if you're a spec Shopper there's no doubt that Samsung's Odyssey Neo G8 caught your eye earlier
this year at CES it certainly caught our attention as the first 4K gaming monitor with a 240 hertz
refresh rate and promises of brightness and HDR performance on the level of the super ultra wide
Odyssey Neo G9 it's not unbearably expensive like Samsung's wild art concept either it's
1500 bucks so still definitely up there even compared to other monitors in this class but
the premium isn't unreasonable considering the super high refresh rate it's a very impressive
monitor for gamers who want the best of the best and it makes a lot more sense now that
graphics cards like the RTX 4090 can push 150 plus frames per second in games at 4K it's not slam
dunk recommendation though there are still a few problems one of which I hope Samsung can address
in a future update before getting into all of it like this video if you enjoy get subscribed we're
publishing a ton of new videos every week and trust me you don't want to miss them the Neo G8
certainly look looks like a modder worth fifteen hundred dollars with a really nice glossy white
finish on the back along with Samsung's core sync lighting ring you can sync that up with whatever
is on your screen at the time and it looks really nice for a little bit of mood lighting setting up
the monitor isn't completely tool-less but it's still easy you have the base stand and
monitor and they all have pre-thread screws in the right places so you just grab a screwdriver
and get everything set up in a minute or two the stand is pretty good you get just less than five
inches of height adjustment 22 degrees of tilt and 30 degrees of swivel you can also rotate the
monitor vertically which actually works really well considering the aggressive 1000r curve of
the display if you want you can also wall mount it with a pretty hefty adapter that Samsung includes
in the Box the stand has these two long protruding legs so you'll need a pretty big desk for this
monitor not to mention the screen itself is 32 inches big thankfully the legs are thin so you
can still Place stuff around it and set up your desk at your wife or on the back of the stand you
have this little rubber hook for cable management as well as a bit of plastic that you can snap in
and to hide all of your connections it's fine it works but Samsung has much better Cable Management
Solutions on much cheaper monitors the Odyssey G7 for example the 500-ish one has this nice
routing channel that runs through the stand and it doesn't feel great not seeing that same attention
to detail on a monitor that's almost three times as expensive for ports you have two HDMI 2.1 which
can handle 4K at 120 hertz for consoles like the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5. but if you're
using a PC you'll want the DisplayPort connection which is the only one that can unlock 240 hertz
at 4K in either case there's a setting in the menu that allows you to quickly jump between 120
hertz and 240 hertz depending on what you're doing all right I mentioned spec Shoppers at
the top of this video because the Neo G8 kind of looks impossible based on the spec sheet 2
000 nits of peak brightness contrast on the levels of oleds and Quantum HDR 2000
whatever that's supposed to mean Samsung likes to talk up its monitors with pretty misleading
specs including using badges like Quantum HDR that Samsung made up for itself in reality the
Neo G8 doesn't have a certification with the industry standard display HDR and the specs
although not totally inaccurate are not what you should expect to see on a day-to-day basis in my
testing the monitor topped out at around 800 nits for the full screen it can get brighter in smaller
areas some of which can actually reach 2000 that's very brief periods of time but let's be honest you
don't want 2000 nits blasting you in the face all the time from only a few inches away 800 nits is
still super bright for a monitor like this and it uses mini LEDs for the backlight with close
to 1200 local dimming zones it can get really contrasty with HDR turned on but unfortunately
you can still never achieve the perfect black levels of an OLED panel you start from Pure
Black you're going to have higher contrast it gets close to OLED but a a one million to one
contrast ratio no the Neo G8 isn't as bright as Samsung says but it is as beautiful colors look
fantastic on this monitor especially with HDR turned on it covers 100 of srgb 82 percent of
adobe RGB and 90 of DC ip3 based on the results I got with my Spyder x the color air overall was 2.1
out of the box which is just above okay it's not bad but Samsung says this monitor comes Factory
calibrated so I hope to see a little better color performance out of the box the good news is that
there were no colors that were really far off the mark everything hovered between an error of one to
three so it's not like the reds or the greens look horrible everything looks really balanced even if
it's not on the level of a professional grade Moder that you use for proper color work you
can easily adjust your picture settings to dial in a look you like or calibrate the monitor further
as well I've always liked Samsung's menus and it's the same tried and true version on the Neo
G8 pressing up on the four directional buttons gives you quick access to picture settings like
brightness contrast and sharpness but the full menu is still super easy to get around Samsung
includes a handful of picture modes like an FPS mode that cuts a bunch of contrasts
and an RPG mode that does the opposite but the only really useful one here is the srgb mode so
you can limit the colors to that color space if you're editing in Photoshop or color grading in
Premiere the specs of the Neo G8 are definitely off but that doesn't mean it's a bad gaming
monitor it's a really really good gaming monitor booting up cyberpunk 2077 with HDR turned on was
kind of amazing this monitor looks fantastic with HDR turned on particularly because it has
really good black levels it's not OLED perfect black levels but I measured as low as .05 nits
contrast is great and the colors just pop off the screen it's not just cyberpunk either shallow the
Tomb Raider looked amazing it made me forget this game is over four years old at this point
Modern Warfare 2 looked fantastic even games without HDR like Sackboy a Big Adventure get
a big bump in contrast from the local dimming and showcase bright vibrant colors on top of
the great gaming performance you get Freesync Premium Pro certification for the Monitor and
it works with Nvidia g-sync it's not certified as g-sync compatible but I tested with an Nvidia GPU
and g-sync worked just fine so it doesn't matter if you have AMD or Nvidia you can
still use variable refresh rate my main issue with gaming is that only a few graphics cards
are able to take advantage of the full 240 hertz and only in some games if you want the immersive
cinematic HDR experience you're not going to hit anywhere near 240 FPS in games like God of War
and Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4K the RTX 4090 is the only GPU that even kind of makes sense and
even then it hovers in the 180 FPS territory and these demanding games with upscaling turned on
the Neo G8 could make sense if you play a lot more competitive games things like Rainbow Six
Siege OverWatch Valorant it'll be much easier to drive the full refresh rate even if you don't have
a top end GPU still you definitely need a beefy gaming rig to drive 4K much less at a full 240
hertz the Neo G8 is a great monitor I only have a reservation because Samsung also offers the Neo G7
for 400 cheaper it comes with the same number of local dimming zones same brightness and contrast
specs but a 165 Hertz refresh range that's still super high and it makes a lot more sense for what
most gpus are actually capable of today if you want a monitor that ticks all the boxes though the
Neo G8 does that just be aware that more often than not you won't be able to take advantage
of the full 240 hertz especially if you like immersive AAA games if you lean heavier on those
games and don't play a lot of competitive titles you can probably sacrifice in the refresh rate and
save a little money in the process the Alienware 34 qdo LED is a few hundred bucks cheaper and is
even more immersive than the Neo G8 with its Ultra wide aspect ratio and if you don't like
ultrawide monitors Samsung's awesome Neo G7 is a solid alternative as well if you want the Best of
Both Worlds there's nothing that can touch the Neo G8 right now it's the only 4K game monitor with a
240Hz refresh rate on the market and it doesn't sacrifice image quality or HDR performance to
reach those impressive specs it looks fantastic it performs excellently it's a little expensive
but not unheard of for a monitor in this class totally easy to recommend assuming you can pair
it with a top spec gaming rig to take advantage of the 240 hertz refresh rate but I want to know
what you think about the Neo G8 in the comments below does 240 hertz in 4k even make sense and
if you're going want to pick up this monitor what rig are you planning to pair it with down there
you can also find a link to my written review in the description and you can help us get closer
to the 1 million subscriber Milestone by getting subscribed alright everyone thanks for watching
I'll see you in the next one in the meantime here are two videos that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy