If you’re after a new gaming monitor and can hold off until the end of the year, it may well be worth waiting on the 34-inch Samsung Odyssey OLED G8. It’s a screen which has an awful lot going for it, including the ability to stream games from all the main players without any additional hardware.
The monitor comes with both Samsung’s Smart Hub and Gaming Hub built in. This means that the panel can not only monitor smart home devices, but stream TV from Amazon Prime, Netflix and YouTube, as well as games from Xbox, Nvidia GeForce Now, Google Stadia, Utomik and Amazon Luna.
Of course, if you’re buying a gaming monitor, the chances are you won’t actually need the streaming options, and will have a decently powered desktop plugged into it, so what else does it offer?
Well, it’s Samsung’s first OLED gaming monitor, meaning you get inkier blacks and greater contrast, and sure enough the monitor is VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black Certified. Samsung says it offers 100% color volume and DCI-99.3% color gamut too, and while it’s curved, it’s a very gentle 1800R curvature.
It boasts a resolution of 3440 x 1440 and 175Hz refresh rates, meaning you could hit 175 fps if your gaming PC is powerful enough. It should also help to up your game in competitive twitchy shooters, thanks to its pretty incredible response rate of 0.1ms — that’s a tenth of the usual 1ms figure that most fast screens offer.
It also supports AMD FreeSync Premium for smooth gameplay, but there’s no mention of Nvidia’s G-Sync equivalent. That’s a little disappointing, as is the fact that despite being a large 34-inch display, Samsung has for some reason opted for Micro HDMI and Mini DisplayPorts.
It does, however, have USB-C ports, and also comes with Samsung’s fancy Core Lighting Plus technology, where the monitor projects colors matching your on-screen action onto the wall behind it for an eye-catching immersive light show.
No word on pricing yet, but Samsung says it will be “available globally from Q4 2022” so we should know before long. If you can’t wait and simply must upgrade your setup today, be sure to check our list of the best gaming monitors before you go shopping.
