Cheap Korean Curved Ultrawide 100Hz Gaming Monitor
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,990 words · ~9 min read
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sorry guys I am feeling a little sick coming into this video that is to say
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I'm sick of ultra wide monitors costing so
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much okay no but seriously so this
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company Zotac reached out to me offering to send
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their 34in LED curves monitor to have a
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look at and initially I was just like H it's another cheap Korean monitor off
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eBay and then I was like right it's a cheap Korean monitor off
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eBay that's 34 in Ultra wide and is
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anywhere from4 to $500 cheaper than the
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ones that you can get from brand names so is it up to Snuff let's find
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out Mass drop is Now featuring their custom configured AKG k7xx audio file
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headphones check them and other drops out at the link in the video
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description all right so let's get this baby open so honestly I wasn't even
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going to look at this like I said in the intro but for more reasons than
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just it's an eBay monitor the reason
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that I didn't care was that I thought it
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was pretty similar in Spec but just cheaper compared to any other Ultra wide
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you could get what I didn't realize until I looked a little closer was it's
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3440 by 1440 34in ultrawide at 100 Hertz
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with free sync for $400 to $500 less
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than what you would pay for either an Acer Predator or a susus Rog
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equivalent at that size with gsync so
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you are definitely giving up the tearing resistance of G syn and you are giving
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up the like A+ panel or whatever it is
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that you would get with a brand name but you're still getting the ultra wide
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experience which I personally think is amazing you're still getting high
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refresh rate anything above 60 is a very
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noticeable Improvement going past 100 to 120 I'd say the gains start to drop off
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but up to 100 it makes a huge difference
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and you're getting it at a way lower price so Inside the Box we get a display
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port cable we get a Korean power cable with a North American adapter that's
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bent but that's okay we get an ARM oh
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look there's an ARM in there that kind of ARM we get a foot oh
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look there's a foot in there it's
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fun we get some screws and we get some
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instructions entirely in Korean but
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there are a few useful specs in here so it's using a Samsung VA panel that's
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good to know it runs at 60 HZ according to this but it's at 100 HZ on the eBay
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page r1800 so this is a very very curved
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monitor look how happy that makes me so let's put this baby together the foot
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bones connected to the ARM bone the
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screw bones connected to the foot bone
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the ARM bones connected to the
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backbone the backbones connected to the
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monitor bone and we lift it all up and it goes a
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little something like that overall I got to say I'm pretty impressed I think they
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did a pretty good job aesthetically for like an off-brand monitor uh the bezels
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are pretty thin it does get a little bit fat near the back but I like the silver
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chin bar uh it's not that big I like that it's made of metal it's got like
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these screws on the bottom that give it kind of like a an industrial kind of
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look um I wish the foot and the ARM were
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not so glossy and such fingerprint
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magnets if you take such a heavy monitor like this and you put it on a really
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tall ARM as soon as the user goes to type you get a lot of monitor wobble and
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that's really not the case with this one another polarizing bit is these little
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covers at the back I personally am not a fan because all they seem to really do
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to me is force this wire to come out at the bottom where you're going to see it
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from the front whereas if they were like over
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here and they routed over here or something I would see more of a
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justification for them but like you can't really do that Ed likes them
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though so I think that tells us everything we need to know about Ed's
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taste the microboard monitor is missing
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an audio output so if you wanted to pass through to your headphones you will not
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have that capability but what it has is
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DisplayPort 1.2 HDMI 2 and DVI of all
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things so what I don't know yet is exactly what resolution and refresh
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rates it's going to run at for all of those interfaces but darn it I'm going
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to find out so we're running off a GTX
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1080 here 6950x 128 gigs of RAM is it
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turning on the onscreen control buttons and
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placements are not a strong point although from my perspective you can
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actually use the bass as a mirror to see them hey and it turned on anyway no
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there's no other way to see any of the buttons no that's not intentional I
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refuse to accept that that was their
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intent okay so we got it fired up and I will say this uh any sort of uncertainty
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with respect to the specifications of the refresh rate we can put that to rest
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because this is clearly running at 100 htz let's go ahead and fire up a game
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well if there was any doubt that it magically had a g-sync module in it that
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tearing should put that to rest but uh dang it actually looks pretty good oh
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and the menu is in Korean okay there we go oh oh this
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navigation is awful what do the buttons do okay sometimes you get what you pay
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for okay so free sync is included uh response time is off usually
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the medium setting is best I had noticed immediately that motion blur was more
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than I'm accustomed to in modern monitor so let's see if that helped a little bit
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so motion blur still definitely a thing
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um even with the higher refresh rate that's not going to compensate for the
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pixels themselves not switching that quickly and Samsung's MVA technology is
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not known to be like the fastest
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especially compared to things like OLED or TN with that said and I've said this
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before the higher refresh rate makes a
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huge difference to the responsiveness overall
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of the feel of the game and I would take that over a crisper 60 HZ image any day
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of the week so gaming experience actually pretty solid um but one risk
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that you take with these monitors is
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dead pixels so we're going to use dead pixel buddy and have a quick look now
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the odds of them sending a reviewer one that has a bazillion dead pixels is
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obviously a little lower and
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actually I'm impressed there are no dead
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pixels at all cool I like that dead pixel buddy is just a website now coming
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back to that whole 10bit mode thing um
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there's a 10bit test ramp Photoshop file that you can get to find out if your
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display is actually 10bit and that looks like not but just
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because the panel is not 10 bit and it never promised to be so I was like o did
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we get a little bonus well we didn't doesn't mean it couldn't be used for
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basic content creation this on the other hand does these are about the most all
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over the map results that I've seen since I got my i1 Pro from xrite and uh
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this calman uh ultimate for business software from Spectra Cal I mean I look
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at these points some of them aren't even in the same neighborhood as the colors
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that they are supposed to be hitting here okay so the last thing that's left
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is to check out all the different interfaces so I've never used an ultra
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wide with DVI before but there you go dual link DVI 60 HZ 3440 X
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1440 actually not bad I never actually run the numbers to see what we were
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going to get but I know that on HDMI 1.4
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you've been stuck with 50 htz on most ultrawide monitors the good news though
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HDMI 2.0 seems to work perfectly so it
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just switch switches on its own and boom there we are 3440 by 1440 I'm pretty
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sure we're running at 100 HZ and the UFO test on blur Busters will back me up
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there so bottom line then uh I had Ed play
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some Counter-Strike Global Offensive and his conclusion is pretty much this if
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the option is between this and a faster pixel response time display like the 144
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HZ TN that he has at home he'll take the 44 Herz TN but if the choice is between
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spending another $100 to get 25 fewer
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Hertz somewhat more accurate color I actually did review this display from
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Acer in the past and no HDMI 2.0 then
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this one actually looks like a pretty darn good option if you're only planning
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to game and you don't plan to do any serious color work because that was not
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as compelling of a story
10:00
Ting yes my friends that is the sound
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that is made by the word that is the name of the sponsor for today Tang which
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focused on customer service and satisfaction when you call them you do
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stuck in contract and switch to Ting they'll cover 25% of your cancellation
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you use their savings calculator which we have Linked In the video description
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save money on Ting or hey actually maybe you won't but there's a good chance you
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will cuz data is now just 10 bucks per gig beyond the first Gigabyte so check
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it out head over to lin. t.com and try out their savings calculator today when
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you use our link you'll get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new Dev
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