okay so i don't even think it was two weeks ago that i swapped out my OLED tv
for ASUS va based bfgd gaming display with
the objective being that i was going to get variable refresh rate and i was
going to get higher refresh rates for smoother gaming then all of a sudden i
get an email from alienware and they go hey do you remember that OLED 120 hertz
4k gaming monitor we showed at ces i'm like uh-huh well we're shipping it it's
in the mail and i go what so now i've got a three-way decision to
make is it OLED high refresh rate or
both doesn't seem like a tough decision does
it just like it wasn't a tough decision to
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so with a maximum refresh rate of 120
hertz so 120 refreshes per second a max
resolution of 4k and an OLED panel i'm expecting a few
things one i'm expecting extremely
smooth animations provided that i've got the hardware to drive it which
i do number two i'm expecting completely pitch black
blacks i mean that's one of the key benefits of OLED is that every single
pixel can be turned off individually and then finally the last thing i'm
expecting is something that could be a
huge decision factor for me alienware is claiming less than 0.5
millisecond pixel response times now in theory this has always been a benefit of
OLED technology really fast pixel switching which eliminates or at least
dramatically reduces that blurring or ghosting when you've got moving objects
across the screen but it's something that really hasn't been focused on by a
lot of the OLED uh display manufacturers
up until now because they're just they're not really that uh dialed in to
the gaming community
neat so that's cool i guess that explains where the included vasa adapter goes so
if you're more into using like a monitor ARM or whatever else you can
get right into that but putting that
there and then screwing that into whatever kind of you know wall or desk
mount or whatever else it is that you want is if you're more into just
setting it up on your desk you just slide this puppy in here uh we
can have a look at the i o now so we've got a single usb 3 up link with four
downlinks two of them are here we've also got optical audio out displayport
1.4 in and two HDMI 2.0 ports and then
this is cool we've got this cable management
ow okay well don't run your finger down it so this is how i'm planning to use it
so i'm going to go ahead and pop these screws in
whoops oh um
shoot i guess you're supposed to do that one first
oh man
then over on this side we've got power in which is going to run through this
cable channel which i will keep my fingers out of then when you've got all your cables managed you go ahead you pop
this back on wow that is a nice magnetic backing i don't remember the last time i
saw such an elegant monitor back cover back when they first
showed this it wasn't clear exactly how NVIDIA's
g-sync on freesync monitors thing was going to work and we didn't know if this
was going to be a variable refresh rate display well it turns out it is it's
freesync and as you know NVIDIA g-sync
can be forced enabled on any freesync display so we definitely want to give
that a shot but there is one big caveat
this while it does feature 400 nitpeak brightness
is not HDR certified so rather than installing
it at my tv i think i'm going to take the product box literally
did you really put a tv on your table
uh it's not a tv it's a monitor it says on the box
well the box doesn't fit in here it's big andy can you take an end
yup what i wouldn't hold it by the top yeah i would yup i would support it by
that okay good you good there might be an argument to be made
for using a gigantic 4k display instead
of a smaller one so i'm going to go ahead and
take out my rog swift pg-35 whatever this is
and we're going to pop that thing in its place i think i'm going to need to move my 3d printer well
it passes the first challenge which is
not encroaching on my wife's desk is your 3d printer living on my desk uh
no i'll move that sorry i'm just doing something very important right now i have to play this game and see if i'm
getting a competitive advantage from my new monitor and i thought this was
interesting it's very unusual for monitor manufacturers to include such a
long displayport cable but this one is a 10 foot cable because clearly
alienware while they are marketing this as a monitor is just not really sure
where people are going to deploy this thing that's why they include a remote
with it now just like with the ASUS bfgd i
already have some concerns about the remote uh because so far alienware
doesn't appear to have done anything specific to integrate with logitech
harmony and their remote doesn't have specific commands for like input one
input two so um in the living room depending on
your setup it might not end up making a ton of sense but um
hey i mean at least you have something even if it doesn't perfectly
integrate with like a super advanced setup oh there goes the built-in speakers so
the Windows control panel knows what's wrong there we go all right cool so
ycbcr-422 so 8-bit color they claim
about 98 coverage of the dc ip3 color space
not bad for a high refresh rate display so you've got all the usual sort of
gaming image presets um personally i've always been partial
to just you know standard the way the developer intended it there's a
backlighting on the monitor that's kind of glowing off the wall it's cool i
guess if you're into that sort of thing there are shortcut keys at the bottom of the monitor and you can reconfigure what
you want them to do there is no option for pixel overdrive because
theoretically the pixels are plenty fast
enough on their own and we can do a quick sanity check for that and we are
getting next to no smearing
not bad well it don't do 144
okay it's just like 125. so it's not
overclockable i've heard people make the argument to me before like
hey Linus you know why bother
going for an ultra wide monitor when you could just have
the whole thing and then you could always just
take your window and make it ultra wide or whatever okay so this is a chance
to give the onboard speakers a shot i've certainly heard worse i will say this
though zero complaints so far with respect to input lag and pixel response
times that was crisp oh you know what
anno got an update so one of my biggest complaints about anno up until now has
actually been that you can't zoom out far enough particularly if you have a
large monitor now i've got a really big monitor and
they've updated it apparently to have a much greater zoom that was actually like
a couple months ago but i haven't played it much in the last little bit okay here we go so it's an option under gameplay
increased camera oh restart required okay fine further out
that is so much better
freaking awesome like you can really see enough of an
island to actually make reasonable decisions but like
this is the old limit like i can't even see enough of the island to make a
decision about what kind of layout i want for it like it's stupid this is way
better you can really see what you're doing we've got g-sync enabled and that
is looking g-sync smooth i don't see any tearing
like okay just to be clear guys these weird anomalies that you're seeing here those are an effective draw distance
okay oh here we go actually i have juiced two hot import nights which i have never
played but i specifically installed for an
upcoming video make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it where i'm gonna go through and play games that
i have never played that are in my steam library i'm sure we can all relate to
that i'd say comfortable distance for this one is a little closer than something like
an rpg where you really need the context of everything that's going on around you
all at once but not quite as close as something like
anno where you're really doing things at your leisure and it's okay to be looking
around here it's okay to have the peripheral vision
filled up but it's more for immersion and less for actually looking at it like
really you've got your eyes on the road so i'd say the distance that we're at
right now is okay but i'd recommend a newer game that
doesn't have crashing issues pc gaming
it's just so easy i'd say to comfortably
play a fast-paced FPS i'd need to be
more than reasonable desk width away from this thing
yeah i think this is the least
compelling of the gaming experiences we've tried out today
by a long shot yeah i can see how if you're prone to motion sickness too like
this would be quite overwhelming for you
what do you think david uh i think there's a reason
pro shooter gamers play on 24 inch monitors
yeah i'm with you dude now as for third-person adventure type games so
let's just shadow the tomb raider here once again as long as you got a chair
that can do this
i don't really see the size as a as a huge problem from this distance i'm
pretty comfortable but this game in particular
definitely brings my attention back to the fact
that this display does not support HDR
this game in HDR looks amazing and the
monitor i took off my desk to put this one here
does support HDR and it's a totally totally different experience
unfortunately this safe game is stuck at the beginning but
yeah that's fine i do want to try their so-called smart HDR and see if that does
anything for me though
that's worthless
so all that's fine and good but the one game that more than any other
one i find just impossible to enjoy on anything other
than a crt is this one and to be clear i understand
that any game that was designed to be displayed with scan lines is never going
to look great on a progressive display like this one
but when it comes to the input leg
i'm hoping that this will be the first time on anything other than a crt that i
find this game playable
oh boy oh boy it's been a while
you can see there is
a perceptible delay
am i just being picky though
so the conclusion for this one is a little bit complicated at 55 inches
compared to how affordable 65-inch tvs
are and how much more immersive that viewing experience is from a typical
couch distance i don't see alienware's
gaming display or monitor whatever you want to call it making a play for your
living room anytime soon
then when it comes to the desktop experience well it ranged from
really really amazing all the way down to
wow this isn't that playable and i almost feel like i would need an
extension to my desk in order to be able to take in the information that's being
bombarded at me so
i don't really see a compelling use case for it there either
where i see this display finding its
ultimate niche though is somewhere like this
sorry guys i'm totally blindsiding you with this i don't even know if david's
gonna be able to fit in here with me
the basement den or the upstairs playroom that is where alienware's
gaming monitor really comes into its own because
lacking HDR kind of kills it for me as a primary display for watching movies or
for cinematic games but
the image quality the input lag and the
high refresh rate with no glitches that we encountered at least during our
session with g-sync means that as a gaming display it's absolutely fantastic
as long as you're willing to live without HDR which for me for a second
display i absolutely would another reasonable place to deploy it would be
somewhere like a dorm room where it can be used for everything from schoolwork
to having a bunch of friends over and playing some overcooked too
the problem with every scenario that i just pitched though is of course the
price we're talking secondary displays for the den or the bedroom or
something for a student and the OLED panel is
kind of a killer at that point with that said even if this only applies to point
zero zero percent of customers out there that's still a lot of gaming displays
that they're going to move because quite frankly there is nothing else in the
market quite like this and so from that perspective i think dell has absolutely
hit it out of the park here i have no complaints
as long as my use case for it makes sense
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guys if you liked this monitor you can check out the link to where to buy it in
the video description and if you like this video you can check out my recent video where i looked at the pros and
cons of ASUS's pg65u bfgd gaming display
that's about the only thing i'd consider to be a straight up competitor for this
but the price is higher it's bigger it's got HDR but the price is higher