Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 Review, A True HDR Gaming Upgrade

[Music] welcome back to hardware unboxed today we're checking out a monitor that has generated a lot of buzz in the gaming community when it was announced earlier this year it's the samsung odyssey neo g9 an updated version of their impressive odyssey g9 super ultrawide monitor that debuted last year this new version seeks to address one of the fundamental issues with the previous model in its lackluster hdr functionality most of the basic elements to the odyssey g9 have been retained for the neo upgrade we're still looking at a 49 inch 5120 by 1440 va panel with a 1000 r curvature at this size and resolution the odyssey neo g9 is the equivalent of two 27-inch 1440p monitors glued together into one seamless display the refresh rate is still a very impressive 240hz here with support for amd freesync premium pro and nvidia g-sync compatibility meaning just a regular adaptive sync implementation no g-sync module or anything like that the big area of improvement though is in hdr the original odyssey g9 packed a rather pathetic 10 edge lit dimming zones which is insufficient for true hdr visuals on such a large display samsung has totally addressed this criticism with the neo version swapping out the backlight for a new mini led version that includes 2048 local dimming zones in addition to that samsung lists support for what appears to be their own in-house hdr standard quantum hdr 2000 which is a bit meaningless by itself though the spec sheet does list up to 2 2000 nits of peak hdr brightness as we're going from a monitor with limited hdr support to full hdr support the price tag has increased though the degree to which the prices increase depends heavily on your region in the united states the new neo g9 is quite expensive at an msrp of 2500 us dollars that's a huge 800 increase on the otto cg9 which retailed at 1700. but here in australia the price tag has only risen by 500 australian dollars from 2500 to 3000 aud actually making the monitor cheaper locally after currency conversion than it is in the usa which is a rare occurrence either way though you're still looking at flagship monitor pricing for those with deep pockets aesthetically the odyssey neo g9 looks basically the same as the odyssey g9 it's replacing there are of course some subtle differences to how the monitor looks but the general design is the same we're looking at the same glossy white plastic used for the outer housing on the rear and stand same wide legs with a black plastic outer and the same rgb led lighting element in the middle of the stand connection samsung are going with a sci-fi futuristic look here i think it works to some degree though of course with a monitor of this size you won't be getting anything too subtle speaking of the size this will be an issue for some buyers as the neo g9 takes up a lot of space the monitor is nearly 1.2 meters wide while the stand legs span 80 centimeters so you'll need a lot of desk real estate to fit this beast on top of that the overall footprint is quite large due to aggressive 1000r curve so you'll need some available depth as well this is actually wider than the lg c148 inch oled we looked at a few weeks back just without the extra height the 1000r curve is significant and it's not something i'm a fan of with their 16x9 aspect ratio monitors like the samsung odyssey g7 series but on an ultra wide like this i think it works quite well especially when gaming as it gives you an immersive feel at the same time it's not ideal for content creation or productivity work because there is a bit of distortion at times but it depends how sensitive you are to those artifacts in any case this is a heavily gaming focused product so overall the 1000r curve is a positive the stand samsung have included here is surprisingly adjustable for such a large display there's height adjustment as well as swivel and tilt support so it allows for a decent range of motion i'd probably like slightly more height though you can vase amount with the included adapter and the stand is a little wobbly due to the massive size in addition to the hdr upgrades another area that's received a spec boost is the port selection we're still getting a displayport 1.4 connector with dsc which provides bandwidth for the full 5120x1440 resolution at 240hz with 10 bit hdr but the hdmi ports have now been upgraded to hdmi 2.1 and there are two of them so hdmi is no longer capped at 60 hertz unfortunately though despite hdmi 2.1 in theory having more bandwidth than displayport 1.4 the neo g9's hdmi 2.1 ports are still limited to 144hz whether we're in 8-bit or 10-bit operation i don't know why this is the case perhaps samsung are using a low bandwidth hdmi 2.1 implementation and it will be disappointing for those hoping for the full 240hz through hdmi the osd remains the same as the previous iteration of this monitor generally speaking it's controlled through a directional toggle on the bottom edge of the screen and includes features like black boosting modes crosshairs various color controls and so on it also includes the vrr control feature that was introduced to the odyssey g9 firmware after launch which should be enabled if you're having any issues with variable refresh rates i personally didn't experience any flickering during my testing which was a problem some people reported with prior models but it can depend on your setup response time performance is a very simple story with the odyssey neo g9 as it's basically unchanged from the odyssey g9 this includes how the monitor doesn't let you change the overdrive setting when adaptivesync is enabled and as i expect the vast majority of gamers will be using this monitor with a variable refresh rate i'll stick to standard default configurations at the maximum 240hz the neo g9 is a very fast monitor it packs a 2.8 millisecond greater grey response time and while there is some overshoot at this refresh rate it's somewhat manageable and actually a bit less overshoot than the same refresh rate on the g9 this leads to excellent cumulative deviation results and negligible dark level smearing which is outstanding for a va display as the refresh rate decreases performance stays pretty balanced at below 200 hertz overshoot drops away to be insignificant while for the most part preserving a sub 4 millisecond response time average with few changes to cumulative deviation at 100 hertz performance improves again as the neo g9 actually runs this refresh rate at 200 hertz on the display doubling the frames and similar at 60 hertz which actually runs at 180 hertz so this is standard refresh rate duplication on a variable refresh rate monitor which is done to deliver the best performance but regardless you can clearly see the neo g9 delivers a single overdrive mode experience at 240hz the odyssey neo g9 is a small improvement on the original g9 both in terms of response times and overshoot this keeps the neo g9 as one of the fastest lcd monitors i've tested although performance isn't as good as the c1 oled with that said the c1 is capped to hertz versus 240hz on the neo g9 so motion clarity when you're able to harness the high refresh rate is generally better on this va based panel on average across the refresh range the g9 and neo g9 perform basically the same makes sense as both use practically the same va technology with even a small improvement on the autocg7 this allows this ultrawide display to beat most other contenders in this field including products like the lg 34 gn850 which isn't bad by any means for an ultra wide but the neo g9 is simply a lot faster in cumulative deviation the neo g9 is a small regression on the regular g9 but that still puts it in line with the odyssey g7 i suspect this is down to samsung pulling back slightly on overdrive at some refresh rates to minimize overshoot it's always a delicate balance with those sorts of things but in the end i think it still delivers a strong result at a fixed 120 hertz refresh rate we see what i was talking about with the neo g9 having slightly reduced overdrive here which does lead to somewhat slower response times just at lower overshoot as well whereas at 60hz things go the other way with faster response times but more overshoot no matter which chart we're looking at though the neo g9 has excellent response time behavior and that's highlighted by brilliant dark level smearing results for a va monitor samsung has solved this issue with their high-end va panels the neo g9 is not only better than most prior gen v8 monitors but it also competes strongly with and beats most ips displays in this metric needless to stay you won't be seeing any unsightly dark trails following moving objects with this monitor input lag is excellent with the neo g9 the processing die is slightly higher than i measured with the original g9 and that may be down to things like a more complex mini led backlight and having to manage that but either way due to the high 240hz refresh rate and fast response times the neo g9 is one of the fastest and most responsive monitors that you can get power consumption has increased by 10 moving from the old backlight to the new mini led backlight on the neo g9 making the neo g9 a somewhat power hungry display which kind of makes sense given its size this is only really relevant for heat output is most monitors don't consume that much power to be a significant concern and overall the neo g9 is similar in power consumption to two 27 inch displays which makes sense given its size i'll note here quickly that the neo g9 like the original g9 does not appear to support backlight strobing there is an mbr feature listed in the osd but it's grayed out for all combinations of settings that i tried which suggest that like the prior model this feature is not accessible next up we have color performance and to be honest here there's not a lot to talk about because the odyssey neo g9 performs just like the original g9 wide gamut support is the same for example at 89 dci p3 and 66 rec 2020 which means the neo g9 has a somewhat limited wide gamut that only really extends into p3 and not into adobe rgb fine for hdr content and gaming but it doesn't make the g9 as versatile as the best ips monitors which sit at the top of this chart and provide a dual p3 and adobe rgb experience factory calibration is below average in the default out of the box mode grayscale performance is off with a gamma that's too high meaning the monitor is a little dark most of the time combined with an incorrect white point and delta e results are a little higher than we like to see from gaming displays it also ships without an srgb mode enabled by default so you will see some oversaturation though as the gamut itself isn't particularly wide this issue isn't going to be that bad when comparing these results to other gaming monitors both the neo g9 and regular g9 have very similar factory calibration in both grayscale and color checker and that leads to a below average experience it would be great to see samsung put more focus into this in particular tightening up greyscale which is the most noticeable area where the neo g9 was off relative to accurate the neo g9 does include an srgb mode which is average at best the main thing this mode does is clamp the gamut down to srgb and it does so to a passable but not ideal degree as reds still exceed the srgb colour space though overall it is a large improvement on the default mode unfortunately grayscale is largely unchanged and in this mode samsung unnecessarily locks down the grayscale controls meaning we can't fine-tune this mode there is no reason whatsoever for these controls to be locked from here it is possible to slightly tweak the default mode to improve grayscale results and i'll show my osd settings here but this doesn't solve the oversaturation issue as there's no independent srgb toggle for viewing standard content i also found the variable backlight a little distracting at times when using desktop apps that have large uniform areas so i'd only recommend enabling it for hdr content unfortunately the auto mode doesn't actually disable the variable backlight for sdr content it just tries to smooth out the backlight so it's less noticeable the only way to actually disable it is switching it to off which you then need to manually flick back to auto for hdr it would be nice if the auto mode actually turned the backlight off for sdr and then on for hdr like i thought it would and just quickly here are my final calibration results using display cal and patreon members can download the icc profile i created for this review for srgb you can achieve excellent results there are all the tools here for great performance when calibrated for this gamut when calibrating to p3 results aren't quite as good as the top end of the gamut is missing so the odyssey neo g9 probably isn't the best monitor for any color critical p3 work due to the gamut and the curve the neo g9 provides the same peak brightness in the sdr mode as the original g9 at 430 nits or thereabouts this is plenty for most viewing environments and while the backlight is capable of much higher brightness it's probably not required for most people meanwhile minimum brightness is solid at around the 50 minute mark the neo g9's native contrast hasn't changed significantly from the original g9 my review unit neo g9 was better than my review unit g9 pushing contrast to around the 2300 to 1 mark but this is still expected of course this is with the dynamic backlight disabled so we are getting typical va sorts of numbers here nothing mind-blowing though as some va's including samsung's own odyssey g5 can blow past 3000 to one with the variable backlight this isn't too much of an issue while gaming as we'll get into in the hdr section viewing angles nothing amazing mostly limited by the huge curve uniformity on the other hand was surprisingly good zoned backlights can have some issues with uniformity but on this panel i was impressed with how most of the image is uniform with only a small amount of vignetting around the edges grey uniformity isn't quite as good but still not too bad for this size of panel moving now to the final section on hdr and we'll first start with the hdr checklist the odyssey neo g9 packs true hdr specifications unlike the original g9 with its disappointing 10 zone backlight here we are getting 2048 zones which significantly increases the possible contrast ratio and allows us to get the best out of hdr content in addition to that we have a rated high peak brightness of 2000 nits the neo g9 includes two hdr modes hdr standard the default mode and hdr dynamic unfortunately the hdi dynamic mode isn't very usable due to it producing weird color tones and other issues at times i'm not sure whether this processing is intentional to create a more dynamic image in some instances but it doesn't work well for keeping highly detailed skin tones as you can see in this side-by-side comparison this was the case with both the original firmware that shipped on my review unit and the latest 1005 firmware available from the samsung website so for this testing we'll be using the hdr standard mode when displaying a full white window in the hdr mode the neo g9 can sustain 650 nits of brightness which matches the original g9 with its lackluster backlight i suspect samsung have chosen to implement the exact same limitation here for sustained brightness regardless of what the backlight is actually capable of though in most situations this level of brightness is acceptable however it is not as good as the pg-32 uqx in a full screen flash the neo g9 increases to 1290 nits of brightness a small upgrade on the odyssey g9 which itself was a display hdr 1000 certified display and this is a very good result again we're not at the same level as the pg32 uqx but still more than sufficient for most hdr content then we get to sustain brightness in a 10 window and the neo g9 is actually a regression here compared to the regular g9 at 905 nits versus 1085 nits now this isn't a massive deal for hdr content but this did surprise me a bit and it only gets weirder from here when viewing sustained brightness versus window size i was a bit disappointed to see the neo g9 can't sustain 2 000 nits at any window size a bit disappointing given the pg-32 uqx can sustain 1700 nits with ease at a 10 window but even more surprising was that in the hdr standard mode it also can't hit 2000 nits at any point even with peak brightness in fact peak brightness is only superior then sustained in this mode at a 100 window and at really small window sizes which is not ideal given that if the monitor can do 1290 units at 100 window size there's no reason it should be incapable of that at 10 so how do you actually achieve 2000 hits with this monitor well you have to use the hdr dynamic mode which as we showed earlier has weird issues with tones and other artifacts in this mode sustained brightness is a little higher but the main difference is that at around a 10 window the neo g9 can do over 2 000 its peak again not quite sure why brightness falls off to below 1000 it's at a five percent window and why two thousands is so limited to this range of window sizes in this mode but the neo g9 can technically do what it says on the box there are also some notable brightness differences between the two modes when looking at eotf tracking basically what these graphs are showing us is how well the neo g9 is producing the exact brightness levels that the content requests for hdr you expect it to follow the eotf tone curve and that means that when 500 nits is requested 500 nits is displayed what's super weird here is that the hdr dynamic mode has different eotf behavior to hdr standard in the standard mode the image is generally too dim relative to what it should be displaying you can see here that when the content the yellow line requests 400 nits the monitor the gray line is showing more like 250 nits which doesn't give us as impressive highlights as the monitor is capable of meanwhile the dynamic mode has much better adherence to the eotf curve but doesn't give us a linear line in the sections it needs to which i think contributes to some of the artifacts including raised black levels as shown by this section here so in layman's terms what do all of these charts mean for the neo g9's hdr brightness when the standard mode the image looks better in terms of colors and tones but is generally too dim relative to what it should be and the monitor can't reach the advertised 2000 nits in the dynamic mode image brightness is much better and you can hit 2000 nits but tones look off and quite weird at times with raised black levels this is disappointing because the hardware is clearly here to show excellent hdr brightness it's just samsung hasn't tuned it very well even with the latest firmware the ideal situation would be taking the high brightness of the dynamic mode and the flat tone curve of the standard mode and combining them into the one excellent hdr mode that provides great image quality and the full brightness capabilities of the panel this is totally possible through a firmware revision but you can never fully rely on future software updates to be made so we have to review the monitor as is now to be totally fair while the level of brightness isn't as good as it should be in the hdr standard mode content still generally looks pretty good in this mode it's clearly giving you some level of hdr experience and brightness does get quite high at the right times i just find it frustrating that we've got the right hardware here but the ideal use of the hardware is stuck somewhere between two software settings in a mode that isn't provided what doesn't change significantly between the two hdr modes and what remains excellent at all times is the dynamic contrast capabilities of this panel thanks to its high zone count fald backlight i could show you charts comparing the full screen flash contrast and ideal situation contrast ratios but there wouldn't be much point as the backlight fully switches off at times when displaying full black so the best case scenario for contrast with this panel is infinite contrast but on top of this the odyssey neo g9 performs exceptionally when bright and dark areas are placed close together a worst case scenario for lcd monitors with full array backlights the combination of a high zone count and va technology means the neo g9 is significantly better in terms of hdr contrast ratio in the worst cases than any other lcd monitor i've tested so far we're looking at 2.5 times better performance than the pg-32 uqx which itself isn't bad but in practice this leads to a lot less blooming with the neo g9 in tricky conditions like star fields compared to ips based displays like the pg-32 uqx even in a checkerboard test for contrast the neo g9 destroys its competition especially in the high brightness checkerboard results are less good in the low brightness checkerboard due to what i believe are similar issues to what i described previously with the hdr standard mode but regardless there is no doubting the neo g9 has the best contrast capabilities i've seen yet from a gaming monitor outside of oled products and this is why despite some strange brightness results in some tests the neo g9 still looks awesome in a lot of hdr content overall the samsung odyssey neo g9 is in my opinion an excellent gaming monitor and only improves upon the foundation established with last year's odyssey g9 many areas to this monitor's performance are unchanged with the new version but that's a good thing as samsung was already leading the pack in areas like motion performance especially with a va panel in general i think gamers will be very impressed with how fast this monitor is it's got a high 240hz refresh rate elite response times and no dark level smearing issues which have plagued prior va panels the variable refresh rate experience is great it's a huge and very immersive monitor with a perfect resolution that's still playable with modern gpus though you will need something high-end i'm not the biggest fan of curve monitors but even i think the 1000r curve adds to the experience when gaming with this sort of super ultrawide color performance also very solid and like with motion performance remains pretty much unchanged from the prior model same wide gamut capabilities which are decent though not amazing same good brightness in the sdr mode same sort of native contrast and so on while i probably wouldn't buy a g9 for productivity or content creation the content consumption experience here is very strong but the big deal about the neo g9 is the upgrade to proper hdr capabilities 2048 zone backlight with full array local dimming 2 000 it's a peak brightness in practice this provides a significant upgrade to the hdr experience over the odyssey g9 which wasn't really a true hdr monitor with only a pathetic 10 edge lit zones when you increase the backlight zone count by 200 times suddenly a new world of hdr experiences are open and this display ends up with the best contrast ratio i've measured yet in tricky hdr conditions with an lcd panel only beaten by oleds in many instances it looks really good whether that's watching hdr videos or playing hdr games and it can do this right up to 240hz with variable refresh rates the only significant drawback to the hdr experience and really the monitor overall are some weird brightness characteristics the mode that can achieve 2000 nits doesn't look great and the other mode is a bit too dim in some instances this isn't a hardware issue though and i'm confident it could be addressed with a firmware update whether or not samsung actually does fix it though is another matter but i hope they do because it's the only thing holding this display back from near perfection when it comes to the price tag it is an expensive monitor no doubt about it 2500 u.s is in premium moneybags territory however there's a couple of things at play firstly there's really nothing like it on the market both in terms of form factor and hdr gaming capabilities that makes it hard to judge whether it's too expensive or not because if you want this form factor then what other choice is there secondly i'd much rather have the neo g9 than the asus pg32uqx which is an insane 3 000 us dollars and has a larger range of limitations including no hdmi 2.1 of course provided you're happy with an ultrawide the other consideration is an oled screen like the lg c148 which i could understand as it's a thousand dollars cheaper but i feel the neo g9 is a bit better suited to use as a gaming monitor of course each has its pros and cons but for the first time i feel the neo g9 is at least providing some genuine competition to the favorite oled tv options and i'm not nearly as disappointed with the hdr gaming experience on this monitor as i have been with a lot of the prior models that i've tested anyway that's it for this review of the samsung odyssey neo g9 been an interesting one always like looking at these sort of high-end displays that provide us a look into the future of xjr technology and i feel like we're really starting to see some movement in the hdr gaming space for pc monitors which is great to see and samsung if you're listening an odyssey g7 with this sort of mini led backlight i think would sell like absolute hotcakes so please make that sort of display anyway if you're interested in supporting our monitor testing you can do so via the links in the description below we've got our patreon and floatplane accounts if you sign up there get access to our icc profiles that we create for these reviews our discord community where you can chat about monitors at any time and all sorts of other pc related stuff and we've got monthly live streams and all sorts of other things also consider supporting our fundraiser for mental health research to get me to shave off this moustache links to that are in the description below and yeah thanks for watching i'll catch you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 185,831

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: XQeOkmKpBxQ

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Your_Depressed_Soul]

meanwhile g7 peeps: oqgbolfavlc lqegl qelv l1egl 1eflb1eglbelgbl1rgleqglo sllqdlvwlfglqfb ooga booga where upgrade

[u/82Yuke]

what could be the reason to limit hdmi 2.1 to 144hz lol

[u/TheWalkingDerp_]

Here's hoping they're gonna release a 34" G7 version of this. Still beyond me how they made a 34" G5 but not G7...

[u/moist_muffin_maan]

I just want this in a 21:9 apsect ratio, would be almost perfect

[u/Mikey21420]

It does make me wonder how Apple engineered the new iPad screen. It seems a lot of companies are struggling to get to high zone densities. I remember reading about how they acquired a patent for advanced micro LED tech, so I do wonder if that’s just a cut down version for mini-LED 🤔.

[u/VictoriusII]

No 2k brightness, who would've thought...

[u/Wellhellob]

Color gamut is a joke. It's not just about contrast. Also 2k brightness is literally fake marketing.

[u/dragonfliet]

Excellent. Now do it again in a flat 32" form factor at 4k.

[u/-Negan--]

A damn impressive product. The Asus MiniLED being IPS the dimming algorithm has to work a lot harder in more complicated scenes where as this display will offer superior HDR.

A 27” version of this would be pretty cool, it makes sense to have a version for those who prefer 27” but in its own right this is a class leading monitor.