Samsung Odyssey G81SF OLED Gaming Monitor Review: Gorgeous

Let’s trim to nan chase—Samsung's latest QD-OLED machine show is perfectly awesome, and I've loved having it astatine my table for nan past period aliases so. Every crippled I play connected it looks incredible, and it has quickly go nan centerpiece of my conflict station.

Even so, I'm still having problem recommending 4K high-refresh monitors to group who person to bargain and build their ain systems. Having a show pinch immoderate room to turn is nan correct choice, but nan spread betwixt capacity and capacity tin beryllium frustrating if you're connected different budget-friendly hardware. If you’re reasoning of making an upgrade, really bully 1440p screens are disposable for nether $400, and they mightiness beryllium a amended capacity fresh for astir people.

On nan different hand, if you’ve already sewage nan astir powerful gaming PC successful your friend group and you’ve sewage nan rate to spare, you’ll beryllium highly pleased pinch nan Samsung G81SF. It offers nan champion sheet type successful nan category, nan highest solution and refresh complaint modern systems tin reasonably manage, and nan suite of features to match.

Fast Refresh, High Resolution

The G81SF features Quantum-Dot OLED technology. (We person an in-depth explainer astir sheet types if you want nan method details.) The consequence is conscionable astir nan champion gaming show acquisition you tin person astatine nan moment. Colors are ace agleam and vivid, and shadows and acheronian areas wholly vanish into blackness. It makes maine want to move disconnected nan lights, put connected immoderate headphones, and settee successful for excessively galore hours of immoderate profoundly cinematic game.

For astir folks, nan QD-OLED screens are going to beryllium nan absolute champion gaming acquisition you tin find, but location are alternatives. If you’re conscionable group connected 4K and 240Hz, nan Mini LED type of nan aforesaid screen from Samsung has a slower consequence time, and won’t person nan aforesaid beautiful Quantum Dot-powered colors, but tin beryllium recovered for $700 aliases less. If you’re considering this screen, I don’t deliberation that 1 will impressment you astir arsenic much, but it does bespeak nan benignant of premium you’re paying for nan newest tech.

Given nan precocious refresh and resolution, leveraging adaptive refresh present will beryllium important for preventing tearing, and nan Samsung features FreeSync Premium Plus, alternatively than Nvidia G-Sync. The astir noticeable advantage to doing truthful is that it saves you immoderate bucks, pinch FreeSync screens mostly being a spot cheaper than their counterparts. The different advantage is that it useful pinch some Nvidia and AMD cards, truthful you won’t beryllium tied to 1 aliases nan different erstwhile shopping for GPUs.

The rumor for astir group will conscionable beryllium getting games to tally smoothly. I’m fortunate capable to person an RTX 5090 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) for reappraisal purposes. Even pinch Nvidia’s existent top-end, precocious released card, astir modern games won’t get anyplace adjacent to 240 FPS astatine 4K without important settings tweaking and wide usage of framework generation. If you’re connected a lower-powered aliases older card, you mightiness get disappointment to find that only Terraria runs astatine afloat solution and refresh rate. People pinch cards older than nan RTX 20 Series should avert their eyes, because it’s apt you won’t moreover beryllium capable to output astatine 4K and 240Hz, fto unsocial game.

Tech and Stand

It has a elemental level stand, which is sufficiently sturdy fixed nan comparatively dense screen, pinch a basal cablegram loop astatine nan base. It besides has RGB lights successful a mini ringing astir nan back, but successful bid to spot them your room will request to beryllium acheronian and your show reasonably adjacent to nan wall down it. You tin group them from nan on-screen display, truthful nary other package needed.

New monitors often travel retired of nan container pinch nan surface brightness turned measurement up, and I urge turning it down to anyplace from 20 to 30 percent. You mightiness beryllium amazed really overmuch it spares your eyes complete nan people of a fewer hours of gaming, and it will prevention you a fewer bucks connected your powerfulness bill. I tweaked a fewer different settings arsenic well, including turning down nan opposition to 40 and nan colour to 20.

It’s really important to touch connected nan ports, because some DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 trust connected Digital Stream Compression to scope 4K astatine 240Hz. Compression mightiness sound for illustration a scary connection here, but according to nan VESA nan effects shouldn’t beryllium visually apparent. Technically, nan HDMI larboard has a higher bandwidth, but I couldn’t show nan quality erstwhile switching backmost and distant betwixt them.