I’ve recommended several OLED gaming monitors to readers over the years, and I’ve finally taken my own advice to buy one. Alienware’s new 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED has all the features that I want and a low $350 price that was too tempting to ignore.

The AW2726DM model has five things that make it stand out for the price: a 1440p QD-OLED screen with lush contrast, a fast 240Hz refresh rate, a semi-glossy screen coating to enhance details, a low-profile design without flashy RGB LEDs, and a great warranty (three years with coverage for burn-in).

I’ve been using Alienware’s new monitor for a couple days, and I’ve already spent hours with it playing Marathon. It was my first opportunity to see Bungie’s new first-person extraction shooter in its full HDR glory, and I can never go back. Switching on HDR wasn’t automatic, though it already looked so much better than my IPS panel without being activated.

Enabling it transformed how Marathon looked for the better, but made everything else about the OS look pretty washed-out. It’s a Windows issue, not an Alienware issue. It’s easy to enable HDR every time I launch a game and disable it afterward with the Windows + Alt + B keyboard shortcut, but unfortunately triggers HDR for all connected displays. This includes my IPS monitor that imbues everything with a terrible gray hue when HDR is on. So, using the system settings is the best way to adjust HDR for just the QD-OLED.

I landed on this QD-OLED after having spent a ton of time researching pricier models. The unanimous takeaway from reviewers was that LG’s Tandem RGB WOLED panels are some of the brightest out there, but also tend to exhibit lousy gray uniformity in dark scenes. QD-OLED monitors, on the other hand, offer slightly better contrast than WOLED and don’t suffer from those same uniformity issues. However, blacks sometimes appear as dark purple in bright rooms on QD-OLED panels, meaning they’re ideal for rooms that don’t have a bunch of light bouncing around.

There’s no perfect choice, and honestly I got tired of doing research, so I jumped in with the cheapest OLED. I’m glad that I did. Shopping for an OLED gaming monitor can be hard, but it can also be this easy. AOC makes a model that’s discounted to $339.99 at the time of publishing, and its specs are comparable.

As expected, the AW2726DM isn’t a cutting-edge monitor. Its QD-OLED panel isn’t as fast or as bright as some other pricier options, and it doesn’t have USB ports for connecting accessories. Considering its low price, it’s easy for me to overlook those omissions. I’d have a much harder time accepting them in a pricier display.

The fact that I mostly use my computer for text-based work at The Verge is what prevented me from upgrading to an OLED monitor. My 1440p IPS monitor is bright, it’s good at showing text clearly, and it has a fast refresh rate for gaming. Alienware’s QD-OLED is less bright, and some might be bothered by how text looks (I have to really squint to see the slight fringing from this QD-OLED’s subpixel layout). But I have a life outside of work, which includes playing a lot of PC games. That’s the slice of myself I bought this monitor for, and I’m so happy I did.

Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

Billionaire Michael Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, have become the first donors to give more than $1 billion to the University of Texas at Austin, funding a massive new medical research campus and hospital system powered by artificial intelligence.

The couple’s latest investment includes a $750 million gift to help build the UT Dell Medical Center, a planned “AI-native” hospital expected to open in 2030 as part of a more than 300-acre advanced research campus.

University officials said the project will integrate research, clinical care and advanced computing to improve early disease detection, personalize treatment and expand access to care in the rapidly growing Austin region.

The Dells’ support builds on decades of contributions to UT, including funding for its medical school, scholarships and research programs.

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“By bringing together medicine, science and computing in one campus designed for the AI era, UT can create more opportunity, deliver better outcomes, and build a stronger future for communities across Texas and beyond,” Michael Dell and Susan Dell said.

The gift ranks among the largest in the history of higher education, alongside major contributions like Phil Knight’s $2 billion pledge to Oregon Health & Science University and Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University.

The new UT Dell Medical Center will be developed in collaboration with MD Anderson Cancer Center, integrating cancer care into a system designed to connect prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

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“We will deliver better outcomes for patients by providing research-driven cancer care that is precise, compassionate and hope-filled,” Peter WT Pisters, president of UT MD Anderson, said.

Officials said the facility will be built from the ground up to incorporate AI, rather than retrofitting older infrastructure — an approach they say could transform how hospitals operate.

Independent experts have cautioned that AI in health care can introduce risks if not carefully validated. A widely cited study published in the journal Science by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago found that a commonly used healthcare algorithm underestimated the needs of Black patients due to biased training data, highlighting broader concerns about equity in AI-driven systems.

The project also includes funding for undergraduate scholarships, student housing and the Texas Advanced Computing Center, where officials are developing one of the nation’s most powerful academic supercomputers.

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the investment will help position the state as a national leader in healthcare innovation.

“Texas already dominates in technology, energy and business, and now we will further cement our leadership in health care innovation as well,” Abbott said.

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The university said it plans to break ground on the medical center later this year and has launched a broader campaign to raise $10 billion over the next decade.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SpaceX and Cursor are now working closely together to create the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI.

The combination of Cursor’s leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX’s million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will allow us to build the world’s most useful models.

Cursor has also given SpaceX the right to acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together.