Gigabyte Aorus FV43U review

Like most gaming monitors, the Aorus designers sketched out an aggressive design for something you will never see — the back. It’s got sharp lines and an aggressive back panel design comparable to most PC gaming equipment and peripherals. Is there RGB? Nope, but it doesn’t really matter because the party is in the front (more on that later). This 43in monitor is very thick and heavy with a sturdy build quality and thick bezels. 

The Aorus FV43U is shipped with a 16A plug that is not going to slot into many sockets other than that one aircon socket in your room. So you might need to find a replacement power cable.

The Aorus FV43U is one of the fastest 43in 4K HDR displays we’ve tested. It’s big, fast, sharp and bright as the sun. Playing Apex Legends on 4K at 144Hz is a different kind of fun and with the PS5 plugged, the 4K at 120Hz fun feels right at home.

But sitting with your keyboard and mouse under a 43in monitor and your noggin glued to its QLED display might burn your peepers silly. So essentially gaming with this is best left with a controller with some distance in between. You can really enjoy driving games like Dirt 5 in proper 120Hz fluid motion on the PS5. Even though you may have to sacrifice the resolution due to hardware limitations of the PS5. Nevertheless, 120Hz PS5 gaming is absolutely fun on the Aorus FV43U because there’s no ghosting here. Many monitors and TVs we’ve tested have always had a bit of ghosting with Dirt 5 running at 60Hz or 120Hz on the PS5 but not this one. The image quality is clean and crisp without any screen tearing or ghosting on PlayStation games. Even Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection runs without any screen issues on higher and lower frame rates.

The dark and cinematic scenes from The Quarry have inky blacks and respectable contrast. The close-up shots of the characters with pitch dark backgrounds and moonlit faces have minor tonal issues but still, the backlight bleeding was kept to a minimum. This Quantum Dot display has plenty of brightness to make the colours pop. It punches into a different weight class for monitors when it comes to bright and colourful scenes. Something that was very evident while playing Horizon Forbidden West.

The quality drops when you shift from the centre of the display. It has terrible viewing angles thanks to the VA panel. Needless to say, the Aorus FV43U is a one-person pleaser. You cannot binge movies with your loved ones because the colour gets washed out as soon as you leave the centre zone. The same applies to couch co-op games. It’s nearly impossible to not be irked by the FV43U’s poor viewing angles.

The speakers sound warm. These are focused on the lower end which sits well with racing and action-adventure games. Christopher Judge’s deep voice in God of War (2019) sounds meatier than what you’d get from monitors but it’s not as detailed and clean as we’d like. Even if we’re asking a lot from telly speakers, for the price and size, we expected the thick rear of the Aorus to bring better audio. Toggling through the audio presets doesn’t offer much respite either. It’s missing a dedicated audio EQ. You do get the proper set of features from Gigabyte’s OSD. You can tweak display settings, add crosshair, monitor your PC hardware statistics and even use the KVM feature which allows you to use one mouse and keyboard across multiple devices.

The remote is very similar to what you get with budget tellies these days. It’s got basic buttons and that’s about it. Not that you need more buttons here because there’s no Android-based UI for accessing OTT apps like you would on smart tellies. So it’s got the size of tv but the brains of a monitor.

The Gigabyte Aorus FV43U is a proper gaming monitor. It’s sized as big as a telly which makes it a fantastic console gaming monitor for folks who want a fast and responsive display without sacrificing colour. Think of Apex Legends, Call of Duty Warzone and FIFA competitive games and you’ll be tempted by the Aorus. Even cinematic games look great with punchy saturation and bright whites. However, the viewing angles are not really enticing for a 43in display and the sound also could’ve been better for the price.