Samsung has announced its first OLED gaming monitor, the 34-inch Odyssey OLED G8. It’s also one of the company’s first gaming monitors we’ve seen, including Samsung’s gaming hub, which allows people to stream games from services like Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Google Stadia, or Xbox Game Pass without needing a console or PC. (The feature, which also lets you stream movies from services like Amazon Prime, Netflix and the recently upgraded Samsung TV Plus, has been available on Samsung’s Smart Monitor line, but those aren’t really built for gaming.) But though it seems like a perfectly reasonable rendering in its own right, there are a few confusing things about it as well as some key unknowns.
However, let’s put those aside for a moment and look at the specs of the OLED G8 – the 3440 x 1440 panel can operate at a refresh rate of 175 Hz and it has an 1800R curve (which relatively flat compared to monitors like the 1000R curved Odyssey G9 and LG’s OLED gaming monitor, the UltraGear 45GR95QE). It also supports AMD FreeSync Premium, which helps reduce stuttering or tearing while gaming by dynamically adjusting the monitor’s refresh rate to keep up with what your GPU is outputting. The monitor also comes with a height and tilting stand and has a built-in 5W stereo speaker.
In addition to its game and video streaming hub, the OLED G8 can also talk to and control IoT devices using Samsung’s SmartThings app. The company also says the monitor has an upgraded version of its Core Lighting Plus system, which uses lighting from the back of the monitor to splash your wall with colors that match what’s on your screen. In terms of ports, the monitor has Micro HDMI 2.1, Mini DisplayPort 1.4 and USB-C.
Using the micro and mini variants of the display connectors on such a large monitor is a bit odd, but there are a lot of slightly odd things about the Odyssey OLED G8. First up, the name – I assumed this monitor would just be an OLED version of Samsung’s existing Odyssey Neo G8, but the two monitors don’t really look alike. They have different sizes, refresh rates, resolutions and curvatures.
Stranger still is the display technology itself. Samsung has led the way in quantum dot OLED, or QD-OLED, which has delivered some very impressive results on gaming monitors like the Alienware AW3423DW. But Samsung isn’t entirely clear on whether it’s using any of its QD-OLED panels in the G8 OLED — the press release says the OLED panel is “along with Quantum Dot Technology.” The company did not immediately respond to The edge‘s request for clarification as to which panel the monitor is using. Since Samsung is showing off the screen at the IFA technology show, we hope to get a closer look at it in person and maybe some more info to boot.
Depending on the price, it can be a more than decent monitor. Samsung hasn’t released any details on that yet, but we should know relatively soon — the company says it’ll be “available worldwide from Q4 2022.” It seems likely that a few of its features, such as the improved lighting system and Gaming Hub, will make their way to the company’s 2023 lineup of gaming monitors, so if this isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, it might be worth a look. waiting to see what else Samsung has in the works.
