Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2021
Rarely was I as conflicted over hardware as I was with the CRG9. Ultimately, I bought it because the current M1 Macs (you might be reading this years in the future, so this may not still apply) can only use one external monitor. For most people that's not an issue, but I use three 4K color-calibrated Dell 27s in my office, so going down to just one was very constraining. There are a handful of 49 inch panels out there, but there are really only three top-of-the-line ones you might want to consider supposing you've got the budget. One is an IPS panel made by LG, also offered by Dell, and then Samsung makes two, the one in this CRG9 and the one in the Odyssey G9. I think some other companies are rebranding the CRG9's panel too.
In retrospect, for the work I do, I should have gone with the Dell/LG IPS panel, but at the time I felt the CRG9 had the best balance of assets between the three, based on rtings.com's analysis, and it was more affordable as well. According to that thorough website, the colors were more accurate, the contrast and brightness were much better, and of course it has a 120Hz, something I don't need but is nice to have.
I'm going to give a quick rundown of the pros and cons with this monitor, talk about who should and shouldn't buy it, and then discuss how to get it to work right (tl;dr, it does work right, and it's not that hard to get it to work) with the M1.
The good:
Size: 49 inches is actually only about 2/3rds the screen size of my previous triple 27 setup (basically two 27s combined), but for multitasking, it's even better than you'd expect. I discovered that, because of the bezels on my triple monitor setup, I ended up giving way more space than necessary to entire programs, because in some cases cutting them in half (two per monitor) wasn't enough. That is to say, space was used inefficiently. using magnets in macOS lets me break things down into thirds very easily on the 49, and a third is about what you need to have three truly full-sized windows side by side, which is about right for me. If the lack of monitor real-estate is your #1 issue with the M1, the CRG9, and any of these 49s, will absolutely solve that problem.
Frequency: 120Hz, surprisingly, makes a difference around the desktop. I was just as surprised as anyone, but I could really tell the difference just moving windows around and things like that. It's hardly a deal breaker to go back to 60Hz, but just for office workers that are wondering, yes, it is appreciable outside of games.
Brightness: The intensity of this monitor was almost off the chart. It was casting my shadow on the wall at night. I work in a very dark office, so this isn't super important to me, but if you do work in a bright office, that'll be an asset.
The bad:
Colors never looked quite right on the CRG9. I compared it side by side to my color-calibrated Dell, and the colors almost always looked washed out and bland (and yes, this is with HDR off). It didn’t look terrible, but it was a noticeable decline in color intensity.
The resolution, although 5k laterally, just isn’t enough for a Mac user. We’re so used to 200+ PPI that, without trying to look for it, everything looks rough and unpolished at 109 PPI like in this monitor. My Dell 4Ks (27 inches) look great to me even though they’re not over 200 PPI, so you don’t have to go all the way to an LG 5K or an XDR, but the drop in pixel density was a lot more jarring than I hoped. Keep in mind that if you’re not used to high resolution displays, and if you’re just working on things like spreadsheets, this probably won’t be a big deal to you.
The viewing angles were OK. They’re in the “bad” section because they’re a noticeable step down from an IPS panel, but they’re not horrible or anything. You can see some washing out on the fringes of the onitor.
Curved: For a lot of people, being curved is the ultimate in monitor design, but in graphics, it creates a distortion. All straight lines look curved, and ultimately the people you’re working with, and the final product, will be seeing it flat, so it’s an unnecessary element to compensate for.
Space: The monitor takes up a ton of space, as you’d expect, but really it’s the stand that gets me. It may just be unavoidable for a giant monitor like this, but it absolutely consumer the center of your desk. It got hard to even move the mouse around without hitting a leg. Make sure you’ve got a deep desk or a monitor arm for it.
Connectivity: No one-cable solution here.
The ugly:
The real killer on this for me, in addition to the resolution, is the backlight. The backlight is extraordinarily uneven. I’ve attached photos of mine so you can see what I mean (keep in mind that they look worse on the photo than they do in real life). I had a particularly terrible spot in the bottom right of the panel, which almost looked like a flashlight shining into the display. It even gave the area a slight blue tone. Keep in mind that, for gamers, this is potentially acceptable, and every CRG9 has a really sloppy backlight from what I can tell, although mine, I suspect, was below average. But it isn’t suitable for product design or things like that.
And I think that’s fundamentally the issue here: it’s a gaming panel that I tried to make work for productivity. For some people, it will do that job just fine, but for many it won’t. The resolution is simply not high enough for a monitor of that size to have a precise and sharp image yet, at least not to my eyes. I think for the well-heeled home user that just wants an epic monitor, or for the gamer, these flaws are probably acceptable. For gamers, perhaps this is even desirable.
How to get it to work on an M1 Mac (early 2021 edition). I used this monitor on both my MBP 16 with Radeon graphics and my M1 MBP 13. This all pretty much the same between the two, except that you can get the right resolution at 60Hz (but not 120) on the older Radeon-powered MBP just by holding down the option button when selecting a resolution. With the M1, you need to use Switchresx, separate software that lets you have much finer control of display settings. You’ll need that on non-M1 Macs too if you want 120Hz.
The next tip is to use only Displayport cables, and go directly from USB-C into the monitor. Also, consider turning the monitor’s settings from Displayport 1.4 down to 1.2 in its on-screen controls.
Ultimately, setting it up on my Mac(s) wasn’t really that painful of an experience, contrary to what I often hear about these. I wouldn’t let this particular element scare you off.
