welcome back to monitor unbox today we're finally checking out the Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 the g95 SC model to be specific after months and months of waiting for this product to ship a quick backstory to this one I purchased an OLED G9 back in November of 2023 after Samsung never responded to my emails inquiring about this product I would have ordered it earlier except Samsung wouldn't even ship this big boy to my address until they updated their delivery system in November and even then it took several months due to high demand and low stock anyway it's here now and ready for a full review the OLED G9 is a wider version of Samsung's popular OLED G8 that debuted early last year it features a 49 in 5120 x1440 resolution panel the equivalent of two 27in 2560x1440 monitors stitched together into a big super ultra wide with a 32 by9 aspect ratio the panel uses second generation QD technology the same we saw in asus's similar PG 49 wcd last year with the refresh rate that tops out at 240 HZ it supports adaptive sync technology it has rated 0.03 millisecond response times and display HDR true black 400 certification while the official MSRP for this product is $1800 us it has regularly been seen for around $1,300 for several months now falling in price along with many other olded gaming monitors towards the back end of 2023 a competitive price for sure compared to other displays like this though still a high-end product for those after a flagship gaming monitor as regular viewers of monitors unboxed may know I am a fan of ultrawide gaming I typically use a 21 by9 aspect ratio display as my daily gaming monitor these 49in displays are especially wide the OLED G9 is 1.2 M wide so you'll need a decent sized desk to accommodate it but it's not overly tall relative to most other monitors we're looking at 40 cm of additional width versus traditional 21 by9 Ultra wides so it feels more immersive to use while gaming and offers more screen real estate for side by-side productivity applications the downside being that while game support is pretty good these days for Ultra wides 32 by9 is less supportive than 21 by9 and 16x9 so you may run into titles that don't support this type of format without mods or hacks but the newer the game you're playing the less likely this will be an issue in my experience it is a curved monitor though the curve is standard and not too aggressive at 1800r I think this gives it a nice balance between bringing the edges in a bit for immersive gaming while not distorting the image too much for desktop app usage a flat panel of this width I don't think would be very good The Wider the screen the more justifiable the curve is especially at normal desk viewing distances the design is very similar to the olded G8 but with a few small tweaks that improve the package the outer surfaces are still silver plastic or metal with a thin build that looks great in my opinion the stand has been widened a bit especially at the base to keep it stable with such a large panel but the amount of desk width necessary to house the stand is surprisingly small I also appreciate the Bas is flat so you can put things on top of it if you want to on the rear you'll find an RGB LED ring around the connection between the stand and monitor which is bright and looks good it's one of the lighting Integrations that doesn't feel like a simple marketing check mark the stand also only supports height and tilt with no swivel adjustment though Vasa mounting is supported I would have appreciated shed slightly more height in the stand but that's probably challenging with the display of this size one of the good improvements to the G9 versus the G8 is the move back to standard display connectors the G8 for some reason used both mini display port and micro HDMI the G9 though has a full-sized display port 1.4 connector and a full-sized HDMI 2.1 connector along with a micro HDMI port and three USBC ports none of which can be used for display connectivity they are simply a USBC Hub with no power delivery capabilities or KVM switch the drawback is that while the connectors are now a proper size they've been inset into the monitor in a way that's a lot less accessible as for Port capabilities the HDMI 2.1 ports are 40 GBS per second so they are compatible with the full bandwidth of the PS5 however regardless of whether you use DP 1.4 or HDMI 2.1 DSC is required for either input to reach 240 HZ at the maximum 5120 by 1440 resolution like the OLED G8 the G9 continues to use Samsung's Smart TV OSD which can be controlled either through a directional toggle on the display or the included remote this means the OLED G9 is Internet connected and can run various apps like Netflix YouTube and Disney plus and supports other features enabled by the Chip's processing capabilities this is unusual to see as the primary use case for a display like this is gaming especially PC gaming where the input device itself like a PC or game console can run these sorts of apps perfectly fine and often with faster easier input access than the included remote however the benefit to having app support is that in some circumstances you'll get better feature support for HDR and other formats through the built-in app compared to the desktop PC app there are other benefits to a more advanced OSD such as a more extensive range of settings with fewer restrictions firmer updates over the Internet Bluetooth functionality and it's relatively smooth to use certainly the level of software features is far ahead of its competitors and if you specifically wanted things like say native app support unfortunately there's no Dolby Vision support the major downside to this OSD is that while it is somewhat smooth it's difficult to navigate and there's a lot of useless garbage clogging up the interface getting to important display settings for calibration or adjusting the image takes a lot of button presses even using the quick shortcut that opens the bottom setting bar when you turn on the display for the first time it doesn't automatically show you the content from the primary input instead defaulting to the app page and it's not immediately obvious how you get for example to your PC's desktop instead it's nice to have all this Advanced functionality and app support but the interface could do with a complete redesign to make the focus the most commonly used monitor functions Samsung second generation of QD OED panels do provide some improvements to the issues we highlighted in our initial QD OLED monitor reviews chiefly around the subpixel structure while this QD OED panel still uses a triangle RGB layout the sizing of the sub pixels has been adjusted which slightly improves text Clarity relative to first gen Q OLED there is still some pink green fringing at the top and bottom of text but it's not quite as noticeable as with first gen panels enough to say it's been improved without being fully fixed with those first gen panels I was one of the reviewers that found the text fringing issue more noticeable and more annoying with desktop app usage there were certainly others that didn't think it was a big deal at all with the second gen QD all Le design I think it edges closer into the acceptable range it's still not as good as a similar pixel density LCD that uses an RGB stripe sub pixel layout but typically it's reasonable enough for occasional desktop app usage and continues to be a non-issue for Content consumption like gaming on top of this I believe the text Clarity of second gen QD OED is much better than similar wed panels so of the two main OLED Technologies I would choose QD OED for anything text Heavy unfortunately though the screen composition layer structure and coding has only received minor improvements relative to first gen QD OED this second gen panel is still glossy and still has issues reflecting ambient light when light sources are in front of the display the reflection handling itself is reasonable so you won't always notice those horrible mirror-like Reflections in bright usage environments but the layer structure to this panel still reflects far too much ambient light if your environment isn't well optimized this ambient light reflection makes the panel appear gray even when attempting to display pure black which reduces the quality of the the deep rich blacks that OLED is known for now the second gen design does reflect a bit less ambient light relative to first gen QD OLED T Central has a great article that goes through and benchmarks this but the Improvement is not enough to be considered a fix I don't think it's even close in my opinion so the same thoughts I have in regards to screen composition and coding appli to the OLED G9 as previous QD oleds in a standard indoor viewing environment with artificial light or plenty of sunlight C OLED isn't ideal due to its issues with reflecting ambient light and raising blacks this ambient reflectivity is exacerbated when there's more light in front of the panel but isn't as problematic when lighting is only behind the display and it's a non-issue in dimly lit or dark rooms in contrast glossy lgw allad panels typically appear blacker when faced with a bright usage environment as its panel structure rejects more ambient light it's really hard to say whether this will be an issue for you as it can be a case-by casee basis personally I do find it annoying and one of the larger issues with qdl panels but if you primarily game at night it's not anywhere near as much of a concern at the very least it's something to be aware of what's also important to be aware of is that oleds generally aren't great monitors for desktop usage productivity apps or web browsing because they are susceptible to permanent burin anything with static content like toolbars or icons on screen for a long period of time like you get with most desktop applications is at risk of burning in conversely Dynamic content like gaming or watching videos is at practically no risk of burning so don't worry about this if you're primarily using an OLED for gaming even the occasional bit of desktop app usage is fine it's more 8 hours a day of productivity work that may lead to Burnin as for Burnin warranty unfortunately Samsung do not provide specific Burnin coverage as part of their warranty listed on their website some cded models in the past like the Alienware aw 3423 DW have featured burning warranties but Samsung are not offering that with the olded G9 which is the same policy as with the olded G8 this further hurts desktop usability as you don't get any paace of mind that burning will be covered if it does occur in terms of response time performance it's no surprise to see this QED panel offering Lightning Fast speeds similar to other qds we've tested at its maximum 240 HZ refresh rate we're seeing a 0.3 millisecond average response which is extremely fast and that leads to very clear motion for this sort of refresh rate with no noticeable inverse ghosting the Samsung model is on par with the other variants for Speed and far superior to any LCD at the same refresh rate it exceeds Alternatives like the Asus PG 49 wcd due to having a higher 240 HZ refresh rate versus 144 HZ a noticeable increase for gaming when you have the performance to drive games at that frame rate the best part of how old Leeds function is that performance is basically identical at all refresh rates this means whether we're testing at 240 120 or 60 HZ we're still seeing about a 0.3 millisecond response time average LCDs typically get slower as the refresh rate decreases but that isn't the case here so the the OLED G9 offers a single overdrive mode experience without any overdrive settings of course as they aren't required for an OLED there is effectively no difference in response time performance between this QD OLED and other OLED monitors the only difference for motion Clarity at the maximum refresh rate is the max refresh itself as the OLED G9 has a high 240 HZ refresh rate you can ensure when buying this display that its motion Clarity is excellent where the big difference lies is between OLED and LCD The Odyssey is much faster than the fastest l L CDs I've tested which is a big win for OLED and it only gets better when looking at average performance while LCDs do get a bit slower at lower refresh rates oleds don't so the gap between OLED and LCD grows it's also good to confirm excellent cumulative deviation results though no different from most other oleds as expected this really is the same technology that delivers the same response time performance as other QD OED Ultra wides the OLED G9 technically supports black frame insertion although the feature is it's so convoluted to access that it's basically pointless and unusable it only works with 60 HZ 4K inputs which completely rules out any sensible PC connections and doesn't even look that great when set up to use strobing so I just forget about it input lag is good reporting in with a 1.1 millisecond processing delay in both the HDR and SDR modes at the maximum refresh rate this is a little higher than some other qdo gaming monitors but not enough to have any significant impact on gaming with a high 240 HZ refresh rate and Lightning Fast Response times this is a low input latency monitor that feels very responsive to use power consumption is on the high side when displaying a full white image as you might expect from a display this large however I was surprised to see the screen consume an additional 30 WS relative to the pg 49 wcd which uses the same display technology just at a 144 HZ refresh rate without Smart TV functionality it ends up using 44% more power than the OLED G8 with a screen that has a 52% higher area so scaling seems in line with Samsung's other model which also was on the higher end of power consumption among 34in Ultra wides the old Leed G9 as expected for a c OLED is a wide gamut display with 99% dcp3 coverage we're also seeing 98.5% coverage of adobe RGB so working either of those color spaces is going to be good this leaves us with 84% coverage of Rec 2020 which is one of the strongest showings from Modern displays although no different to other ql leads as the panel technology is fundamentally the same while the G9 has a High color gamut it has terrible Factory calibration almost entirely due to a single setting which is enabled by default called contrast enhancer this feature destroys gamma and washes out the image making it look awful when you first turn the display on I have no idea why Samsung thought it was a good idea to enable this by default but we get really high Delta ease as a result saturation and color Checker are also impacted by oversaturation as the wide gamut capabilities are left unclamped so standard SDR srgb content is expanded up to fill the wide gamut of this display compared to other gaming monitors you can see the damage that enabling terrible features by default has the olded G9 ends up as one of the worst monitors I've tested for default Factory performance in both grayscale and color Checker luckily the use of a smart TV processor has allowed for a wide variety of color controls including a fully unlocked srgb mode and a wealth of calibration options changing just two settings turning off contrast enhancer and setting the color space to Auto significantly improves color performance while not amazing and still falling short of what I'd describe as Factory calibrated this srgb mode of sorts does look and perform a lot better when comparing this configuration to its peers the olded G9 doesn't look as out of place it is still a mid to lower tier performer but it's far from worst of all time level so that's a good step in the right direction with further tweaking white balance adjustments and so on I was able to get the screen into a position where I would describe it as pretty well calibrated Delta e ITP averages were around 5.0 the CCT average is looking pretty good and overall color performance is decent this shows the strength of having fully unlocked color controls it really does allow users to improve color performance if they want to a full calibration through calman was able to somewhat improve performance from what I just showed I wasn't able to achieve outstanding results but they were good enough for regular usage it would have been nice to see these results from the factory maximum brightness in the SDI mode is typical of QD oleds topping out at just over 250 nits like Samsung's previous OLED the G9 does not require you to switch on a uniform brightness setting in the SDR mode it's automatically enabled so there is no automatic brightness limiter when viewing SDR content and so brightness will not change depending on the amount of white on screen minimum brightness is basically the same as the old Edge G8 at 65 nits which is on the high side for an olded most others can push well below 50 nits viewing angles are outstanding from Q olded panels so you won't have any issues with color shifting or tint when viewed from off angles the only concern here would be the curve reducing the visibility of the entire screen though 1800r is good for gaming at this sort of size and aspect ratio uniformity was great as well continuing a trend of these cded panels delivering a nice and consistent experience this Samsung monitor is a great HDR display this is due to OLED Technology's inherent Hardware qualities that had tailor made for displaying HDR content the key feature here is that each individual pixel is self lit meaning at a pixel level the display can turn on or off to accurately display everything from Dark Shadows to bright highlights when the display needs to show pure black it can fully switch off giving us the trademark Rich zero level blacks and Deep Shadows that OLED is known for this is in contrast to most HDR capable LCD panels which are not fully controllable at the pixel level LCDs require a backlight and for HDR displays that typically means the use of full array local dimming a technology that splits the backlight into zones whereas OLED can turn off each pixel individually LCDs with local diming can only turn off certain zones encompassing hundreds or even thousands of pixels this can still be effective for HDR content and look great but it has some fundamental flaws in difficult circumstances for example when showing a bright and dark element close together an OLED can control each pixel as needed with a clean accurate distinction between bright and dark LCDs with local dimming need to masterfully control the zones to achieve the necessary distinction between bright and dark and when the element is too small or not in the optimal position the bright element can spill into the dark are within the backlight Zone creating ugly blooming artifacts OLED therefore has the edge when it comes to displaying clean HDR content with minimal blooming or haloing in some scenes this will be the difference between raised blacks and deep blacks such as for Star fields and Christmas lights at other times OLED can have a brightness Advantage for small bright objects within a dark scene subtitles will look cleaner on an olded with reduced blooming and generally oleds produce richer Shadows thanks to its inherently higher contrast ratio aside from brightness and Shadow detail oleds also have other advantages for HDR as there are no backlight zones old leads are faster to transition between bright and dark with no visible Zone transitions old leads are much less likely to suffer from backlight flickering although light pwm Behavior especially when using a variable refresh rate is common and oleds like this do not increase input latency in its HDR mode as they don't need to run a backlight Zone algorithm unfortunately the olded G9 suffers from the same issue as the olded G8 when it comes to HDR compatibility across GPU brands on an Nvidia GPU the G9 is somewhat poorly calibrated for HDR to begin with but can be tweaked to deliver a 1,000 experience with good accuracy on an AMD GPU the G9 is much more accurate to begin within its HDR mode but no combination of settings will ever deliver a thousand its of peak brightness the most I achieved on an AMD GPU was around 450 nits this appears to be due to the OLED G9 using a different HDR pipeline depending on whether you have an AMD GPU hooked up or any other type of input AMD gpus use the display's freesync premium Pro pipeline which Samsung seems to have poorly implemented despite it being certified by AMD Nvidia gpus and other input sources use the regular HDR pipeline which has a large number of adjustable settings and the ability to hit a th000 in of brightness when testing on an Nvidia GPU using the best combination of HDR settings the accuracy on show was quite good decent eotf tracking good control in the lower brightness range which is used for shadow detail and decent saturation accuracy delivering a wide HDR color gamut this display also benefits from QD oled's much larger color volume compared to W OLED on an Nvidia GPU I'd have no issues recommending this display for HDR gaming on an AMD GPU it's much harder to recommend not because it's less accurate but because crucial high levels of brightness are not achievable it's not good enough that Samsung hasn't been able to fix this despite an entirely new product and multiple software updates for it and the G8 for that matter given I first brought this up in March last year monitors must perform the same all gpus and input devices not switch to some worse processing method for specific products If this means removing support for the freesync premium pro HDR pipeline so be it anyway we'll continue with the results as seen on Nvidia gpus fulls screen HDR brightness is the same as other ql leads topping out at 253 nits this is much lower than LCDs so brightness in high APL scenes is lower though typically HDR content doesn't use fullscreen white very often 10% brightness also identical to other QD oleds delivering around 450 nits this is an area Samsung need to improve with their OLED technology compared to W OLED and LCDs then for 2% brightness we see a th000 nit is achievable matching the best oleds and exceeding most LCDs which typically aren't willing to push this High to avoid dimming Zone artifacts for brightness vers window size we can see identical Behavior to other qdl monitors Asus recently released PG 34w CDM that uses a w old lead panel can get brighter but whether you get get an OLED G9 or the Asus PG 49 W CD makes a little difference as both deliver similar QD OED brightness for real world brightness in scene one the g95 SC is a little lack cluster as this is a higher APL scene which qds can struggle with however in scene 2 which is low APL the olded G9 flexes to show off its 1,000 nit capabilities and while gaming I also achieved around 1,000 Its Real World which is a good showing this isn't one of those displays that only has good HDR brightness in test patterns final section of this review is the new and revamped Hub Essentials checklist 2.0 which compared to previous checklists splits out the spec sheet and advertising section from the features checklist so first of all we'll provide a spec sheet based on our testing and compare that to what Samsung advertises to see whether they are doing a good job aside from the usual response time nonsense the old Ed G9 is well advertised though I do think the spec sheet saying Factory tuning yes is a bit misleading given what we saw earlier in the color performance section when looking at the feature support Matrix you'll see this is greatly expanded compared to the original Essentials checklist with a lot of Highly requested checkboxes such as DSC compatibility USBC support key OLED usability features like uniform brightness setting and more this is a much more comprehensive look at what makes a monitor good and how the particular product we've just been looking at Stacks up many key features are supported by the OLED G9 especially for contrast and Motion Performance there are a few borderline results such as input latency which is approximately 1 Mond and Rec 2020 color volume which fell just short of 80% it was also pleasing to see key inclusions such as graceful SDR HDR switching with no need to constantly change settings passive cooling a fully unlocked srgb mode and user upgradable firmware there also some key areas to improve though like the lack of burning warranty inability to access a thousand h of brightness on AMD gpus and poor Factory tuning we could have seen a lot more green ticks here with more attention to detail which would have widened the appeal of this monitor to buy after something very specific for their needs overall the Samsung Odyssey OLED g95 SC is an interesting relatively Niche high-end gaming monitor that I have mixed feelings about there's some genuinely great stuff here largely due to the use of a highquality qdl panel that brings all the usual benefits we've seen from this technology but there's also some frustrating aspects to how Samsung have configured this display and how it performs in some key areas the best aspect to the OLED G9 is its immersive ultrawide size and aspect ratio for gaming combined with its super fast response times and high 240 HZ refresh rate this panel is really well suited to highend gaming and has plenty of Headroom for years of GPU upgrades this alone makes it probably a stronger Choice than some of its competitors like the Asus PG 49 wcd which top out at just 144 HZ if you're going to spend over $1,000 us on a monitor you may as well get the one that goes all the way to 240 HZ this is true for people thinking of using it for both Competitive Gaming and single player gaming while 32 by9 isn't always the best for multiplayer titles as some don't support the format at all the motion Clarity and responsiveness here is right up there with the best monitors and for single player Gamers you get all the benefits of a true HDR panel with per pixel local dimming up to 1,000 of peig brightness deep blacks and the capabilities for decent HDR accuracy it can be a greatl looking monitor when set up properly what I'm less convinced about is using this panel for desktop productivity work as well as being super wide and immersive for gaming the resolution is equivalent to two 1440p monitors side by side and that is great for showing two desktop apps at the same time what's not as great is text Clarity which isn't quite as good as an LCD its risk of permanent burnning and crucially no Burnin warranty if Samsung wants to convince buyers that a super ultrawide QD OLED is the best choice for both gaming and productivity work and that these panels are the best choice for multi-a usage going forward they should have backed it with a bur in warranty to to give buyers peace of mind that they can use it however they like without risk of damaging it aside from the productivity side of things there's a few frustrations to this monitor the big one is that you cannot access a thousand in of peak brightness on an AMD GPU the exact same issue found on their olded G8 despite being freesync premium Pro certified this effectively locks you into Nvidia gpus for the best HDR experience which isn't ideal on a premium product and it restricts your choices for GPU Hardware changes in the future it looks to be unintentional vendor lock due to a poor implementation of freesync Premium pro HDR but given I first talked about this issue 10 months ago in another product and it's still present in the latest firmware here I don't have confidence that it will be addressed whether or not the OLED G9 is a good choice for you may depend on how comfortable you are being locked into to using Nvidia gpus on top of this the G9 is badly calibrated from the factory and while you can use the powerful Smart TV functionality to fix this thanks to a wide variety of color controls it's fiddly to do so and really on a highend monitor it should ship in a more usable State and speaking of the smart TV OSD it's great that it's so feature and has things like app support but it has led to a lot of bloat that makes it less intuitive to use versus a regular non-smart Monitor and key settings are buried deep in menus despite these issues I think $1,300 us is a okay to decentish price for what Samsung are offering though you are faced with a 3 to $500 US premium compared to 34in ultrawides you need to be really set on a 49in panel size and comfortable with the drawbacks to justify the more premium price tag at its MSRP of $1,800 there's no way I'd purchased the G9 though it really needs to be no more than $1,300 which is probably why it's Fallen to that price several months ago so I'm not giving this monitor a strong recommendation but I'm also not not recommending it if that makes makes sense it has a niche there aren't a lot of 49in cuet options and both of the ones I have looked at have some flaws this is one of those categories where it really pays to do your research and pick the one that is best suited to your needs and use case anyway that's it for this review of the Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 thank you to all our patreon and float plane supporters who support the channel directly and allow us to produce independent reviews like this one we did use the money that we get from patreon and float plan to purchase this very monitor for review so if you're wondering about where does your money go when you sign up and support monor unboxed and Hardware unboxed it goes into buying Hardware like these things that we use for some of these reviews so if you want to get some cool benefits and perks in addition to supporting the channel we've got our Discord Community ICC profiles we got monthly live streams and things like that then there are plenty of perks to enjoy if you sign up but that's it for this one thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next [Music] one [Music] [Music]
