The Samsung CHG90, or the LC49HG90DMNXZA to present it its full and correct title, is by far probably the most ludicrous monitor I’ve ever seen. Measuring a whopping 49in throughout its fancy curved diagonal, this ultra-super-stupidly-wide 32:9, 3840×1080, 144Hz, HDR (let me catch my breath for a second) FreeSync 2 VA show is correct bonkers. And I type of form of adore it.
I’ve at all times been keen on ultra-wide screens and I exploit one day by day for work. They’re so handy, with the ability to have two home windows facet by facet with out feeling like they’re being squished in on the sides. Just pretty. It additionally means I’ve received a bit extra wiggle room to shift browser tabs round if considered one of my cats decides to plonk themselves in entrance of it to allow them to stare longingly at my mouse cursor.
But whereas my ultrawide monitor is an outdated 21:9, 2560×1080 mannequin, giving me a bit extra room than your typical 27in monitor, the CHG90 is actually two 27in 1920×1080 screens in a single, offering sufficient display screen actual property to have three full home windows open side-by-side and nonetheless have room to spare. Just consider the spreadsheet potentialities! Of course, it additionally means you may recreation in super-duper widescreen with none nasty black bezels getting in the best way.
Yes. Please.
And let me inform you, this isn’t any extraordinary form of widescreen gaming. Throw in a 144Hz refresh fee, excessive dynamic vary (HDR) help for brighter whites, darker blacks and extra vivid colors, plus FreeSync 2 for AMD graphics playing cards, and that is about as fully-featured a monitor as you’re going to get nowadays. The solely draw back is the worth, as you’ll must be ready to spend north of £1075 / $1100 for the privilege. Excuse me whereas I sit down for a second.
In some ways, it’s not shocking that such a daft endeavour instructions this sort of cash. No one else other than Samsung are making such mad display screen sizes, not to mention curved ones, and its seemingly a whole lot of additional options solely add to the general price. In truth, while you take a look at it subsequent to the remainder of at the moment’s best monitors, it looks like a relative cut price, as the one different HDR one you may truly purchase proper now could be BenQ’s SW320, which prices upwards of £1300 / $1500, and a number of the finest and largest non-HDR screens like Acer’s XR382CQK nonetheless go for round £800 / $820. In this gentle, one other £200 / $300 for HDR, a better refresh fee and FreeSync 2 somewhat than common outdated FreeSync appears, on paper, not that dangerous.
But is the CHG90 truly any good? I have to admit, I used to be skeptical after I first noticed it solely had a 3840×1080 decision. Spread throughout a monitor this broad, the CHG90 is true on the very fringe of what I’d contemplate an appropriate pixel density, coming in at 81.four pixels-per-inch. That’s mainly the identical as an ordinary 16:9, 27in 1920×1080 monitor, which can be borderline in my books, and I might by no means normally suggest somebody purchase a 27in 1080p monitor until they had been on a finances. At that dimension, you really need the crisp reassurance of a 2560×1440 decision, so to spend this sum of money on one thing that isn’t truly that sharp within the flesh stays considered one of my greatest rankles with it.
Admittedly, it doesn’t assist that the CHG90’s preposterously deep stand insists on shoving all these pixels proper up in your eyeball grill. Measuring 381mm deep, it typically means you’re solely sitting round 2ft or half a metre away from it, making it a lot simpler to identify these ever so barely jagged textual content edges than if it was additional again in opposition to the wall.
I must also level out that the stand is sort of as stupidly broad because the monitor itself, coming in at round 820mm with tough ruler measurements, and there wasn’t truly sufficient room on my desk for each it and my mouse mat ultimately. Luckily, the actual mouse mat I’ve received in the meanwhile is a inflexible RGB job, so it simply caught out over the facet. Needless to say, although, you’re going to wish a fairly large work house to accommodate it.
The factor is, although, whereas its pixel density may not look nice for each day computing duties, it’s a lot much less noticeable when taking part in video games. Far Cry 5 at 3840×1080 appears to be like fairly rattling beautiful, if I do say so myself, and taking part in Final Fantasy XV at this decision makes the entire ‘best boy’ argument null and void, as a result of none of them can compete with the monitor itself. It actually beats the faff of attempting to arrange three screens individually for widescreen gaming, and the CHG90’s 1800mm curvature radius actually does really feel prefer it wraps round your imaginative and prescient at this size, offering a much more immersive expertise than another curved 21:9 monitor I’ve used up to now.
Its image high quality impresses as effectively. Utilizing the identical ‘Quantum Dot’ expertise as Samsung’s high-end TVs, this VA panel delivers vivid, vivid colors that solely get higher when you allow HDR. In reality, Windows 10 still hasn’t got its act together on how to display HDR properly in your desktop but, as every part simply turns into an prompt boring mess. As a outcome, I did all my accuracy testing with HDR turned off, as this was the one strategy to get a correct concept of what it’s like.
Admittedly, on the CHG90’s default Custom image mode, my i1 Display Pro calibrator confirmed it wasn’t fairly as correct as different curved VA panels I’ve examined up to now such because the Acer Predator Z35p or Philips 349X7FJEW, however its 95.7% protection of the sRGB color gamut is actually nothing to smell at.
Indeed, the CHG90 had a better distinction ratio than both of these two screens, coming in at 2686:1 versus one thing nearer 2000:1. Its black ranges had been additionally considerably decrease, hitting a lovely 0.08cd/m2 (the nearer to 0.00cd/m2, the higher). This meant darkish patches of shadow seemed convincingly black and inky, and the transition again to gentle was filled with plenty of pretty, juicy element.
There are loads of different image choices to select from on the CHG90, together with a High Brightness mode, sRGB, Cinema and a complete host of recreation genres corresponding to FPS, RTS, RPG and the ambiguous AOS (which I can solely assume refers to Aeons of Strife, or MOBAs generally, as a result of I do not know what else it may presumably imply). Most of those, nevertheless, don’t offer you as a lot flexibility as Custom, so I caught with this one all through my testing.
Continuing my calibration journey, the CHG90’s peak brightness was a superbly first rate 240-odd cd/m2 on Custom with HDR turned off, which is greater than sufficient for workplace work and gaming alike, but when you actually need an additional enhance, High Brightness will take it as much as simply over 300cd/m2.
Of course, alarm bells could also be ringing for HDR aficionados at this level, as high-end tellies should have the ability to do at the least 1000cd/m2 to qualify for that coveted ‘Ultra HD Premium badge’. I’d additionally think about that almost all of cheaper 4K HDR TVs are doing greater than 300cd/m2 as effectively, although HDR (and by extension brightness necessities) isn’t technically a requirement to get the subsequent customary down, which is Ultra HD Certified.
On the face of it, it’s precisely the identical drawback I had with BenQ’s entry-level 4K HDR monitor, the EL2780U, whose max brightness of 280cd/m2 simply didn’t create a large enough influence for handsome HDR. That, at the least, had the excuse of solely costing round £329 / $500, however happily the Samsung CHG90 has two useful methods up its sleeve: native dimming and FreeSync 2.
Local dimming is the flamboyant method of claiming a show has a number of, individually managed backlight zones, however you’d usually solely encounter one thing like this in a top-end TV. The extra native dimming zones a show has, the extra succesful it’s of creating vivid sections vivid (and darkish sections darkish) with out interfering with the remainder of the picture, and this actually comes into its personal while you activate HDR and the CHG90’s FreeSync 2 help (or somewhat the confusingly named FreeSync Ultimate Engine in its onboard menu).
To shortly recap, extraordinary FreeSync is AMD’s adaptive body fee expertise, which matches the refresh fee of your monitor to the variety of frames being spat out by your appropriate AMD graphics card, serving to to eradicate tearing and stutter and retaining issues tremendous clean if it occurred to be struggling a bit.
FreeSync 2, in the meantime, throws AMD’s personal interpretation of HDR into the combo as effectively, requiring shows to hit sure picture high quality necessities (wider color gamuts, low latency and dynamic refresh charges) earlier than they’ll earn that additional ‘2’. On the one hand, this muddies the waters of HDR requirements even additional, which had been already fairly murky to start with as producers nonetheless can’t resolve on whether or not to go all in on HDR 10 or Dolby Vision, and that’s earlier than you get thinking about these aforementioned UHD certifications and the very fact Nvidia’s doing an analogous factor with its personal G-Sync expertise as effectively.
On the opposite hand, it simply kinda works. And it’s arguably among the best and convincing bits of HDR I’ve ever seen exterior of TVs.
In the opening of Far Cry 5, for instance, the glowing dials and management panels of your helicopter are all of a sudden reworked into vivid bursts of sunshine with HDR, native dimming and FreeSync 2 turned on, piercing the night time time gloom with such a vibrant depth that it nearly matched the expertise of watching it on my OLED TV.
When the sport shifts to sunlight, I may additionally see a smidge additional into the brilliant sunshine than I may with HDR turned off, and the very brightest spots hit a formidable 500cd/m2 after I caught my calibrator on them. The distinction in color vibrancy wasn’t as noticeable, all instructed, however the entire HDR impact positively made extra of an influence than the BenQ EL2870U.
Turn FreeSync 2 off (both altogether or by switching to the ‘Standard Engine’ within the onboard menu, which is actually simply extraordinary FreeSync help), and people white spots max out at simply over 300cd/m2, lessening the wow-factor and not likely delivering the form of amazo-image high quality you’d anticipate from a grand’s value of monitor.
It goes with out saying, after all, that you just’ll want a FreeSync-compatible graphics card to make the most of this, however the intensive checklist of supported elements on AMD’s web site means you need to be well-catered for in the event you purchased a graphics card within the final 4 years or so.
The Samsung CHG90 doesn’t cease there both when it comes to options. In its splendidly intuitive onboard menu, you’ll additionally discover a black equaliser that adjusts the brightness of darkish areas, and you may also modify the monitor’s response time. Adjusting the latter will have an effect on on the monitor’s total picture high quality, however it’s good to have the choice. Ditto for with the ability to activate a low enter lag possibility, which is supposed to assist minimise any potential enter lag by decreasing the time spent processing the video sign so you may react sooner to what’s occurring onscreen.
You can even save as much as three gaming profiles and map them to the buttons subsequent to the principle navigation stick, providing you with loads of flexibility when taking part in various kinds of video games. I additionally actually like how the principle UI offers you a potted abstract of all the important thing gaming options proper on the high, providing you with a pleasant overview of what’s what earlier than you dive into the principle bulk of the settings.
You’re well-catered for within the ports division, too, as you get two HDMI inputs, one DisplayPort, one miniDisplayPort, separate headphone and microphone jacks plus a two-port USB3 hub, considered one of which may cost your telephone as effectively. Throw in an low blue gentle filter for decreasing eye pressure and a height-adjustable stand with built-in tilt and swivel, and I don’t assume I may ask for something extra.
There’s no getting spherical that this factor prices an absolute fortune, however there’s additionally no denying the Samsung CHG90 is a beautiful, pretty monitor that delivers on nearly each entrance possible. The decision could also be a sticking level for some, however give me the choice of taking part in Final Fantasy XV in silly widescreen with no bezels at 144fps with the very best HDR I’ve ever seen on a monitor and it makes an especially convincing and compelling argument.
