KTC flies under the radar as a white-label monitor manufacturer for the likes of ViewSonic, but it also offers some of the best value gaming monitors and we’ve previously recommended their great value OLED models. This new £340/$450 M27P6 also promises an excellent value, this time based around a 27-inch 4K 160Hz Mini LED IPS panel. If you don’t want an OLED for whatever reason, then a Mini LED monitor like this one is likely your best bet.
The M27P6 is hardly barebones either, with nice-to-have features including a vast port selection, a KVM switch, a 65W USB-C input and a dual mode feature that quarters the resolution to double the refresh rate, giving you a 1080p 320Hz panel that’s even better suited to fast-paced esports games.
The M27P6 comes with a pleasant two-tone black and white colourway, in a similar vein to the Alienware AW3225QF, although it lacks the premium finishing of Dell’s choice, owing to a plastic frame, and has some chunkier bezels around the sides of the screen – for the price, though, it’s fine. It feels quite sturdy for the more modest price tag and benefits from a tool-less construction thanks to a clip-in stand and base assembly, so is very easy to get up and running.
This KTC panel also benefits from strong adjustment, with swivel, tilt and good scope for height adjustment. It can also go into a portrait mode if you want to use it as a second screen in your setup, or for any vertical workloads in a pinch. The flat base it comes with takes up less space than more typical V-shaped legs, and also allows you to stand items on it – in my case, it’s a Sonos Beam soundbar for a more compact audio setup.
The M27P6 also has quite an advanced set of ports for its more modest outlay that outshines more expensive rivals. That includes a pair of two HDMI 2.1 ports and a DP 1.4, plus a USB-C port with both video out and up to 65W of power delivery. The HDMI 2.1 ports mean you can get connect up a PS5, PS5 Pro, Switch 2 or Xbox Series X and enjoy games at up to 4K 120Hz, while the USB-C input means you can connect and charge a laptop with a single cable. In addition, you get a pair of USB-A ports that are powered by a USB-B port from your PC, and there’s a headphone jack. This KTC screen also has KVM functionality, so you can hook up peripherals to two separate devices through the screen, and swap between them at will.
The OSD of this panel is where it falls short, being quite basic versus the swoopier options from the likes of Asus, Gigabyte and MSI. Of course, standard adjustments like brightness, contrast, HDR modes and more are all still available, and there are different picture modes to choose from, but some fancier features are missing. The joystick used to control the menu is also weirdly hard to use, requiring more precision than you’d expect to register the correct input. Certain menus, such as changing brightness or HDR mode, also need confirmation every time you do it, which just becomes a pain.
As much as the OSD is a small indicator of this screen’s cheaper nature, the panel it comes with isn’t. Granted, the 27-inch 4K Fast IPS option on the face of it isn’t too exciting, but add a 1152-zone Mini LED backlight with Full Array Local Dimming, and it becomes a different ball game. It allows this panel to reach a eyeball-searing rated peak HDR brightness of 1400 nits, according to KTC, which takes it up a notch from more traditional IPS screens. Its claimed peak SDR is 400 nits, which it meets in my testing, while HDR support includes both VESA DisplayHDR 1400 and DisplayHDR 600 modes. The screen lacks any more advanced support, such as Dolby Vision or HDR10+, though a vanishingly small number of PC games support either HDR standard.
This panel also has no certification for either AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync VRR, unlike a lot of its contemporaries, though you can still manually enable these features on graphics cards of any vendor. I didn’t see any issues with judder or tearing with this enabled, so I suspect that KTC just doesn’t want to pay for the expensive certification process.
Enabling local dimming makes a lot of sense in all instances when I was testing this panel, as otherwise, my colorimeter spat out unremarkable numbers that make it a brighter-than-usual Fast IPS monitor. Having local dimming boosts the contrast and deepens the black level for stronger dynamic range. With it enabled, the dreaded blooming effect isn’t present, largely owing to the large number of dimming zones on offer.
A 4K resolution provides some lovely detail and sharpness, especially in conjunction with the Mini LED backlight, plus a smooth 160Hz refresh rate keeps everything from games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza Horizon 5 and even general productivity work looking sharp. Of course, to get the full benefit of the resolution and refresh rate combo here, you will need a particularly powerful PC, as 4K is a lot harder to drive than 1440p, and of course four times the pixel count of 1080p.
As a dual-mode screen, you can also tick down to 1080p resolution with a 320Hz refresh rate for even crisper motion in competitive titles such as Counter-Strike 2, where it’s likely to yield benefits for more competitive players. It is at the expense of a lot of detail though, and there was visible deterioration in overall visual fidelity.
Getting my colorimeter out and enabling Full Array Local Dimming yielded some generally solid results. Granted, peak brightness didn’t necessarily increase past the 628 nits I noted with FALD disabled, but the contrast ratio went up from 1110:1 to 3490:1, allowing for better dynamic range, plus the black level got much deeper (0.57 vs 0.10). Okay, the results may not be quite as strong as you’ll find on competitively priced 1440p OLEDs, but it’s some of the best you’ll find on an IPS screen at any price.
The M27P6 is also beautifully colour-accurate, with my colorimeter measuring 100 percent sRGB coverage, allowing for perfect coverage of mainstream colours for gaming and productivity workloads. In addition, its 97 percent DCI-P3 and 93 percent Adobe RGB numbers prove this panel could happily be used for more colour-sensitive and creative tasks without much trouble, especially in conjunction with its lovely stats elsewhere.
Mini LED has become the dark horse of the monitor world, as OLED has taken all of the spotlight against older VA, IPS and TN panels that we were quite happy with for many years. By contrast, Mini LED offers a pleasant halfway house, providing the lovely dynamic range, depth, and searing peak brightness without the potential issues of burn-in that’s always in the back of your mind with OLED.
For the £340/$450 asking price, I’m largely impressed with the KTC M27P6, especially as it stands as one of the most feature-rich panels available at its price, with sharp 4K images with lovely contrast and deep blacks. Plus, it benefits from excellent colour accuracy, a potent port selection and pleasant stand adjustment. It’s little things that hold it back, such as a painful OSD and cheaper-feeling stand, but if you can look past these foibles, this is a very capable gaming screen for the price.