It’s been a big year for Samsung and OLED with the S95C releasing earlier this year bringing QD-OLED technology as well as the 34-inch Odyssey G8 OLED, but now they’ve just dropped its big brother in the 49-inch Odyssey G9.
Design-wise, the G9 is very similar to that of the G8 with its silver stand that is very simple to put together, although it is a little bit wider given there’s a massive 32:9 display on either side of it. It has a sleek silver metal finish, and whilst I’m normally a fan of all black tech, it gave it a high-end quality that I really enjoyed.
It can’t be a gaming monitor without RGB lighting, and that’s been cleverly placed in a translucent bulb at the back of the monitor. It can go through your standard rotations such as breathing or putting out rainbow lighting, or it can even replicate what is on screen with CoreSync which is great if you’re playing in a dark room and want that extra immersion through lighting.
Whilst I had a small issue with Samsung only going with Micro HDMI and Mini DP on the G8, there’s a wider variety of ports here with Micro HDMI, full HDMI, full DP, a USB-C port for power/data as well as two upstream USB-C ports as well. It’s a much better offering for a high-end monitor.
When it comes to the actual display, this is a ginormous monitor at 49-inches. It’s absolutely glorious to look at but make sure you’ve got your measurements down before you buy it as it will need a mighty bit bench to sit on (see it pictured on my table here).
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Given it’s got an OLED display it’s impressively slim at 4.5mm at its thinnest point meaning it’ll look great on your desk. It has an 1800R curve which isn’t too overwhelming, but enough to help keep the entire display within eyesight.
It has a 5,120 x 1440 resolution with a 32:9 aspect ratio and it’s capable of 240hz. When you’re gaming on this thing, it’s hard not to be blown away with just how much fits on the display. It breathes new life into games and if you’ve got the PC to run games at their best quality, you won’t be disappointed.
At 250 nits of brightness, it doesn’t quite rival the Samsung S95C, but given it’s a QD-OLED display, it’s able to has an incredible contrast ratio meaning it can produce those inky blacks whilst still throwing out great highlights and colour vibrancy.
Something Samsung has started doing with their monitors in the last year or so is including their Tizen OS on monitors. This means that even without connecting anything to the monitor, you’re getting the full smart TV experience including the ability to watch Netflix, Apple TV+ or any other streaming service that you’d find on your TV on the display. This is a great for a bedroom or office where you might want to watch TV on this stunning display when you’re not using it for productivity of gaming.
On the G9 there’s also the brand new Samsung Gaming Hub which means you can boot into the likes of Xbox Cloud Gaming or NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service right from the TV itself, which is great if you’re wanting to play the latest Xbox game but don’t have access to a console.
You can even connect a keyboard/mouse to browse the web without connecting a computer, and whilst I can’t think of too many reasons why you’d need to do this, it’s better to have the functionality built in than not have it at all.
The TV also comes with a standard TV remote, for controlling volume and going through settings. This all does mean that there’s a little bit more of a setup that what’s required with other standard monitors, but it’s worth it in my opinion.
The Samsung Game Bar functionality is also included with the monitor. For those that have used a Samsung TV in the last 3-4 years, it’s a very similar experience with response time, FPS, game picture modes and virtual aim point all being on offer with a quick way to turn them off and on.
There’s also a number of measures in place to prevent burn-in such as pixel shift and auto sleep, but I’d still recommend being a little bit more careful given it is an OLED and whilst computing, obviously there can be elements that stay on screen longer than with a TV. When it comes to glare, there definitely seemed to be less here than what I remember with other ultrawides such as the Alienware AW3423DW. I was primarily using it in front of a window and still able to see clearly even in dark scenes.
