Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware box today's monitor review comes courtesy of you guys the commenters the patreon members and just general viewers of the channel you guys have been telling me to review a Cogan monitor for ages and thanks to Cogan I've been able to make that happen and yes before you ask I do have a bit of a cold at the moment I've been sort of working through that over the past week that hasn't stopped me from testing out more displays which is what I'm still able to get this review out so the model that in question is the Cogan Kamm 341 f qu LA which is sensibly advertises just the Cogan 34 wqhd kerbs 21:9 ultra-wide 100 hertz precinct monitor 34 40 by 1440 on their website I'm probably not going to say that absolute mouthful of a product name in the future but from the website name you've probably been able to figure out all the key specifications for our international viewers you might be wondering what is coconut never heard of this brand before and well that's because it's an Australian exclusive brand but before you click away you might have spotted something very familiar about this 34 inch monitor design it looks quite similar to some of the vo-tech monitors I've been testing out on the channel over the past year in fact I suspect both biotech and Kogan are using the same odium for this product an OD M or original design manufacturer is a company that develops products it then sells to other companies that put their brand on it I'm not sure which OD m is responsible for this monitor but the Kogan 34 inch monitor I'm reviewing today looks almost identical to the vo-tech G and 34 see that North Americans can buy off Amazon the stand is slightly different but the rear design is a dead giveaway and the on screen display used with this kokomo delay is identical to some of the biotech monitors aren't tested the specifications such as the 34 inch 1440p ultra wide VA panel at 100 Hertz are also identical so while this review will be based on my experience with the Kogan model I suspect most of what I will be talking about he will also apply to the vo-tech GM 34 C and that's great use really because both options are very affordable in their respective territories the GN 34c is available for just 450 US dollars which is an absolute steal for these specifications in 2019 undercutting many competitors by several hundred dollars similarly the Kogan 30 forge ultra wide is a steal for Australians costing just five hundred and forty dollars which again is several hundred dollars less than the next cheapest equivalent option so what does five hundred and forty dollars get you well I've got to say I wasn't super impressed with the build quality of this monitor I've actually quite liked the design of past biotech displays but this one just feels a bit cheaper and less well constructed on the rear there are some quite obvious and messy seams where plastic panels join together and I'm not a fan of the glossy plastic strip that runs around the edges on top of this The Stand is not very stable there's a lot of play in the connection point which isn't great for such a wide monitor there's also no height adjustability which is an issue when the monitor sits so low to your desk I suspect many buyers were you're looking to get a visa mount for this monitor given that at least for me it sits uncomfortably low at a desk and the wide prongs stand is hard to raise using simple cheats like stacking books for example the problems with the design don't end there while the rear panel is nice clean and free of game elements the ports are split into two separate areas each with its own cover one is for the power plug and the other is for the display port HDMI and DVI connectors this makes it hard to achieve neat cable management because the cables are coming from two separate areas each quite far apart and with no obvious rounding point through the stand this is probably sounding like a bit of a nitpick but it's just one of those things that most other monitors seem to get right the on screen menu is controlled through face buttons rather than a directional toggle so flicking through all the options is difficult I wouldn't say there's a lot of features in there but you do get several modes multi window options check crosshairs and color controls all of these would be easier to navigate with directional controls also worth mentioning is that free sync is disabled by default you want to turn that on to get an adaptive sync with low framerate compensation luckily as we move into the performance section of this review there are many more positive things to talk about response times are one the co 34 inch ultra wide uses a VA panel and we know that VA is the slowest of the 3 main LCD technologies however this particular panel set to its fastest overdrive setting which does not introduce noticeable overshoot Coxon with a greater great average of just five point eight eight milliseconds this is several milliseconds faster than most VA s that typically sit around eight milliseconds and that helps reduce blur smearing and ghosting this isn't the fastest VA panel I've tested but it's certainly one of the better ones sitting in the response time zone that gaming grade IPS panels tend to occupy while the refresh rate of a hundred Hertz is nothing special given we now have 120 and 144 Hertz monitors at this resolution the fast response times mean a hundred percent of transitions occur within the Refresh window so the display is never bottlenecked by response times and this is comfortably a true 100 Hertz panel input lag is also good not the fastest I've seen for a gaming monitor but at around 5 milliseconds it's middle-of-the-pack and won't slow you down significantly in your quest for gaming greatness for NVIDIA GPU owners you'll be happy to hear that adaptive sync works without any issues provided you enable the checkbox in the Nvidia control panel brightness and contrast ratio are both good at around 310 it speak the Kogan 34 ultra wide should be suitable for most users while the contrast ratio of slightly over 3000 to one is bang-on for a VA I've actually seen some ultra wide vs and other monitors using Samsung VI panels slip down to around 2,000 to one but no such problems with this display out of the box car performance was better than expected out of the box with game and grade monitors I don't expect factory calibration but I always like it when a display put some respectable figures the white point of 6700 K is closer than many similar monitors get to the correct value and the overall CCT curve while a little wonky isn't too far off the mark gamma is slightly too low but a Delta II average of two point five eight is good for a gaming monitor it's not under 2.0 so it's not at the threshold for proper accuracy but it's pretty close and that's a strong result this continues with a look at saturation which again you'll see here a Delta a average of two point two for this is skewed somewhat by much better yellow and cyan performance than the other colors and you but some slight under saturation for reds and blues through the mid-tones but the fact this display has been configured with srgb in mind is definitely welcome performance does fall away in our more intensive color checker test with a Delfy average of 3.26 and some particularly loose values but really this is a typical bordering on good result for a gaming monitor in its default configuration it's better than several other via tech monitors I reviewed getting respectable performance out of the box is good because there's not a lot you can do in the on screen menu to adjust color performance there are white balance and saturation controls here but that weird CCT curve you saw earlier is hard to correct with just basic red green and blue sliders I messed around here a bit but was only able to get performance to be worse that said you can always run a full calibration and that's exactly what I did using display Cal patreon members can't download the software profile I created although as always this profile won't deliver true accuracy for other monitors due to peril variants the results from a full calibration are good wouldn't say it's the best I've seen but it definitely fixes a number of issues the contrast ratio does drop down a bit down to around twenty-nine hundred to one button that's not a huge concern panel uniformity is mediocre which tends to be the case with ultra wide curved VA displays the outer edges in particular are problem areas with Delta ease of above 3.0 relative to the center while the bottom and top edges are also a bit uneven the center area is decent but you shouldn't expect great uniformity with this sort of display at the end of the day the positives outweigh the negatives with the Kogan 34 inch ultra what most of the performance metrics are decent especially response times which are better than usual for a VA panel we're getting a 100 Hertz refresh rate which isn't a super high refresh these days but does give a smoother experience than 60 Hertz by a long way and adaptive sync works perfectly with both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs to enhance the gaming experience further I really liked the combination of a 21-9 aspect ratio 34 40 by 1440 resolution and 100 Hertz refresh rate as well for ultra wide I feel this is the sweet spot in 2019 and current pricing reflects that being able to get this monitor for 540 ozzie or an essentially identical via tech display for 450 US dollars it's an absolute steal when 120 or 144 Hertz monitors are often double the price you can see why I'd recommend a hundred Hertz monitors for shoppers after the best bang for buck speaking of the vo-tech GN 34 c while i haven't specifically reviewed that monitor i believe most of what i've tested and found with this Kogan monitor review will also apply to that model maybe put an asterisk on that because i'm not a hundred percent sure but i'd be pretty confident in recommending the vo-tech options as well based on what i've seen here this monitor isn't perfect though the build quality and design features leave a lot to be desired and that's clearly where costs have been cut but given the panel delivers a great gaming experience despite these problems and it's a lot cheaper than other monitors to me it's pretty easy to look past these minor flaws in favor of the screaming good value this display brings that's it for this review if you're interested in either the codeine or vo-tech options you can find links to those in the description below sorry to our viewers in Europe and Asia because I believe neither of these displays are available there but they could be more models from the same ODM out there so definitely do some research there subscribe for more monitor reviews consider supporting us on patreon I'll catch you in the next one