Review Alienware AW3423DW Gaming Monitor Review: QD-OLED Impresses

[Phuntasm]

Should have had its predecessor, the AW3420DW, on the charts. Also interested to know about day-to-day non-gaming ergonomics, including just basic productivity apps like Office

 

[RamGuy459]

Wow, I guess my eyes are just not that sensitive to light cause I game in the dark at full 350 nit brightness and it doesn’t bother me at all. Maybe it’s because I calibrate my monitor with argyl software and I’m too busy marveling at the realistic color? (Side note: It takes 15 hours to complete calibration on Argyl’s highest accuracy settings lol but omg does my panel look good now) That’s why I say it is opinion whether 250 nits is enough. If 120 nits is good enough for you then more power to you and honestly I’m still thinking about buying this monitor (maybe the 0.0000 nit black noise floor makes up for decreased top end brightness and I will simply love it!)

Isn't SDR content mastered at 100 nits? At least when calibrating TVs you are supposed to aim for 100 nits for SDR content for it to be "optimal". I'm not entirely sure if PCs are the same here, but from what I understand 100 nits is still what you want to aim for when calibrating for SDR?

Obviously, you need to have great ambient light control for 100 nits to be enough. But as long as you are able to limit the amount of ambient light in your room, 100 nits for SDR is supposed to be enough and the correct amount of brightness to aim for. When I got my LG OLED77G1 professionally calibrated the SDR mode is 100 nits. We also have one additional mode that can be used when we decide to not have our blinds lowered as 100 nits without lighting control becomes too dark, but it's still the 100 nits mode that is the most accurate and correct one for SDR content.

My current Acer X35 is running at 17 brightness which translates to about 100 nits when in SDR mode. I could go much higher, I bet I could push it to at least 250 nits before it starts hurting my eyes. But why would I want the brightness to be that high when it just makes the image less accurate? For OLED there is even less reason to push brightness as the perfect black levels make contrast looks much better even without the brightest part going crazy bright.

Sounds like you are just trying to make SDR be more like HDR. If you run Windows 11 you can pretty much achieve this by enabling HDR in Windows and enabling auto HDR.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Isn't SDR content mastered at 100 nits? At least when calibrating TVs you are supposed to aim for 100 nits for SDR content for it to be "optimal". I'm not entirely sure if PCs are the same here, but from what I understand 100 nits is still what you want to aim for when calibrating for SDR?

Obviously, you need to have great ambient light control for 100 nits to be enough. But as long as you are able to limit the amount of ambient light in your room, 100 nits for SDR is supposed to be enough and the correct amount of brightness to aim for. When I got my LG OLED77G1 professionally calibrated the SDR mode is 100 nits. We also have one additional mode that can be used when we decide to not have our blinds lowered as 100 nits without lighting control becomes too dark, but it's still the 100 nits mode that is the most accurate and correct one for SDR content.

My current Acer X35 is running at 17 brightness which translates to about 100 nits when in SDR mode. I could go much higher, I bet I could push it to at least 250 nits before it starts hurting my eyes. But why would I want the brightness to be that high when it just makes the image less accurate? For OLED there is even less reason to push brightness as the perfect black levels make contrast looks much better even without the brightest part going crazy bright.

Sounds like you are just trying to make SDR be more like HDR. If you run Windows 11 you can pretty much achieve this by enabling HDR in Windows and enabling auto HDR.

They probably do this as an industry standard to set a ground point, because how bright something appears on screen depends entirely on the ambient lighting conditions. 100 nits in a pitch black room? I'm sure that'll appear realistic to most people. 100 nits in a room light up by the sun? That's definitely not going to look bright and it's going to affect your perception of the image.

 

[anthoMuzz]

I recommend everyone also watch the Hardware unbox review on this before purchase.

View: https://youtu.be/YleSuwK8vR4

Also should watch -

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNG2s0yPIDY


An industry professional with many years experience.