Nov 25, 2025 7:00 AM
Review: LG UltraFine Evo 6K 32-inch Monitor
More pixels is never a bad thing, right? That’s at least part of the reasoning behind the existence of the LG UltraFine Evo 6K. This 32-inch monitor aims to put even more pixels in front of content creators and professionals.
Beyond that, it has an attention-grabbing design and off-the-charts image quality. It’s one of the best monitors you can buy for content creators, despite some of the unfortunate trade-offs it comes with.
As Sleek As Monitors Get
The 32-inch LG UltraFine Evo 6K is a very pretty monitor. I wouldn’t blame you for mistaking this as an Apple product, given the focus on clean lines, simple shapes, and designerly aesthetic. The extra-wide stand means that the base itself isn’t overly large. Like the Apple Studio Display, the flat base provides more usable desk space rather than occupying it. The stand itself has a unique design, too. It resembles the styling Apple uses on the iMac and Studio Display, but it has a textured pattern on the back. It’s gorgeous, though you probably won’t spend a lot of time looking at the back of the monitor unless your desk is in the middle of the room or in command position (if you know, you know).
I also like that the back of the cabinet is flat, giving it a sleek look that the rounded backs of typical monitors can’t achieve. Because it uses conventional backlighting, though, it’s not as thin as OLED displays like some of Samsung’s Odyssey gaming monitors. The UltraFine 6K also has some impressively thin bezels, too, adding to the ultra-modern aesthetic. While they’re not “virtually borderless” as LG states, they’re smaller than the bezels on most monitors I’ve tested.
One of my favorite aspects of the UltraFine Evo 6K is the speakers. The pair of included speakers on this might be the best I’ve heard on a monitor. They are extremely loud and clear. There’s even a decent amount of bass in there, to the point where you won’t need a pair of computer speakers.
One thing I don’t love is the port placement. In favor of keeping everything clean and minimalist, there’s nowhere to hide the ports, so they’re just lined up vertically on the back and in the middle of the monitor. That makes them hard to reach, and there’s no built-in cable management to speak of.
The UltraFine Evo 6K sports a decent amount of adjustment, though the design of the hinge limits some of what’s possible. It can rotate a full 90 degrees into portrait mode, which is awesome. But the height adjustment is pretty minimal, with a range of only a few inches or so. It also doesn’t swivel. As a tall person, I didn’t have a hard time finding a comfortable position with this monitor. But for shorter folks, the height of the UltraFine Evo 6K could cause some significant ergonomic problems because of how high up the minimum height is. It does have a VESA mount, so you can avoid all these problems by using a monitor arm.
While I don’t like their placement, the ports themselves are powerful. You get the latest standards and speeds, including DisplayPort 2.1, HDMI 2.1, and two Thunderbolt 5 ports. There’s a built-in KVM switch for using the same monitor and peripherals with multiple devices. The UltraFine Evo 6K lacks a few ports that other high-end monitors include, such as a headphone jack, Ethernet jack, or upstream USB-A ports.
One of the Thunderbolt ports supports power delivery, although only up to 96 watts. This is less than the 240 watts that’s possible with Thunderbolt 5. A high-powered laptop like my 16-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro couldn’t hold a charge when plugged in. However, you can daisy chain multiple 6K monitors together using just a single cable, which feels impossibly great.
The 360-watt external power brick is the largest I’ve ever seen on a monitor, although it’s a nice white color. Its size could cause issues with your setup, especially if you have a tall or standing desk.
All the controls happen through a single joystick that can be found dead-center on the back of the monitor. The menu is really intuitive to use, and it’s easy to get to important settings like volume or brightness. In the settings, you’ll find the Studio Mode, which is designed for compatibility with Macs. If you’re using this with a MacBook, matching the color on the screens is key to making sure your edits are consistent.
Mind-Blowing Image Quality
This monitor’s calling card is its 6K (6144 x 3456 pixels) resolution, which represents the peak of display sharpness available today. Asus has a 32-inch 8K mini-LED monitor with a resolution of 7680 x 4320, but at $8,000, it’s entirely niche. For all intents and purposes, 6K is as sharp as consumer monitors get right now, and there are only a few options out there, such as the Apple Pro Display XDR and Asus ProArt PA32QCV. The Apple Pro Display XDR is thousands of dollars more and uses mini-LED backlighting to deliver very strong high dynamic range (HDR) performance, while the Asus ProArt model is LG’s direct competitor. In both of these 6K displays, you get a pixel density of 224 pixels per inch (ppi). That gets close to the sharpness of higher-resolution laptops. The current MacBook Pro still beats it, though, with 254 ppi.
The UltraFine 6K is also a Nano IPS Black display, which is something the Asus model is not. Nano IPS Black is actually a combination of two technologies that improve the image quality of IPS in different ways. Nano IPS enhances color coverage, while IPS Black cranks up the contrast. The combination of the two is pretty spectacular, especially on a monitor this sharp. It covers sRGB and AdobeRGB at a full 100 percent, something I’ve never seen on an IPS monitor before. The color accuracy is also incredibly strong. Right out of the box, I measured the average color error at a Delta-E of 0.62. Anything under 1.0 is considered excellent, even for professional color graders. No further calibration needed here.
In terms of brightness, my review unit topped out at 480 nits in standard dynamic range (SDR), which is quite bright. The screen has an anti-reflective, matte coating that deters glare and reflections without dimming the screen too much. This is probably going to bother some people coming from a glossy, older LG 5K display. Although I’d also prefer a glossy display, LG’s solution is subtle enough. And while this is certainly not a proper HDR monitor in that it uses a conventional LED IPS panel, I was able to measure 640 nits of peak brightness in HDR. That’s far from what OLED or mini-LED can do. Remember: The HDR effect is created by higher brightness and contrast. That’s what makes OLED displays attractive. The UltraFine Evo 6K has a 2,000:1 contrast ratio, but I only got 1,720:1 in my testing. That’s still better than the average, though, as monitors like the Dell UltraSharp 32 4K use an enhanced IPS Black in order to push the contrast closer to 3,000:1.
The refresh rate is the one big problem with the UltraFine Evo 6K’s picture. It’s only 60 Hz. It doesn’t matter how sharp, vibrant, and color-accurate your image is if the motion feels stiff. Even fairly affordable monitors like my favorite, the Dell 27 Plus 4K ($300), have a 120-Hz refresh rate. That’s likely not the fault of LG, as Asus’ 6K monitor is also stuck at 60 Hz—but it’s a current limitation of the resolution on offer. I have no doubt that future 6K monitors will come out with a 120-Hz refresh rate, but as of now, that’s a trade-off you’ll be making for the extra pixels.
Pricey Proposition
The LG UltraFine Evo 6K costs $2,000. While that’s not as much as Apple’s ridiculous Pro Display XDR, it also lacks the HDR capabilities that make that monitor special. The price feels especially egregious when you consider how cheap OLED monitors are getting. Dell’s first nongaming OLED, the Dell 32 Plus QD-OLED, is only $850 and is often on sale for under $700. It’s only 4K, but it’s better for both watching and producing HDR content.
Lastly, if you’re set on 6K, there’s also the Asus ProArt PA32QCV to consider. I haven’t tested it yet, but it’s $600 cheaper than LG’s model, despite using the same 6K panel. What does that extra $700 buy you? A flashier design, for one, but also more up-to-date ports. Although I like where Asus has placed its ports better than LG, it uses old specs such as Thunderbolt 4 and DisplayPort 1.4. The biggest difference is the lack of Nano IPS Black, which means it likely doesn’t have the color performance and contrast of the LG model. These differences aren’t insignificant, but are they worth $700? That’s tough to say, especially since they are otherwise the identical panel. I can’t say for sure until I’ve tested Asus’ model, but on the surface, the LG UltraFine 6K does feel a little overpriced by comparison.
On the other hand, if you’re already dropping this much cash on a 6K monitor, image quality is paramount, and the inclusion of Nano IPS Black makes the LG UltraFine 6K a better alternative to OLED or the Pro Display XDR.
Credit: Original Article
