Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 Review: Ultrawide QD-OLED Monitor

After the sustained rise of OLED televisions, monitor manufacturers are increasingly turning to the same display technology. The latest development is the QD-OLED panel, and at the time of testing only four gaming models of this type existed at 34 inches. The question is whether Samsung's Odyssey OLED G8 — sold in the UK as the Odyssey OLED G85SB, model LS34BG850SUXXU — can set itself apart from that competition.

Despite its considerable 34-inch size, with a screen diagonal of 86.3 centimetres, the OLED G8 is anything but bulky. Its slim panel makes the Samsung look more like a business display than a gaming monitor, and the matt-silver finish reinforces that impression, recalling Apple hardware. That is no bad thing. Build quality is equally strong, because the OLED G8 is made largely from aluminium.

Ergonomics is where the monitor loses a few marks. The Samsung can be tilted and adjusted for height, but it cannot be swivelled or rotated into portrait orientation. In practice the latter would make little sense anyway, because the OLED G8 uses a curved display. The manufacturer specifies a relatively tight 1,800R curvature, which means that a circle formed from many OLED G8 panels lined up side by side would have a radius of 1.8 metres. The curve reduces the distance from the eye to the edges of the image, so players can sink further into what is happening on screen. In testing that pay-off was real: the single-player title Hogwarts Legacy pulled the viewer straight into the game.

The 21:9 aspect ratio strengthens that effect. Compared with the conventional 16:9 display used by 27-inch and 32-inch monitors, the ultrawide format offers 33 per cent more horizontal space. Only larger screens can beat that, such as the Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 with its 32:9 aspect ratio and 49-inch diagonal. There is one small drawback: older games in particular often support only the classic 16:9 format, so players must live with black bars to the left and right. Most current titles, including Cyberpunk 2077, the aforementioned Hogwarts Legacy and Forza Horizon 5, do fill the screen on Samsung's 34-inch panel.

Films and series are a different matter, because they are almost always produced in 16:9. The exception is cinema releases in the ultrawide Cinemascope format, whose 2.35:1 aspect ratio corresponds roughly to the 21:9 shape of a 34-inch monitor.

The resolution is generously specified too. The monitor does not deliver 4K like its smaller 32-inch sibling, the Neo G8, but the 3,440x1,440 pixels of the OLED G8 — so-called UWQHD — still produce a pleasingly sharp image with a high level of detail. The real highlight, however, is the display technology itself: Samsung has not skimped, fitting the OLED G8 with a QD-OLED panel of its own manufacture.

The OLED display serves only as the foundation of this high-end monitor. Blue OLEDs initially generate a completely blue image, and quantum dots — hence the QD-OLED name — are then used as colour converters for the red and green pixels: when blue light strikes these nano-crystals, they glow red or green. Compared with conventional (W)OLED displays, QD-OLED panels absorb less light, which in theory makes them brighter.

In practice, laboratory measurement recorded a maximum brightness of 258 candela per square metre with SDR content, while HDR managed 342 candela per square metre. Samsung appears to be capping the potentially high luminance of QD-OLED in order to extend the panel's life. That the monitor is capable of more shows in specular highlights, which reached up to 1,000 candela per square metre across small areas.

Colour reproduction is faultless. Thanks to 100 per cent coverage of the sRGB colour space and 98.4 per cent coverage of DCI-P3, the OLED G8 renders colours with real punch, while high colour accuracy of 97.6 per cent keeps skin tones natural. The low black level is also typically OLED-perfect, and this is where the technology's advantage tells. Unlike LCD panels, which use a backlight that still shines through slightly even on pitch-black content, OLED pixels emit light individually and simply switch off for black areas. The result is a very solid, almost three-dimensional image.

Another benefit of OLED pixels is the short response time that matters so much to gamers. The Samsung monitor needs just 2.6 milliseconds for its pixels to change colour, which produced a smear-free image even during hectic movement in testing. That is paired with a 175Hz refresh rate, meaning the monitor updates the picture 175 times per second, so opponents can be spotted earlier than on a 60Hz display — often the difference between victory and defeat.

One important caveat: because of the triangular subpixel structure of QD-OLED, hair-fine colour fringes form along high-contrast edges. This is most noticeable with black text on a white background, so the OLED G8 is less suitable for working in word processors and similar applications. Anyone who does not spend eight hours a day on text work can still use the monitor for home office duties.

For that use case the Samsung offers a USB-C port with DisplayPort functionality that simultaneously supplies laptops with power, at 65 watts of Power Delivery. A second USB-C connector can take an external hard drive, or alternatively charge a smartphone at 15 watts. Curiously, instead of using conventional DisplayPort and HDMI sockets, Samsung fits the G8 with the Mini and Micro variants of each. The technical specifications are the same, but only a Mini-DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort cable is supplied. Anyone wanting to connect a gaming PC over HDMI 2.1 must buy a Micro-HDMI-to-HDMI cable separately. The good news is that both HDMI and DisplayPort unlock the monitor's full 175Hz; over USB-C the ceiling is 120Hz.

The OLED G8 can do more still. If required, it works entirely without a PC or laptop, because it is a genuine Smart TV with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and all the familiar streaming apps. Even cloud gaming is possible. Its television genes are underlined by the supplied remote control, which Samsung otherwise packs with its TVs; alternatively the joystick on the rear can be used to navigate the menus. As with its Smart TVs, Samsung uses its own Tizen operating system, although the sometimes deeply nested menus are irritating. The integrated speakers, by contrast, are unusually good, delivering a full sound without turning tinny at higher volumes.

With its QD-OLED screens, Samsung has created serious competition for LG's WOLED panels, which include displays such as Corsair's Xeneon Flex. The newer QD-OLED technology appears not only in the OLED G8 and OLED G9, but also in the Alienware AW3423DW(F), the MSI MEG 342CDE QD OLED and the Philips Evnia 34M2C8600. Unlike those last few monitors, the Samsung OLED G8 does without active cooling, so it never irritates with fan noise. Combined with its innovative styling and a very fair asking price at the time of testing, it leaves the competition behind.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 is the best 34-inch gaming monitor to come out of this testing to date. Alongside perfect colours and deep blacks, the OLED monitor convinces with short response times and a high refresh rate. The only real grounds for criticism are the somewhat modest maximum brightness and the nature of the connectors.