49” OLED Is Downright Beautiful

This is the most insane monitor that we’ve ever tried and it’s seriously impressive. The Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 is a 49” behemoth with a dual QHD display for a whopping 5,120 x 1,440 resolution. Which means this has an aspect ratio of 32:9 which takes immersion to the next level.

We tried games like Cyberpunk 2077, Kena Bridge of Spirits and even fast paced shooters like Modern Warfare 2. On top of that, did we mention that this is an OLED panel with a 240Hz refresh rate? So not only does it look incredible, it feels incredible. This is something that is exclusively reserved for PC gaming only, so for those of you on consoles, perhaps it’s time to build a PC.

But do note that this has a sticker price of S$3,399 or US$2,199. That’s a lot for sure, but perhaps it’s well worth it? What do you think?

Design

Now to start off, Samsung has been using the same name for this very monitor for a while now. So to be more specific, this is the latest model which is G95SC. But model name aside, the most obvious difference would actually be the design itself because Samsung has totally redesigned it, especially the stand. Gone are the two long legs, now replaced with a huge solid chunk of metal. In our opinion, this looks way classier and takes up way less desk space at that.

The overall monitor design is tastefully done as well, with silver as the main theme that is accentuated with an acrylic ring right in the middle that houses a ring of RGB. We have it set to Aurora Rotation and it provides a nice subtle glow against the wall, especially if the wall is white.

Of course, with this being a super ultrawide monitor, don’t go expecting portrait orientation here. All you get is the standard height and tilt adjustments which is more than enough to position the display how you want it to be.

Now you can also choose to VESA mount it as it does have the 100 x 100mm mounting positions, but you have to make sure that the monitor arm fully supports the weight as the G9 OLED weighs 12.9kg with the stand and 9.2kg without.

Talking about connections, it’s really simple here despite this quite the behemoth. All you get is HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4 and a Type-C port that only supports data. For our testing, we did it all using DisplayPort with our gaming PC but HDMI 2.1 is great as well and will make this monitor fully compatible with the PS5 and Xbox Series X.

OLED, 49-Inches Of It

But anyways let’s now talk about that OLED panel itself, the very reason why one might even be interested in this.

So we’re talking a 49” OLED with a 32:9 aspect ratio and a 1800R curvature, sporting a resolution of 5,120 x ,1440 running at 240Hz. It’s also capable of 10-bit colour, cover 99% DCI-P3 and supports FreeSync Premium Pro. The typical brightness is about 250 nits, while the peak brightness is about 400 nits and there’s also full support for HDR10+ and DisplayHDR 400 True Black.

Now that’s quite the mouthful but this is one feature packed monitor and every single spec is what makes this really awesome.

The image quality is just downright amazing. OLED is king when it comes to colour reproduction and contrast levels. Everything is just that much more vibrant and lively and just looks like it should.

Take Cyberpunk 2077 for example, the neon lights and dark vibe of Night City is enhanced ever more with the use of OLED. When paired with a powerful PC sporting the RTX 4070 Ti, we could even crank the details and run Path-Tracing for the absolute best visual experience and the Odyssey G9 OLED delivers in spades, in HDR no less.

It was a night and day difference, switching between this very monitor with a really high-end IPS monitor. OLED really takes the cake here. There simply is no comparison.

Even when you look at a game like Kena: Bridge of Spirits, a game which utilises a much more vibrant colour palette and distinct visual style, the Odyssey G9 OLED renders everything beautifully. It just looks stunning.

Now some of you might think that the resolution is a little insane for most PCs to run it and we’ll actually say, that’s not quite right. While 5,120 x 1,440 is essentially two 16:9 1440P displays put together, the resulting resolution is actually still less than that of a 16:9 4K display. That means it’s actually easier to drive this display than say a 4K IPS monitor or OLED TV for that matter.

On top of that, this panel is capable of a 240Hz refresh rate which is a huge boost when compared to 120Hz or 144Hz. So not only do your games look that much better now, they still feel just as great or perhaps even better since OLED boasts a grey to grey response time of just 0.03ms.

So all in all, it’s an amazing monitor and it really is. But they are certainly a few quirks about it to take note of, should you be really interested in owning one for yourself.

Things To Note

The first of which is the size and aspect ratio itself. This is one huge monitor and so you best be prepared to have a desk that can actually accommodate the whole thing. The 32:9 aspect ratio is highly subjective depending on the kind of use case you might want to use this monitor for.

If we’re talking gaming, most modern games nowadays do support such an aspect ratio. Heck, even CS:GO fully supports it. But we would say that not a lot of genres really benefit from such an extreme ultrawide aspect ratio. In general, we would say that story driven RPG games, driving, flight and first-person simulator type games work best. That’s where you really benefit from the added peripheral vision that the 32:9 aspect ratio provides.

If we’re talking fast paced shooters such as Modern Warfare 2 or CS:GO, while the games do fully support it, we would say that it’s less than ideal. Important UI elements such as your minimap and ammo counter are pushed all the way to the edges, essentially robbing you of important key elements that do actually impact the gameplay experience.

There are also many games that outright do not support ultrawide, which means you can only play them with black bars throughout.

So when it comes to gaming, you have to be very specific and know what kind of games you play, where you’ll actually enjoy and have an enhanced experience when paired with such a monitor. If not, we’ll suggest standard 16:9 monitors for the most part, which will also pair nicely with the next-gen consoles.

Now we do want to touch on one other peculiar restriction that Samsung has with the G9 OLED and that’s Game Mode. 240Hz is only accessible when Game Mode is enabled. Should Game Mode be toggled off and any other Picture Profile is to be used, the max refresh rate is capped at 120Hz. So you might be thinking, well, just use Game Mode all the way then?

That’s a possible option, but we would actually only recommend using Game Mode when you’re actually playing games. When Game Mode is turned on, the refresh rate can now be set to 240Hz and this is also where HDR comes into play. HDR gaming is amazing with the OLED and it really takes games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Resident Evil 3 up a notch.

But with how HDR works in Windows, it’s not necessarily the best experience with general PC usage. Within the G9 OLED’s OSD, there is the option to set the Peak Brightness. When HDR is enabled, we highly recommend setting to High as this means that the display will output as white a white it possibly can, which makes things like neon lights and explosions stand out.

However, this also means that when you have a small window of white on the desktop, the brightness reduces dramatically once you expand that window to the full-screen. It’s just how OLED works.

You can set the Peak Brightness to off and this essentially lowers the max brightness of the entire display such that you don’t get that constantly changing brightness no matter the area of white on display but in turn, those neon lights and explosions don’t punch as well.

So if you’re planning to just use the OLED for general usage or even content creation, we would actually highly recommend turning off Game Mode and using one of the standard Picture Profiles with HDR turned off. While this might limit the max refresh rate to just 120Hz, the overall brightness and colour stays consistent throughout. It’s easier for your eyes and much better for reference and more.

And yes, it does work well as a multi-tasking focused monitor. Thanks to the wide aspect ratio, you can easily use it just like you would with two 16:9 27” 1440P monitors or do a triple window setup natively with Windows 11.

Lastly, did we mention that this is actually a smart monitor? That means the OLED G9 actually runs Tizen, the same as the Samsung TVs and you can simply watch Netflix or YouTube and the likes without the use of your PC. In our opinion however, this isn’t ideal as most of your content is just going to be black barred.

And for those of you who’re concerned about OLED burn-in and what not, well… we can’t say for sure but Samsung does include some OLED care features which will help mitigate that for as long as possible.

Purely PC Gaming Territory

Ultimately, this is a gaming monitor specifically for PC gaming and in that regard, it does perform admirably. But is it worth the sticker price of S$3,399 or US$2,199?

As long as you know what you’re getting yourself into, we do feel it’s an easy recommendation.