Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by NCI XCOM great technology selection and service I know man well enjoy your voiceover guys enjoy him talking to the camera all right bye Eber bye the curve on the desk is a growing trend that is for sure and is a fantastic way for media consumption and entertainment but is it any good for editing and gaming meet the LG 34 UC 98 the latest hot curved panel from LG spanning at 34 inches 34 40 by 1440 resolution it's in 10 bit IPS panel and aim D free sync support and a pretty extreme curve price to 1200 bucks you got to think long and hard before taking the plunge to see if the curve is everything you want it to be so here's my side of the story now I wanted to see if I would be comfortable replacing my dual monitor setup which are 144 Hertz IPs and 1440p panels with the LG 34 UC 98 that from an organizational point alone that would add extra order to my desk set up and actually let me place speakers on each side of the monitor given my limited desk space I really love the design language of this monitor with an aluminum stand that has a curve of its own a bit more aggressive than the panel itself but still beautiful in design it may be challenging to organize the little things around the stand because because of that curve but I honestly think it's totally fine now unlike the previous model this monitor has some flexibility with the stand allowing plenty of height adjustment angle adjustment and even small horizontal rotation to allow you to strengthen the panel in case it slightly cricket the rear housing of the monitor is white which may look odd at first but I think it has the potential to blend in more within your space if it's not facing the wall versus a fully dark frame and behind the stand is a VESA mount for walls or monitor stands the i/o includes dual Thunderbolt 2.0 dual USB 3.0 with quick charge support so that's awesome in there DisplayPort to run the screen in free sync mode dual HDMI 2.0 a headphone jack and power in now I love that we have Thunderbolt in here to diversify your input options but no Thunderbolt cables included we only get an hdmi and displayport cables which are also in white to keep up with the color scheme for cable management I love the simple and tiny clip that attaches to the bottom of the stand and helps to hide anything from the front view which is awesome the built-in seven watt stereo speakers are actually quite decent and loud enough with detailed projection so let's take a listen so now let me play you this sound sample now let's focus our attention on the panel itself as I said earlier the curve is a little extra curved so at arm's length it wraps around your vision in my experience with the earlier model I could not stand video editing as everything on the screen is distorted and so all your lines are skewed and for creative professionals not having reference straight lines you know is just very difficult to work with with this model the curved lines are amplified because of the extra curve but I gave it extra shot as my daily driver where the majority of time was spent on my premiere timeline so shifting the video preview window closer to the middle is quite helpful to reduce the curvature and of course going fullscreen with sixteen by nine content means black bars on either side but as users migrate towards this 21 by nine format I'm pretty confident that we'll see more compatible content which in this native resolution in native format is absolutely fantastic and combine this with the calibrated colors and pleasing contrast to make media consumption so so awesome now take this trail II for example which fills the entire screen so give you an idea of what watching a cinema format 4k movie would feel like and then there are content creators like ash Taylor whose movies in 21 by 9 deliver such a unique cinema feel it makes me want to produce in this aspect myself so I can enjoy content with this monitor now I feel the hesitation from the consumer side who want to experience 21 by 9 content is the availability or the lack of it sure you find some amazing gems here and there to watch let's fill up the screen without black bars anywhere but even still it feels fantastic to be among the early adopters of this aspect ratio and this is where we come to talk about gaming since LG has equipped it with free sync support via DisplayPort with an extremely limiting variable refresh rate range of 55 to 75 Hertz so the refresh rate at native resolution is 60 Hertz but with free sync our refresh rate ceiling goes to 75 Hertz so effectively overclocking the panel for smoother gameplay the sucky thing though is about free sync is the minimum supported refresh rate which is 55 Hertz so when your framerate drops below 55 you will still encounter tearing and stutter now gaming and the scale is pretty awesome with the aggressive curve giving you extra round warp but it's not easy to drive this resolution above 55 FPS when I was gaining with my 980 TI the framerate was okay but I just couldn't handle all the tearing and stutter so freesync support is totally attractive this however means a beefy AMD GPU is required for gaming on this panel with carefully selected in game settings so your framerate does not drop below 55 because then you start to stutter and tearing occurs it is definitely an upgrade over the previous generation models but if only the minimum supported refresh rate or while in free sync mode was you know below 55 Hertz somewhere around 40 so the gamers aren't really stranded for their fps and have to lower in game settings in order to play at the proper native resolution now I would still prefer faster refresh rate for FPS games where I don't really care about the visual experience auto playing squad with the sunset map was crazy satisfying or the forest map to give you extra field of view which actually is helpful and this visual beauty is only made better for a slower pace hack-and-slash games like victor ran which is stunning in native resolution beautiful colors and this extra wide resolution also gave you extra visual of the map which turned out to be super useful and seeing beyond my usual 16 by 9 aspect when I open Tomb Raider which is part fighting and part exploration this unique environment isn't any more pretty in 21.9 but it feels like more of a cinema experience which to some degree improved my game time now when we talk about backlight bleed on previous models which was significant here it is minimal with some minor spots visible around the perimeter which are honestly only visible on camera when your overexposing and this is what it looks like to your naked eye which i think is totally fine now when we talk about this phenomenon of 34 inch curved desktop displays making it into our lives and the most common term used to describe it as in the mersive experience you know simply because the thing sort of wraps around your front vision I don't particularly think that's the best way to describe your entire experience instead I would call it a tempting experience because the real drawback here is the lack of available 21.9 content which isn't the fault of your monitor manufacturers but it's the fault of us as consumers catching up to that format and really us even as content producers trying to reach that same 21 by 9 output which isn't to the level that we want to be just yet I have gotten used to editing with this monitor with shifting a few my windows around but when it comes to gaming sure with a powerful AMD card and it's it can be satisfying as long as you maintain your frame rate within the freesync range within the 55 and 75 but that is extremely limiting so the 34 you see 98 is not a gaming monitor by any means instead it has fantastic color information and depth and to my eye very good screen uniformity to make for an awesome multimedia package with some gaming tricks up its sleeve we'll make sure to produce some 21 by 9 content ourselves so we can also contribute to you know the rising popularity of this format so guys thank you so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed it if you have any questions about the panel and my experience with it moving forward make sure to clean in comments down below and I will make sure to respond to you I'm Dimitri with heart Knox thank you so much for watching we'll see you in the next video I'll call you up again when you want done go okay okay all right all right yeah okay Huber's gone let's do this