Alienware’s QD-OLED gaming monitors are a worldwide wonder

Imagine everything you want in a gaming monitor – bright and beautiful display, fast refresh rates for silky smooth graphics, HDR to really make everything shine – and very likely You’ll find it in Alienware’s 34 Curved QD-OLED monitors. This is one of the first monitors to ship with Samsung’s Quantum Dot OLED panel, and it’s stacked with other features that will help you out. Halo Infinite match all the more satisfying. Although it seems a bit luxurious for $1,299, compared to Apple’s $1,599 Studio Monitor it is in fact an act of stealing. (Or maybe I’m just saying that to myself to justify buying this.)

I’ll admit this first: I a sucker for super wide screens (21:9). Having a lot of horizontal space makes it easy to organize multiple apps at once, and it’s much neater than a multi-monitor setup. So when Alienware revealed that it was finally launching its OLED micro-displays worldwide, I was sold. While OLED has cemented its place in high-end TVs, it took a while to reach computer screens (we’re just getting started). Regular OLED laptops a few years ago). What makes this display even more appealing is that it has all the benefits you’d expect from an OLED – deep black levels, great contrast, and no backlight bleed thanks to the individual glowing pixels – but the addition of quantum dots means you’ll continue to see vibrant colors as the screen gets brighter.

Advantage

• Bright and gorgeous QD-OLED display
• Continuous HDR maximum brightness
• Fast response time
• Multiple ports

Sure, this new technology means there’s another nasty display acronym to keep in mind, but at least QD-OLED will offer some other notable upgrades. According to Samsung, it will be able to reach a maximum brightness of up to 1,000 nits (like this Alienware monitor), while the cream color of current OLED screens reaches around 400 nits. More brightness isn’t everything, especially since OLED’s perfect black levels can produce some blinding contrast, but it’s still a meaningful step forward as LCD screens get brighter and brighter. than with Mini-LED backlight.

The Alienware QD-OLED display, like many 34-inch ultrawide models, has a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440. Think of it as an extra-long quad-HD display: It’s not as sharp as 4K, but it’s still a huge step up from 1080p. And since it doesn’t have as many pixels as a 4K display, you’ll be able to play many games at its native resolution without borrowing money for an RTX 3080 Ti. There’s also support for G-SYNC Ultimate, NVIDIA’s adaptive refresh rate technology that reduces stutter, as well as HDR 400 True Black. Alienware says it hits 99.3% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and it also comes with factory color calibration, both important features if you’re doing any production work.

But given the specs, does this monitor really look good in action? Yes, oh Yes. My eyes water while playing Halo Infinite’s the “Behemoth” map is based on the desert, it’s almost as if I’m seeing the sun reflected in the pristine sand. (It’s also a sign I need to lower the brightness a bit.) I continue to notice new details about my Spartan armor, thanks to the display’s impeccable contrast and color accuracy. It also took me a while to get used to the game Overwatch again, as my brain struggled to keep up with the QD-OLED’s quick 175Hz refresh rate. Games respond almost instantly, thanks to the QD-OLED display’s 0.1ms response time.

Compare to Dell’s 34-inch ultra-wide gaming monitor, which I tested for a few months last year, the Alienware QD-OLED looks noticeably better no matter what I’m looking at. Colors pop across the screen, even when I’m just scrolling through the web or watching movie trailers, and the deep curve always puts me in the middle of the action. You’ll have to live with the vertical black bars if you want to watch typical 16×9 videos in full screen, but personally, I’d rather have more room to play something in the corner or to the side of the screen. Let your TV handle the movies of the night – ultra-wide screens are all about multitasking.