- Oh, strong arms. (box banging)
Inside this box (box thumping)
is the successor to perhaps
one of the most popular (light upbeat music)
gaming monitors of all time,
the Predator X34, which originally debuted in 2015.
Then in 2017,
there was a kind of redux (upbeat music)
that gave it a higher refresh rate and some other qualities.
But until now, it's never been its final form.
This is its final form.
Finally, we think.
I don't know. (cardboard flicking)
There's no camera on the top,
so I'll just, I'll just tell you.
It's got (plastic crinkling)
a bunch of stuff in it.
This is the USB type B for the internal hub
which I assume is on the back.
This is a display port cable,
and this is an HDMI cable. (plastic tearing)
Hello, who are you?
Instruction stuff, (plastic crinkling)
power adapter, external to the monitor.
It's not huge, but it's not nothing.
And one more cable, the power cable.
Am I supposed to?
Ugh! (styrofoam squeaking)
It's just, it's just in there.
I'll show you a magic trick.
Oof. (box clunking)
Ha, ha ha.
Now if you're really anal
about keeping your equipment looking pristine
for years to come, you can leave all this stuff on.
I think that's what Andy does.
- [Andy] You're not peeling that.
- That's a price I'm willing
- to pay. (laughs) - No! No!
- But I personally like to use my monitor
with this off. (plastic sliding)
So I'm just gonna go ahead and do that.
Look at this, it comes fully assembled.
You don't even need to clip the stand to it.
And because this has elevation adjustment,
they actually included this Velcro
(plastic tearing)
just to keep it from bouncing around in there.
(Velcro lifting)
Oh yeah, look at the styling now.
Let me get this unwrapped. (plastic crinkling)
This is like that scene in "She's All That,"
where she comes down the stairs.
Y'all remember Freddie Prinze Jr.?
He hacky sacks in that movie?
Man, what a classic.
Those are actually sharp! (laughs)
Okay, check this out.
The original X34 was glossy plastic, which was brutal.
This is kind of again, striking a balance
between gamer-y and a bit executive.
It's got this more matte textured plastic,
but it does have these gamer lines.
Then it's got this cool back design
that reminds me of like a Xenomorph
from "Aliens," or something.
And the familiar kind of disc-like pivoting, swiveling,
I don't know, neck column down here.
Have I peeled all the peels?
- [Andy] You don't have to.
Andy, you have to peel the peels.
The chin bar's a lot smaller than it used to be too.
So the bezels are more consistent
all the way around, thinner.
You got your, the characteristic and pointy legs,
maintaining the design language from the whole series.
Man, those are actually pointy.
You could pop a balloon on that.
So watch out.
Checking out the ergonomics.
This is as high as it goes.
That's as low as it goes. (monitor scraping)
And quite a lot of swivel.
And then you got your classic tilt.
(monitor clicking)
It almost looks like
it tilts so much (monitor scraping)
that it hits itself.
Ah.
See, like that versus it's up here it goes farther.
For my next trick I will require
an assistant. (grunts)
(computer clunking)
You always choose a pretty one.
Huh, an accessory
stayed in the box. (plastic crinkling)
It, you baited me.
(plastic piece clicking)
It goes like this,
or like this. (plastic piece snapping)
There it is.
Check out the IO.
We've got two HDMI 2.0, not 2.1 ports.
We've got two display port 1.4 ports.
And then a USB-C that supports 85 watts of power delivery
which is enough to power a like 16-inch MacBook Pro.
And then the uplink for the USB-E cable
that we looked at earlier,
which will power your USB type A ports.
Those two there.
And an audio port.
And there's also two more USB-A ports on the side.
(makes gun-cocking sound)
Awesome.
Shall we plug it in?
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All right, let's finally turn it on.
An improvement from the original X34
is that this has one of those little nipple toggles
for the OSD. (light ambient music)
They actually did have this on the refresh version
which was the X34P.
But on the original X34
it's just five buttons, which sucked.
And that is the preferred, (plastic clicking)
tactile controller arm choice.
You could do this all day. (upbeat music)
All right, turn it on, power button.
Well?
Oh.
It's working!
Okay, so refresh rate.
Each of the X34 iterations have advertiser refresh rate,
that was actually only achievable by overclocking.
This one, I don't know what the native refresh rate is,
but they are advertising this up to 180.
So I wanna check out what it's running at now.
That should tell me
what you're gonna get at least.
Okay, it's saying 143.855.
You're gonna get 144Hz, no matter what.
Then the fact that they put 180 on the box,
it really should get to 180.
So I'm gonna overclock it now and see that it does that.
Now keep in mind guys, this is unboxing, not a review.
So I'm not really gonna evaluate its performance
for motion blur and stuff like that.
I just wanna make sure it does the things
that it says it's gonna do.
Alright, 180 is available in my dropdown list right there.
Syncing.
180 FPS.
Awesome.
Pretty clear. (light ambient music)
And I'm not seeing any overdrive artifacts
like coronas or inverse ghosting.
Overdrive, yeah, here we go.
Overdrive normal.
Let's check out extreme.
Yeah. I can see some smearing.
This, the overdrive isn't brutal though.
So this is overdrive off, (upbeat music)
so this is the smeariest it should look.
I'm not seeing a huge difference between these
so that's kind of a good thing.
'Cause sometimes the most aggressive overdrive mode
is just like unusable.
It's making doubles of characters
in game just when you're moving the mouse,
as you're panning around you're in your shooter game.
But I will say that this is using a new generation fast IPS,
and they're advertising this as 0.5 millisecond
gray to gray pixel response time.
Which is huge.
When the first one came out back in 2015,
it was probably advertising five milliseconds, maybe three.
Now, grain of salt, pixel response times, GTG numbers
are kind of just like made up.
But 0.5 is a huge, kind of bold spec
to put on an IPS monitor.
The curve of this monitor is 1900r.
That's actually more aggressive than the original X34 had,
but it's the same curve as the X34P.
And it's, it's a pretty gentle curve.
They say in their marketing materials
that this will keep every edge of the screen
the same distance from your eye.
But, doesn't that just change if I move my head closer?
'Cause now this is very close and this is far?
That's kinda stupid. (laughs)
What is that?
Stupid.
All right, now I'm on YouTube
and I'm gonna check out the second biggest change
since the first X34, which is the HDR nits.
Other than having a faster panel for shooter games,
the biggest change in the industry since 2015
has been wide color gamut and HDR, full rate,
local backlight performance.
And this has a display HDR certification of 400.
Now of course, that is the lowest tier.
But this monitor actually does claim to go up to 550 nits,
not just 400 nits.
That said, there actually is
a VESA display HDR 500 certification,
and they didn't get that.
Does that mean that this monitor is incapable
of doing a full screen flash
of 550 nits for two full seconds?
No, not necessarily.
What it could mean is that this monitor
just doesn't have full array
local dimming, or any local dimming,
which is a prerequisite
for all levels of display HDR above 400.
But because it doesn't have full array local dimming,
we're not getting a bunch of crazy halos that move around
as the backlight lights up and darkens
while this thing moves.
Another thing the X34 was great for
was accurate colors out of the box.
So this is claiming 98% coverage of DCI-P 3
with Delta Es less than two out of the box.
Which of course, is,
is gonna be good for color critical work
and professionals because less than two
is less than the human eye can discern anyway.
I mean, it's not an OLED,
but it doesn't look like super-saturated and unreal.
Which is good.
Another thing that's changed since before,
G-Sync.
VESA has integrated adaptive sync into the HDMI standards.
So now this puppy is just G-Sync compatible
with a capital C.
Another cool thing are these canned modes
that they have for different picture settings,
which out of the box, they say they're action, racing,
and sports settings for different games.
But these are actually all customizable,
so that you can make your own user settings
with different blue light modes
and, and, overdrive settings depending on your use case.
(computer music playing)
Wow, listen to those two 7-watt speakers!
I don't think they've really improved in six years.
This is the Linus tech tips (muffled talking)
audio test. - [Linus] Is that BH?
- If you can withstand Linus's voice
for more than 10 seconds,
the speakers are good. - [Linus] Combination black.
WX Andy-
(Andy laughing)
- The last thing I'll say about this monitor,
and maybe the most interesting thing to me,
is that when the first one launched all those years ago,
it launched with an MSRP of 1300 US dollars.
But this one, (upbeat music)
this one's launching with an MSRP of $900.
400 bucks cheaper even though it's better
by basically every dimension.
Does that mean that the pace of innovation
in monitors has slowed way down?
Or that costs have just plummeted
and you can get so much more for so much less?
I don't know, maybe a bit of both.
I would not really hesitate to pay $899 for this
given its amazing stylings and color accuracy.
Not the greatest for HDR,
but if I'm a gamer who's had an X34 for a long time,
I can get behind upgrading to this.
So thanks for watching guys.
If you liked this video,
why don't you also check out our Samsung Odyssey G7?
Or G5?
G7 is what we actually ended up covered.
Pretty similar product to this
but 240Hz and a lot more money. (pops lips)