QD-OLED Gets Cheaper - Alienware AW3423DWF vs AW3423DW

welcome back to monitor's unbox today we're checking out the Alienware aw3423 DWF from Dell the new lower cost variant of the aw3423dw we reviewed earlier in the year this product has gathered a lot of attention as it's simply a way to get a cutie OLED Ultra wide for a bit cheaper than the original monitor but with a few interesting differences as well so let's talk about the new DWF variant the base specs are very similar it's the same 34 inch 3440x1440 QD OLED Ultra wide panel from Samsung with an 1800r curvature naturally it's a true HDR product with display HDR true black 400 certification and it has rated 0.1 millisecond response times on paper the only main spec difference is a slight refresh rate decrease for the DWF at 165 Hertz versus 175 Hertz on the DW though practically speaking this makes next to no difference while gaming as it's only a 6 reduction what makes the DWF cheaper is the removal of the Nvidia g-sync module in favor of a more traditional scalar this drops the price by 200 US from thirteen hundred dollars to eleven hundred dollars which is a pretty typical price gap between a g-sync and non-gsync product of otherwise the same Hardware while these are listed on the Dell website as the AMD freesync premium Pro and Nvidia g-sync ultimate variants either monitor works with adaptive sync Tech from both Brands so the DWF variant works with both AMD and Nvidia gpus despite being listed under freesync just like how the DW also works with AMD and Nvidia gpus despite being g-sync branded and having the g-sync module it's not something to be concerned about you don't have to pick a variant based on the GPU you have but the DWF also brings a few other minor changes including user upgradable firmware which was a bit of an issue for early adopters of the aw3423dw in including myself as the very first batch of units did have a few firmware bugs such as standby issues and the OLED panel care features activating at sub-optimal times we also in this review have the opportunity to see if there's any performance differences in areas like input latency calibration and response times which may change since the scalar has been swapped this review is intended to be a complement to our original aw3423dw review over on Hardware unboxed so I'd strongly recommend watching that video as well as this for the full picture on what this display can offer areas which are the same between both monitors will be covered in more depth in the aw3423dw review the primary goal here is to see if there are any differences between the DW and DWF models and how that affects your potential buying decision from a design standpoint the DWF model is basically identical to the DW except with all of the white panels being swapped for black instead I guess you could call this the stealth variant as a result and honestly I prefer the way the black model looks compared to the original two-tone design there's also a difference in RGB lighting effects on the rear the DW has a light ring around the standard connection but no RGB for the large 34 text it's the opposite on this DWF variant there's no light ring but the 34 has RGB lighting the DW also has a light bar near the OSD toggle which the cheaper DWF doesn't have not a big deal in the grand scheme of things as otherwise they look pretty similar and that's good news because the aw3423dw was a well-built display so that also applies here it definitely looks and feels like a premium product despite many of the surfaces being plastic the stand is reasonably sturdy it supports height tilt and swivel adjustment and honestly I think it looks pretty great one of the more contentious aspects to the DW was its active cooling while switched on and even during standby the DW produced audible fan noise active cooling has been a part of g-sync module displays for a while now as a fan is required to cool the module with varying results on how Audible The Fan noise is the DW was on the worst end of the scale as the fan could be heard in a quiet room though typically not over game audio the DWF still includes active cooling however the fan is much quieter to the point where I didn't notice it in a quiet room from a reasonable viewing distance it was only when I put my ear right up to the top vents where I could both hear the fan and feel some air movement the DWF has further benefits the fan noise doesn't appear to change unlike the DW where the fan could ramp up and slow down at times which made it harder to blend into background noise the DWF also seems to fully switch off the fan in standby whereas the DW model still runs the fan at times when in standby and your PC is off there is no doubting whatsoever the DWF model has better tuned Cooling and is the better product for silent PC enthusiasts however the issues with Port selection remain between the two models we're only getting DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 here the DP 1.4 Port doesn't use DSC so it's limited to 8-bit 165 Hertz with 10 bit only at lower refresh rates not a huge deal though the bigger deal is that the DWF still doesn't use HDMI 2.1 so it's only capable of 100 Hertz over HDMI 2.0 HDMI 2.0 is a limitation of the g-sync module but this hasn't been resolved when the scale was swapped as for the OSD it's easy to navigate thanks to a directional toggle and includes all the usual color and game features interestingly the DWF has more features including cheat crosshairs and something called console mode which gives you the option of source tone mapping on supported input devices obviously user upgradable firmware is a huge plus here too as any issues discovered with how the DWF operates can actually be fixed without an RMA unlike with the DW in my aw3423dw review I spent extensive time covering the screen coding and subpixel structure of the kudiola panel as the aw3423dwf uses the exact same panel the same issues are present here so the sections of these problems from my initial review hold true and I'd recommend checking that review for my in-depth thoughts but to summarize the QD OLED panels coding is glossy and lacks are polarizers so it can reflect quite a bit of ambient light depending on the conditions in a standard indoor viewing environment with artificial light or in a sunlit room blacks can appear gray or raised due to some of this light being reflected off the panel this is unlike an LG OLED which appears much blacker even with ambient light in the room 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 this can hamper the deep rich OLED experience in some viewing conditions oleds are famous for their black levels but with the aw34 423 DWF you'll need to have an optimized setup to get the most out of it the subpixel structure is also not ideal for desktop productivity use the QD OLED panel uses a triangle RGB layout instead of the traditional RGB stripe which can cause fringing on some high contrast edges such as text this is not easily fixable with software Corrections some people don't notice this issue but others including myself found it reasonably obvious especially next to a normal LCD this reduces the crispness and Clarity of text in some situations but is a complete non-issue for contact consumption like gaming or watching videos standard OLED issues also remain including the risk of permanent burn-in which doesn't make this a good candidate for productivity work where static images may be displayed on screen for long periods of time cutie OLED is supposedly less susceptible to burn-in than other older panel types and Dell do offer a three-year burn-in warranty but it's still unclear how these panels will be affected over the next few years there is a risk here and it's important to be aware of that in terms of Motion Performance there is no difference between the DW and DWF models the only difference you're seeing here in these results compared to what we showed in our aw3423dw review is that we've since fixed an issue with our test tools and their ability to test OLED screens which we talked about in a recent Community post this has improved recorded OLED performance but it's important to note that there is no actual difference between this display and the DW I retested the older model and it's roughly the same anyway we're seeing about a 0.3 millisecond response time for the DWF which is naturally very fast and that continues to give OLED a huge Advantage compared to an LCD of the same refresh rate overshoot is negligible and performance is held across the entire refresh rate range so there is no difference in performance whether you're at 165 Hertz or 60 hertz this is excellent and delivers motion Clarity that Rivals 240Hz LCDs as I said earlier there's no difference between the DW and DWF in response times and also no difference to the LG C2 OLED and other monitors using that family of panels the Gap to LCDs is rather large with the fastest I've tested coming in around two milliseconds compared to 0.3 milliseconds here other HDR capable displays tested at their best refresh rate like the Odyssey Neo G8 and Cooler Master gp27u are varying degrees of slower oleds are able to extend their lead looking at average performance because unlike most LCDs there's no difference in performance at any refresh rate this gives oleds somewhere in the range of 10 times faster response times on average compared to a good quality LCD so if motion is King for you there's no better choice you'll see similar in average cumulative deviation where there is a huge advantage in favor of oleds like the DWF but no difference comparing the dw2 DWF model fixed refresh rate performance is also excellent and unchanged with the new model what has changed is input lag previously the DW model with the g-sync module had mediocre input lag of around 5 milliseconds Which is higher than many other displays with the new DWF model that ditches the g-sync module in favor of a traditional scalar that's brought input lag well down and now it sits at a 0.3 millisecond processing delay which is typical of a modern gaming monitor this leads to lower total input lag that again Rivals some of the fastest displays on the market simply because the response times on offer here are so fast it's ridiculous and in good news there's no difference between SDR and HDR input latency many LCD equivalents have increased HDR processing lag as they have to run algorithms to decide upon the best local dimming configuration that isn't required here so typically there's no difference between SDR and HDR lag for an OLED power consumption is also lower from the DWF model as the g-sync module is quite power hungry power usage when displaying a 200 nit full white image dropped from 101 watts to 86 Watts with the new model presenting a 15 watt reduction which is decent fundamentally though the DWF is still a relatively power hungry panel in the most stressful scenarios from an OLED with typical power usage while gaming being lower and more in the range of LCD so it's not a big deal for most people color performance is quite similar between both models as both use the same panel so we're getting the same excellent 99 DCI P3 coverage as well as 97 coverage of adobe RGB this leads to around 80 Rec 2020 coverage which is excellent among gaming monitors as for factory calibration my DWF model had reasonable grayscale calibration out of the box slightly better than my DW due to improved gamma tracking however both models come with an unclamped color gamut by default so oversaturation is present as the color space extends well beyond the standard srgb used for PC SDR content Delta E's here are average at best comparatively speaking looking at these charts there isn't a huge difference between the DW and DWF for factory performance the F model being a little better for grayscale and a little worse for color Checker however the new DWF variant does have the superior srgb mode although some controls are still locked like on the original model my DWF unit flatter CCT performance and closer adherence to the correct gamma curve leading to lower Delta ease this gave the newer DWF about a one Delta e advantage in saturation color Checker though both ended up having very solid srgb modes that are worth using for viewing SDR content a full calibration can improve either Monitor and deliver really good results there's no difference between the DW and dwf's brightness Behavior both top out around 240 to 250 nits for desktop content with the automatic brightness limiter disabled for desktop SDR usage this gives consistent brightness in all usage conditions which is great for using desktop apps minimum brightness is also similar so the overall brightness range is basically the same black levels are also the same of course as both use the same panel with old ad Tech no difference to viewing angles or uniformity either in fact I was surprised how similar the uniformity results are for the DWF compared to the DW I reviewed earlier in the year so yeah don't expect many differences there a sharp performance is very important with these monitors as of course one of the main reasons you'd buy an OLED is to experience Elite HDR gaming the good news is that the HDR Hardware here is fundamentally the same as the aw3423dw so we get zero black levels per pixel local dimming and good levels of peak brightness this sort of monitor like other oleds has unparalleled ability to show bright and dark content close together so everything I said in my initial review of the DW holds true for the DWF in this regard this is a great panel for HDR there are some differences though the main one is in HDR accuracy and eotf tracking previously the DW had two main modes an HDR 400 troop-like mode and an HDR Peak 1000 mode which all to the peak brightness and adjusted aotf tracking slightly with the DW the hdr400 mode was more accurate than the hdr1000 mode but ultimately both were pretty good though there was some variability depending on average Picture level the DWF is different not only are there more modes to choose from now including stuff like game HDR but they're also less accurate than the DW's equivalent modes generally the new modes are pretty similar to the hdr400 true black mode here called the display HDR true black mode so I'm not going to focus on them here but this is how the new display HDR mode works so you can compare it to the hdr400 mode in the original DW model it's pretty similar overall both topping out at around 450 nits with this 10 window test though the DWF mode is somewhat less accurate for dark level tracking unfortunately the biggest difference appears for the hdl1000 mode if you want to access higher brightness levels like 1000 nits which are enabled in this mode for window sizes around five percent or lower the htl 1000 mode is not very good or accurate almost always being too bright tracking here is much worse than the DW's hjr 1000 mode and is also more variable offering even greater differences in tracking depending on the APL of the content being shown this is also true comparing the hr400 modes but to a lesser degree so basically the original variant has tighter HDR tracking with better accuracy in both of its modes and while the hdr1000 mode is usable on the DW it's not as usable on the DWF luckily this can be corrected through a firmware update and I've let Dell know it's an issue so hopefully they do release a revision to adjust the hdl1000 modes performance aside from these calibration differences in the HDR modes there's not a lot separating the HDR performance of both displays which shouldn't be a surprise as they both use the same panel for example full screen sustain brightness is still the same as is 10 window brightness neither of these areas is very impressive from these cutie OLED Ultra wides and Falls well below most LCDs and even some other oleds we've tested nevertheless you don't see HDR content exceeding 400 nits for large screen areas very often so despite lower brightness in these charts the actual real-world HDR performance is often quite good from the aw3423dwf brightness tracking in the HL 1000 mode is also quite similar between each monitor my DW model was slightly brighter overall But ultimately these two displays deliver effectively identical performance with similar curves around 1000 hits is possible with small window sizes both in benchmarking like this and in real world content such as games and movies the final section we have is the Hub Essentials checklist which assesses whether Dell is accurately advertising this monitor's capabilities and whether the display meets basic acceptable performance metrics in the opening section the aw3423dwf does receive a deduction for only including HDMI 2.0 which limits the display to just 100 Hertz over HDMI I also found it odd that for the DWF model specifically Dell's website inaccurately shows a Slimmer bezel than what is realistic it also shows Slimmer bezels than Dell's own website for the DW model even though the actual bezels for both the DWF and DW are the same so don't be confused into buying the DWF for supposed Slimmer bezels based on the marketing photos the motion section is improved relative to the DWF mostly due to lower input latency and while the 0.1 millisecond response time claim isn't that accurate on average this monitor is capable of around 0.1 millisecond response Times best case obviously no issues with HDR here as this is a true HDR monitor then in the issues and defects section we do have a few penalties to dish out no flickering or pixel inversion issues but the aw3423dwf does use a non-standard subpixel layout and is at risk of burn-in though unlike the original model it doesn't have an audible fan so that's the Alienware aw3423dwf and how it differs compared to the original model the aw3423dw I think prospective buyers will be happy to know that in the majority of instances this new model has improved on the older variant despite coming in cheaper though across most areas of performance the two are basically identical which is to be expected they use the same qdollar panel to summarize the positive changes we're seeing here the new DWF variant has a much quieter fan with a better fan curve lower input lag for SDR and HDR gaming several new OSD features user upgradable firmware small sgr accuracy improvements and a new all-black design that I personally prefer several firmware bugs with the initial batch of DW units aren't present here I didn't experience any issues with sleep or randomly activating all their care features it's also the cheaper model at just eleven hundred dollars US a 200 discount attributable to swapping the g-sync module for a traditional scaler many areas are identical you can expect the same response time performance the same brightness in the sgr and HDR mode the same per pixel dimming capabilities and unfortunately the same fundamental issues with this QD OLED panel such as its coating subpixel layout and risk of burn-in the main Hardware hasn't changed it's really just the scalar hardware and some of the other stuff around this panel there are a few regressions though compared to the original model the refresh rate is slightly lower at 165 versus 175 Hertz though this is negligible for gamers the bigger issue is the change in HDR accuracy and eotf tracking especially in the brightest hdr1000 mode this mode is definitely worse on the DWF it's often too bright and more inconsistent across different apls relative to the DW I hope this is something Dell can improve through a firmware update luckily this is actually possible on this new version in its current state I don't think there's a clear answer on which aw3423 model is the better buy at least until they fix the hdr1000 mode on the DWF once that mode is equivalent to what we get on the DW the DWF will be the clearly Superior option it has fewer issues more features and a lower price but for some people that must have the best HDR experience with the brightest highlights right now the original model does offer that to a better degree than the DWF the though the HR 400 mode on the DWF is still very usable and looks great if you're not as concerned with eotf tracking and don't care about how accurate it is or have faith Dell will resolve this issue I would buy the aw3423dwf you'll save 200 get less fan noise use upgradable firmware and less input lag which are all significant advantages the other option is potentially waiting to see how other models fare like Samsung's new G8 OLED plus other variants like the upcoming MSI equivalent anyway that's it for this look at the new Dell aw3423 DWF thank you to Dell for sending out this monitor I think this is only the second time ever that Dell has sent out a monitor to review so big shout out to them for pulling through on this one also if you're interested in supporting the channel and the independent testing that we do we have our patreon float plan accounts links to those are in the description below you'll get access to some interesting perks like our Discord Community monthly live streams behind the scenes videos ICC profiles and all sorts of other good stuff so thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next one [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Monitors Unboxed

Views: 173,044

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Id: b0aLF3KVOTQ

Length: 21min 35sec (1295 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/n1cx]

The text issue is really the only thing making me hold off :/

[u/Lmui]

The DWF is just better than the DW. I'm an early adopter and I guess I got buttfucked.

The g-sync module is just a brutal kick in the nuts. It increased input latency, locked you out of firmware updates, and to cap it off, you paid for the privilege.

[u/zejai]

I wonder how far off a 240Hz version is. Hopefully something gets announced at CES and comes out soon after.

[u/DesbaTech]

The AW3423DWF seems the best choice overall, hope the hdr 1000 mode get a fixed in a future firmware update.

[u/DrunkenSkelliger]

The DWF is def a more stable product. I actually feel like I got what I originally expected with the DW. The menu system feels smoother to me, the lack of fan noise, you can now only hear the fan if you put your ear to the back. ALL DW models have audible fan noise. It has two fans too due top the Gsync module where as the DW has a fan to keep the panel in check. The DWF also has the lowest total latency I've ever seen in a display measured, 3.6ms is insane. .

DWF has more menu options, built in pixel checker, upgradable firmware. The downside is using 10-bit for HDR you only get 100hz, I'm hoping this can be fixed with firmware.

[u/s_j_t]

I do not regret my DW at all. Sure, not having PIP/PBP and no firmware upgrade sucks a little, but I always knew the risk of being an early adopter and the fact that this being a OLED, won't be getting a long life out of this anyway.

Also, I still feel the HDR in the DW is the best among all gaming monitors. I will just hold on to the DW till there are good UW mini led monitors in the market.

[u/Sylanthra]

If I was buying today, I would by the DWF, but since I already have DW that works fine, I see no reason to switch. That might change when a version with HDMI 2.1 comes out so that I could get full 175hz HDR instead of being capped at 144hz.

[u/Doubleyoupee]

Still confused as to which mode should be used for normal usage (gaming/browsing). I can't imagine people are actively swapping between HDR400 and 1000?

[u/stzeer6]

It's interesting they even raised the blacks in true black HDR 400. Likely did this because it's prone to flickering.