- When Steve Jobs unveiled the original
iPhone back in 2007,
the year I graduated high school,
he pitched it as a music player, a phone,
and an internet communicator all rolled into one.
- Are you getting it?
- And the crowd went nuts because who wants to buy three
devices when one device can do it all.
Fast forward to today,
and we're seeing similar convergence
in the world of monitors.
Case in point the LG27GN950,
a 144 Hertz variable refresh rate monitor for gamers,
that's also a color accurate 4K monitor for creatives.
But can it compete with Samsung's 240 Hertz, G7?
And can you compete with this slippery segway to our sponsor
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My first impression of the 27GN950 was that it was
basically just a 4K version of 2019's immensely
popular 27GL850.
That monitor was the first IPS to advertise one millisecond
pixel response time, but it was only 1440P.
But is that the whole story?
Just decide if the higher resolution is worth an extra 300
bucks to you and call it a day.
Not quite.
As the 950 addresses a couple of our gripes
from last time around namely upping the brightness to
achieve a VESA DisplayHDR 600 certification,
and most importantly, adding RGB.
Ha, ha ha ha.
Another upgrade comes with display stream compression,
a feature of display port 1.4 that allows this monitor to
run a 3840 by 2160 resolution at 144 Hertz with 10 bit
color and no Chroma sub sampling,
something that was not possible on even the best monitors,
just a short while ago.
The catch you need either a 20 series in video graphics card
or an AMD one from 2019 onward
or else it's just not gonna work.
And as far as we can tell,
you'll be relegated to 95 Hertz, big buyer beware there.
Companies should just be more direct.
LTTstore.com.
But assuming you're using it to its full potential,
gaming on the 950 is a great experience.
It's snappy, clear and offers a great deal of flexibility
with GCN compatible and freezing premium pro designations.
And the high resolution gives you the freedom to crank the
details in sightseeing games or drop down to 1440P or even
1080, if you absolutely need as many frames as possible.
And hey, if you're hoping in Nvidia's
upcoming 30 series graphics cards are gonna let you run
4K at 120 FPS and beyond, then this monitor will have you
covered for a fair few years in that respect too.
Also, get subscribed so you don't miss our coverage
of those GPUs when they arrive, heh.
But what about LGS claim about one millisecond
pixel response time?
Can this IPS panel really game at a 144 Hertz without
turning into a smeary mess?
To find out we set up a pursuit
camera to photograph the display's inherent motion blur,
that's motion blur, that's not due to the persistence
of vision in your brain.
On the default fast setting,
it looks pretty good with very little smearing
on the trailing edge.
And while the pictures don't look materially different with
the slower, normal and offsetting selected,
in real life, you can actually see a difference.
LG has made this easy to test since the settings change in
real time without the screen going black between toggles.
Nice.
It's also nice that LG lets you choose whatever overdrive
setting you want, even when adaptive sync is turned on.
Something we did not see in our recent review
of the Samsung Odyssey G9.
Back to the LG.
In order for them to get that one
millisecond sticker on the box though,
they definitely use the faster setting where aggressive
pixel overdrive introduces garish, inverse ghosting,
or coronas that are really distracting in game with no real
benefit, in my humble opinion.
I will definitely be keeping it on fast.
So yes, the 27GN950 is great for gaming,
but this monitor is 4K.
It probably makes the most sense for gamers who also are
creators and it delivers there too.
Out of the box, the color accuracy on our unit
was squarely in professional territory with deviations below
what's detectable by the human eye.
It covered over 97% of the DCI-P3 color gamut
and a respectable 74% of REC 2020.
It also offers hardware calibration.
As long as you have LG's Calibration Studio Software
installed, which should be available soon
for free from their website.
Okay, so the 27GN950 is a worthy upgrade
to last year's 850, but a lot has changed in that year.
What about compared to arguably the hottest displays of 2020
Samsung's Odyssey lineup?
The G7 is $50 cheaper,
five inches bigger and runs at 240 Hertz instead of 144.
It too has great color accuracy thanks to quantum dot
enhancement film, but it's only 1440P, not 4K.
If you lean more gamer than creator though,
the G7's higher refresh rate definitely
contributes to better motion clarity,
but with more smearing and dark scenes due to the VA panel's
poor handling of dark to dark transitions.
Additionally though the G7 has a motion blur reduction
strobing mode, but that introduces image doubling
due to crosstalk.
You're also going to have to be okay with narrower viewing
angles and a tight 1000 R curve.
So it's definitely a more gamer focused,
less versatile display than the LG 950,
which above all has more RGB.
It does, but you know, just kidding,
but I do really like how it's implemented in addition to the
regular LG nipple stick for controlling the SSD.
There's also a click wheel that lets you adjust the
brightness and select effects without installing any extra
software, very convenient and intuitive.
The bezels have been improved on this monitor since last
time around with a narrower branded chin bar.
There's no logo here and it's sharp,
but not too in your face stand,
offers 16 centimeters of height adjust 20 degrees
of tilt and 90 degrees of rotation.
Still no swivel though.
Which brings us to the monitor's shortcomings, HDR.
While the 27G950 does have an appreciated
and noticeable VESA Display HDR 600 certification,
the difference between HDR and SDR, isn't that crazy.
And there's a lot of daylight between what this monitor can
do versus one that shines at a thousand nits.
Overall, it's a nice to have,
just don't buy this monitor for HDR.
Similarly, the backlight is a bit weird.
I'm not miffed that this monitor doesn't have full array,
local dimming with hundreds of zones because I'm generally
not even into fog really,
but this monitor doesn't not have local dimming either.
It's somewhere in the middle, what LG calls active dimming.
The defacto result isn't as bad
as it looks on this test pattern,
but I'm still a little on the fence about it.
I mean, I guess it's making some scenes darker,
but if you're looking for it it can
be noticeable sometimes.
So ah, probably not that big of a deal.
So should you buy this monitor?
Only maybe.
If you don't I don't have enough GPU power
to game in 4K at high refresh rates,
maybe save some money and go with the 1440P 27GL850 instead.
Or save a little less money and check out
the 240 Hertz Samsung G7.
But if you're a gamer who also dabbles or even a works in
photo editing or video editing,
or if you have a multi-monitor setup or if you just really
prefer 4K displays,
then this is a fantastic monitor that almost does it all.
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So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this video,
you might also like our recent review
of the Samsung Odyssey G9.
It's like the G7,
but it's 49 inches, super ultra wide,
240 Hertz, it's insane.
Go, go watch it.
Yeah, Linus has hosted it.
I wrote it.