 1080p VA monitor. I would happily pay more for a better VA monitor, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to exist yet.Yes it has a smearing problem for high contrast colors. This is due to the lower grey-to-grey time of VA monitors compared to IPS and TN. However, switching to IPS or TN is not "upgrading", but rather trading one issue for another.With TN, you get much worse image quality and viewing angles (to the point where even head-on it doesn't display accurately), but faster response. That faster response is quite overhyped. I'm a long time high-level competitive FPS player, and the faster response of TN only matters in that it doesn't have the obvious smearing that occurs in some high contrast areas (IE: white clock with black hands and numbers).The weaknesses of this VA monitor are most obvious in specific examples, such as: A chain link fence in a darkish area, a bookshelf with multicolored books. When panning the fence will get darker, and the bookshelf will kind of darken/flicker/smear. Turning up the gamma reduces the effect. The Overdrive setting doesn't seem to have a major impact on this. Using any of the preset profiles will make this much worse.I tested two $500 240hz IPS monitors and they had horrible IPS glow that ruined 1/3rd of the screen space. Making this cheaper monitor much better overall. The more accurate colors of IPS is only important to people doing color-critical work. IPS also has as bad contrast ratios as TNs.VA has the best image quality and blacks. And this VA has much better viewing angles than the expensive IPS I tested, and any TN monitor.Additionally, this VA monitor comes with Overdrive turned off. Setting it to Medium greatly reduces any high-contrast-smearing to the point where it's only noticeable in certain parts of certain dark games, or when scrolling a web page with high contrast sections/features. Also, I bought the 27" version, but reportedly, the 24" version is slightly better in this regard.-The first monitor I got had significant backlight bleed around the edges, especially the top right. This was very disappointing given that the benefits of VA monitors are their black levels. But that much black light bleed ruins black scenes. I returned it for a second monitor, and was relieved to see it had much less BLB. However, it did have a dead pixel in the bottom right, but it's not noticeable unless I turn the screen white and look for it. So I'll take the lower BLB with a dead pixel any day. Unfortunately it seems like the back light bleed gets worse over time.I did also notice that with the 2nd monitor, under certain circumstances (flux on at night with white background) the colors don't display evenly (three vertical bands of darker/lighter shades). But that's only under rare circumstances and not something I'd notice during gaming and most regular PC use.The motion blur is as low or lower than "better/faster" TN and IPS monitors I tried. And the MBR feature on this monitor seems to work fairly well.Not a fan of the curve, but I got used to it.Not a fan of this type of stand. The regular flat, square ones are much better and allow me to customize the positioning of the monitor much more. In one of the images you can see how I've had to position this.Image setup is greyed out. So no access to Sharpness setting.The OSD controls are the worst of any monitor so far. Can't tell what button is for what. The power button isn't even under the power light. Thankfully they have software (i-Menu and G-menu) that controls most (unfortunately not the MBR setting) of the OSD.It tilts up, but basically not down at all. It swivels side to side at a very good range.Nothing wrong with 27" at 1080p. Just not as sharp as 1440p would be. I prefer 27" due to the larger size being more immersive in games, and 1080p due to the significantly greater FPS cost of 1440p resulting in having to pay $500+ for a graphics card to get around 100 FPS in newer games.Has black borders on the sides where the bezels would normally be. Not sure what the point of that is.Has an OSD crosshair and a dedicated button for it. Has a "frame" counter, but it's actually a refresh rate counter.Gamer 1 is really blue. Gamer 2 and 3 are nice, and almost identical, but the software doesn't show you what their settings are. This is very unfortunate because they drastically change the image and I can't seem to get the custom setting to look similar no matter what I do. They look much better than my custom setting, but my custom setting has much less ghosting/smearing/trailing, thus I have to use Custom for games, and ironically, can only use "Gamer 2 and 3" on desktop.Oh, by looking at a specific image I'm able to deduce that what they change is a mixture of sharpness and saturation (called "game color" in OSD). I don't even see a sharpness setting anywhere though. Oh it's in the image setup menu, which for some reason is unavailable to all non-VGA connections.Works at 1440p downscaling in games at 144hz without having to create custom timings.-The images I included in my review are a comparison of the backlight bleed on my first and second monitors. And then the viewing angles of the first monitor.