Disappointing: Samsung Stumbles Again - Odyssey Neo G8 Review

[Music] welcome back to hardware unboxed today we're continuing our investigation into samsung's new series of odyssey neo monitors last week we looked at the neo g7 and today we're back with a hotly requested review of the neo g8 the neo g8 is essentially a higher refresh rate model of the neo g7 bumping up the maximum refresh rate from 165 to 240 hertz making this the first 4k 240hz gaming monitor to hit the market i guess to get the most out of this display you'll need a pretty powerful gaming pc most other specifications are the same between the two models including the 32 inch size va panel technology 1 000 r curvature and true hdr hardware thanks to a 1196 zone full array local dimming backlight to get the extra refresh rate the neo g8 offers you're looking at spending around 200 us more to upgrade from the neo g7 model so it'll be interesting to see if the g8 offers anything more than just 240 hertz like with our neo g7 model we bought and imported our neo g8 sample from amazon in the us so a big shout out to our patreon and floatplay members who support our independent testing and allow reviews like this to happen today's video is sponsored by gigabyte the latest aorus and gigabyte gaming and creator laptops feature up to an nvidia geforce rtx 3080ti graphics card and up to 12th gen intel core i9 processors this powerful combination of hardware is great whether you're a gamer or creator gamers will be interested in the aorus 17x featuring high performance geforce rtx graphics a super fast 360hz display and heaps of cooling power the rtx 3080ti model is very impressive in the speed it delivers for gaming in a laptop form factor especially with dlss enabled learn more via the links below including the remix contest where you can win an aero 15 oled laptop the design of the neo g8 isn't the same as the neo g7 samsung has opted to give each unit a distinct style the major difference here is the use of glossy white plastic on the rear of the neo g8 compared to black plastic on the neo g7 so it ends up looking a bit more gamery and closer to the odyssey neo g9 we saw last year personally i prefer the way the neo g7 looks but it's not a huge deal really it's not like you'll see the rear of the display all that often the neo g8 does have an rgb led light ring in the center where the stand connects as well as two thin rgb led strips along the front edge in a different shape to the neo g7 the monitor's chin is a bit thicker on this version as well i do have a few issues with the build the first one is that the stand isn't very sturdy the display section is quite big and it wobbles a fair bit it does provide a good range of ergonomic adjustments but if you bump your desk or try use the osd controls expect the monitor to move around the second is the curve once again the neo g8 uses a 1000 r curvature the same as the other v8 entries in the series on a 16 by 9 aspect ratio display the curve adds nothing and in my opinion makes the overall experience worse especially for productivity apps where the curve is noticeable and introduces distortions i don't mind a curve on an ultra wide panel where the edges extend to the outer parts of your field of view but with a 32 inch display like this the entire panel is well within your izfo v at normal viewing distances i think it looks weird and while you will get used to it over time my preference for these sorts of displays has always been a flat panel and i don't think it adds the immersion that samsung claims as for ports we get one displayport 1.4 with dsc and two hdmi 2.1 ports the monitor has high bandwidth requirements to run at 4k 240hz so i'd recommend using a high quality cable the hdmi ports are 40 gigabits per second ports and implement dsc to achieve a 240hz refresh rate though you shouldn't have compatibility issues with other devices when seeking to run at say 120 hertz there's also a few usb ports though unfortunately no kvm switch functionality which is becoming increasingly popular for monitors like this the on-screen display is controlled through a directional pad along the bottom edge and includes samsung's typical set of features which is good but not the strongest on the market you do get functionality like crosshairs and eyesafe mode and user upgradable firmware though before diving into response time performance let's talk about samsung's quality control and whether they've addressed previous criticisms we've had particularly around the neo g9 unfortunately the story here is a bit different to the neo g7 which i largely had no issues with the neo g7 being capped to 165 hertz doesn't display noticeable scan lines however the neo g8 being run at 240hz does suffer from scanline issues now the scan lines present on the neo g8 aren't as severe as the neo j9 when viewing test patterns like the lagom pixel inversion test the neo g9 would have scan lines across the entire display which were very noticeable the neo g8 in the same test only has issues localized to the test patterns themselves which is an improvement however i was able to spot scan lines pretty easily in non-test pattern environments one easy to replicate trigger was the windows volume indicator whenever that popped up i could see scanlines in the blue volume bar noting that it should be an entirely solid blue color normally i also spotted scanlines in this rainbow scanlines test made for the odyssey g7 in several colors but again most notably blues perhaps the most bizarre location i spotted scanlines was in samsung's own osd for the monitor surely you check to make sure scanlines don't activate when using the monitor's own built-in software but here we are based on what i've seen it appears as though samsung has tried to minimize the scanline issue with the neo g8 but ultimately the high refresh rate is once again a culprit we saw with other models that dropping from 240hz down to say 200hz or lower would often reduce scanline significantly which is likely why the neo g7 capped to 165 hertz has no such issues this is quite clearly a defect with this panel technology and in my opinion it's not acceptable for a premium price monitor how noticeable are the scan lines in realistic usage conditions well like i said it's harder to spot them on the neo g8 than the neo g9 partly due to samsung's improved tuning and partly due to the higher resolution each scan line is thinner at 4k than on a similar sized 1440p panel but once you notice this sort of defect it begins cropping up quite a bit hurting image quality in subtle or moderate ways for usage at the highest refresh rate i'd say the neo g8 looks worse than the neo g7 and there's no easy way to get the neo g7 performance on the neo g8 as samsung doesn't offer a built-in 165 hertz display mode it's either 240hz or 120hz or lower outside of custom resolutions offering a 165hz or 200hz mode would mitigate the problem somewhat although i guess it kind of defeats the purpose of buying the 240hz version but that's not the only quality control issue i had with my neo g8 thankfully i didn't spot any flickering so like with the neo g7 the vrr control setting isn't necessary however my unit shipped to me with a noticeable yellow mark on the display just above the osd control area it kind of looks like a burn mark and i was hoping it would fade after some usage but i've had this panel set up for now for over a week and so far the yellow mark is still quite visible this burn mark is clearly enough to trigger an rma for this unit in my opinion that sort of defect is completely unacceptable on a 1500 monitor now of course sometimes not every monitor is going to come from the factory in perfect condition dead pixels may occur other issues may crop up but there's two things that concern me about this issue with my unit firstly this is an expensive premium product i'd expect extra care taken at this price point to ensure each unit is in great condition before it ships to customers and secondly samsung have a terrible record of quality control issues so i have little faith that this is just a one-off for my particular unit i could perhaps forgive this with another brand where issues are rare but not with samsung so i'd hate to see another product where buyers have to rma their unit multiple times to get a good one so this is a fair caution to anyone buying the neo g8 i'll be rma in this unit soon so i guess we'll see how that goes moving on from the bad stuff now let's take a look at response time performance like with other samsung monitors if you're using it with adaptive sync enabled you cannot adjust the overdrive setting but luckily the performance using the included mode is excellent at 240hz this display has among the best tuning i've seen from an lcd offering a fast 2.51 millisecond greater great average with low to moderate levels of overshoot this amount of overshoot is difficult to spot in practice as indicated by very good cumulative deviation values a sub 400 result from an lcd is great you won't see any dark level smearing here either the neo g8 has crystal clear presentation in motion the neo g8 holds up very well at lower refresh rates as well and makes use of variable overdrive to tweak performance depending on the refresh this gives the g8 superior performance to the neo g7 at similar refresh rates particularly when looking at things like 165hz 144hz and even all the way down to hertz samsung nicely balances response times with overshoot at all refresh rates to minimize artifacts you won't see much ghosting or inverse ghosting with this monitor in any condition this gives the neo g8 a single overdrive mode experience which is what i expect from premium displays however the response times i've been talking about so far relate to the neojet's performance when local dimming is disabled when the fld backlight is enabled this becomes a more complicated discussion as the response behavior you'll see is not only dictated by a specific pixel but by the pixels around it that encompass the local dimming zone both the backlight and the lcd layer work in tandem to produce the response and change in color value so what does this look like well here are some example transitions using the monitor with various backlight settings enabled and if you saw the neo g7 review this is just a repeat of what we saw there the fald system does extend response times generally speaking but this is in relation to how dark the monitor needs to get transitions between moderate or bright shades typically see no impact from the fld system lower backlight settings take longer to transition on purpose so you can tune the appearance to your liking the big question is whether the fld system affects motion clarity while gaming when using this display for gaming i'd say for the most part you'll see transitions most like the earlier charts where the backlight is only making minor adjustments that don't have a significant effect on response times however there are some times particularly when an entire zone changes from dark to bright that you can feel the display is a bit slower with local dimming enabled depending on the setting you choose the high local dimming setting also appears to have some overshoot issues that can cause a flicker-like effect on rare occasions although this isn't a true flicker and goes away when changing the setting to low i don't think this outweighs the benefits of having local dimming and in any case if you are concerned about speed for example if you're playing a competitive game you can simply disable local dimming to get the best performance on offer compared to other monitors the neo g8 has the best lcd tuning at its highest refresh rate that i've seen yet at the same 240 hertz as the neo g9 and original odyssey g7 the neo g8 is faster with a similar or slightly lower level of overshoot across the last two years it seems that samsung has been able to perfect their algorithm for their va panels and that delivers outstanding results for gamers motion clarity is noticeably better than the neo g7 both due to the increased refresh rate and faster response times on average across the refresh range the neo g8 is similar to other top end odyssey monitors and somewhat superior to the neo g7 as well clearly this level of performance is excellent and the only way to get a step above is to move to an oled panel it blows previous hdr lcds out of the water such as the pathetically slow asus pg32uqx which feels like ancient technology in comparison no dark level performance issues here as i said this monitor has great tuning to minimize dark level smearing and that leads to performance similar to other lcds for cumulative deviation the neo g8 is in the ballpark of other odyssey flagship monitors so the experience here is quite similar despite its high resolution the neo g9 is slightly better tuned across the entire refresh rate range but this difference is not noticeable in practice the neo g8 is about 15 percent better in this metric than the neo g7 which also isn't that noticeable but at some specific refresh rates the difference is a bit larger and more noticeable like it's say 60 hertz the neo g8 is an excellent monitor at 120 hertz delivering similar response times to the neo g7 but with lower overshoot this is due to the neo g8's more extensive use of variable overdrive and resulting better tuning at all refresh rates similar at 60 hertz we get roughly the same response times but less overshoot which is a great result and while the neo g8 isn't a chart topper i prefer this sort of performance to higher overshoot like you might get from the neo g9 at this refresh rate input latency is an interesting story with local dimming disabled there are no issues with latency the monitor's processing delay is around 1 millisecond and this leads to an extremely responsive 240hz experience however if you decide to enable local dimming the processing delay increases to approximately nine milliseconds which is rather slow though not unusable slightly faster than the neo g7 but slower than the aw 3423 dw and in zone m9 under similar conditions this means that for competitive gamers i'd recommend disabling the fald backlight power consumption is high though similar to other fld options such as the pg32uqx and neo g7 the fld feature consumes roughly 20 watts more than a similar monitor without fald though far less power than an oled displaying a worst case full white image the neo g8 does support backlight strobing which is a rarity for monitors with a mini led backlight unfortunately samsung doesn't give users any control over the feature and you can't enable it with adaptive sync simultaneously this significantly weakens its usability but nevertheless let's look at how it performs a 240hz strobing only has a minor impact on visual quality the 240hz non-strobe image is already reasonably clear and the strobing implementation here isn't perfect so it doesn't improve on that very much there appears to be a slight synchronization issue between the strobe and refresh as well which causes a double image but only some of the time bit of an odd one here that i probably wouldn't recommend using i think it needs more work and more fine tuning to achieve the crystal clear results we'd normally expect from a setting like this the neo g8 like most gaming monitors of today packs a wide color gamut 93.4 dci p3 which isn't quite high enough for color accurate p3 work but this isn't a very versatile creator monitor anyway due to its curve the overall rec 2020 gamut is slightly higher than some of samsung's past va monitors but not quite high enough to push it into the upper echelon of our chart here which is dominated by ips lcds factory calibration was pretty weak with my unit the neo g7 had issues with color temperature but the neo g8 has issues with gamma being a bit wonky which leads to below par delta e results color performance was also relatively unimpressive due to an unclamped color gamut for sdr content the neo g8 should be using the srgb color space but this is left unclamped by default which leads to over saturation this isn't unusual for a gaming display lots of monitors in the chart so you have poor color checker factory results however the grayscale result could definitely be better it's one of the weaker results and not any better than the neo g7 samsung include an srgb mode which works and limits the color gamut to srgb which is good for sdr content and prevents oversaturation however grayscale performance is not that different to the default mode so there's still some gamma issues and samsung don't provide a way to adjust the white balance in this mode this means that despite advertising factory calibration on their website i don't think any mode included with the neo g8 qualifies properly as being calibrated and certainly the results are no better than a typical gaming display with no factory calibration however if you do choose to calibrate this display yourself you can improve performance especially for srgb as the panel is capable of covering the entirety of this gamut for p3 like i said i don't think the gamut coverage is quite good enough for color accurate work but with such a strong gaming focus here i don't think the neojet is a great monitor for productivity tasks anyway brightness in the sdr mode is relatively low at just 327 nits which is similar to some other odyssey products and essentially the same as the neo g7 i don't think this is a deal breaker though as 300 nits is still very usable in most viewing environments especially when combined with the matte screen coding however i know some people love to use their monitor at max brightness in which case the neo g8 isn't that great minimum brightness is excellent though allowing for a great experience in dark viewing conditions when assessing the panel's native contrast ratio i've disabled local dimming entirely so we can see just how good this va is and i'm pleased to see a strong result of 3600 to 1 which nicely complements the dimming functionality for hdr content this contrast ratio is much higher than the odyssey g7 and neo g9 however not as good as the neo g7 which could be down to panel variants it's more panel variance than i'd normally expect but i guess this is samsung we're talking about or it could be tuning not sure either way the results are very good and when dimming is disabled the neo g8 shows far deeper blacks than ips alternatives though of course oleds with their infinite contrast ratios are a step above again viewing angles aren't great on the neo g8 and exacerbated by the curve you'll want to be looking at this display dead on for the best experience as for uniformity my unit was ok but when viewing some full screen single color images i did spot a minor amount of dirty screen effect particularly with mid grays the mini leds don't appear to be 100 uniform which might be noticeable in some productivity apps though i don't expect you'll notice while consuming content whether that's gaming or videos now let's move into the hdr section and if you've seen my review of the neo g7 this section will be pretty familiar to you as both the neo g8 and neo g7 have very similar hdr performance this is a true hdr display with the hardware capabilities to display hdr correctly to some degree it has high brightness full array local dimming with plenty of zones and a wide color gamut as far as the local doing capabilities are concerned samsung is providing 1109 zones in a 46 by 26 grid so each zone is tasked with roughly 7000 pixels this is an order of magnitude tighter local dimming than the 96 zones of the sony inzone m9 and two orders of magnitude better than edge lit dimmed panels like the original odyssey g7 it's fair to say the hdr experience is clearly better than both of these monitors which i'd classed as having a basic hdr experience and a poor semi-hdr experience respectively when you combine a good number of dimming zones with a great native contrast ratio you end up with an hdr experience that has a low amount of blooming that's not to say you won't see blooming or raised blacks in some circumstances but most of the time these issues are hard to notice the only content i'd say really struggles with this sort of backlight are star fields and other very small bright highlights which only oleds can display properly the majority of the time you'll be seeing deep blacks and a really strong hdr experience with bright highlights just make sure you view the display dead on because viewing at an off angle will show much more blooming due to the panel's mediocre viewing angles however there are multiple ways to implement a local dimming algorithm and samsung have chosen an algorithm specifically to minimize blooming this has the effect of reducing peak brightness for bright highlights at times basically you have to choose one issue or the other either the backlight zone is dim so that dark areas are dark but bright areas aren't so bright or the backlight is bright so you get the best brightness in bright areas but dark areas are raised i don't have an answer for you as to which algorithm choice looks better because clearly there are many times where the neo g8 looks amazing and produces deep blacks with minimal blooming alongside bright highlights in real world gaming examples i saw over 1 000 units of brightness comparable to other true hdr displays but then at times the algorithm chooses to minimize brightness and on occasion elements that should be well over 700 nits were only displayed at around 300 nits lower than even the aw 3423 dw oled i've also seen a few issues for game huds as one example where the content around the hud is dim so the hud is also dim where it probably should be brighter despite this i'd still rate the hdr experience reasonably highly from this panel and better than an ips equivalent like the pg32uqx as ugly blooming is far less common while i do think the neo g8 is a very good hdr monitor in many aspects i did find some concerning results one is full screen sustained brightness the neo g8 when displaying either mostly bright scenes or bright flashes can't actually get that bright it tops out at 320 nits which is slightly worse than my result in the sdr mode and below that of the neo g7 this is a poor result that is well short of most hdr monitors as for 10 window brightness it's a mixed result achieving 1141 its of brightness is decent and above many other hdr monitors tested but it's lower than i got with my neo g7 unit when you'd probably expect or hope the more expensive neo g8 would be better that's not the case i do believe there will be some variance between units but basically i would expect a typical neo g7 and typical neo g8 have the same sort of brightness behavior on top of this samsung advertises this as a 2000 monitor and achieving 2 000 nits simply isn't realistic i could only ever hit 2 000 nits actually up to 2100 nits in a pure 10 window test pattern even slightly modifying this pattern such as changing it to a 10 window with 1 apl reduced the brightness recorded to around 1150 nits which is the number i eventually am reporting as i feel it's more realistic the neo g8 can only hit the advertised 2000 its in a specific pattern which appears to be detected by the monitor to enter some sort of special performance mode again i did not actually see two thousands a performance in any other circumstance including all real world content examples as such the neo g8 performs like this at different window sizes most of the time using realistic test conditions and when avoiding samsung's apparent 2000 cheat mode while i think advertising this as a 2000 monitor when it can't actually be practically achieved is highly misleading i don't think its actual results in the 1200 nit range are a deal breaker 1200 nits is still quite bright plenty for hdr gaming for full screen multi-frame contrast the neo g8 is capable of an infinite contrast ratio this is because the backlight can be fully switched off when displaying a full black image which is ideal behavior for best case single frame contrast the neo g8 hits over a million to one which might as well be infinite because blacks are very dark in these instances this puts most edge-lit panels to shame as well as weaker hdr monitors like the inzone m9 and even manages to beat the neo g7 in this specific test the neojet is also very capable in our worst case tests though again like with brightness and native contrast ratio this model wasn't quite as good as my neo g7 unit that i bought a ratio of 15 533 to 1 in this test is very strong but the neo g7 was about 20 better which is in line with the difference in native contrast ratio i would have hoped the more expensive model would at least match the neo g7 but due to unit variance that doesn't appear to be the case in the checkerboard test the high brightness contrast ratio on offer is very strong reaching nearly twenty thousand to one which is excellent and only surpassed by oled panels and the neo g7 to a marginal degree however the low brightness checkerboard tested around 70 hits is weak indicating that at times when the general content on the screen is dim that black levels could be lower this is an algorithm optimization issue with how the monitor locally dims as for hdr accuracy samsung's grayscale tracking implementation is good for the most part when using the best dimming mode high which actually performs slightly differently to the auto mode in the high mode dark shades are somewhat too dark in the low luminance range and there's a small dip in performance around the midpoint of the pq eotf chart but this mode gets the closest however this is sort of only the case when testing with a 10 window size adjusting this to different window sizes throws off the eotf curve when it should stay consistent which is the flaw with samsung's optimization that hurts performance these are the results with an 18 window size though they can differ anywhere from accurate to more like this depending on the exact test conditions the accuracy i reported here isn't quite as good as on the neo g7 and color accuracy could use a bit of work at times lastly we have the hub essentials checklist which looks to see whether samsung is accurately advertising the panel and whether it meets minimum performance standards the neo g8 has the appropriate level of hdmi 2.1 support and most areas to color performance are accurately advertised with the exception of factory calibration of note here is 12-bit color support i should mention this is only accessible over an hdmi 2.1 connection for motion performance samsung calling this a one millisecond monitor i feel is misleading given its real performance is more like four milliseconds though it can get reasonably close to one millisecond in the best cases i also would prefer adjustable overdrive control however processing lag with local dimming disabled is decent then for hdr performance the only really show i have is samsung basically falsely advertising two thousands of peak brightness which i wasn't able to achieve in any real world content that i looked at even stuff that is supposed to be 2000 nits another issue crops up in the defect section where the neo g8 did produce observable pixel inversion and of course my unit had an issue with a yellow burn mark so not an ideal showing for samsung's quality control while i was reasonably impressed with the samsung odyssey neo g7 the neo g8 is much more of a mixed bag possibly due to the unit i received but also just due to issues with the display in general there are certainly strengths to what samsung are offering here for high-end hdr gaming buyers but i wouldn't exactly be rushing out to purchase an eog8 especially over the neo g7 the major issue with the neo g8 is once again samsung's quality control scan lines are a problem when running this display at 240hz and while they're not as noticeable as previous samsung va monitors it's still an annoying defect that shouldn't be present on a 1500 display on top of that samsung clearly didn't do a very good job of checking every neo g8 at the factory as my unit had a noticeable yellow burn mark which is unacceptable for a high-end monitor and having to go through an rma process to get a good unit is something that should be avoided at all costs especially in this sort of premium category these two problems significantly cheapen what should otherwise be a top-tier experience and it doesn't instill a lot of faith in me that the units you receive will be up to scratch it's also disappointing that the 240hz mode in particular is affected as this is the primary reason to get the neo g8 over the neo g7 the higher refresh rate does deliver a noticeable boost in clarity and responsiveness plus samsung are using better factory tuning with improved variable overdrive which leads to elite response times for an lcd but if you have to drop the refresh rate to 200hz or lower to avoid scan lines and samsung doesn't provide a simple mode to do this then it kind of weakens the benefit of the high refresh rate as for hdr performance the neo g8 is a great hdr monitor the combination of a high zone count backlight and great native contrast leads to minimal blooming in hdr content while retaining the punch you should get from these displays as far as hdr gaming monitors go this is one of the only viable options on the market today for a proper true hdr experience and i don't think buyers will be disappointed for the most part provided you can avoid the neo gh defects but again while the hdr performance is great i was a bit disappointed to discover my neo g7 unit actually outperform my neo g8 in brightness and contrast so you're not getting improved hdr with the neo g8 it may actually be somewhat inferior samsung's claim that the monitor can hit 2 000 hits of peak brightness is also extremely misleading as that value isn't close to achievable in real world content then there's the 1000r curve the neo g8 would be far better as a flat panel and i think the curve ends up limiting its versatility i wouldn't really recommend this for productivity work this is a gaming first monitor what i'm left with after testing the neo g8 is a strong feeling that buyers are better off saving around 200 and opting for the neo g7 instead you may still run into quality control issues and panel variants but i'm pretty confident scan lines will not be an issue at the highest refresh rate which makes the display more usable i also just don't think this 240hz experience is worth paying 200 more for i'd say that would have definitely been the case if the neo g8 was defect free and guaranteed to be as good as the neo g7 at a minimum but it's not the neo g8 ends up having a few too many issues i also find it hard to recommend a premium monitor like this that's clearly meant for long term usage when it has a bunch of flaws 4k 240hz is heaps of headroom for future graphics card upgrades but i don't think this is a monitor i'd want to use long term i'd constantly be wondering if the next iteration had fixed the issues if there was flat version coming if more hdr brightness especially full screen hdr brightness was possible and so on i'm sure in time we'll see more 4k 240hz monitors and maybe then there will be a really elite option to buy and set you up for say five to ten years aside from the choice between neo g8 and neog7 there are also several other monitors to consider such as the alienware aw3423dw personally i'd choose the alienware qd oled over the neo g8 at a similar or even at times cheaper price but not everyone will want to go ultra wide or sacrifice the 4k resolution so in that case probably go the neo g7 similarly you can get an lg tv in this price range but they're also larger not necessarily equivalent and stay tuned for our review of the lg c2 in a 42 inch size soon anyway that's it for this review and a look at the samsung odyssey neo g8 pretty disappointed by this monitor i was expecting that this would be at least a better version of the neo g7 but it's not quite that like i said i think most people should stick to the neo g7 which is a monitor that i would recommend whereas this probably i wouldn't if you're interested in supporting our independent hardware testing and allowing us to buy and import monitors like this from the us then please consider supporting us on patreon or floatplane links to those in the description below your support is greatly appreciated and you'll get some nice bonuses like the icc profiles we create a discord chat and all sorts of other stuff so thanks for watching and i'll catch you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 156,624

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: SFBM-djS2d8

Length: 30min 51sec (1851 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 22 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/NonaHexa]

I wonder what causes such a stark divide in the general quality of Samsung's gaming panels versus their larger displays. I understand the underlying panels are different, but it feels like they significantly lower their QC standards for the Odyssey line.

[u/DuranteA]

I simply don't understand how Samsung can still have scanline issues on their newly introduced high-end monitors years and years after the problem was first discovered.

They apparently just don't give a shit.

[u/Zarmazarma]

The dim HDR and scan lines are really disappointing, especially since the panel has great response times. If it actually hit it's claimed 2000 nit brightness, and didn't limit itself almost as bad as an OLED when it came to full screen brightness, it would be an easy buy. I guess there's a reason it's cheaper than it's competitors, despite being on paper better in every way.

Claiming 2000 nits and only producing it when it detects a specific test pattern should honestly be illegal.

[u/BlyFot]

I've never been happy with a single Samsung product I've ever bought. Always something annoying or wrong. Latest was a QLED TV, which had so bad DSE (Dirty Screen Effect), I had to return it. Got an LG OLED instead, and never looked back.

[u/JigglymoobsMWO]

So I have now had two neo g8's due to an Amazon shipping error.

Pros:

Good screen uniformity

Very good contrast with local dimming off

Very good 4k image at 120Hz with VRR off

In game 240hz at 4k with the curved screen and vrr is highly immersive. Basically real life like motion. Much better than my older 144 hz 1440 p ultra wide.

VRR works well even though it's not gsync certified.

Bad:

Color gamut is good but doesn't have the advertised dcip3 and Adobe rgb coverage. The color gamut volume is on spec, it's just not centered on the standard color space.

I had no problem calibrating colors at 120 hz no vrr, but display Cal cannot seem to get gamma correct for 240 hz (auto dimming turned off, vrr on or off)

One of the units crashed my PC (rtx 3090) every time I changed it from vrr to vrr off.

The ok:

HDR looks good, not mind blowing. I still prefer the look on my lg CX. The extra brightness is either not there or not that apparent.

The scan lines: they are there on certain colors at 240Hz. They are noticeable, particularly on windows desktop. Less noticeable in games.

I shipped the unit that caused crashes back to Amazon and plan to keep the remaining one. The reason is that Amazon sold it at a discount for $1099 when the initial customer reviews came out. I would not keep it at the $1499 price.

[u/HermitCracc]

The LTT showcase was too good to be true.

[u/pabloe168]

I was weary of their monitors, now I will be completely skeptical.

[u/ButtPlugForPM]

i was waiting for this,looks like a no then,might go with the dell QD-oled

[u/luizmourabr]

Buying Samsung's monitors is asking to have problems with it