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i knew this video was going to be a challenge i knew that having come from
the thousand dollar plus lg 34 um 95
i was gonna have a hard time being quite as positive about its little brother the
29 um 65. a monitor that currently retails for about a third of the price
and one that has a form factor that i just never really found very compelling
but first an overview the 29 um 65 is an ultra wide 21 by 9 29 in monitor from lg
that runs a resolution that lg calls ultra wide full hd but i think it's
actually faster to say 2560 by 1080. it features a thin bezel a couple of
functional if unexciting speakers a joystick control knob for navigating the
on-screen display and a glossy plastic stand that unfortunately has only two
height positions that you need a screwdriver to adjust neither of which i
really found high enough but you can just kind of put it on a box like what i did if you really want to under its very
satisfactory hard anti-glare coating is an 8-bit ips panel for solid color
performance and superior wide viewing angle performance something that's a
must since just looking at the thing straight on you're going to be looking
at the edges from a bit of an angle the monitor features a fairly average five
millisecond greater gray response time rating that despite being the same as
the um 95 which we looked at recently feels very noticeably snappier which
would indicate that this monitor is going to have low input lag and be a
gamer's delight i've got an input lag tester on order from leo bodner but it's
not here yet so in the meantime i decided to do a side-by-side comparison
against the pb278q from ASUS a monitor with that fairly average input lag we
shot at 240 frames per second and it looks like my subjective observations
were correct with each frame equivalent to about four milliseconds the
difference you're seeing here is between 16 to 20 milliseconds or equivalent to
the action reaching your eyes a full frame sooner than the pb a very solid
result motion blur is also subjectively a strong point with it being about as
good as i could expect for an ips panel feature-wise it's got inputs galore with
dual link dvi two HDMI inputs displayport and an audio in that can
either run the two onboard speakers or pass through to the headphone out jack
these inputs support a side-by-side mode that would let you run two devices at
the same time like like a desktop and a notebook as if you've got two 5x4
monitors a feature i don't personally find that useful but i'm sure for
someone that will be a huge deal a more practical use of the extra horizontal
space for me is enabled by lg's screen split utility it's available on Windows
and mac and allows you to split your Windows or your screen up a number of
different ways it actually works a lot better than i expected but the execution
needs maybe two to three more software revisions and some more customization
options before i'd say it's ready to take on the likes of display fusion for
example i found the most useful modes for me were the three screen left and
three screen balanced four screen was just too small to be useful with a mere
1280 by 540 resolution per window and two screen split can be replaced easily
by just using arrow snap within Windows on the subject of resolution though
let's get into why i never really cared
for 29-inch 21x9 ultrawide monitors a
form factor that some others notably austin evans in his gaming setup video
where he talks about how great it is for widescreen movies and games really like
i guess a big part of it is that it's really not as big as it sounds the
further you get from a one to one square
aspect ratio the smaller the screen area
is relative to the diagonal monitor size this 29 inch monitor is actually smaller
than a 27 inch 16 by 9 and only about 12
bigger than a 24 inch 16 by 10 a size
and aspect ratio that i always really liked with that said i am aware of the
advantages movies that are shot in 2.39 by one cinematic aspect ratio can be
watched without black bars and the advantage for gaming with a wider field
of view without bezels getting in the way is obvious and in fact gaming is one
of the strongest arguments i can make for getting this monitor it's only about
33 more difficult to drive than a single 1080p monitor so you won't be spending a
fortune on your graphics card and it delivers a very different gaming
experience in supported games which of course brings up the usual
issues that crop up every time we throw a new resolution at the gaming industry
and that's that many games will not run at 2560 by 1080 without a little bit of
tinkering the first bit of good news though is that if you need some help
figuring out if your games will work at all or getting your games running check
out widescreen gaming forum they've helped me out a couple of times in the past and the next bit of good news is
that because the vertical resolution is 1080 in games that just flat out won't
run in ultra wide you can play at 1920 by 1080 with black bars along the sides
without any weird interpolation or other visual anomalies your monitor will be
equivalent to about a 23-inch 1080p monitor when it's run this way gaming
aside the Windows modern ui and steam bic picture are a couple of newer ui
styles that can benefit in a big way for more horizontal space although valve has
yet to add support for 21 by 9 resolutions and i'm also acutely aware
of the productivity argument that it's basically equivalent to two 17-inch 5x4
monitors with a 1280 by 1080 resolution each making it great for multitasking
it's just that i didn't find that
productivity was earth-shatteringly different enough to
justify the price premium the way that i did on the larger um 95. i never found
1080 vertical pixels to be enough and giving me the option to either stretch
things out even wider or narrow them even further so i feel like it's 2007
again and i'm working on a couple of 17-inch lcds are a couple of options
that i just don't find that appealing for just over 350 or so i can get two
23-inch 1080p monitors if productivity is a focus for me
but that's all subjective and i know a lot of people disagree with me so with
that out of the way let's get down to the bottom line
since the price of the 34 um 95 with its
higher resolution higher pixel density and larger size makes it completely out
of reach for gamers and pretty much everyone else for now
now that i've actually used one of these instead of just seeing them briefly at
trade shows would i recommend a 29-inch
21x9 monitor as a less expensive substitute for productivity the answer
is no but for gaming or a mixture of the two actually yes i would some people
don't mind bezels and some people think that the 48 by 9 aspect ratio of an
ifinity setup is just dandy i am not one of either of those types of people and
even though i could get three 23-inch 1080p monitors for the price of one of
these which would be better for productivity i prefer the single monitor
experience for gaming and the comparatively smaller amount of hassle
that comes from dealing with one monitor running a weird resolution versus three
spanned monitors running a weird resolution thank you for watching guys the link for
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