The time was that 49 inches was considered large for a TV, let alone a computer monitor, but that’s exactly the size of Samsung’s latest curved ultra-wide screen, the Odyssey G9.
As I sit down before writing this review, I have to turn my head almost 45 degrees left and right to take its full width, and with the app windows laid out across its width, there is has a huge amount of office space to play with.
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Samsung Odyssey G9 review: what are you getting for your money?
The size of the Samsung Odyssey G9’s VA QLED panel isn’t the only thing that suits it. It offers a crisp resolution of 5120 x 1440 and an incredibly wide aspect ratio of 32: 9. It supports HDR10 with maximum brightness rated at up to 1000 cd / m2 (1000 nits), spectacular curvature of 1000R, a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz and a GTG response time rated at 1ms.
Add in AMD FreeSync Premium Pro support and Nvidia G-Sync compatibility and it looks like the ultimate monitor for gamers, although at £ 1,279 you’ll need to have big pockets to buy one.
All in all, it’s an impressive list of specs. In fact, this is probably the most impressive monitor I have ever come across. Even our recently announced Monitor of the Year – the 38-inch LG UltraWide LG38WN95C – can’t match it and we were blown away by the quality of this monitor.
However, impressive specs aren’t good if the image and build quality can’t match. So how does the Samsung Odyssey G9 measure up?
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Samsung Odyssey G9 review: is it too big?
The first thing to adjust is the size of the monitor. At 49 inches on the diagonal, of course, it’s huge, but its 32: 9 aspect ratio means it’s even wider than you might think. In fact, it measures a whopping 1.15m from left edge to right edge and the deep 1000R curve means the monitor measures 235mm front to back in the center and around 416mm to the sides. Basically, be sure to measure your desk before investing or you could end up spending even more money.
At this type of size some kind of curve is essential with super wide screens that are flat, you feel like the edge of the screen almost disappears from you when you let your eyes wander. So while the G9’s 1000R curvature looks on top of it, it’s actually perfect for the screen size.
While working, objects positioned at the left and right ends feel tilted towards your eyes at just the right angle; and during the game there is a good feeling of immersion especially with driving games where you can look left and right to see cars passing you while getting a decent view through the windshield .
It should also be noted that this monitor is quite heavy. The display alone without the stand weighs 14.1kg and with the stand, 16.7kg, so make sure you have a hand when lifting it off your desk.
Another downside of a monitor of this size is that inevitably the resolution has to be high to match it. In this case, it’s a whopping 5120 x 1440, which means you’re going to have to have a high-end graphics card to do it justice. If you want to get frame rates close to the monitor’s 240Hz maximum refresh rate at native resolution, you’ll probably need one of the latest Nvidia RTX 3000 series cards – if you can get one.
Samsung Odyssey G9 review: what connections does it have?
Surprisingly enough, given the girth of the thing, the Samsung Odyssey isn’t exactly overflowing with video inputs.
On the back you have two DisplayPort 1.4 inputs and one HDMI 2.0 input, accompanied by a 3.5mm headphone output (the monitor does not have built-in speakers) and a USB 3 hub with a USB-B upstream port and two USA-A downstream ports.
These USB-A ports are also located right next to the video inputs, which is a bit of a nuisance considering the size of this monitor.
A positive point here is that you can use the video inputs to display inputs from two separate sources side by side (frame by frame) or inset (frame in frame), or you can connect two outputs from the same graphics card. to get a multiple monitor configuration on one panel.
Samsung Odyssey G9 review: image quality
Overall, the image quality of the G9 is very impressive and whether you are gaming or creating it will do just fine. Unlike most HDR PC monitors we’ve tested, its 5120 x 1440 VA QLED panel is capable of reaching peak brightness levels of 1000 cd / m2, which is the HDR10 Premium standard for TVs and it more than matched that of the tests.
I measured it at 1112 cd / m2 with HDR enabled, which it is able to achieve thanks to local dimming, although it is quite coarse with only ten areas spread across the screen.
Enabling HDR, as it always seems to be with Windows 10, is a bit of a lottery. But, when it does work, it’s gorgeous, with jaw-dropping specular highlights and luscious, vibrant colors coming out of the screen surface like neon signs on a dark, rainy night.
One thing to note, however, before moving on. You won’t be able to run Netflix in HDR on this thing; it’s not Samsung’s fault, but Netflix’s insistence on requiring 4K to work in HDR. Also note that while some customers have reported flickering when activating Windows HDR and G-Sync together, this is not something I witnessed in testing.
The responsiveness of the panel is very impressive, and with a nominal GTG of 1ms (gray to gray) and a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz, there’s not much to complain about here. I barely noticed any blur or drag when I ran the UFO frame rate test and it was the same when playing games. While I had to lower the detail levels and sometimes the resolution down to 3840 x 1080 to get higher frame rates from my bad graphics card, the monitor felt super-smooth throughout.
Finally, if you are serious about working on it that is also a possibility, but be aware that you will not get professional levels of color accuracy here.
Its wide-gamut panel provides measured coverage of 95.6% of the DCI-P3 color gamut (at 106.1% volume) in most modes and 99.6% (at 122 volume, 5%) of the sRGB color space in sRGB mode.
In sRGB mode, I measured maximum brightness at 460 cd / m2 and a contrast ratio of 2285: 1, while color accuracy was decent, but not spectacular with an average Delta E hitting 2.26. The brightness uniformity is impressive for such a large monitor, however, with an average luminance deviating by no more than 6.15% from center.
Since this is a VA panel, its limited viewing angles mean you see a slight brightening towards the far left and right edges when viewed from a normal sitting position, but this is only really noticeable when you have a completely black screen and the lights are on.
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Samsung Odyssey G9 review: Verdict
All in all, the Samsung Odyssey G9 is a spectacular monitor in every way. Its size, image quality, and performance are very impressive, the spectacular 1000R curve puts you right in the middle of the action, and a decent mid-way sRGB mode means it’s not a drawback for the either. photo or video montage.
And while £ 1279 sounds like a lot of money, it’s not that bad for a monitor with this level of specs, especially with the 240Hz refresh rate and the 1000R curve, which is a unique combination in the market. monitors. If you have the money and office space for it, this is highly recommended.
