Gadgetory

welcome back to Hard Rock's today I'm checking out one of the most heavily requested LG gaming monitors I've been seeing requests to check out this bad boys since I think it was late last year which is when it went on sale I'm of course talking about the LG 34 GK 950 F it's in the title after all and from a lot of angles this is a pretty interesting display that I'm glad to finally have some hands-on time with so this is LG's highest and gaming Ultra wired right now it's 34 inches in size and uses a 34 40 by 1440 IPS panel with a 1900 hour curvature crucially this display supports up to a 144 Hertz refresh rate making it the highest refresh monitor at this resolution all thanks to that new LG panel it's actually higher clocked than the equivalent g-sync variant the tops out at 120 Hertz although judo Nvidia now supporting free sync owners of an NVIDIA GPU can also now use the 34 GK 950 F and up to 144 Hertz with adaptive sync aside from the gaming features this display is using LG's nano IPS technology which allows for 98% DCI p3 coverage so it's comfortably a wide gamut display you're also getting free sync - and what LG claims is HDR with display HDR 400 certification although this isn't really an HDR display and I'll get to that a bit later on all of these features come at a pretty high price LG is selling this display for 1200 US dollars and it seems it's quite popular as it's on backorder at most retailers that's more expensive than the G sync option on Amazon right now and also quite a bit more expensive than most other ultra Wired's of this type I'm guessing the justification here is it has HDR and an exclusively high refresh rate but we'll talk about how this monitor is positioned in the market after all of the testing let's kick things off by looking at the design LG is using a very similar build to most of their current ultra gear gaming monitors here so it means it's simple minimalist and uses mostly basic matte black plastic for its construction there are a couple of red highlights on the stand and on the rear of the display but it's not overly gamer in style at the same time I wouldn't call it a particularly high in design many of its competitors use full metal stands while the 34 GK 950 F is mostly plastic and that may be off-putting to some buyers considering the price tag is over $1000 the stand is pretty adjustable supporting swivel tilt and height adjustment the way height adjustability is achieved us through this unique sheath design which didn't look very effective at first glance but it's actually quite stable and reliable in fact the entire stand is very sturdy and supports the wide display area very well all the ports are found directly on the back panel and there's very little in the way of cable management you do get a DisplayPort input plus two HDMI port two USB 3.0 hub and a 3.5 millimeter audio output jack so a standard arrangement for a gaming display you'll need to use DisplayPort if you want adaptive sync with an NVIDIA GPU you have the good feature is the inclusion of a directional toggle to navigate through the on-screen menus this makes accessing all the options very easy and in fact the entire menu system is very responsive on this display more so than other monitors the feature set is also quite typical including all your basic color controls plus cheat crosshairs shadow boosting features and a number of gaming modes before speaking about performance there's a few things you should know about this monitor the first is that there's a crucial firmware update available that improves input latency you should download and install that through LG's on screen control utility if you buy one secondly you should enable the free sync extended mode for the best performance I didn't spot any flickering but enabling this is required to get adaptive sync working and it's disabled by default of course one of the major selling points to this display is its ability to push up to 144 Hertz rather than 120 or a hundred Hertz like previous 34 40 by 1440 displays the good news is that response times are fast enough to allow a proper 144 Hertz experience I recorded a great a great average transition of just over 6.0 milliseconds with the majority of transitions tested falling inside the 6.9 for millisecond refresh window that's required for a 144 Hertz display this was using the fast overdrive mode as the faster mode introduced a bit of overshoot the recent response times are important here is at 34 inch 34 40 by 40 40 panels available in two panel technologies IPS and VA this lg monitor uses an IPS panel but had they opted for VA instead it's unlikely that 144 Hertz would have been achievable the air panels often have response times up around eight milliseconds which is fine for a hundred Hertz but effectively becomes a bottleneck at 144 Hertz that prevents you from getting a true 144 Hertz experience LG using IPS II with its inherently faster response times opens up 144 Hertz as a possibility and I'm happy to verify there's no response time bottleneck with this panel while the panel can properly do 144 Hertz I'm sure you're wondering whether 144 Hertz is any better than 120 or 100 Hertz especially as monitors using those refresh rates are cheaper I don't think it's much of an upgrade over 120 Hertz we're talking only about a 1.4 milliseconds difference but I do feel it's a noticeable step above 100 Hertz with that said one option is best could also come down to your PC hardware because 3440 by 1440 and above 100 FPS can be hard to achieve with all but top-end components the faster LG option could give you better longevity while a 100 Hertz monitor could be better for today these are the things you'll have to weigh up depending on your setup and needs also worth mentioning is this monitor packs a 48 to 144 Hertz refresh rate range with low frame rate compensation support effectively removing that minimum value I found no issues with the adaptive sync experience here it works very well with hardware from AMD and NVIDIA input latency with the latest firmware update was very good at an estimated 2.4 milliseconds without the update you'll be stuck with lag over 10 milliseconds which is poor for a gaming grade monitor which is why installing the update is something worth doing combined display latency doesn't quite reach that of at again but overall the IPS based 34 GK 950 F is one of the more responsive monitors I've tested recently while the use of an IPS panel does allow LG to hit a maximum 144 Hertz refresh rate the downside compared to a slower VA is in the contrast ratio the 34 GK 950 F clocks in around 950 to one which is around the mark of other IPS ultra whites like the Acer predator x 34 however you can easily get double the contrast ratio with an ultra-wide VA the particular ultra-wide VA pounds I've tested haven't been at the high end of what VA can achieve but there's still a big contrast advantage to VA brightness from the 34 GK 950 F is pretty good for SDR at 316 it's with no roll-off to brightness or contrast at different window sizes or conditions I also didn't experience much IPS glow with this panel which is definitely a good thing and a key complaint that a lot of IPs buyers can make as this is a wide gamut display there's naturally a few complications around color performance by default the monitor ships with its gamut unclamped this means that if you're reviewing regular content on your PC the display will over saturate everything as it expands srgb content which is the vast majority of content you'll be viewing into the DCI p3 color space as you can see this unclamped gamut leads to delta ii averages between 3.0 and 3.5 in our saturation and color checker tests when testing against srgb nothing unusual here for a wide gamut display we're also getting a white point of around 7,000 K which is a little cold although a grayscale Delta a average of two point four three isn't terrible for a default experience while the default behavior isn't accurate - srgb it actually does a decent job with matching DCI p3 in fact with just a few OSD tweaks to fix up the white point I was able to achieve sub 2.0 Delta ease when testing against DCI p3 this is a great result for working with wide gamut content although again most content isn't wide gamut so you won't get the benefit of this accuracy and instead you'll be left with over saturation with srgb content however LG does offer an sRGB mode which thankfully clamps the gamut down to srgb but this mode is far from perfect the fatal mistake LG has made is restricting access to color temperature settings when in the srgb mode luckily you can change brightness which is something other OEMs also restricts however the lack of color temperature controls within the srgb mode means you basically have to hope you are receiving a perfectly calibrated srgb mode from the factory with my review unit this wasn't the case the srgb mode gave the display and noticeable yellow tint which is reflected in the 61 34 KCT average and greyscale delta-e average of four point four six and while the gamut is clamped so we aren't getting over saturation color Delta e averages are still above two point O because of this incorrect white point and this is pretty frustrating because if LG allowed users to change the white point while using the srgb mode you'd be able to fix this problem and have near-perfect srgb performance my advice to monitor makers is definitely to still include an sRGB mode that clamps down the gamut and attempts srgb accuracy but still make the fine color controls accessible so that users can correct inconsistencies when they receive the unit so for buyers without a calibration tool what you're left with is one of two situations a default mode with a correctable white point and good DCI p3 accuracy but over saturation for srgb content and an sRGB mode that fixes the over saturation but has poor and unfixable white points this isn't the worse situation to be in and for gamers I think the default experience is probably fine but it isn't ideal either for those that do have a calibration tool there's actually a lot that can be done here with the default mode we can easily create a wide gamut display profile that is accurate for both DCI p3 and srgb which is perfect for color managed apps like Photoshop although in unmanaged apps like the Windows desktop you'll still get that over saturation but then we can also create an S RGB mode display profile that fixes the white point in that mode while keeping the gamut clamped in any application in the end you can switch between the two modes and profiles using the srgb mode combination for regular usage and the default wide gamut mode whenever you are working with wide gamut content it doesn't have the convenience that a properly calibrated professional display would have but since LG is giving you a full wide gamut panel here it's nice and in some situations you can use it and of course some people may want that oversaturated srgb look anyway in which case you'll be very happy with the performance and vibrance of this panel if you are a member of our patreon page you can download both profiles I created for this display over there it won't be perfectly accurate for every unit shooter panel variances but it might be useful if you want to sneak closer to accuracy without buying calibration tools before talking about HDR I want to talk about uniformity because this is another advantage IPS ultralights have over their VA counterparts the 34 gk 950 f is a pretty uniform monitor for something that's both curved and 21:9 factors that usually work against uniformity the center zone is excellent and even the outer areas only just sneak over a delta ii of 2.0 relative to the center in most cases this is an outstanding result of this type of monitor far better than any code VA or oxford VA i have tested the only major downside to this monitor is its HDR performance the 34 g can 950 F is incapable of properly displaying HDR content because it fails two of the three key performance metrics for proper HDR it can display upwards of ninety five percent of the DCI p3 spectrum so we are getting a greater than s RGB color gamut but peak brightness tops out at just 400 nits which is too low for displaying the bright highlights of HDR content I recommend at least 600 nits here more importantly the 34 GK 950 F spectacularly fails in contrast which is the most important feature of an HDR display there is no local dimming here so all we are getting is this IPS panels weak 950 to 1 contrast ratio in HDR scenes this simply is not good enough for showing HDR content where if I was being generous I'd maybe permit a 5,000 to 1 ratio but really would be looking for at least 10,000 to 1 this monitor shouldn't be advertised as supporting HDI it's something I'd completely ignore when making your buying decision and again it throws into question the worthless display HDR 400 certification even more bizarre is the fact AMD certified this as free sync to complaint the certification standards really are not tight enough if this sort of display is passing HDR aside there's plenty to like about the LG 30 40 came down for fear from a hardware perspective it's got the fastest refresh rate we've seen at this resolution and the response times and input latency to back it up the design is simple yet pretty effective the use of an IPS display has led to excellent uniformity and a nice wired gamut and I just really like this aspect ratio resolution and size for gaming in general the issues are mostly nitpicks when it comes to a gaming class display revolving around calibration and how the wide gamut is handled non-existent hgr performance is also disappointing but considering this display performs well for SDR content I think it's easy to overlook this or a problem if the pricing is acceptable and as we move into discussing on pricing this is where it becomes hard to recommend the LG 34 GK 950 F at twelve hundred US dollars it's by far the most expensive ultra wide of this class on the market and really the only feature here that justifies this price tag is the high 144 Hertz refresh rate I think LG was also banking on HDR to justify that price tag but they didn't deliver in that regard so the refresh rate is really all we're left with when looking at other options we have displays like the Alienware aw 3418 DW for under $900 which is g-sync and 120 Hertz also with an IPS panel for NVIDIA GPU owners that's a really great Buy and I don't think the difference between 120 and 144 Hertz is all that significant and then you've got some really affordable 100 Hertz ba options like the astute MX 34 VQ and vo-tech GM 34 c4n that's six hundred and fifty dollar mark which don't have as good a panel as this IPS in my opinion but are significantly cheaper there's no doubting this new LG monitor has the best hardware but I think that for $300 less you can get a pretty similar experience from the Alienware option and then really if you are just after the best value it's hard to go past the VA options for almost half the price if the 34 GK 950 F delivered a proper HDR experience the price tag would be justified but it doesn't so what we're left with is a really great SDR panel that's priced out of contention I would have no hesitation recommending this monitor if you could find it on sale or at a great price say 800 or 900 dollars but right now this is a prime example of there being no bad products just bad prices that's it for this review of the LG 34 GK 950 F if you're interested in any of the monitors I've been talking about in this video there are links to them in the description below don't forget to head over to our patreon page where you can find display profiles for this monitor consider subscribing to get more display testing and I'll catch you in the next one you