Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAmazing, but maybe ahead of its time
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2020
Review updated 8/12/2020 after a few months of ownership.
Okay, so, lets start with the price tag. As of writing this update, the monitor is at $2,000. I purchased this for $1,200 only a few months ago. I don't suggest spending $2,000 on a monitor no matter how nice it is. I still struggle with myself for spending just $1,200 on it. The combined features in this monitor are unique, but they will not stay that way for much longer. I would expect actual competition in this space within the next year or two, and thus lower prices.
That said, this monitor absolutely blows me away. Even through a recent financial hardship that saw me itemizing things to sell for quick relief, I still couldn't let this one go. The 4k quality is of course crisp, the refresh rate is high, gsync works flawlessly, the full array backlight is decent, and the HDR implementation literally has no match within the gaming monitor space. The 1100 nit peak brightness combined with a QDot layer for color enhancement allows for the full effects of HDR to be taken advantage of, and it is simply beautiful in games like Far Cry New Dawn. Bring all of these features together, and your mind will be blown.
I have a second, normal, monitor next to this one and sometimes I like to find an HDR video and play it back on both screens at the same time to compare. The difference is almost always immediately visible, as on a normal monitor the darker colors get washed out and the brightest colors look dull in comparison. That's to say, this monitor allows you to have (almost) true black and true white on the screen at the same time. It's not something that you can really show off on a standard monitor, it's something you have to see in real life. Kind of like 144hz, you simply cannot reproduce it on a standard monitor. The colors are so vibrant, lights are actually bright like lights, sometimes I squint when I walk outside from a dark area in a game just like in real life.
Now, something to keep in mind is that this monitor and HDR on PC in general is still enthusiast-tier technology. Meaning that it's not a simple plug-n-play solution. Before I bought this monitor, all I knew about HDR was that it looked pretty on my friend's TV. After a few months of ownership of this monitor, I could probably call myself an expert on how monitors and colorspaces work. You may have to do a lot of research to fully understand the features on this monitor and work your way through technical issues and limitations. I really can't stress that enough, if you just plug this in and expect everything to work flawlessly and look super nice, you're going to have a bad time.
All in all, I am very happy with my purchase. This monitor blew me away like no other has before.
