Samsung has officially announced a couple of gaming monitors under the Odyssey lineup, and one of them, the Odyssey G9 which is the better one in both was showcased at the CES 2020 event in Las Vegas. At the event, we got to check out the Odyssey G9, and while it looked like a gadget from a sci-fi movie, it practically has a lot to offer as well.
The Samsung Odyssey G9 is an ultra-wide gaming monitor and the company claims that it is the world’s first Dual QHD display with a resolution of 5120×1440 pixels. The refresh rate that it boasts is 240Hz and the response time is 1ms. It has a 49-inch Quantum-Dot LED display and the aspect ratio of it is 32:9 and a curvature of 1000R. Even the brightness of this new monitor is high, rated at 1000cd/m2.
It is a glossy white finish on the Odyssey G9, and the back of the monitor has something called the “futuristic Infinity Core Lighting glowing rear core” that lights up and it is customizable with up to 52 colors and 5 lighting effects. It looks like Iron Man’s arc reactor and it does look like something worth showing off, but for gamers who have their setups towards the corner of the room would not find a need for something like this on the back of the monitor.
Only Samsung knows the reasoning behind that name, and while we would have loved to see the light thrown onto a wall to see how it lights up things in a dark room where gamers usually spend hours being indulged into heavy firing, it was in an open booth with not much to view and judge about that Infinity core from the back, and it just looked good, not so bright as it would usually have looked if in a room.
There’s support for AMD FreeSync 2 and Nvidia’s G-Sync on the Odyssey G9, so you would be getting the required gaming experience if you are into professional esports, but only if you can easily view everything on this ultra-wide monitor where things happening on such width won’t be easy to follow with the need for head turning left and right continuously. Based on what we heard from the people visiting the Samsung booth to check these monitors, they’d be pretty happy to give up on the triple monitor setup they currently have if Samsung prices it well enough.
While the price of the Odyssey G9 is not yet known, it sure won’t be affordable enough, with those features offered on it. It is made for those who really have a purpose of it, rather than for showing off a 1000R curvature monitor with that QHD resolution. I was at the booth watching people try out games on the monitor and they did struggle to see everything happening on the widescreen in real-time, so it would be a choice only for someone who has used something close to this already and is ready to get to a newer width. As said, it would boil down to the pricing, knowing that it is from a brand that is capable of delivering the best, there won’t be any doubts regarding the quality of the display and the think-process behind the 1000R curvature on the single monitor.
