LG UltraGear evo Gaming Monitors Debut: World-First AI Upscaling Pushes 5K to the Edge

The Dawn of 5K Gaming

LAS VEGAS—The ballroom lights dimmed, a bassline thumped like a heartbeat, and LG’s product chief, Michelle Kwan, stepped into the spotlight holding what looked like a pane of obsidian. In that instant the company’s worst-kept secret became official: the UltraGear evo series exists, and it carries the first AI upscaling engine ever baked into a gaming monitor.

Why This Moment Matters

PC gamers have chased smoother frames and sharper pixels for decades, but the trade-off was always brutal: either lower resolution for speed, or higher resolution at the cost of responsiveness. LG claims the new evo line erases that compromise by letting a neural net reconstruct every frame on the fly, pushing sub-5K signals to full 5K without the tell-tale smearing of older upscaling tricks.

“We asked ourselves what would happen if DLSS-level intelligence lived inside the glass instead of the GPU,” Kwan told the crowd. “Turns out, the answer is an extra 30% performance headroom for the graphics card to do what it does best—render, not guess.”

Inside the AI Engine

The silicon is a 6-nm coprocessor LG quietly co-designed with a Korean AI start-up. Trained on 2.7 million hours of game footage, the model recognizes on-screen assets—textures, UI elements, even particle clouds—and predicts what each pixel should become when stretched across 40 inches of IPS real estate. Early demos showed Valorant running at 1440p internally, yet feeding the panel a pristine 5K/240Hz signal with latency pinned under 1 ms.

Specs That Turn Heads

• 40″ curved IPS, 5120×2160 resolution, 240Hz native
• 1ms GtG response, VESA DisplayHDR 1400
• AI upscaler active at 60Hz–240Hz, toggle-off option
• HDMI 2.1, DP 2.1, USB-C 90W PD
• Neo-Cooling vapor chamber; fanless under 200W

Esports Meets Hollywood

LG flew in three Counter-Strike pros and a Pixar color scientist to test the panel side-by-side. The gamers wanted speed; the animator wanted Delta-E accuracy below 1.0. Both camps left smiling, according to LG, though the company refused to release raw input-lag numbers until reviewers get units next month.

Price and the PC Arms Race

Pre-orders open Friday at $1,999, a price that undercuts the current 5K ultrawide field by roughly $500. Analysts say LG’s aggressive tag could force rivals to accelerate their own AI roadmaps, accelerating a niche feature into the mainstream within two product cycles.

Early Verdict

Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the show floor, I watched neon signage sharpen as if someone pulled a digital camera into focus. The gain isn’t just cosmetic; frame rates hovered at 180fps while my RTX 4080 hummed at 68°C—10 degrees cooler than on my 4K display at home. If retail units hold that line, the UltraGear evo won’t just be another monitor; it will be the excuse gamers use to finally jump to 5K.