Product Review: The Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 is an Almost Perfect Gaming Monitor with
Potentially Deal Breaking Flaws.
This monitor was tested thoroughly as well as used PERSONALLY everyday to complete this full in-depth review. Here is what I found after this process...
Pros:
1200 Local Dimming Zones (Excellent Contrast Ratio)
Amazing HDR Performance
240Hz Refresh Rate
Very Low Ghosting
1000R Curved Screen
4K Resolution
Cons:
Scan Lines at 240Hz
Bad Matte Finish
Cheaper Feeling Stand
Gaming Performance
Let's start with the gaming performance. It's amazing. If a cinematic, ultra-fast, crystal clear luxury display is your thing, that's exactly what this is.
Black Levels
Now the Neo G8's black levels. This uses a mini LED lit VA panel with almost 1200 local dimming zones and honestly, it does a great job overall.
From a use case scenario, the blacks feel closer to an OLED than any VA panel I’ve used. They are incredibly dark. However, the tuning for local dimming can be quite annoying sometimes, as it makes parts of the screen very dark. Even when dragging, let's say, a small window or your mouse into that dark area of the screen, it will stay dark. You can turn local dimming off, but it has to be mentioned.
Continuing with black levels, even though they are fantastic,
when playing more competitive games with my friends, I actually did worse due to the black levels, as many times it was too dark to see enemies. So is it realistic and gorgeous? Yes. Is this going to make you a pro gamer? No. This is a luxury product.
Brightness
Now the brightness. There are big claims here and funny enough, they don’t plaster and advertise a typical SDR brightness everywhere, and that's for a reason. It’s not super bright like you'd expect.
After testing, this hits around 310 to 330 nits of brightness. They rate this at 350 nits, and it's right around that. Now, that is not a very good brightness for a monitor this expensive, however, I don’t care too much because of a few real world things.
Clarity & HDR
One is the clarity overall. The Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 shows games superbly with rich colors while not having the highest brightness out there, which is impressive.
HDR gaming is where this shines, and honestly, is what this was designed for. Now Samsung claims 2000 nits, which is obviously just a small window of the screen, so this is going to be for highlights. Unfortunately, I’m not a billionaire, so I cannot afford the extremely expensive testing device to correctly test lux in that small of a window. But, from real life experience, I wouldn’t think it's 2000 nits, but it is awesome. The highlights are bright while still maintaining beautiful clarity and contrast throughout darker areas of the game.
240Hz Refresh Rate
Now, as you can probably see from my enthusiasm: I loved gaming on this. Easily one of my favorite gaming monitors. But is the 240Hz overkill? Eh, let’s call it future proofing.
If you’re gaming on this, you’re probably going to want your settings to be high. With my RTX3080, I was topping out at 180Hz in well optimized games and around 120Hz to 150Hz in newer or less optimized titles. There were some more graphically simple games that ran at full 240Hz, and this is great. With that being said, going from 60Hz to 120Hz or 144Hz is extremely noticeable, but going from 144Hz or 165Hz to 240Hz is noticeable, but much much less noticeable. It’s an overkill luxury for this monitor, but that’s also what it's about.
Ghosting
Now what about ghosting, because the Neo G8 is in fact a VA panel. Well, this has no ghosting, and I mean it: no ghosting at all.
They tuned this to have pixel overshooting and a small amount of inverse ghosting, but honestly, for a VA panel, this is the single best tune I’ve ever seen. I’d rather have a smidge of pixel overshooting than a bunch of normal ghosting. As far as red and green ghosting, there was none, which is impressive. When comparing this to the top IPS panels though, this is beaten 10/10 times.
The CURVE
The 1000R curve is immense.
From testing the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8, I think it would be awkward in a triple monitor setup, so I would say it's best to use this monitor as a stand alone on your setup.
In game, I don’t mind the curve, it definitely adds to immersion, but outside of gaming, it’s not my favorite. I prefer a curve, but substantially milder.
Variable Refresh Rate
Now, this has AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, which is great. This allows HDR gaming with FreeSync, or G-Sync in most of our situations. This does work well with G-Sync, which is fantastic.
Overall Gaming Experience
So, overall the gaming experience is one of my favorites ever. Personally, I prefer the Alienware Quantum Dot OLED, but I also love 21:9. Ultrawide master race. However, this is damn close for me. But now let’s talk about everything else, because this is where things can change.
The Non-Gaming Performance
So outside of gaming, well, there are a few big problems which we are going to go over first.
Issue #1
The number one biggest issue is scan lines. From everyone I’ve talked to, I think every single person had scan lines as I did. Something to note here is that scan lines are only present during 240Hz, at 120Hz they are not present.
This is basically noticeable on static colors. In game it was never an issue for me, and I never even noticed it. However, on the desktop it sticks out like a sore thumb. This is the number one biggest issue for me.
Issue #2
The second biggest issue, when not gaming, is the coating on the screen. This has a matte finish and honestly, this one is bad. Again, in game I don’t really notice it at all. But, when large amounts of the screen are, let’s say, white when surfing the web, or gray when editing in premiere, you can noticeably see the coating. It essentially looks like if you had grease on your finger and swiped it across your phone, giving kind of a rainbowy smudgy look. Not quite that extreme, but it is noticeable to me.
Issue #3
Now, the third issue for me is the stand. It has height, tilt, swivel, and rotation to go completely vertical, but jeez does this feel cheap. Especially when compared to the stand of the also newly released Alienware QD OLED, which was absolutely fantastic. This literally feels like it came off of a $250 dollar monitor, and I’m not being overly dramatic here, legitimately.
Now is it all bad? Absolutely not.
Resolution
4K at 32 inches is a fantastic resolution to screen size, and in my opinion, the perfect PPI and res to size. The monitor is beautifully crisp, minus the coating.
Colors & Accuracy
Next, the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8's colors are great. This comes factory calibrated, and mine was done well. How much these vary while being calibrated from the factory, I don’t know, but overall, I was impressed with how this came out of the box. I will say, if you’re looking for a monitor to edit on while also gaming, this isn’t it. Pair the scan-lines with the anti-reflective coating and the curve, and I’d say this would definitely not be a great editing machine.
Now, I am going to go over all the results that I talk about in every review, but the main point here is this: If you want an insanely good gaming monitor that’s 32 inches, 4K, 240Hz, and awesome HDR, this is a great monitor. However, if you then also want this monitor to be fantastic at web browsing and editing, it’s just not that monitor. I personally would love to have this at a home gaming setup, but I’d also never use this for work or anything like that.
Menu System & Controls
Now, the menu system itself is pretty good, although not the prettiest.
The controls, however, are weird. Rather than doing a joystick, they do a middle button and then 4 arrows, like a joystick would be. Why??? Whatever, this works the same as a good joystick would, but as buttons. Not my favorite, but it's intuitive, just not as fast. It gets a full pass, though.
One thing that’s not a full pass, is the amount of settings that can’t be changed until other things are changed, and they leave you to figure out, which is just crazy. For example, when FreeSync is on, you can’t change response time settings. Weird.
Vesa Compatibility
Vesa compatibility here is 100mm by 100mm with a bracket that is included in the box.
Connectivity & Ports
Now, I know everyone is going to say, "there's no DisplayPort 2.0". Yes, no DisplayPort 2.0. I’m not sure exactly how they did it, whether through DSC, Display Screen Compression, or what.
So ports are: one Magical DisplayPort 1.4, 2 HDMI 2.1, a USB type-B upstream, and 2 USB type-a downstream, then a 3.5mm audio out.
Stand & Build Quality
Now the Neo G8's stand and build quality.
It looks nice-ish. The bottom piece of the stand is literally completely plastic, like 100%. It rocks, doesn’t feel stable, and the monitor bounces every time you use the menu system. And overall, the stand feels so budget it’s offensive. It truly feels offensive to get a monitor this expensive with a stand that is this subpar.
Overall Verdict
So overall do I recommend the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8? Actually, yes. If you want this exclusively for an amazing gaming experience, this is one of the best monitors out there and I absolutely recommend it!