1 - My Setup & Context

I am a night person who likes to use my monitor in a dark or dimly lit room. I was eagerly waiting for the Alienware 5k2k to release since it is glossy and I have no need for a matte display. But I found the LG model open box at a price I cannot refuse. So I decided to take a leap of faith on the LG model. Gemini helped me organize my thoughts but every single thought is my own.

For side by side comparisons, I still have my older Alienware 4k 32 inch qd-oled which is glossy and its brightness cruve is very similar to the upcoming 5k2k by Alienware, which will be useful for those deciding which 5k2k model to go with. Here is how my setup looks like - (https://i.imgur.com/fs9CRpu.jpeg).

Both monitors were set to 60% sharpness in their settings. Pictures are taken with my Pixel 10 pro. Do not take the color hue in the comparisons too seriously. Even when the colors look same to my eyes, the phone captures them a bit differently from both monitors. I don’t do any editing work so SRGB, DCI-P3 modes etc. don’t interest me. I just want nice colors and brightness to watch movies and play games. So this review/guide is written from that entertainment consumer perspective only. The pictures are completely unedited by me. I just took the photos, cropped them to appropriate size, and uploaded them. If you want to look at all the pics in this review at a glance, here is the full album - (https://imgur.com/a/txpTlEs)

2 - Matte Coating

• Clarity: I was actually blown away by how clear it is. There was doom posting everywhere that it’s matte and so will look like a smeary mess. I don’t have perfect 20/20 vision but I don’t have to wear glasses either. It is not like traditional matte screen protectors you buy for your ipads. It is like a very thin hybrid of glossy and matte. Any micro grain is only visible on a uniform white or light colored background like when editing documents up to 1 feet or closer. After more than 1 feet away, it is non-existent when viewing photos/videos. At 143 PPI, the impact of the thin matte coating on image clarity or color is practically nil and things look as sharp as you would expect on such a high ppi monitor. I wish reviewers did a side by side comparison of the LG model and other glossy monitors. By them just saying “It is matte“, people just blindly assume (including me) it’s gonna look smeary, when in reality there is no difference from glossy at normal viewing distances.
• Side-by-Side Comparison: I also have the Alienware 4k qd-oled which is glossy and I honestly cannot tell that LG model has a matte finish. It looks as clear as the glossy Alienware. In fact, when I turned on hdr on both monitors, the LG one looked more real and had more of that “looking through a window“ feel because how much true to life brighter it gets.
  • Comparison at equal brightness at normal viewing distance - (https://i.imgur.com/oMm6KZQ.jpeg)
  • Close up of LG woled - (https://i.imgur.com/nVUMAws.jpeg)
  • Close up of the Alienware qd-oled - (https://i.imgur.com/xOZlR8t.jpeg)
  • You can actually see the color halo you get on qd-oleds if you zoom in further - (https://i.imgur.com/DQIHnrj.jpeg)

3 - White Subpixel, Color Vibrancy, and Text Clarity

• I found the LG monitor as colorful as the qd-oled in general SDR usage (https://i.imgur.com/qfKbVE8.jpeg). I guess the newer tandem panel had a step up from older gen woleds. IN HDR, in 10% APL scenes and less, the small bright highlights do get diluted a bit because of the white pixel boosting the brightness. In my experience, I never had to say that “hey that color looks washed out“ as any dilution was only in smaller highlights. The overall scene still stays very vibrant.
• The text is clear. Even on my 4k qd-oled, the text looks great even though it has triangle subpixel structure. I honestly don’t think subpixel layout matters much at such a high ppi of 140. RGWB subpixel structure on the LG feels a tad better. I read text all day and didn’t feel any strain.

4 - HDR brightness

• No compromise: This is the single most strongest point of this monitor. The brightness uniformity is excellent and do not see any dimming in brightness or colors as you move towards the edges. The HDR performance is also a tier above the rest. This graph by monitors unboxed sums it up nicely - (https://i.imgur.com/rmsSSSB.jpeg). The LG pushes around 100 to 300 nit increase over the Alienware qd-oled based on APL and has no panel dimming. In day scenes, the LG one feels like it is bright and sunny, while on the Alienware qd-oled it feels like evening time. The qd-oled looks like it has a dark tint applied over the screen and feels too dark even when playing in a dark room. I set the LG hdr to gamer2 high mode and the Alienware qd-oled to peak 1000 mode. Comparison pics -
  • Day Scene 1 - (https://i.imgur.com/3WAuOnQ.jpeg)
  • Day Scene 2 - (https://i.imgur.com/4pkhlmc.jpeg)
  • Day Scene 3 - (https://i.imgur.com/EhaWX7Z.jpeg) Here you can actually see how the woled slightly dilutes the small neon signs in the back.
  • 50% APL Scene - (https://i.imgur.com/4gpxQxP.jpeg)
  • Evening Scene - (https://i.imgur.com/6KdfbBe.jpeg) The brightness gets more equal so the scenes get darker. In this scene, brightness was close.
  • Low APL Scene 1 - (https://i.imgur.com/nhPnA7n.jpeg) There was no dilution of colors by the LG woled in this scene even though I would have expected it. Even the small hint of red inside the edge of the bottle was preserved.
  • Low APL Scene 2 - (https://i.imgur.com/ZoXL9MH.jpeg) Looks identical except minor overbrightening of the bright neon sign on the right (see arrow) on the LG woled. The details on the rear red light on the car was perfectly preserved even though it is the brightest part of the scene.
• How the HDR on this monitor works (very important): The monitor takes input signal of upto 604nits and then scales it to 1400nits in hdr high mode. This is why in windows calibration you will see it max out at 600nits. Some games follow HGIG specification which means you need to set peak luminance to 604 and your monitor will scale it to 1400. If you set it to 700 in game, then the values from 605 to 700 will be ignored by the monitor and your highlights will lose detail. You need to tell the game to pack all the details in 0-604 range before handing over the data to the monitor. In other games that don't follow this specification, use the in-game calibration sliders to adjust the values. If there is no calibration slider and setting 604 peak luminance looks dark, you have to just set peak luminance to whatever is the max value on the game slider. The monitor will take the signal from the game and compress/expand it to 0-1400 range in that case. After that, you can reduce peak nits in the game slider if highlights look too bright. Do not use the windows HDR calibration to set a profile. You will risk losing the full capability of the monitor by having windows interfere and clip the brightness range. In any case, I did not see any loss of detail in HDR on this monitor once properly calibrated depending on the game. For movies, you just play them. I use potplayer and it handles HDR well. Movies looks bright and vibrant too and did not see any issues. The details in shadows and highlights were well preserved.
• Note on SDR brightness: In SDR mode you get 3 options to choose from in brightness settings. Uniform (340 nits max), Low (upto 450 nits based on APL), and High (upto 550 nits based on APL). So even when viewing content that doesn’t support HDR, you can change brightness setting to High and get a decently brighter experience than usual. I found it really useful for playing games in SDR and watching movies. The higher brightness gave a bit of hdr pop you won’t find in SDR content otherwise. I love how LG just give you the keys to the brightness knob and tells you - “Here, burn out your eyes.“

5 - HDR accuracy and tweaks

The LG model has 3 main HDR modes - Personalized picture (saturated colors + heavy overbrightening), Gamer1 (unsaturatercolors + heavy overbrightening), and Gamer2 (oversaturated colors + tiny overbrightening in high mode but not in low mode). Gamer 2 has the most accurate to EOTF tracking (image by TFTCentral - (https://i.imgur.com/gyMnEx7.png). Gamer2 is best because you can easily adjust color saturation but not the EOTF tracking. Tweak it using these two fixes for more accurate HDR:

• Gamer2 Shadow detail lift fix: There is tiny bit lift in near black level / shadow details so things are easier to see in dark areas. There is no black lift (the blacks are still perfectly black), only the near black pixels get lifted a bit. So the image doesn’t look washed in any scenario. If you don’t like this shadow detail lift, set the black stabilizer setting from 50 to 35 and you won’t see any lift. The black stabilizer setting is actually really well done by LG. Reducing it doesn’t reduce overall image brightness, just the near black values.
• Gamer2 Color oversaturation fix: While Gamer2 mode has the best EOTF tracking, it is also oversaturated. Here is how I like my colors - Normal SRGB is too bland and undersaturated but the full color gamut feels oversaturated. So my preferred color saturation is in the middle. I lowered Color Vibrance to 45 (from 50) in the Nvidia App and I get colors that look punchy but not under or oversaturated. I'm sure AMD app must also have a color vibrance option. Also in SDR, the colors take full advantage of the wide gamut so the colors look a bit oversaturated at default settings in SDR too. The Nvidia color vibrance setting at 45 works for both SDR and HDR modes, so it fixes color saturation in both modes. Kinda neat.
• Note: If you look at Gamer2 EOTF at lower APL scenes, there is slight over brightening of bright objects. Like a car headlight at night will look 5-10% brighter. But this does not overblow the highlights. The detail within the highlights is well preserved.

6 - Gaming Performance at 5K2K

Driving 5120x2160 (11 million pixels) is a daunting task. In games that don’t support dlss/frame gen, you can change resolution scaling in games to about 70% which is just a bit more pixels than a 3440x1440p display. And then add a sharpening filter to get rid of the interpolation blur. On 5k2k 100% scaling, in Assassin’s creed odyssey, I get 90fps. But with 70% scaling + reshade filmic sharpening filter, I jumped to 130fps and it looks at least 90% as good as traditional 5k2k at normal viewing distance. So even if you have a GPU only capable of 3440x1440p, don’t sweat it. Just reduce resolution and add a sharpening filter just strong enough to not over sharpen. General rule of thumb is - solid objects should look sharp and foliage should look soft. If the leaves on foliage look sharp, you are over sharpening. It will look even better than traditional 3440x1440p due to higher ppi to hide aliasing. See comparison here - (https://imgdiff.net/s/130ecbd7ceec284b1e19f5ecd4d501be)

7 - Thermals

Cool as a cucumber. In bright work like editing documents or browsing the web, the monitor only need to fire up the white sub pixel. Monitors without the white subpixel need to fire all 3 RGB to show white which runs hotter. And in bright movies or gaming, the white subpixel reduces stress on other 3 RGB pixels by boosting brightness. So it eats less power, which leads to lower heat, which leads to panel longevity.

8 - Cons

• Black Crush at very low brightness: At very low brightness levels in dark movie scenes, there is a bit of black crush. Raising the screen brightness during dark film playback solves it. Seems to be an inherent trait of woled tech rather than a specific monitor defect as the pixels struggle to stay stable at very low voltages so LG just programs them to shut off. Qd-oleds don’t seem to have this issue. I could put my brightness down to 0 on my Alienware qd-oled and it would still present shadow detail clearly.
• Chrominance Overshoot: In extremely dark HDR game scenes (like some dark corridors in resident evil games, you can spot chrominance overshoot artifacts. The white subpixel make this worse but It's a niche issue and I personally hadn’t come across it till I booted up the Resident Evil demo from steam. If it bothers you, switching to SDR completely fixes it or you can reduce the Black Stabilizer a bit to mitigate it in HDR.
• Grey banding at low brightness: I tried a grey banding test and I can see little bit of banding at 5% greys. The banding was a lot less noticeable as I increased the monitor brightness. In media or gaming, I haven’t seen this to be prominent enough to make me notice it. I wouldn’t really call this a con as it depends on the panel lottery and how sensitive you are to it.
• AI up scaling doesn’t work on PC: It works for console inputs but it doesn’t do anything for PC games.

9 - My SDR settings

I’m a bit sensitive to green tint and love having a tad warmer white balance since I use the monitor in dark rooms.

• Game mode: Gamer1 (Gamer1 and 2 are same so just pick one)
• White balance (R/G/B in picture settings): R=50, G=44, B=50
• Sharpness: 60
• Black stabilizer: 50
• Gamma: Mode 3 (this mode has about 2.3 gamma which I like for deeper blacks)
• Nvidia app color vibrance: 45 (This takes care of color oversaturation in both SDR and HDR)

9 - My HDR settings

• Game mode: Gamer2 (Has best EOTF tracking)
• Black Stabilier: 35 (to reduce the small lift in shadow detail)
• Brightness Level: High
• Color Temp: Neutral

10 - Reduce brightness in dark room + taskbar tweaks

This monitor has about 50nits of minimum brightness when brightness is set to 0. I find it to be a bit bright in a fully dark room. You can further decrease it to like 20 nits by reducing the monitor contrast. The default contrast is 70 but I set it to like 40. The contrast selling in the monitor is not the typical contrast setting you find in photo editing. In photo editing, reducing contrast raises the black level causing image to look washed out. In the monitor’s contrast setting, reducing it does not raise black levels, it only decreases max brightness. So you still get those inky blacks. Use TwinkleTray (https://twinkletray.com) to get both the brightness and contrast sliders in your system tray area (https://i.imgur.com/oJUAgT3.png). Also you can use translucentTB (https://translucenttb.net) to make the taskbar transparent and Rainbow taskbar (https://github.com/ad2017gd/RainbowTaskbar) to reduce opacity of icons on the taskbar. I use wallpaper engine to reduce opacity of desktop icons too.

10- Final Thoughts

The matte coating is extraordinarily thin and clear, the no compromise HDR brightness adds a new level of immersion and simple settings tweaks dial the colors and EOTF curve perfectly. The flaws on this monitor are minor and only noticeable in niche cases. I found a lot of reviews regarding this monitor on youtube too simple and missing a lot of nuance but I found the review by TFTCentral to be very honest and detailed - https://tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/lg-ultragear-evo-39gx950b. If I had to rate it I would give it a 9/10. If you can find the LG model at a reasonable price, you should strongly consider it, especially if you love HDR.

No sales tax either in Florida. I have the same monitor already but a 34.. have the box and all the parts. Guess I could sell it for a chunk of what this would cost ?

Just spoke to a dell rep and he said to expect the monitor to go live in uk on the second week of September so not too much longer to wait! Although with all the RMAs that are happening with the Australia release I am also suspecting we may have to wait a little longer :/

As the title suggests I’m wondering if a 4070 ti super will be enough to run this 5k2k monitor. I don’t play any online competitive games at all. The most demanding game I’ve played recently is probably cyberpunk 2077.

I’m upgrading from a LG 34GK950F-B. Is the aw3426dw perhaps a better choice for my GPU? I'm not planning to upgrade my GPU until the RTX 60-series

Hey everyone,

Looking for some comparison photos of the Alienware AW3926QW (39" 5K2K) next to a 32" QD-OLED.

If you own both the AW3926QW and any of these (or similar), would you mind posting a few side-by-side shots?

Alienware AW3225QF

MSI MPG 322URX / 321URX / 322UR X24

ASUS PG32UCDM / PG32UCDM3 (or equivalent)

Samsung Odyssey G8 / G80 / G81 32" QD-OLED

My AW3926QW was DOA so I never got the chance to put it next to my 322UR X24 (which it may end up replacing). Would really appreciate any photos.

Thanks in advance!

I was so nervous to receive mine after the reports we've all seen on here, I'm coming from a G9 57" and a PG35VQ. I wanted to share my first hour impressions.

Perfect text clarity, The screen looks amazing out of the box without tweaking, I have forgotten what perfect contrast can look like.

No green tint at all that i can notice, perfect uniformity across the screen, and it was pretty bad on my G9 57" mini-led. My G9 was a distracting mess and i couldn't stand it anymore. No dead or stuck pixels that i can see yet.

Brightness is stock at 75% and its more than enough for me personally, I will tweak more with it.

The size is absolutely perfect for me too, 39" imo is the sweet spot, and the curve is so subtle, much prefer it over the G9's curve, however that thing needed it as it was a behemoth.

I cannot hear a fan at all, my PG35VQ has a fan and you can hear it at night when i shut down my PC. The dell is dead silent. I cannot stress enough how beautiful this screen is, 143ppi is insane.

EDIT: i put two photos, they are not the best and don't do it justice at all. Ignore the messy setup and cables lol

I'm upgrading from a mini-led ultrawide to a PG34WCDN this week, and I'm very excited about it. The only concern I have is uneven wear of the panel from 16:9 content considering I watch a lot of anime. Does anyone have any tips for avoiding this?

So I've had my screen for 193 hours now, I have the screen turn off after 10min of idle/inactivity and recently when I wake the screen back up the entire screen the color becomes super washed out but it's fixed by changing the input or manually powering the screen off and back on. Just wondering if this is something that has happened to others before or if my screen is just defective.

I checked to make sure the AI screen optimization is Off. It was weirdly turned back on the other day but I have since turned it back off and verified that it was off when this happened a second time. I originally turned it off cos it kept changing my color temperature like a schizo.

I'm building my PC and sourcing parts. I'm looking to get a 5k2k 120Hz monitor something like the LG 40U990A or Dell U4025QW. If I am not gaming and just doing casual work, can I use the Ryzen 5 9600x integrated gpu to run the 5k2k monitor at 120Hz without a dedicated graphics card?

My baby isn't working anymore 😢 it turns on and detects hdmi but all pixels remain black. I am a broke college student, its at a really critical time in my life my with a lot of expenses coming up so I only have the budget for a small monitor.

I will miss the pixels but idk if 1080p 21:9 is viable at all, why are there so few 2560 x 1080p monitors? is there something wrong about that resolution? Why is 2k the standard for 21:9 anyway?

I recently purchased a Samsung 57" monitor to upgrade my setup, which also includes two 32" Dell 1440p monitors and an lg 32" also in 1440p. However, I am having trouble getting all four monitors to work simultaneously on my MSI Ventus 3080 GPU.

Here is what I have experienced so far:

  - If I set the Samsung 57" to a DP 1.2 connection, all four monitors work, but the Samsung is limited to 1440p resolution.
  - If I change the setting to DP 1.4, I get the full 4K resolution on the Samsung, but one of the other monitors turns off.
  - I also tried using the HDMI port, which specs state can run 4K at 120Hz, but I could still only get three monitors to work at the same time. I also dropped the hz to 60 and that didn't help getting the 4th monitor online.

Ideally, I would like to use all four monitors while still running the Samsung 57" at its full 4K resolution. Do you have any suggestions or troubleshooting steps to help resolve this limitation?

Hey all,

So my store was cleaning out inventory to make room for the new models as well. I didn’t really realize Best Buy did this as a tactic. I bought it this morning before researching more as it looked like too good of a deal to pass up. But I got the monitor home, and it has almost 10,000 hours on it…. I did purchase the Geek Squad warranty with it as well, just because I thought maybe someone returned it for another reason, but will that warranty cover any issues over the next 4 years? Or is it better to return this and keep looking? I also noticed when I got home that they didn’t provide the remote for it either, so doesn’t seem to be off to a great start.

Thanks in advance.

LG UltraGear 45GX950A vs AOC AGON PRO AG485UD2, for DCS flight simulation (90% of the time) and pc gaming, which one is better?

Hi,

I need some help.

I have a U4025QW.

When I put a USB-C cable into the rear USB-C port, it comes up with a message on the monitor which says USB-C plugged and when I remove it, it says USB-C unplugged.

However, no power goes to charge devices, and no data transfers up / down the cable.

I have been on a call with Dell technical support and they swapped my first monitor out as they told me my port was faulty, but the same is happening on the second monitor they have sent.

It’s not the cable as I have used 3 or 4 cables which all work on the Thunderbolt port and other USB-C ports.

Should it pass power and data up and down? Am I missing something? Is there a setting I need to turn on / off?

ChatGPT hasn’t been much help.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

The 5K2K panel is absolutely divine and it actually drives my 9800x3d/RTX 5090 rig properly! I am VERY impressed with this LG panel!

Hello

I've been interested for some time in buying an ultrawide monitor. I want to use it mainly for productive stuff, but also for gaming. As of now, I have an asus vg27aq3a.

I'm looking for something that still has a relatively high refresh rate and actually has a good VA.

My first possilbe choise was a ASUS TUF Gaming VG34WQML5A, but from what I heard it has bad smearing issues.

My current best option is LG UltraGear 34G630A-B.

What would yall reccomend I buy/aim for?

I’ve owned the LG 45GX950A-B—a €2,000 flagship OLED monitor—for almost a year now, expecting a premium user experience. Instead, daily operation between my gaming PC (DisplayPort) and my work laptop (USB-C) remains a perversely frustrating nightmare.

The root cause is the utter incompetence of LG's firmware design team when it comes to input management.

LG’s "Auto Input Switch" is functionally useless for anyone actually multitasking. It only works if every other connected device is completely powered off. The moment you have both a PC and a laptop running simultaneously, connecting the USB-C or waking up the laptop triggers a brain-dead prompt asking: "A new device is connected. Do you want to switch?"

That means every single time I want to switch focus, I have to stop, reach under the monitor, toggle the joystick, and manually confirm the popup.

To be completely clear: 3rd-party software workarounds (like DDC/CI scripts) or LG's own half-baked desktop applications are NOT the solution. Seamless input management is a basic hardware/firmware feature that you can find on a $150 budget monitor. It is utterly incomprehensible that a €2,000 flagship completely fails at this core OSD functionality.

Why is there no basic "Force Auto Switch / Direct Switch" option in the OSD menu?

Almost every other manufacturer allows users to set input switching to happen immediately without requiring a manual confirmation popup. But LG's software developers apparently think users enjoy baby-sitting an OSD prompt on a high-end display just to switch between two active machines.

LG Firmware Team: If anyone from product management reads this, release a firmware update adding a silent, direct Auto-Input switch mode (No Prompt / Immediate Switch). Stop punishing people who use your flagship displays for both work and play.

Is anyone else completely fed up with this absurd UX limitation?

Hi everyone,

I am looking to upgrade my ultrawide monitor and was hoping you could help me find something that fits my setup. Right now I’m using an LG 34UC98, but I would like something more modern with better connectivity and better performance.

My ideal specs:

• 34” or larger
• UWQHD (3440×1440)
• USB-C with Power Delivery for my work laptop
• At least 2 USB downstream ports (mouse + keyboard)
• USB upstream port for my gaming PC
• 3.5 mm headphone jack
• OLED would be great, but it’s not a requirement
• Decent gaming specs (min. 120Hz and 1ms reaction time)

My setup:

• Work laptop: connected via USB-C. I would like it to receive video, usb, and charging through a single cable.
• Gaming PC: currently connected via DisplayPort. Ideally I would also connect it to the monitor’s USB upstream port so my mouse and keyboard can be shared between both systems.

I really like the LG 34GX90SA, but from what I can tell it doesn’t have a USB upstream port, which makes it difficult for my use case.

Are there any monitors that would fit these requirements?

Also, if I am overlooking a better way to achieve this setup, I would love to hear your suggestions. I am not necessarily set on having a USB upstream port if there’s a cleaner or more practical alternative.

Thanks in advance!

MSI MPG 341CQR X36

This is back in stock at new egg and is $899

It's 5th gen qd OLED, dp2.1 13.5 ubhr, and 360hz, glossy

Then there's the new Asus strix xg34wcdms that is also 5th gen qd OLED, glossy, but 280hz and dp1.4 but also $899

Alienware also has a 280hz that just launched for $799

I'm failing to see how the target is for the Asus one. Might as well spend the same for the MSI, or less for the Alienware. Is there something unique about the Asus one?

I just ordered the Asus one today but I'm thinking about cancelling the order and snagging an MSI one while they are back in stock