Samsung Odyssey G9 Neo Review – The monitor features a selection of additional cables including a Display Port, a USB-B cable for updates, a wall mount and a power cable

HDR performance is beyond the HDR1000 certification, too. In HDR test video, it's clearly capable of beyond 1,000 nits of brightness. Actually, you can see that in games, too. Pan the camera up to the sky and the desert sun in Cyberpunk 2077 and the panel absolutely sizzles. HDR video content looks spectacular, too. It’s no exaggeration to say the super-ultrawide Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 is a game-changing monitor. It can deliver not just stunning visuals but improve the way you play some titles. Unfortunately, it falls far short of perfection.

For the record, all this applies to both SDR and HDR modes and, on the Windows desktop, it’s all rather messy and distracting. You could say, so what? This monitor isn’t designed for serious content creation or office work. But at this price point, it’s surely a serious flaw. Now, of course, you can use another stand with this monitor, as it has a standard VESA-compatible mount. However, the massive weight of the monitor gets in the way again, and you're going to have to make sure you get a stand that can handle it. Honestly, we'd recommend just mounting it on your wall – and when we spoke to Samsung about this display its representatives told us the same thing. Overall, the local dimming is better than any other monitor we've tested as it helps to improve the contrast and make highlights pop. It looks really good when viewing from the center, but there's more blooming when looking at it from the side. It's on par with some local dimming features on TVs, but don't compare the score with TVs. Instead, we took real content local dimming videos like we do with TVs so you can see how it looks: The Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 is big. And while that is pretty obvious from the fact that it's a 49-inch ultrawide monitor, it doesn't hit until you take it out of its box to set up on your desk.

For instance, in Deathloop, we're usually hovering around 110 fps, with it often dipping down to 100 or 90 fps. That's still a fast frame rate, don't get us wrong, but we're pretty far off from being able to totally saturate this display. Unfortunately, that's also where the biggest issue in this monitor's design arises. Likely because of how heavy this monitor is – and trust us it's very heavy, the stand doesn't really have any channels you can use to hide cables. That makes cable management a little bit harder, which is definitely a shame with a monitor of this class. Because anyone who is going to fork over the cash for a monitor of this caliber is probably going to take their desktop appearance pretty seriously – obviously not us, though. In terms of performance, the display offers a fast 1ms GtG response time speed, an input lag of a mere 2ms, a 240Hz refresh rate and a quoted 2000-nit peak brightness while offering support for 95% DCI-P3 colour gamut along with 125% sRGB. It also supports NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro while playing nicely with HDR10 and HDR10+ content. Despite this, the Neo G9 isn’t a great monitor for day-to-day use or content creation. The super-ultrawide aspect ratio and aggressive 1000R curvature are a problem when using the monitor to view and edit photos and videos. A 32:9 aspect ratio isn’t a great fit when editing content for a 16:9 display. You’ll also see distortion introduced by the curve. A straight line will never look straight.

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The monitor’s color-gamut coverage testing is next. The Neo G9 spanned 100% of the sRGB color gamut, 85% of Adobe RGB, and 91% of DCI-P3. Those are excellent numbers, though shy of the near-perfect readings we got from the OLED G9. Based on GtG measured under internal test conditions. Results may vary by content and monitor settings (requires ‘Extreme mode' setting). The monitor also supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, the highest tier of AMD’s technology that eliminates screen tearing and stuttering by providing a variable refresh rate if you have a compatible graphics card. To that end, the gameplay was smooth from all angles, and while I did notice some warping when viewing from the sides, I saw no issues when seated right at the center of the monitor, exactly where you want to be to enjoy all of its ultrawide splendor. I also noticed the top of the monitor would get warm after extended play sessions, though it didn’t interfere with gameplay.

What that means is you have to decide whether you value what this display does best over the alternatives. If you want that crispy pixel density and punchy brightness on a scale never seen before, there's nothing that can touch this monitor. But, arguably, what this screen does best is actually productivity, especially when you factor in the picture-by-picture support.What’s more, SDR content is handled poorly in HDR mode. Some screens can be set up to render SDR almost indistinguishably in either SDR or HDR modes. That’s handy because it means you can simply toggle HDR mode and you’re good to go. But with the Neo G9, you’ll need to jump between modes to get the best experience. Another minor niggle—and a surprising oversight—is that you can’t have both pixel overdrive and adaptive refresh enabled at the same time.

The rated HDR2000 peak brightness isn’t just for show and the brightness is breathtaking indeed if you have the appropriate footage to fully appreciate it but its sheer size and image quality will ensure anything you view on it is given due justice. The screen fared well in our SDR color tests. Using a Klein K10-A colorimeter and DisplayCal calibration software, we measured the Odyssey G9’s delta-E (its variation from an established color norm) at a solid 0.26, and we determined that it covered 113.7 percent of the sRGB color gamut and 80.6 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut on its default settings (Custom mode).Added that this monitor is a better super ultrawide gaming monitor than the LG 49GR85DC-B in the Compared to Other Monitors section. We tested the local dimming with Adaptive Sync and Low Input Lag enabled and there isn't much of a difference when using either of those modes. While the display is intended for supporting ultra wide 32:9 aspect ratio gaming, you’ll need the appropriate game that natively supports it like Cyberpunk 2077 and Call of Duty Warzone as well as a sufficiently powerful gaming rig capable of running it too. The Neo G9’s incredible contrast provides a rich, deep image with great dimensionality. Yet, if anything, the high contrast ratio undersells the display’s strengths. Mini-LED completely eliminates the edge-lit glow that plagues most gaming monitors and ruins the ambience of dark scenes. Watching the sun set in an open-world game is a truly beautiful experience. That said, it's questionable how much you really notice this in-game as opposed to on the desktop. At normal game viewing distances, the heightened image detail is definitely there. It's just not super obvious versus Samsung's smaller (if you can call 49 inches small) and lower resolution G9 monitors. So, the funny thing about the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 G95NC is that it's at its most appealing as an all-round PC monitor rather than as a pure gaming panel.