Alienware AW3423DW Curved QD-OLED Review | Best Gaming Monitor in 2023

we are back to Alienware let's get it okay so if you've been a part of the channel uh since the beginning I got my first break on my YouTube channel dealing with Alienware computers stuff like that and I know a lot of people don't like pre- bills and all this stuff but you know back then you know my first gaming PC was a Alienware or World R7 and uh man we came a long way you know we got into custom bills building our own PCS and all that good stuff and now we're here what we have here is the Alienware aw 3423 DW and yes this is the one that comes with gsync ultimate and I know there's been a lot of stuff over the net about oh how did you know the actual DWF model is better than this model and all that different type of stuff forget all that um I've been looking for a monitor to complement um both of my PCS so I got two PCS um one one at you see all the time is my gaming PC that has a 7800 x3d in it um along with the and I've been swapping you know back and forth between the 7900 XTX and 4090 I've enjoyed my LG CX so much uh with using that whenever I can as a 4K gaming monitor along with entertainment and stuff like that but I needed a a real gaming monitor um but I also wanted it to be OLED and the reason it is because you're G to see a little bit later on in the video we talking about HDR infinite contrast deep blacks um everything from what I've been able to see the actual panel uh you know this uh particular monitor is probably a little bit over a year old but this is like one of the first gaming OLED monitors this Ultra wide 34 in it has everything we're talking about gsync ultimate it's 34 in the actual resolution on here is 3440 by 14440 so basically you know it's like you know from from from the height Wise It's You know the same as a 1440p monitor uh but it's wider right so higher resolution um so you definitely need you know a graphics card that's capable of being able to run this um it gets up to 1,000 nits on the brightness it covers the DCI P3 um at 99.3% it has a 0.1% great great response time and yeah this particular panel um actually is the quantum dot um OLED panel U which is a newer OLED technology that Samsung created um there are two models when it comes to this uh we have the uh the DW model and then the DWF the DWF is a little bit newer um that comes with freesync Pro so basically if you have a AMD graphics card the actual freyn model um may work a little bit better for you um but here's one thing I do know on a DWF model it allows you to be able to upgrade the actual firmware uh which that particular I model and this model um needed some frameware updates you know a couple of changes we'll talk a little um a little bit more about that later on um but the reason why I picked up this particular model is one because I wanted the GC ultimate um this particular model gets up to 175 HZ uh you know as for the refresh rate the DWF model it does 165 um but another thing when it comes to the H 10bit panel um you can actually use up to 144 Herz at 10bit I've also heard that you could actually be able to do um like a custom um resolution setting in order to be able to um to use but I didn't want to get into all that um but the biggest thing about um the reason why I picked this up from Micro Center um is because on the box it told me what the manufacturer date was and it said August of 2023 so that was just a couple of months ago um in which that means that this should had the latest firmware which I shouldn't have to worry about any more firmware update that should be needed you know s for this particular model so hopefully you know we should be good down the road let on down the line but because this has been out over a year now um I think a lot of the actual firmware updates and stuff like that is needed is probably pretty much done so that's a good thing all right so let's get into it okay we got the knife out let's go ahead open this thing up see what we yes sersi tells you everything that's in here this also comes with the and I you know I've been saying this a lot it also is Factory calibrated so it tells you it checks off everything pre-tuned for srgb um DCI P3 modes um everything great scale gamma color uniformity so yeah um so cables HDMI cables so as for as like ports on here this comes with HDMI 2.0 I know a lot of people like it doesn't come with 2.1 uh no it doesn't the actual GC module in here doesn't support a HDMI 2.1 U so we have a USB cable display port to a mini HDMI mini display port um and then we actually have a display port cable that comes in the box which is pretty cool oh we got a cloth we got a wiping cloth okay this is the power cable and uh what's cool about this is that we don't have to deal with the actual power brick and that's because um all of the actual power is built into the monitor which is great so this right here is probably the actual Vasa mount adapter yep 100 by 100 um you would need this if you want to put this on monitor arms and we have the stand it has a thumb screw right here and that's basically it like once you connect everything together that's all you need you don't need any tools and then woo this is pretty heavy this is the actual arm that the actual monitor sits on so this Clips in into the back of the actual Monitor and then we actually have the back panel um that will actually cover up the wires for for your power cable HDMI cable display port cable so obviously be using that as well we got the monitor so of course this is where the actual stand goes and if you was to put this on a monitor arm um the adapter would go here and you attach it man this looks so you know I initially thought this was like a white but this is more of a a kind of like a light gray silver we got the 34 on the side and I think this lights up along with the Alienware head that's right here so this actually supposed to clip in just like that but before I do that I'm going to go ahead and just connect these two together so there we go okay all right now we can screw it in boom and so that's it so re right here it just Clips in and boom that's it that's all you got to do and this thing is heavy so I'm move this box out the way and let's put it on the table okay so here is the back of the Monitor and this thing is massive um and I'm going to absolutely love it especially for video editing content creation uh obviously gaming um content watching um but yeah so we got a 34 here I think I talked about it already we got the alien head and um I still got the actual um this thing is actually sturdy um it's like real sturdy um it's there not a whole lot of wobble you know and stuff like that like if I shake the table you know it wobbles just a little bit but not a whole lot um this thing is heavy you know um as well so definitely um it's made really good you know and I know there's been certain stuff with Alienware with how they do their pre-builts well we not going to get into that um it's all about the display right here um so let's take a look at some of the ports so again we actually have display port uh two HDMI 2.0 ports USB port ports um that's up in here and I think those are like 5 GB per second ports so that is pretty cool uh for being able to plug in different things then over here on this side um we actually just have the power cable I don't think we have anything else let's turn it around oh and then you know of course you know we have uh um the paneling that's going to go on the back here uh to be able to hide the cabling and uh yeah this thing looks pretty dope and so um I do know um this comes with the fans uh for the actual GC module and also uh for being able to cool this thing down cuz uh you know I heard OLED you know my TV yeah Power uh heat and all that different type of stuff definitely um but this thing is beautiful I love the twoone um that's on the back here and uh yeah talking about Aesthetics oh and also this comes with lighting um RGB lighting that goes around the actual back um you know I heard it's kind of kind of subtle it's not too bright which is good um but also at the same time you know if you had you know M's vest is up against the window so um you I'm never going to see the back of this so I just see the actual highlights that comes from the actual RGB lighting that that goes on in the back okay so what's great about I still had a foam panel on but what's great about this is that the actual stand it doesn't come out that far so if we look at the side that's like this the actual stand is almost kind of Flesh um with it which is great because I actually have a mouse pad um that's going to go I have a pretty big mouse pad and I was hoping that wasn't going to get in the way you know what I'm saying for being a using mouse and keyboard but um this is this is a big monitor but it's not too big and of course I have a oversized desk so I'm I'm thinking I probably maybe about a little bit over two feet definitely over two feet you know from Death wise uh from theep back of the desk to the front uh but yeah this is this is this is amazing so let's take off this actual panel and you know they using this special type of tape so I thought I was going to be able to take this but I don't know okay let's do the styrofoam peill yeah I bet you never heard that before styrofoam pill all right so we got something at the bottom look at that so um some people don't like the gloss I love it because you know on my TV on the LG CX it also has the gloss but I like the gloss and the reason is because the actual HDR the pitch is going to come out um I do uh there was a lot of talk about um something about the actual film that's on the panel so even like in a very bright room which I got the lights on and stuff right now um the panel is not completely black you can kind of see almost kind of like a shade of gray but I usually gain um and while the room is dark um you see I got the blackout curtains and so so yeah um this is not going to be a issue so let's go ahead and get the actual gaming PC um cranked up and let's take a look all right and here you can see the alien head lights up and then we have the suable RGB uh ring that's on the back the 34 is not lit up so I don't think that that lights up but we'll see okay so first thing I want to say is good God Almighty the colors that's on this monitor something special um all right uh let's get into the H Sho so there's a joystick that's down at the bottom of the Monitor and you click that um you got a couple of things that pop up on the screen and uh hopefully you can see that I believe you can so up here at the top the it gives you like the presets the smart HDR is off it says gsync darkart stabilizer and down here at the bottom which is what we're going to focus on so down here at the bottom which is what we're going to focus on um you'll see you could go from left or right presets volume um it does have built-in speakers but we're not going to use those but um if we click up it gives you the monitor um and you have a bunch of different settings so let's start from the top so you have a game and then if you go over here to presets this is where you get be able to change um you have a number of different presets as far as like um the colors and um some of the features and so you have standard uh Creator um FPS uh MOBA uh RTS RPG sports game one game two uh game three warm cool and custom so right now um the HDR with inside Windows 11 it's not turned on U so what I'm using is Creator and up under Creator you have color space and then you have gamma so up on the color space I'm actually using the DCI P3 um you also have the option of srg B and then for gamma um I'm using 2.6 um you I have this suited for the way that I like to see um the extra screen I think the way that I have it set up um suits me best um and then you have oh I just changed the gamma um I like 2.6 I think um a lot of times they use that for like theater um you know like movies as sort like the the gamma um where they're doing a color uh uh correction and expor and stuff like that um but anyway um if we go back here to game enhance mode you also have different options for like a timer frame rate um display alignment um dark stabilizer you guys should be able to control that I have it on zero um and then we have HDR mode so we have HDR 400 true black and then we have HDR Peak 1000 and so upon the HDR true black a lot of people actually like um the actual color and the way that it looks um and the HDR will get up to 400 nits um and then you have and I'm using HDR Peak 1000 you have HDR P 1000 um the actual HDR gets up to a th000 n uh you know I think within like a 10% window or something like that um so I use HDR 1000 now this only pops on when Windows 11 switches when you switch on HDR in the options for Windows 11 so when HDR is off you know you have you know what we have here uh the colors are like super rich um and uh you know some of the tones and stuff like that are a little bit darker um if you go over here to brightness and contrast um I actually have my brightness on 80% in the contrast on 66 um this is just after playing around with some of the settings this is what I like the most when I'm not in HDR um and like I was saying it's like if I turn on like so if we go here I have my 40 90 um in my system right now um but if we go to so if we go over here the display settings um currently right now I actually have uh you see where it says um use HDR so if I click this which I'm going to do of course the screen turns completely black um now and I did a color a HDR color calibration what you could do you could download this from the Microsoft store I think it's uh HDR windows HDR calibration app so I downloaded this and it's pretty cool um which allows you to be able to get better colors while using HDR you kind of fine tun it so I went through that and as you can see you can see the dates it gives you dates I did it like three times uh this is the one that I like the most so was from November the 5th uh whatever the case may be but as you can see the colors of the lion on my wallpaper are a little bit different right um so what I found out was that uh HDR and it looked even more washed out before I did the color calibration so Windows 11 doesn't do HDR all that well you know from a desktop standpoint so what you you know and you really don't see the full effect until you actually going into a game or you're watching HDR uh content where you see the actual big difference so when I'm not uh playing a game with HDR watching content at HDR I actually have this turn off and when you do this you you'll see the actual line you see the the the actual colors so um you know from the Cutie olet panel um I can still be able to take advantage of the actual colors and the brightness stuff like that um when I'm not using HDR and it's phenomenal um it it looks great U so no matter what type of content I'm watching and L of different type of stuff even um the actual um the dark colored theme is darker you know with h being turn off with the inside windows 11 it's weird I know but when um actually let me turn this back on because when you actually have hdr on um I'm going to show you something so when HDR is on and as you can see it's more gray than it is dark um but if we go back in here to the settings um if we go down here to brightness and contrast you can't control the brightness anymore and that's that's because we're the HDR takes over for uh the actual brightness so the only thing that you control is the contrast which I leave at 66% so all this stuff stays the same um and actually when we go back over here to Creator profile you can no longer change anything inside the Creator profile so that's another thing so when you have HDR when HDR is triggered um even up here at the top it says smart HDR it says that it's on when it's triggered you can't change some of the set side Creator so um you know depending on what you're doing um I don't leave hdr on all the time up on the Windows desktop um I only turn it on when I'm about to watch some HDR content all right so let me turn it off and uh we're going to go back into the settings okay so back up under the settings so we looked at brightness contrast you can control that so now when I go back if I go back into creator you know you could go back into the color space and the gamma but when HDR is turned on with the inside windows 11 you cannot go back in and change those things um so let me go back out uh yeah input source so we had display port HDMI1 HDMI 2 um alien effects lighting so you can actually change the lighting that we took a look um on the back of the monitor um so you could change the color and all that different type of stuff brightness um audio uh again has built-in speakers but we don't use those um menu um transparency timers and stuff like that personalized you can come in here you could do short uh shortcut keys uh for different items and then other so upon the other um display info um you can actually see the model um The Source the current um resolution and also refresh rate and right now I actually had a refresh rate on 120 HZ and the only reason why I did that is because while shooting this video I noticed there's it was flickering um and I think you know it has to deal with the refresh rate and stuff like that while recording um so to limit that so you you know didn't bother you while watching this I put on 120 HZ but when I show you some gameplay um I'll put it back at the max and we'll talk about that um a little bit further um let's see firmware so this has the m mo20 5 or they could be m0b I don't know but this is the latest firmware um this the manufacturer date on this monitor was August I talked about that at at the beginning of the video um the ambient light sensor I have turned off eco mode is off I want the highest brightness possible I don't need anything that's you know trying to uh limit the actual brightness of the monitor um OLED panel maintenance um I want to show you this so you have a pixel refresh refesh panel refresh and then Auto warning message and so I keep that on auto the pixel refresh looks like this and so it says OLED pixel refresh and so what it does um kind of shifts everything around as far as like the panel every four hours so whenever you have four hours of use um sometimes you know if you've been using your monit all day this would pop up um and you know it gets a little bit annoying I'm not going to lie because uh you know sometimes if I'm in long gaming session where I've been using my Mone entire day uh I don't want to see that right um but it just pops up in just like in the middle of you just doing stuff but anyway but um it this helps with the actual burning so this is what is for you know to fight against Burning uh this monitor comes with a three-year warranty U from Alienware which is amazing uh well you know and you know if you Ur any type of burning in they um it's like an advaned service for replacing um the actual panel um so it's amazing so yeah the warranty this is one of the only monitors that I've seen that comes with actual three-year warranty that covers burning in and so it I feel really good about you know haven't had any issues with my U my lgtv um and I've had that for years now I think going on maybe it's a little bit over two years no issues with burn in I take a lot of precautions I don't have any icons on my screen or anything like that um but if I did run into any issues I call up anywere get my panel replace and then we'll be good to go um so you can also this will also run during standby U so when you're not using it um it'll also run a pixel refresh um we have another no do do standby so there's another um option over here for panel refresh now this is the one I think it runs after using the monitor for like, 1500 hours um you don't want to just run this um I think it you know uh causes issues um if you try to run this too many times so the panel refresh again I think it runs after 1,500 hours and then Auto warning message you know you can control whether or not you want this on or off on is actually good I leave it on um and then you have a factory reset um so going back so those you know it's really it it's not much else uh with inside here um you could kind of tailor this to how you like it you know and the things that you want um but again for me I'm using creative mode uh game enhance mode off dark stabiliz on zero hdrp 1000 yeah that's how I have my monitor set up now now that we got that out of the way let me show you the Nvidia control panel because I want to talk a little bit more about um so this monitor gets up to 175 Hertz so right now um you could get 10 bit um this is a 10 bit panel um you you can actually use 10bit all the way up to 144 HZ once you go to 175 HZ it switches over to 8 bit uh with dithering now the thing about that I have not seen the difference between um you know as far as like the you know banding or anything like that you know the difference between 8 Bit And 10 bit um I haven't seen it you know I've been playing around with this for a little bit over a week now and you know I don't see it so usually I actually leave this on 175 HZ and like I said the only reason why I have it at 120 HZ is I can stop the flickering from recording on the video um but I am actually going to go ahead and switch this back over to 175 HZ and once I do that it's going to change the 8 bit but again this wide panel um is absolutely amazing and now what I want to do is actually get into some game play and show you exactly what this looks like the best way I can over YouTube so of course we we're recording in 4k um and so yeah let's get into it okay first game we have up is god of war and let me tell you this one is a dooy let's [Music] go for now let me tell you you actually get you see so much more on the ultra wide and the game looks amazing still want me to tie to the boat what that was the last [Music] you see the darks see cutie OLED OLED the blacks are black It's [Music] amazing And if you see any flickering uh that's just from recording that um the actual refresh rate of the monitors at 175 HZ and we record uh you know depending on the situation depend on what's going on you may start seeing some flicking while you trying to record the [Music] screen there do they call to me [Music] she's [Music] [Music] ready [Music] and this just makes me wonder I was playing around with the screen calibration and I'm wondering that I have my contracts up too high let's see what's default so default is 50 brightness I think I had at 75 let's try 70 and see what the difference [Music] [Music] is yeah that looks [Music] better my no you are not ready stay [Music] back you [Music] my no you are not ready stay [Music] back [Music] [Music] get so let me tell you if you haven't played God of War especially on the OLED QD OED this game is freaking amazing let's move on to the next game H's only bought us 15 minutes we hit cassim hard and fast let's go let's help bring in the New Year why am I miss go go go [Music] on up the we need to [Music] [Music] see the hell the SE can't escape find [Music] him watch [Music] it go go enemy contact hurry [Music] [Music] uping [Music] cover I'm moving cassine can't escape this cassine mooving we can't let cassine get away [Music] enem go [Music] moving s up hurry up cover [Music] look Escape [Music] he's bed he B [Music] him go go hurry up nowhere left to run we can work all right next game that we have up is a favorite of mine this is fors of horizon 5 and yeah let's take a [Music] look [Music] one thing I can tell you about this game is absolutely beautiful just look at the lights and playing a racing game on a on a Ultra wide oh you talking about immersion is [Music] crazy [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] stre [Music] [Laughter] okay so that is Forza Horizon 5 U let's check out another game okay the next game that we have up is Ratchet and Clank and man everything about this game screams detailed the colors the HDR everything let's take a look so you can finally know how it [Music] feels the dimensions are weakening considerably how bad is it well it is certainly not good great where are we it's [Music] me the arms we've been boarded get off me ship [Music] creature [Music] Clank Clank palom what is this place where are you Clank maybe someone around here has see welcome to the nefarious City bizar please remember to thank our marvelous Emperor before during and after making your purchase Emperor does that mean there are two nefarious now clink first nefariously maybe he's in this [Music] B wait a second you forgot your order come right in mron will sell you weapons but You' got to be less conspicuous or the resistance will not last the resistance apologies sugar what's Club nefarious going to sound like that sounds like a club all right hello city I just want to let you all know okay um last game day we have up is Doom Eternal and man this is such a fun game to play I never knew how fun it would be to play on an ultra wide on a OLED panel man it's amazing all right let's get into it we got mouse and keyboard play baby let's [Music] go [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you [Music] [Music] fun just go ahead and just buy it just buy it you know Black Friday is coming up I don't know what type of deals Amazon is going to be doing U but if you do have a micros in your ear I was able to pick this up for 7 no $88.99 um and you know if you choose like I said you know this is the uh aw 3423 DW model um there's another model uh very similar to this uh you know again I haven't reviewed it but it's a you know a freesync mo uh model that ends in DWF um that may be $7.99 um but this one is $8.99 I can only speak for this one um and I absolutely love it um it's you know you seeing the game play you seeing what it could be able to look like um of course you won't know until you actually get one in front of your face and you see how bright the actual screen gets uh when it comes to the HDR um but man when I tell you the actual the response time with using this monitor gaming it's it's a that's it it's it's like the ultimate gaming mon gets up to 175 HZ uh content creation video editing all the above it does it I've done a lot of searching online and I could not find another comparable monitor uh that's Ultra wide it's OLED and does everything that it does for the price uh the only other monitor that I would consider um it's not even out yet and it would be the 32 inch uh Alienware OLED 240 htz 4K so that's the only one don't look at that but that mon is going to be considerably more expensive um you know when it comes out and and of course you know you probably don't want to get the first batch of those um you know just depending on you know what's going on and stuff like that but this is it I spent a lot of time doing some research um on this Mon and I pulled the trigger and it's one of the best purchases I made of 2023 so if you want a great gaming experience a great overall monit experience or something U that you're going to be using for years to come make make sure that you hit the link down in the description below hit the links it's going to help out the channel but it's also going to be able to help you uh just make a purchasing decision so if you're in the market for a monitor and if you could cough up $8.99 this is a great purchase um I will tell you the 3440 by 1440p resolution you know is a little bit hard to run it's it's a you know it's more conely harder to run in regular 1440p so you need a good graphics card and also you know to hit the 175 Hertz she need also a good CPU U so make sure that you keep those things in mind um I got a new PCB that's coming up with the 14900 K uh that's going to be coming up right after this video uh so make sure that you look forward to that I'm super excited about that one uh so yeah let me know what you think down in the comments below um if you want to see more content like this make sure that you hit like hit subscribe hit the Bell so you receive all my notifications and I see you in the next video peace

Channel: WiLcreatives

Views: 5,360

Keywords: dell, alienware, monitor, oled, qdoled, samsung, best gaming monitor, first qdoled monitor, best gaming monitor in 2023, unboxing, pc builds, best monitor for rtx 4090, best monitor for rx 7900 xtx, nvidia gsync, nvidia gsync ultimate, nvidia, amd, alienware aurora, high refresh rate monitors, fps, oled monitors, oled panels, best time to buy oled, microcenter, amazon, black friday deals, deals of the week, best monitor deals, ultrawide, ultrawide monitor, oled ultrawide, wilcreatives

Id: CD832ZhuK2M

Length: 45min 25sec (2725 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2023