SAMSUNG Odyssey G5 34″ Curved Gaming Monitor

Pros: Phenomenal value, great performance and specs for price. No defects, the curve is smooth, 1440p res is awesome and 144hz is awesome. Cons: Only one HDMI 2.1 port unfortunately, but that’s the only downside to this great monitor. Overall Review: Definitely recommend this to anyone who wants 2k resolution (don’t really need 4K res), 144hz, a reliable brand, HDMI 2.1 and curved display.

Pros: Full 144 Hz Frequency now in Res above 1920×1080. Full 1 ms Response Time now in Res above 1920×1080. (DisplayPort Cable of powerful Caliber required for this… As of the time of this Review, i’m using the Cable: “Coboc CL-DP8K-6BK DisplayPort to DisplayPort 1.4 Cable, DP 1.4 Male to Male – 8K@60Hz Resolution Ready DP to DP Cable in Black – 6FT” Also purchased here on NewEgg. I DIRECTLY advise against attempting to get away with using ANY DisplayPort Cable of lower caliber then 1.4 Standard for 144 Hz + 1 ms, & Length greater then 6ish Feet!) Looks epic good! Compared to the prior Samsung Syncmaster, imho the Stand is sturdier & feels less scary to manipulate & position, like when carefully scooting around the Desktop trying to fine tune its Desktop Positioning. (& I mean the Hardware Desktop, not the OS Desktop mind you.) I’m not totally sure on this, but it feels to me like the Curve of this Screen is even better in terms of viewing comfort then this Monitor’s Ancestor… Compared to the Syncmaster, unplugging & replugging Locking DisplayPort Cables is less uncomfortable & difficult for thicker fingers like mine. Cons: This Monitor’s Instruction Book swears that the Monitor can be tilted up, but I can’t figure out how to do it… it can’t quit seeming like the Stand is 100% rigid & inflexible & no attempt to push forward on the Monitor Screen Bottom & push back on the Monitor Screen Top at the same time to make it tilt like how I did with the Samsung Syncmaster Screen ever makes it move & i’m afraid to try pushing hard or it feels like i’ll break the connection between Monitor & Stand… & the Instructions are useless as to telling me HOW to perform the Screen Tilting. This aspect of the Monitor Instructions is in dire need of fix. Lucky for me i’ve changed my mind about trying to Tilt the Screen up after discovering my Center Speaker of my “Logitech Z906 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System – THX, Dolby Digital and DTS Digital Certified – Black” (Guilty Confession: Bought elsewhere… regret…) turned out to not be able to sit in the space under the Screen & in the nook of the Stand Legs, let alone without blocking access to the Monitor On/Off Button. Gonna add a Desk Riser to my Strategy to address this Issue + raise Monitor to Eye Level as a substitute for Tilting Screen up. I’m curious if the Monitor Making Devs somehow never expected any User of this Monitor to 5.1 Speaker instead of 2 Speaker… I humbly suggest please taking 5.1 into account in the future… 5 Speaker Surround Sound is useful for better enjoyment of many kinds of Games, including but not limited to “Hunt: Showdown”… Overall Review: This Monitor’s rocked thus far once I got it Hooked Up, Old Monitor Drivers booted, New Monitor Drivered up, & games I play changed to new Res Setting. Also took notice that compared to the Syncmaster’s Menu Interface, this one’s seems improved in Display Performance. This is written from the point of view of usage for a Gaming PC running on W10 Home, & a “SAPPHIRE Radeon VII DirectX 12 21291-01-40G 16GB 4096-Bit HBM2 PCI Express 3.0 x16 ATX Video Card” Graphics Card. (Still have no clue why Hunt: Showdown even on this bad boy is averaging 55 – 70sh FPS… CPU might be Bottleneck…?) My condolences to those who live the dreaded nightmare of getting this Monitor then falling victim to Factory Defect &/or Shipper Mishandling. P.S. Hope my Review wasn’t too yappy.

Pros: This monitor is almost entirely pros. I genuinely love this product. I did however experience some cons. Cons: -The stand is awful. Factor in the price of a new stand or vesa mount if you’re considering the odyssey g5 34″. It only has a slight vertical tilt which feels like you’re gonna break something when adjusting it. The monitor rests tilted towards your keyboard, if you tilt it upwards to a more enjoyable viewing angle, it slowly settles back into the down position. The stand is why I docked an egg. It really is the worst. Think buying toilet paper when covid hit. It’s that bad.-Flickering issue. So for the first week of owning it I noticed a brightness flickering issue in things like games, blender, photoshop. After some googling I found the identical flickering issue on the 240hz G7. There was a simple firmware update to fix the G7 flickering. However, the firmware update file listed on samsung’s website for the G5 34 (M-T5500GGZA-1006.0[3F6C].bin) doesn’t work for the G5 34. Monitor keeps saying, “No update files found on USB”, tried with several usbs all formatted to FAT32, put the (.bin) file at top of directory, it just doesn’t work, it’s as if the file is for the 32″ 144hz monitor instead of the 165hz 34″. They both share the same firmware file download but have different specs, doesn’t make sense. Turns out it doesn’t matter, the reason my Odyssey G5 34 was flickering is because I had gsync enabled in my nvidia control panel. My previous monitor was a 24″ gsync dell, so when I upgraded to this one I didn’t think to disable the gsync option due to the fact this is a freesync monitor. There really wasn’t much information about the G5 out there so diagnosing this was a huge pain. Hopefully someone who also has gsync enabled from their previous monitor can read this and solve their issue. -Final con but it’s not the monitor’s fault. Hooking this monitor up to my 1080ti with the provided display port cable caused my pc to take longer to boot up. My boot time is normally around 5-10 seconds. It ramped up to about 30-60 seconds. Seems trivial but it genuinely annoyed me. And the longer boot times only began after getting this monitor so I suspected it was related. I started digging, turns out this monitor runs display port 1.4, 10 series nvidia cards and older require a firmware update to enable compatibility with the display port 1.4 feature. The website I found claimed a display port 1.4 monitor plugged into a graphics card that isn’t display port 1.4 enabled can cause slower boot times, hang on boot, and even failed boot. Updated my 1080ti’s firmware and boot speeds are back to 5-10 seconds. Again, I hope someone that’s experiencing the same issues reads this and solves their problems because this monitor is definitely worth keeping. Overall Review: Overall? This is an amazing monitor, it performs as advertised. The toggle menu is easy to navigate. HDR was bashed by a lot of the reviews I read but I personally found it enjoyable and pleasant on the eyes. The 1000R curve was another complaint from some others but I genuinely enjoy it. First time looking at it I thought I made a mistake buying a 1000R but after dropping in my first match of warzone I completely forgot I even bought a new monitor, it wasn’t until I got sent back to the lobby that I remembered life existed around me. Very immersive experience. Would definitely recommend, especially if there’s a sale going on. Was on sale with an addition promo discount when I grabbed mine. You’re going to need those savings to invest in a vesa mount as the stand, and I can’t stress this enough, is garbage.