This is the first of a series of gaming monitor videos that I will be doing, and I have a treat
for you today. We got two monitors to review from Samsung. The G7 and the Neo G7, both 32 inch.
These are primarily gaming monitors, but surprisingly,
one of these has a nice hidden smart feature that could make it a “better value for money” option.
I am Alex and I do down to earth tech videos.
There’s obviously a difference as well in price and features but we
will cover all those details throughout the video.
This is the 32” Odyssey G7 4K gaming monitor. It’s a flat, IPS panel,
with 144Hz and the advertised respond time of 1 millisecond.
It’s got an ULTRA HD resolution of 3840 by 2160 pixels, supporting Display HDR 400.
And this one here, which you can see behind me is the
Odyssey NEO G7 4K monitor. With Quantum MINI LED technology from Samsung… Another
absolute beast for monitor and some say… even better than the Neo G8.
I appreciate that these models very depending on where you are, so I
am putting the exact model on the screen for you, for both monitors.
Right, starting with the curved one… And hey.. this bad boy is not messing around.
With a refresh rate of 165 Hertz, and 1ms response time, you can really push this thing.
I’ve recently built this massively overpowered gaming PC, with the most powerful processor and
graphics card that money can buy right now… so we can really see what these monitors are capable of.
This curved model has HDR 2000 and two HDMI 2.1 ports, which is great.
Going beyond the just the spec sheet, this is FANTASTIC for gaming!
Before I go on, a little disclaimer I’ve used a lot of monitors and I know a little
bit about the technology behind it but I haven’t reviewed every monitor out there.
There are dedicated channels for monitor reviews with all the benchmarks that you
can think of… so I am not gonna sit here and pretend to be an expert, all of a sudden.
I’ve used professional monitors for work, and I’ve used plenty of budget
monitors too… but ultimately this is coming primarily…. from a consumer’s perspective…
and from someone who really enjoys gaming and creative work, more than anything else.
Let’s talk about that curve. After all that is the main feature on this display.
This 1000R Curvature, not gonna lie to you… It’s aggressive! I’ve never seen anything like this!
It tries to fill your peripheral vision,
giving you this INCREDIBLE immersiveness… Immersive. Immersive… I hate this word.
You know what I mean right? Makes you fell like you’re really.. IN THE GAME.
I’ve been using the 34” Alienware
monitor for a while now (I will share more in a different video)… And I love that ultrawide
aspect ratio, but I don’t know… there’s a lot to be said for this aspect ratio here!
And if you want, you can go into an Ultrawide game
view… which will give you 21:9 so you can see even more on the sides.
But the compromise there is you would see the black bars on top and bottom.
I am still getting used to it to be honest, but I think I prefer the full screen mode, in 16:9.
And this curvature… I don’t know what it is,
but for me it’s just really satisfying depending on the game I am playing.
Samsung says this 1000R curvature mimics the curvature of our eyes
so maybe that’s why I am enjoying it so much.
Now… this is a VA monitor, which technically is just a different
way of aligning the crystals that make the panel.
OK… I will stop.
What that used to mean is that you get quite a bit of smearing
or blurriness depending on the scenes or games.
Well, those days are gone it seems. We are getting excellent contrast,
I mean, unbelievable contrast which is to be expected, it being sold as a HDR monitor…
And to be fair high contrast has always been an advantage on VA panels,
but here we are gettign very little motion issues, if any!
And I think that’s probably because of that high refresh rate.
Either that or I'm not that sensitive to this sort of thing. I tried to pause and
freeze some of the frames here so you can take a look for yourself.
And this Alien thing is probably as far as I will go with benchmarking.
Talking about refresh rate… I know that 165Hz which is nuts… is not
the highest refresh rate out there, but honestly, this feels so smooth!
No ghosting or anything like that on this display.
At least I haven’t experience that in any of the games I’ve been playing.
My graphics card is really pushing this thing and… even though I’m running a 4090 RTX card,
in some games like Call of Duty with everything set to EXTREME…
It goes way past 120 FPS consistently which… at
4K is UNBELIEVABLE… My eyes are like… wow!! It’s pure eye candy!
But I haven’t see it reach 165 FPS yet.
The point being…Yes, you could go for 240Hz display (that’s my next video), but really
think about what games and what graphics cards you’re gonna need to get that output.
The games I enjoy the most are shooter games and racing games.
I do play other games, as you will see here,
but this monitor - to me… feels like it was made for these first person shooting games.
Call of Duty on this is amazing!
Destiny 2 is superb, HDR really comes to life here.
Although I paired this up with a fairly beefy PC build here… I
also tried it with a midrange build and the experience was great on both setups.
You could potentially use this monitor for productivity work…
but obviously it really comes to its own when you’re gaming.
An Excel spreadsheet on this would feel quite weird… I am not even gonna try it!
I know this monitor has been out for a while, but honestly, this picture quality is incredible!
Like you probably have, I’ve been watching a lot of these videos,
and now having the real thing in front of me, all I can say is… wow.
I mean YouTube is great and I will do my best to reproduce the quality
here for you but to the naked eye, what you see is just so much better!
And it makes a big difference when you are at the right distance as well. So if you’re not
sure about this monitor, I’d say go to a store and try and take a look for yourself before buying.
Also, another point is… Not everyone reviewing these monitors had the latest graphic cards…
So I don’t think many people have been able to show the true quality…
because graphic cards and games themselves needed to catch-up…
But I’ve been able to achieve insane FPS at 4K resolution! In some really high intensity games.
I’ve been using a lot of curved monitors and Ultrawide monitors
too for work but I gotta say… this takes it to a different level of immersion you know?
That word again…
And I think it’s to do with the technology Samsung are using here.
This mini-LED setup which Samsung is calling Quantum Mini-LED and
Quantum HDR 2000 is basically translating into superb depth and picture quality.
It has 1200 local dimming zones - I’m not just reading the spec sheet! This is important
because some companies will try to sell a HDR display, but only have edge-lit dimming zones.
And you’re not gonna get this level of contrast!
And this has highest 12-bit black levels, I mean… the picture quality on this is next level!
I am deliberately showing you footage here in my normal daylight setup,
right next to a massive window so you can see what it’s like in the most extreme of conditions.
Of course it will be sublime in the dark but… as you can see it’s
absolutely insane already even during the day.
From a specs perspective it’s delivering 2,000 NITS in peak brightness…
Now I’ve seen people actually testing this and yes, they were able to achieve
2000 nits.. actually even higher… but only for a small area of the monitor.
In one test that I’ve seen the guy was able to achieve more like 1200 nits consistently.
Which is very very bright! Just beware though, out of the box,
it comes quite dimmed so the first thing I did was walk the brightness right up to 100.
I will share a link to that video by the way, it’s actually a very informative video..
All I can say is, it’s pretty damn bright! Even if it’s …JUST…. 1200 nits in reality.
When playing some games I had to stop and look at the scenery because…
It’s just amazing to look at.
In games that have Ray Tracing and HDR,
you can really see the difference and this is where this monitor shines really.
It supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro,
and with that 1ms response time, it makes this an awesome display.
It makes even noobs like me, look half decent in front of the sweaty teenagers out there!
My graphics card like I said is a 4090 RTX card so I really like pushing everything
to the max on this PC, and paired with this monitor, everything just looks… impeccable.
Whether you have an AMD based graphics card or Nvidia-based, this monitor can handle it.
I didn’t notice any stutters or screen tearing at all, even in the most fast-paced games.
I did have an issue with Harry Potter, but it turned out to be a graphics
card issue which got solved with a firmware upgrade on the card itself.
This is such a flexible monitor too, you can swivel, tilt AND PIVOT!!! Which
is crazy at this curvature, but maybe there’s someone out there who would use it like this.
And of course, you can adjust the height to suit your setup as well.
I left it on its stand but it’s fully compatible with VESA mounts… so if
you want to put this on a monitor arm, you should have no problems with that.
Super convenient.
Talking about convenience, one of the most annoying things in
monitors is switching between devices, right?
In a lot of Samsung monitors now we are starting to see this feature, Auto Source Switch+ which
means, as soon as you power on a connected device, it will switch to that instantly!
So you can have your gaming PC, or laptop,
and something like a PlayStation 5 and switch between those very quickly.
I will show you what gaming is like on the PS5 as well, but before that,
let me talk about those extra “features” that I mentioned at the beginning of the video.
I talked about the things I like about this monitor but what about the things I don’t like?
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I am here at least once a week with a new down to earth tech video for you.
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Right... up until now that’s all good right… with this monitor! But
I do have a couple of criticisms… One is the lack of Smart features. And the
other is the fact that there is no remote for the Neo G7.
The menu is simple enough, but there is a lot of button pushing if you want to
tweak things depending on the game you’re playing.
Which is why I wanted to include the G7 monitor in this review, as well as the Neo G7 curved.
But also, because I appreciate that a curved monitor is not gonna be for
everyone. I love it, and this 1000R curve is very satisfying for me… but that’s just me.
Apart from it being flat, one of the main differences here is the Smart features.
I actually bought the M8 Smart Monitor last year when it came out,
which is also a brilliant monitor for work and editing my videos, photos…
And just like on my M8 monitor, this G7 gaming monitor has the same Smart features.
I’ve been amazed at how… you really don’t even
need a console for playing games or indeed a computer.
I mean… For casual gaming!
Samsung has this Gaming Hub… An dall you need is a controller and the monitor, which is really cool.
It also has some apps which means the monitor can double up as a Smart TV!
It comes with all the latest Cloud Gaming apps which is… just fantastic, really!
We talked already about the VA vs IPS difference earlier,
but in this case, there’s also the difference between viewing angles…
On the curved monitor everything will look a lot better if you are looking at it dead centre.
On the flat monitor it’s ok to use, even if you’re a little bit at an angle.
The G7 has the same resolution as the Neo G7, at 3840 x 2160 but like the Neo G7,
you can also set it to Ultrawide mode to get a 21:9 aspect ratio instead of the native 16:9.
Great for some style of players that might like to have a wider field of view.
The G7 is very fast too, with an advertised response time of 1 millisecond,
and 144 Hz which some might say is still a decent sweet spot for gaming.
As you’ve seen, here even with the most powerful graphics card and everything set
to EXTREME, not a lot of games will go past and sustain above 120 FPS.
In other words, for the majority of people,
this monitor will be more than ok for at least a couple more years I’d say.
Like the Neo G7 it has Core lighting which you can configure to a colour that you want,
different lighting effects or even to match your gaming experience.
So that the most dominant colour being shown on the screen is also reflected on your wall.
Playing on consoles has a slight disadvantage as
the the Refresh Rate is then limited by the HDMI signal.
In my case though, I don’t play competitively… this has not impacted my gaming experience at all.
I haven’t really tried the speakers on these at any length but they are OK,
nothing to write home about. But if you are watching content like YouTube,
just at your desk… then the speakers will be ok.
If you are trying to watch a movie or play games,
then I’d say use an external speaker or headphones really.
Stay tuned for the 34” OLED review coming up as well!
Hope to see you soon!