- Hi, friends. Welcome back to the channel.
Before we get started,
I just wanna say a massive thank you to everybody
who has connected with me recently.
We've just hit 3,000 subscribers on this channel,
which is just insane, so thank you.
And if you aren't already, then maybe subscribe?
I have been using this Dell 49-inch ultra-wide monitor
for the last year, but today, I'm getting an upgrade.
What? How?
Why?
How can you get an upgrade on an already monstrous
49-inch Dell curved ultra-wide USB-C display?
By swapping it with this.
This is the Samsung G9.
Very similar in terms of its specs.
It is still a 49-inch ultra-wide screen.
It's still 5120 by 1440 resolution,
but there are some noticeable differences.
Firstly, this Samsung has a 1000...
This is really heavy.
It has a 1000R curve, which basically means
that this screen will wrap around you at a bigger angle
than the slightly...
I'm gonna drop this.
It basically means the screen
is gonna wrap around you much more rapidly
rather than the flatter angle like this Dell has.
It also runs at a maximum of 240 hertz
rather than the Dell's standard 60 hertz.
For those non-geeks around us,
the higher the number, then the faster the panel can run.
You likely won't notice it
on day-to-day kind of businessy desktop,
email, web browsing, those kinds of things.
But since selling my business,
I've been having a lot more free time recently,
and I've been actually been getting back
into my PC gaming somewhat
and reclaiming some of my social life
and talking to friends and people and stuff; fun!
And then lastly, one of the fixed spec changes
when comparing this particular monitor to the Dell
is that this screen does not have USB-C unfortunately,
so this does mean that you cannot dock a MacBook
with a single cable to both charge and use the screen.
But I have been using the CalDigit dock
that's behind me for many, many years now.
And from this dock, I charge my MacBook
with a single USB-C cable
and the dock is then wired into the screen,
other USB devices, speakers,
and all the other kinds of things.
So whilst I would have preferred
to have a USB-C port included on this monitor
to gain the better curve and the high refresh rate,
well, I'm actually willing to sacrifice USB-C.
Okay, so let's get this unboxed.
And whilst we are unboxing this,
there is something to mention.
This monitor was actually released,
I think, earlier this year.
And there's loads of...
Don't wanna wave that around.
There's loads of tech reviewers
that have reviewed this already on their YouTube channels.
But what happened was when the product went on sale
and there was an onslaught of posts online
from unhappy buyers all over Reddit
and forum posts all saying that they had issues;
there was light bleeding issues,
plastic coming away from the glass and flickering issues
when you enable a Windows feature called G-Sync.
So it looks like Samsung had pulled the product
and it's been unavailable for quite some time,
at least here in this country.
And when I looked at Amazon,
it was showing this as a pre-order item.
And also note that Amazon seemed
to have this screen around 80 pounds cheaper
than anywhere else online I could find it.
So I'll put a link in the description down below
if you wanna get your own.
Yeah, I'm excited.
Wow, first impressions?
That 1000R curve is so noticeable;
it just wraps around you.
And for those of you who are looking at this
as your first 49-inch screen,
yeah, 49 inches does sound like it's a ridiculous size,
but it's actually the same
as having two 27-inch displays side by side.
There's no difference to having dual displays
and having one of these 49-inch screens.
On the back of the screen,
in terms of your in and outputs,
you're getting a headphone port, one HDMI,
two display ports, one USB-B to connect it to your PC
and two normal USB ports.
Unfortunately there is no USB-C on this monitor,
but as I mentioned, I'm using the CalDigit dock here,
so it doesn't actually cause me a problem,
but it would have been nice to see that all the same.
Okay, so of course, to address the obvious here,
the 1000R curve, it's so much better,
I think, in my opinion than the Dell's flatter curve.
I always found when I was sat on the Dell screen
that I'd have to kind of almost look over to the sides
when there was things over there.
Whereas with this, I'm not having to look,
I just literally turn my head at a slight amount
and I can see everything.
I'm not actually literally having to kind of turn
and lean over, which actually over time
and actually I've got back issues at the moment,
it seems I might need to be looking for a new chair
and the the curve...
I think 1000R curve is meant to be replicating
what the human eye can see in peripheral vision,
so you shouldn't actually have to turn your head.
But of course, you're not gonna read text
out of your peripheral vision
or you can actually turn your head and read the text.
Okay, something to address here is that on the old models
of this Samsung G9 display,
there was a flickering issue when you enabled,
I think, it was enabled G-Sync or enabled the HDR.
I'm glad to say that that's not actually a problem,
anyway on the one I've got now,
so I'm assuming they have come up with a fix.
I do now have everything set up properly,
which is the full 240 hertz display,
RGB colour at a full 10-bit colour depth and HDR enabled,
and it's all just working great.
There's no flicker, nothing I can see at least.
And certainly not the desktop,
which is where it was more of a prominent issue before,
and definitely not in the games that I played as well.
And I think if anything,
I'm actually struggling more than my gaming PC
to push the number of frames
to get actually reach anywhere near that.
So the next thing for me to look at
is to actually upgrade my gaming rig
to see if I can get maybe faster processor
and bit of memory in there.
But yeah, overall impressions are,
the monitor is incredible.
One thing to mention that I have noticed,
I mentioned earlier that the base of the screen is thinner
and there's less to it because it is a thinner frame,
which you can see there,
but it actually goes on for a much longer distance
and actually spreads onto my mouse mat,
my keyboard and mouse mat, and that's slightly annoying,
so I might actually look at possibly wall-mounting this,
I'm not too sure yet.
But yeah, as far as Windows goes, Windows absolutely fine.
Over to the Mac side now, I guess,
and we'll see how much progress we make with that.
- [Announcer] A few inches later.
- Okay, so I am having some issues with the MacBook Pro
and the 49-inch Samsung monitor.
It doesn't seem like you can get anything above 60 hertz
with the CalDigit dock that I'm using
and the 2019 MacBook Pro, 2020 MacBook Pro 16-inch model.
Welcome back, we are now two days later
after ordering some bits from Amazon.
And things on a Mac aren't quite as simple
or as easy as they should be really.
So firstly, just to reiterate,
so I'm using the 16-inch MacBook Pro
going into a CalDigit dock,
which then goes into the screen
because the screen itself doesn't have USB-C,
so you need some sort of intermediary
or a converter cable or something along those lines.
So when going from the MacBook Pro
to the CalDigit through USB-C
and then going from the CalDigit to the Samsung G9
using either a USB-C to display port cable,
or just using a direct display port to display port cable,
you cannot get the full 120 hertz
or 240 hertz out of that monitor.
So what you can do is you need to go to Amazon
and buy this cable,
which is a USB-C to display port 1.4 cable,
and then connect this directly
from your MacBook Pro to the screen,
completely avoiding the dock, which is a bit of a shame.
But using this cable,
I have been able to get 120 hertz out of my MacBook Pro.
I'll leave a link down below
for those of you who need to grab one of these.
So yeah, now I have to connect two cables to my MacBook Pro
when I wanna use it at the full 120 hertz
because I have to use my CalDigit dock
for the SD card reader,
loads of other USB devices, the speakers,
all sorts of other things going into that one dock.
Whereas to get the 120 hertz,
I have to have the direct cable
from the MacBook Pro through to the monitor.
So not that great in all honesty.
It would be nice to go through the CalDigit dock.
I have contacted CalDigit now
to ask if it's physically possible.
I'm just waiting to hear back from them on that now.
Overall impressions, fantastic screen,
undoubtedly fantastic screen.
Now at 120 hertz, you do notice it,
even on macOS, you notice that 120 hertz.
On Windows, yes, you definitely know it's 240 hertz.
I haven't been able to get any games
to go up to that full 240 hertz refresh rates,
but I have noticed significant improvements
in Call of Duty and Apex Legends and those kinds of games.
And just in day-to-day general usage,
even when you're moving windows around
checking your emails, using web browser,
and those kinds of things,
you notice it is just so much smoother, so much smoother.
Do I think it's worth getting a 240 hertz monitor
for productivity as well as gaming?
I think I do actually,
considering that the alternatives aren't actually
that far off pricing-wise.
There's a couple of hundred pounds difference or so,
which when you're already spending 1,000 pounds
or 1,200 pounds or 1,300 pounds on a screen of this size,
it's not a huge difference to pay
when you get that just jump in the frames per second,
that massive benefit you get just...
It just looks so much better.
With the Macro-Pro and the CalDigit dock
and any combination of either using this kind of fixed cable
or of a display port to display port cable,
the best I could get out of all of that
was 60 hertz on my Mac.
As soon as I pushed it up to 120, it would just flicker;
it wouldn't actually give me a picture,
and kind of looked like it was breaking my Mac
or the screen.
But yeah, if you do wanna work at 120 hertz
with a MacBook Pro,
then you will need one of these cables.
One other thing that I've actually found quite useful
is that I now have my speakers connected
to the back of the screen,
which means I can now switch between multiple computers
but use one set of speakers.
It's kind of using it like a KVM switch
but through the screen, which is quite quite good actually.
Other than that, I will leave it right there
and go back to the other Pete
as he's continuing his talking.
If you do want to buy your very own,
then follow the link in the description below
to find the cheapest place to buy your very own.
As always, thanks for watching.
Please don't forget to like, subscribe, all of that stuff.
And I'll see in the next video.
Thank you. Bye-bye.