Quantum Dot OLED monitors have completely taken over the high-end market, but they have a few key problems.
Everyone hates the magenta look under bright lights.
Text clarity ain't exactly perfect, and they are so delicate that accidentally scratching one is basically a terrifying rite of passage.
At least, that's what I used to say. Ooh, because MSI sponsored this video so we could show you the solutions that are coming with this new 5th generation of top-tier gaming monitor hardware.
I'm talking color layer optimizations, new traditional RGB-striped sub-pixel layouts, and a step-up in hardness all the way from H2 to H3 that will hopefully prevent accidental damage.
Stay tuned, by the way, because I'm testing that last claim myself, and you better believe that I'm keeping this monitor regardless of the results, so I really, really hope it doesn't get scratched.
Yep, if you have an older OLED, this solves pretty much all of your problems, except your money problems, because when you see this in action, you might want to buy one, so those are gonna get a lot worse.
It's already updated.
Genuinely very excited for this thing.
Like MSI's previous 34-inch ultra-wide monitors, this is a 21x9 1440p 34-inch display, but unlike their older models, it is now running at a whopping 360 Hz.
As I alluded to in the intro, it also uses a new 5th generation QD OLED panel, which has got both of us pretty darn excited.
Whoa, hold on a second, though.
What? I'm so disappointed. In what?
On the front. Well, there's only one. It says there's 36 in here.
Dude, I'm so excited to see this. Yeah, me too.
This is 5th gen. This is brand new. There were some of the first people to see this.
Okay.
Dude, I remember how heavy the early ultra-wides were that were, like, so unwieldy.
This is not too bad. Right?
Got a good little look at the ID. Classic MSI Dragon.
Oh, yeah. IO is handled by dual HDMI's, DisplayPort, as well as a 98-watt USB-C port that acts as, like, a single cable solution, as well as a built-in USB 3 hub.
That's DP 2.1, USB-R 13.5. Of course, it would have to be to run those kinds of refresh rates.
Why am I holding this? Yep. Perfect.
I think there's a screw inside my monitor. It is an early pre-production unit, but, yes, it does sound like that.
This is a pretty big moment, because... We've got some new optimizations on the color layer that are supposed to absorb more light so that we're left with a much more black display in bright lights than the typical magenta.
That is way better. It's still got a bit of a hue.
A little bit, not a bit. But it is a lot better than it was before.
You get a little bit of the pink hue around the edges?
Not much. To be clear, I mean, HeDaily is a QD OLED monitor.
I've used them extensively. If you're in a light-controlled environment, it really isn't that big of a deal.
Especially if content is playing. Yes. But it is a complaint that people have had about these monitors, so they've been hard at work fixing them.
Another big complaint is, of course, the hardness.
My cat has scratched not one, but two.
No! My monitor. It's bad.
It's, like, all over here. As soon as content is playing, you can't notice it.
But other people online have also complained about micro-scratches with just not taking care of the panel super, super carefully.
I have an idea for how we can test this. I'm going to need a cat.
Do like you do. Scratch.
To be clear, 3H is still not super hard.
But it's harder? Yeah. It's one whole H harder.
I don't see anything. Sick. Not the most scientific test we've ever done.
No. But? I mean, we got the nail on the thing.
What do people want from me? The last big thing is the new sub-pixel arrangement, but we're not going to be able to see that until we fire it up.
They went RGB stripe like everyone's been asking for.
Finally. For those wondering, RGB stripe is not inherently superior.
But what it is, is more compatible with Windows' default expectations for how your monitor handles the sub-pixel layout.
And that's just because most displays are RGB stripe.
So having RGB stripe just means we're going to get better clarity, especially with clear type fonts.
And... Yeah, less fringing. Sensitive to some people.
I'm not really. It does not go portrait, but that's pretty normal for ultra-wide monitors.
But at least you do get a little bit of leveling, and we do have height adjust.
Question for you. My DisplayPort cables are in my wall.
Do I need DP 2.0 in order to...
I do, right? DP 2.1. Do you need me to get another computer?
I can get a computer. I got a computer. Okay, please.
While you're setting that up, I'll grab our cable, and it's in this nice little MSI bag.
Look at me. I'm so cool. What?
It's not about that. My computer's in a whole other room. What do you do?
You know what I do feel cool about, though?
It's good to be back to ultra-wide. I haven't even turned it on yet.
I loved the high refresh rate of my old monitor, but you know what the first game I actually
ended up playing after I got it was? Anno. Anno?
Anno does not run at 500Hz. No, and even if it did, it wouldn't matter.
Size is so much better than refresh rate, and there's a new Anno.
So this is going to be a welcome change, and it still...
360Hz. This is hardly a downgrade in that regard.
Another big thing is we did a big investigation into how much input latency is too much.
Have you seen the results yet? No, not yet. It turns out it all matters.
Yeah, I believe it. I 100% believe it. Okay, well my assumptions were that less than 10 or 15, we'd reach a point of negligible.
No, I believe you can feel it. It turns out it just scales.
That's wild. This is a great time to shout out our magnetic cable management from LTTstore.com.
Getting a cable extracted to plug into a different thing is as simple as popping off a magnet.
Love it. I'm putting it back.
Just throwing more magnets around. Let's power it up.
And unlike your C2, you're not going to have any issues if you try to stream while playing
ultra-wide on a 16 by 9 display. You're not going to have that weird black bar in the top.
Did I plug in the monitor? The nipple does not turn it on.
Which is super confusing for me.
Oh yeah, that's the stuff.
You know, talking about latency earlier too, like one of the key things about this is having
the lightning fast motion pixel response times as well.
Now, I don't think that that's something that is materially improved over previous
generations of QD OLED. No. But you're not wrong.
It's just OLED in general. It makes a huge difference to the clarity of a fast-moving image.
Difference in the magenta levels is really noticeable.
It's really not bad now. Yeah, no.
This looks black. And off axis, I'd say it's worse.
Sure. So you're probably getting the very worst case scenario from over there.
But dead on, looks great.
Yeah. What are the odds that this will work properly on an ultra-wide?
Try it. I am so friggin' done with this stupid fight.
Oh no, you're at the end of the game. I know what fight this is, yeah.
Yeah. This fight is bullshit. Well, in tactician mode, yes.
Unfortunately, they didn't do a proper difficulty scaling with better AI for the enemies.
They just juiced the opponent damage and then nerfed my damage in HP.
I'm really glad I chose the normal mode or whatever, because yeah, that's BS.
But you know, it's not BS. Is playing a completely different game on this monitor?
Should we find something that we can both play? No.
They want to be done at five. Oh yeah, that makes sense.
I like playing games with people that work, but I want to be done at five.
Now's as good a time as any to go ahead and turn on HDR on Windows.
Oh, my keyboard's not plugged in. Oh dude, you haven't seen HDR on this yet?
No. Even from the menu? I'm very excited.
I stopped playing and then they did the big update where they added HDR.
Final Fantasy Tactics came on, I've been very busy with that.
I haven't played it in ultra-wide either. In a game like this, where you've got that first person field of view and it's like open fields and stuff.
Yeah. Oh, it's actually really good for that.
Wow.
Oh yeah, there it is. Let's go. Oh dude, oh dude.
What? The sunset? Oh yeah, it's great.
That's what I wanted the horse, I can ride over here. That looks sick. We're literally going to ride off into the sunset.
On the one hand, it's amazing. On the other hand, if you already have a last gen QD OLED, it's probably good enough.
But more than good enough. But I'll take the incremental improvements because it's not like it's going to cost you
more than a last gen QD OLED did when it launched. And in the longer term, that's always a good thing for consumers because it means that
the prices are going to come down for the older gen tech, which is also very good.
Yeah, this looks amazing. I just can't, I keep looking to the sides because I'm like, I don't have normally anywhere
close to this kind of field of view, even with my FOV cranked.
Oh, I don't need ultra-wide. I don't need ultra-wide. I don't need ultra-wide.
I don't need ultra-wide. You know, it's a funny thing because when I went for a 42 inch 16 by 9.
Yeah. Right? Well, this is it.
This is the end game because if I want to play ultra-wide, I can just exactly throw black
bars on it, but I have literally not once done it. It can also be problematic because you're trying to force a weird resolution onto a monitor,
which they're usually okay, but if you're playing full screen, it might give a little
bit of weirdness. And the subtle curve is nice.
Yeah. Too much curve, pretty dumb. A little bit?
A little bit? Tasteful. That's good.
And you're not going to find that on a 16 by 9.42 inch.
Using the light touches. While we wait for shaders to compile, we can have a look at the OSD.
They've got a bunch of AI features and you can be annoyed at the marketing, but some
of them are pretty useful. So the care sensor allows you to have the monitor either controlled by the system or
the monitor itself turn off when you walk away and turn back on when you approach.
The rest of the OSD is actually really comprehensive built-in KVM.
You can tune your HDR so you can actually go for true black 500.
You can turn up your peak brightness or you can adjust the curve yourself.
Yeah. Oh, that's, that's actually super cool. You can turn display screen compression on and off.
I personally never noticed a difference having it on, but if you want it off, you can do
that. Adaptive sync can be enabled and disabled.
You can force various aspect ratios. Obviously, your usual profiles, all your OLED care options.
There's a ton in here, including detection of the vertical split when you drag Windows
to the side using arrow snap. There's also multi-icon detection, taskbar detection.
So these are going to detect when you have icons and they'll just kind of like dim them
or the taskbar. It'll try to dim them to prevent burn in.
And then a bunch of cool stuff in here as well, RGB brightness.
You can change your RGB, where the hell's the RGB? Probably on the back.
Okay. This is cool. You can change your shortcuts.
Oh, nice. For the up, down, left and right. Yeah.
So if you don't want to turn on AI crosshair, whatever the heck an AI crosshair is by pressing
down, then you can just not be a filthy cheater. That's fantastic.
Yeah. All right. Let's fire up.
Halo. Dude, that looks amazing. This might be the best I've seen it look.
Right? And now it's an ultra-wide. This thing is sick.
It really is. I, man, I want ultra-wide, especially after we looked at that other monitor in your office
the other day. What am I doing with my life?
Not living if I don't have an ultra-wide. What am I doing?
Come on, man. Get it together, Linus.
Man, the field of view is amazing, though, for this kind of game.
It really is. Anything first-person shooter, just, ah, man.
Who needs audio? Who needs to check corners?
Not me. Not this guy. Gosh, maxed out with HDR, it really does look so good.
Doesn't it, though? It really does. That's what killed me is, like, the game looks amazing.
Mm-hmm. Like. What just happened?
Did it detect me being gone? I wonder if it did, because it slowly dimmed, and then a kid's coming back.
Hold on. Dude, I was sitting way over here, and it got confused.
Okay, well, the dimming feature works. Any display that I can go to and one with is a pretty good display.
Well, cool monitor. Good job, MSI.
Is there much else to say?
Thanks for sponsoring this video and helping us take a quick look at 5th Gen QD OLED.
The future is here, or at least it's here for us, and it looks bright.
If you like this video, maybe check out the one where we first saw QD OLED, like, five
years ago now. Oh, f**k, my team's gonna lose, I haven't been paying attention.
I'm not carrying hard enough. See you later.
Oh, shoot. Come here. Come on, come on, come on.
This is why we tried to not install Halo on the computers anymore.
How did that grenade not get... I don't know. I wasn't watching.
I was trying to finish the video. I'm so upset.