I've been using this monitor for a little over a month now and I gotta say, I've been extremely impressed with the quality of this monitor for the price. That said, it's this price for a reason, and some corners have been cut, but they likely will be compromises most people are willing to accept for the savings.
The Good/Expected
As far as I know, this monitor is using a Samsung VA panel and the picture is quite nice out of the box. Since it's a VA panel, the contrast ratio should be around 3000:1 out of the box, and in my experience the contrast ratio is quite a nice improvement compared to an IPS or TN panel. Honestly one of the best looking monitors out of the box I've ever used, but I normally cheap out on monitors (strange habit considering I bought an OLED TV). I don't have a calibration tool, but to my eyes the reds are slightly oversaturated, the blues and greens look a smidge undersaturated, the white point is perfect to my eyes, and the gamma is also exactly what I want (around 2.2 based on the lagom website's calibration test). Don't read too much into the color performance I've listed, if you don't buy precalibrated monitors or have never calibrated your monitor before, the out of the box performance will likely blow you away. That said, the matte coating isn't the greatest, leaving individual pixels pretty prominent, which was unexpected considering the resolution. It's easy to get used to and is only noticeable on solid, bright colors. Viewing angles are also what you'd expect from a VA panel. Significantly better than TN, not as good as IPS. The way the image distorts is greatly preferable to TN, as it's pretty much exclusively color shift and isn't too severe. The slight curve of the monitor helps color shift issues at the edges, though they'll still exist to varying degrees based on your distance from the panel.
So how does this thing do with gaming? Input lag feels great, but this is hardly ever an issue for monitors. I went from a 144hz 1440p TN panel, and while the lower 100hz refresh rate is noticeable, it didn't bother me nearly as much as I thought it might. If all you've used before is 60hz, you're in for a treat. Now a weak point for VA panels is motion blur/ghosting, and this monitor is no exception. Out of the box, the monitor doesn't have the overdrive option selected. I HIGHLY recommend setting this to the highest setting, as it exhibits no noticeable overshoot (for those not familiar with the term, it's like inverse ghosting, which can look arguably more weird) and helps a lot with motion performance. That said, even with this option enabled, there is noticeable smearing on near-black to near-white transitions. If ghosting is a major pet peeve for you, you should probably avoid VA panels all together and stick with TN or high end IPS.
So far, this is sounding like it's exactly what you'd expect and hope for from a name brand display. Great out of the box performance with all the settings you want (including freesync/gsync). So where were the corners cut?
The Not So Good
Well, let's talk about freesync/gsync on this panel. It mostly works, which is good! But where it's bad, it's pretty bad. The problem is the monitor exhibits brightness inconsistency or "flickering" within a certain range of its freesync window. When your game is running between 48-54 fps (or in other words, when your frametimes spike to this range, which isn't uncommon especially at this resolution!), you'll get that brightness inconsistency. Figuring out exactly what was making this thing tick was a chore, but once I figured it out I personally didn't have much of an issue working around it. You see, one of the major benefits of freesync/gsync is that you can lock your games to any framerate you can keep steady at and it will look buttery smooth. So if I have a game that's regularly spiking to frametimes that low, I lock the game to 45 or 46 FPS using RTSS. This triggers LFC (or low framerate compensation) for both Nvidia and AMD, meaning freesync/gsync still works outside of its listed range. So, this works, but it is an irritating compromise and potentially a deal breaker to those not patient/knowledgeable enough to figure it out and work around it. So is there anything else wrong with this monitor?
Not a major thing, but the calibration options on the display itself are lacking. If you want a fully calibrated screen, you'll have to do it in software. Again, out of the box performance is good enough for the vast majority of users, so it's only a problem to those that need perfect color performance.
Additional Info
I have my switch dock hooked up to this and it upscales to the correct height and maintains aspect ratio (and does have different scaling options if you don't want that for some reason). Despite being an extremely suboptimal monitor for the switch (most switch games are under 1080p, upscaled to 1080p by the switch, then the monitor has to upscale that to 1440p), image quality is about as good as you can expect. The contrast ratio goes a long way to keeping the image appearing sharp.
Since the weight of this thing is apparently an enigma, I weighed the monitor without the stand and it's just under 15 pounds. It works beautifully on my dual monitor vesa mount that supports up to 17 pounds, which I'll link here for those interested in seeing something that will work. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077X9Z7MT
The power supply is integrated into the monitor, so no power brick under your desk. The monitor doesn't get too hot to the touch either. Always a plus.
If you are hoping to overclock this, you'll have no luck. The monitor uses DisplayPort 1.2, and 3440x1440 @100hz is right at the limit of the bandwidth that standard supports. Seriously, a couple hertz higher and you'll get artifacts. You may have luck overclocking at a lower, non-native resolution, but I didn't try.
I tried to be as thorough as possible with this review since truly detailed reviews are a bit lacking. I hope this helps somebody out there make a decision for themselves. Despite the issues, I still highly recommend this monitor for the price ($400).
| Standing screen display size | 34 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 3440x1440 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 3440 x 1440 Pixels |
