If you haven’t already checked out our review of the Xiaomi G27Qi in the NAG Magazine 2025 Autumn Edition, shame on you. The 2K gaming monitor from Xiaomi scored a 75, showcasing a pretty standard-for-its-price monitor with more than enough ports on the back for every device you own.
Now, we’ve managed to get our hands on the 1080p younger sibling, the Xiaomi G27i Gaming Monitor, and we’ve put it through the paces to see if it can outshine its 2K counterpart.
Like the G27Qi, the G27i has a stunning, thin, almost bezelless design. It’s ultra-thin and feels extremely premium. Aside from the hardly noticeable chin on the bottom, there’s a compartment at the bottom rear of the screen holding all the inner bits. On this same compartment, exposed to the world, you’ll find the power port, a 3.5mm Audio Jack, an HDMI 2.0 port, a DP port and a 5-way joystick for all the controls.
Once again, the power brick is a charger-style power unit, which has its pros and cons. Sure, it’s compact and doesn’t hang behind your desk like an unwanted nose visitor, but it does mean you can only use a 2-pin power point to connect it up.
The minimal number of ports also limits the number of devices you can connect here. Perhaps one console on the HDMI port and your PC on the DP, but I don’t see it as a big downer because this monitor falls into the more entry-level bracket.
Again, I’m not the biggest fan of the monitor stand. It’s minimal, but it also feels a little too low to the table, and with no height adjustment, you’ll have to prop the monitor up onto something if you need more height. That, or you can use the VESA mount and attach it to a monitor arm.
The Xiaomi G27i 1080p Gaming Monitor features a 27-inch, full HD (1080p) IPS LCD, with a 165Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and AMD FreeSync Technology. The G27i packs some pretty good features. At 1080p, you’re almost always guaranteed to hit the maximum frame rate of 165fps if you have the GPU power to do so.
In-game, the monitor perfectly hits that 165Hz cap at full resolution. There’s no screen tearing and unwanted motion blur, and the colours still feel bright and full, just not when next to my OLED laptop.
There is one more downside to the high frame rate, low resolution combination, though, and that’s text legibility. In most cases, the Xiaomi G27i provided perfectly sharp lettering that I could read whether the text was light on dark or dark on light. However, with some small print, like when copy-checking magazine designs, the text did become tough to read. It doesn’t happen often, but if you like small text, this monitor just isn’t for you. But then, no 1080p monitor will be.
Which brings me to the conclusion. The Xiaomi G27i sits just around R4,000 to R5,000. It is cheaper than other branded monitors with similar features, sometimes by over R1,000. That’s pretty good if you’re a gamer on a budget. Is it going to blow your mind? No. But it will make your wallet thank you for choosing something budget-conscious, that looks premium, has a good, solid build and pretty much gives you exactly what you want in this range.
