Samsung's marketing is geared toward the kinds of people whose eyes glaze over
the second they hear terms like QD OLED
panel freesync premium Pro or USB power
delivery all of which are included on this Monitor and yet all of which are
absent from its product page I mean for many gamers this process is enough but
this is Linus Tech tips you all want hey need to know every little detail when
you're shopping for a gaming Monitor and Samsung yes sponsored this video packed
this display to the gills with features that I get to tell you about including
their incredible qdo-led panel that we
have already seen in Action a couple of times and absolutely fallen in love with
I mean it's not cheap but it did say
Odyssey G8 in the title so you already knew it was going to be among the best
gaming displays on the planet let's crack our open inside the Box we find
some things we expect like a monitor stand and a Visa adapter it's a curved
monitor so you'll need one of these if you want to use it with a base amount it's nice that that's included and some
things we don't expect like a remote
that's right the OLED G8 packs in a
bunch of the same features that you would find in Samsung's Smart TVs like
built-in streaming apps and even some free TV channels through Samsung TV plus
which is great if you want a display that can pull double duty as a more
tv-like experience say if you're living in a dorm room or something and it's got
a couple of 5 watt speakers which sound surprisingly usable actually maybe even
good
stand assembly is a straightforward Affair we've got a nice Hefty base for
the bottom that screws on with two number two Phillips head screws lttstore.com
but as much as I love stands this
this is the centerpiece it
it worked on this
OLED a grand total of zero times on
their product page for the OLED G8 seriously go look go check I'll wait but
they should because this panel is based on the exact same technology as
Samsung's s95b TV and is as close as you
can get to zero compromises every pixel
on it turns off completely for incredibly deep blacks and because you
don't need to wait for the crystals to slowly change positions like on an LCD
this is the fastest display in Samsung's
lineup with pixels boasting response times of just 0.1 milliseconds gray to
Gray in practice this results in virtually no blur to all 3440 by 1440
pixels especially if you're running at the maximum 175 Hertz refresh rate none
of that is what makes this so special
though any Outlet is going to be fast with deep blacks QD OLED uses a quantum
dot layer to overcome traditional OLED's biggest shortcomings though like subpar
brightness and the potential for burning it also significantly pumps up the color
gamut for the best looking gaming that we've ever seen we should probably have
a game open let's get it let's get a game going here what do you think should we mix it up
and go with do maternal I don't have it installed on here you bastard
how dare how dare you no it is installed
oh yes oh got him we have a much more detailed
explanation in this video here but the short version is that Quantum dots are
particles that get excited by one wavelength of light then with Incredible
efficiency turn that into a different wavelength of light so instead of rgbw
sub pixels that shine out in their respective colors W is white to boost
brightness at the expense of saturation you get a single color of OLED panel
that excites an RGB quantum dot layer in
front of it this allows that single color OLED panel behind it to wear out
much more gracefully over time ploof
from our writing team for example has been gaming on his qdo-led for six
months already with no sign of burn-in whatsoever and it does all of this while
boosting brightness and improving color saturation thanks to the absence of that
white subpixel of course there's a lot more to a monitor than just the stand
Samsung included their Neo Quantum processor to help with a number of
things starting of course with hey cool
look at that that's their upgraded correlating module with core sync and it
helps with image optimization and Powers the tizen-based smart entertainment
media and gaming Hub that helps improve gaming scaling through the use of
machine learning media and gaming center on a monitor that's right built right
into the monitor is access to all your favorite streaming apps including game
streaming apps like GeForce now and Xbox game pass ultimate so you can play a ton
of amazing games without worrying about your power hungry PC heating up your
room it also enables the OLED G8 to support AMD freesync premium Pro which
gives you the benefits of variable refresh rate with HDR so you get a great
picture with strong resistance to tearing or to stuttering even if your
system is struggling to hold a steady 60fps frame rate I know this is the
older Horizon but does this ever look so good it's worth
noting by the way that do maternal can only run High refresh rate or HDR
because the game doesn't support freesync premium Pro Horizon zero Dawn
on the other hand butter smooth with HDR men is that ever
gorgeous not the most ergonomic setup
that I've created for myself here this stand by the way supports height adjust
as well as tilt this also gives us a
better look at the i o which is a little unusual on this monitor it's got a mini
DisplayPort 1.4 a micro HDMI 2.1 one
USBC port and a USBC port with power
delivery this last one is great because it can do up to 65 Watts meaning that
you can use the monitor as an additional display with your laptop and charge your
laptop while you're doing that for a one cable solution this is great for
students or I mean really anyone who wants to minimize cable clutter also
perfect for watching movies in the dorm the OLED G8 is going to be joining
Samsung's monitor lineup alongside the Neo G8 which uses a mini LED backlight
with a traditional LCD panel which probably raises the question why would
you go with one over the other well let me tell you if you find that
you're particularly sensitive to color fringing like you would find on a cutie
OLED today or if you're in a room where you have no light control and it's super
bright the brighter picture of the Neo G8 could make it a better choice but if
you're pretty much anyone else I would recommend sticking with the OLED G8 but
in the future the Neo might actually lose one of its only two advantages
let's talk about color fringing because
of the unique triangle subpixel layout of QD OLED sharp lines can render with
distracting green and pink outlines this is something that affects all qdo-led
panels no matter which company is making the display now for me and actually
almost everyone else we pulled in the office it's the kind of thing that I
would forget within a week or two besides my home PC is almost exclusively
used for gaming where you won't notice it at all but for Adam who worked on
this video it's a deal breaker so what's the solution
well to understand the solution we need to also understand the problem and the
current situation is partly thanks to Microsoft to improve text rendering in
Windows Microsoft uses clear type which
is kind of this color trickery that takes the subpixels around black text
and slightly colors them to soften edges
giving fonts a smoother less aliased appearance
but this is a super new panel with an
unusual triangular subpixel layout remember it's currently unsupported by
clear type that means that the wrong values are getting sent to those
subpixels causing green tops and pink bottoms now this effect can be mitigated
by changing the scaling in Windows or sitting a little bit farther away from
your display but those just make the fringing less noticeable rather than
eliminating it completely another option is to use better clear type tuner which
is a program that lets you adjust the same settings that Windows clear type
does but in a useful Manner and it helps
but it doesn't quite resolve the issue so realizing that we were committed to
this rabbit hole we kept going and sought out the more granular Mac type
which allows for low level access to Windows text rendering with Mac type you
can actually configure the exact coordinates of each subpixel to force
Windows clear type to properly smooth the tech next and when it works it looks
amazing which is great news because it means it's not a hardware problem like
you haven't seen text until you've seen the kind of contrast that you get with
deep blacks like this but thanks to Windows 10's wonky
approach to text rendering Mac type requires such deep access to our system
that our corporate antivirus actually alerted our sysadmin while he was on
vacation and it wiped out the program on its own like we're talking registry
edits and more it also ended up breaking a bunch of software now it's possible
that with more time we could have made it run a bit smoother but there's a
catch it doesn't even fix all the text on your system lots of apps like Chrome
and hilariously even Microsoft Office don't use Windows to render text rather
they'll use an alternative like free type which also doesn't support this new
subpixel layout meaning that even if the text in Windows looks crisp it'll still
be wonky pretty much everywhere else so please Microsoft free type project
everyone I'm begging you support this
new pixel layout you'll find a link to the Odyssey OLED G8 in the video
description it's already amazing and if I get my way it's only going to get
better if you guys like this video why don't you check out the one where we sent
James to a quantum dot Factory to learn just what the heck they are and how
they're made