Excellent all around
With monitors I have found that you get what you pay for, and this one is not cheap. Thankfully it lives up to my high expectations. I've been using it on my main pc for software development work, photo processing, watching movies, and gaming. Here are my thoughts after a few weeks. Pros: + 3840x1600 at 38 inches is a really nice size and resolution. The pixel density is similar to a 27" 1440p. The width is about big enough to fill your field of view without being so big that you have to do a lot of neck movement like with the 49 inch ultrawides. The vertical dimension is noticeably taller than 1440p and fits a good amount of text. + The colors are beautifully bright and accurate. + Contrast is about as good as you can expect from an IPS. + I can't discern any unfavorable motion blur on the fast response time setting. It's a little smeary on the off setting, slight negative ghosting on the faster setting. Fast is ideal to me, and motion looks really good at 144hz. + There is no PWM dimming or flicker. At this price you could be getting an OLED, so this monitor is a good choice if, like me, you have a preference for IPS because of flicker sensitivity. + The backlight is relatively even. On a fullscreen white image I can only discern very slight variations in brightness and hue across the width of the display and only if I'm really looking for them. It's the best I've personally seen on an ultrawide IPS. + Mine has no dead or stuck pixels. I scoured every centimeter and they're all perfect. I talked to LG customer service before buying it and they assured me that pixel defects would be covered by the warranty. + Commendable quality control. I know I'm very picky with it comes to monitors, I've gone through a lot of them with defects in the backlight and/or pixels. This one is damn near flawless and I'm very happy with it. + The curve is just right. It's subtle enough not to make straight lines look obviously warped. + The design is really nice. This is of course subjective, but I have a white PC and white desk, so the white housing of this monitor makes for a really cohesive look across my setup. Also the cables that come with it are all white. + The joystick interface for the OSD feels intuitive and is easy to access. + The built in USB hub and KVM is a nice touch. I use it to toggle between my PC and macbook, which I previously had to use an external KVM for. There are two USB-A's and one USB-C on the bottom of the monitor for plugging in your thumb drives or mouse receiver or whatever without reaching around back, a thoughtful feature that works well. Cons: - It has backlight bleed in the corners. It's far from the worst I've seen but definitely noticeable when the corners are dark, such as when watching 16:9 video pillarboxed. Most IPS's have this to some extent, so it's not really a defect, just a minor annoyance that comes with the technology. - It has HDR 600 support and a local dimming mode. These are pretty much fake. On an LCD with a ~1000:1 contrast ratio, HDR means it just cranks the brightness and looks very washed out when you enable HDR on your PC. The "local dimming" appears to have 4 zones. It's bad, just keep it off. - The included stand is too deep to be usable on my desk. It overlapped significantly with my desk pad and held the monitor a little too far forward. I had to swap it out for a smaller stand. For reference my desk is 60cm deep. - The built in speakers sound exactly like you'd expect from a 2 inch speaker squeezed behind an LCD with a little vent facing downward. You probably don't want to use them. If you're even considering swinging $1200 for a monitor you hopefully already have some decent speakers. - The white light in the power button/joystick flashes when it's asleep. It's very bright and distracting in a dark room. Fortunately you can disable it in the settings; I'm really just nitpicking here. Other considerations: - This monitor is a full 4k width with some height chopped off. If you're deciding whether your graphics card can drive it for gaming, look at 4k benchmarks rather than 1440p. My old Radeon RX 6700XT struggled to hit >100fps with most games so I switched to an RTX 4080 Super. An extra expense to keep in mind if you're coming from 1440p. - It weighs 23 pounds. If you're planning on using a third party stand or arm, double check the capacity. At this price, you have a lot of options. I'm very satisfied having gone with this LG and hope it will last for years to come. Read more
