Review Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDM 240 Hz OLED gaming monitor review: Premium image quality and gaming performance

[Admin]

Asus’ ROG Swift PG34WCDM puts everything and the kitchen sink into a 34-inch WQHD OLED panel with an 800R curve, 240 Hz, Adaptive-Sync, HDR 400 and wide gamut color. It delivers top-level gaming performance and a stunning image.

Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDM 240 Hz OLED gaming monitor review: Premium image quality and gaming performance : Read more

 

[PEnns]

Sounds quite good actually.

But the cons should include:

• Expensive
• Asus outrageous repair prices (see article from last week!)

 

[Dr3ams]

Cons
- no internal speakers

What?! No gamer I know cares about internal speakers on a display (because they sound like crap). They use headphones or attached 2.1 or 5.1 speakers.

 

[Dr D00p]

Just a shame I can't stand curved monitors, so no sale from me, no matter how good.

 

[Giroro]

2x HDMI ports in a world where an RTX 4090 only has 1?

 

[Giroro]

Is this the same panel as the LG 34GS95QE-B?
Because the LG is $900 right now.

 

[helper800]

Sounds quite good actually.

But the cons should include:

• Expensive
• Asus outrageous repair prices (see article from last week!)

I also believe an 800r curve is going to mean most people wont consider it. If not for the curve I would own one.

Is this the same panel as the LG 34GS95QE-B?
Because the LG is $900 right now.

Yes, its the same panel.

 

[Makaveli]

Looks great but

Premium price
And 800 Curve way to agressive

Its a no for me dawg

 

[Findecanor]

Just a shame I can't stand curved monitors, so no sale from me, no matter how good.

800R is quite extreme. I've not seen that before. The number is the curve radius in millimeters: if you're sitting more than 80 cm from the monitor it will look wrong.

Most curved ultra-wide for office use are 1500R or 1800R. Some "for gaming" are 1000R.

 

[Dr3ams]

I have an ASUS TUF VG34VQL1B that I bought in 2021 and it's curve is 1500R. I'm really satisfied with this display.

 

[thestryker]

All of the new high refresh UW OLED panels from LG have this atrocious 800R curve which really deserves its own section in a screen review. This highly limits overall use of the screen, how far away from it you can effectively sit and what seating angles are usable.

I was contemplating going OLED (I'm still not sold for desktop use and longevity) when I saw LG was putting out a 39" UW panel, but 800R is a complete non-starter.

There are so many good 27" non-OLED panels coming out that sit between premium and basic that I find it very disappointing there's nothing similar for UW. I'd happily spend $700-900 for something VA/IPS with decent HDR capability, but the current monitors are all cheap VA/IPS with no/bad HDR or OLEDs.

 

[das_stig]

No speakers is a bonus, price/ support a con and extra lenses, really does it need to have this just to add something else to go wrong and add to BOM?

 

[Notton]

Could you test for OLED flicker?
It's the one that happens when VRR is on and a dark image is shown.

 

[helper800]

Could you test for OLED flicker?
It's the one that happens when VRR is on and a dark image is shown.

Rtings already tested it, and it definitely has the flicker under very specific circumstances like all the other OLEDs.

 

[Makaveli]

800R is quite extreme. I've not seen that before. The number is the curve radius in millimeters: if you're sitting more than 80 cm from the monitor it will look wrong.

Most curved ultra-wide for office use are 1500R or 1800R. Some "for gaming" are 1000R.

100%

My current ultrawide is 1900R. I can use 1800R and 1500R is the lowest I can go anything under that the curve is just too much for me.

 

[DS426]

2x HDMI ports in a world where an RTX 4090 only has 1?

Could have two different computers connecting to this... and I mean most GPU's have a plethora of DisplayPort connectors and not HDMI. Lastly, TV's far cheaper than this monitor have at least HDMI ports and some have three. :/ Just sayin.

 

[DS426]

800R is quite extreme. I've not seen that before. The number is the curve radius in millimeters: if you're sitting more than 80 cm from the monitor it will look wrong.

Most curved ultra-wide for office use are 1500R or 1800R. Some "for gaming" are 1000R.

I agree; 800R is pretty radical. Yeah, some (very few, i.e. super niche) will LOVE it, but anything below 1200R is crazy curvy.

Got my wife a Dell 32" QHD HDR 1800R monitor on sale the holiday season before last and hard imaging going much more curvy than that. Yeah, some of it comes down to just getting used to, but still... I think these monitor vendors are treating sharping curves as an automatic better market bullet and something to charge more for, even if it doesn't make huge sense. AR/VR/MR makes more sense at this level of "surround", even as it still struggles to reach mainstream 10+ years into the making.

 

[DS426]

Asus’ ROG Swift PG34WCDM puts everything and the kitchen sink into a 34-inch WQHD OLED panel with an 800R curve, 240 Hz, Adaptive-Sync, HDR 400 and wide gamut color. It delivers top-level gaming performance and a stunning image.

Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDM 240 Hz OLED gaming monitor review: Premium image quality and gaming performance : Read more

Great specs but if anyone is following what is going on with Asus customer service since the AMD X3D motherboard burnout debacle, you'll see that Asus is more like an nGreedia or GreedySoft than ever; a company that once warrantied almost anything without much question and prided itself on next-level custom satisfaction just isn't there today -- honestly, they're just running on specs and their history of being the best or thereabouts... but when short-term profits come before long-term strategy and stabile, responsible growth, we have a new loser in our midst.
Gamers Nexus and plenty of our *responsible* tech journalists have this chronicalled at this point. Do your research. This, coming from a previous fan of Asus and owner of several different products, from monitors, to motherboards, to GPU's, and even laptops -- both gaming and general-purpose.

 

[DS426]

Is this the same panel as the LG 34GS95QE-B?
Because the LG is $900 right now.

All of the new high refresh UW OLED panels from LG have this atrocious 800R curve which really deserves its own section in a screen review. This highly limits overall use of the screen, how far away from it you can effectively sit and what seating angles are usable.

I was contemplating going OLED (I'm still not sold for desktop use and longevity) when I saw LG was putting out a 39" UW panel, but 800R is a complete non-starter.

There are so many good 27" non-OLED panels coming out that sit between premium and basic that I find it very disappointing there's nothing similar for UW. I'd happily spend $700-900 for something VA/IPS with decent HDR capability, but the current monitors are all cheap VA/IPS with no/bad HDR or OLEDs.

Diminishing marginal return shoots up REALLY quickly in the monitor world; I just settled for a ~$350 LG 32" panel with HDR10 (sure, it's not fantastic but it's a step up from non-HDR panels), QHD, 165 Hz, Freesync Premium / GSync, IPS, (probably? I need to check) 8-bit, and it feels like a best-bang-for-buck kind of sweet-spot proposition. Until proper mini-LED panels come about with reasonable curves and pricing to boot, I'm out on the high-end monitor market as it's really just ASUS and the rest grabbing good margin on the latest trends and tech buzzwords/hype.

 

[thestryker]

Diminishing marginal return shoots up REALLY quickly in the monitor world; I just settled for a ~$350 LG 32" panel with HDR10 (sure, it's fantastic but it's a step up from non-HDR panels), QHD, 165 Hz, Freesync Premium / GSync, IPS, (probably? I need to check) 8-bit, and it feels like a best-bang-for-buck kind of sweet-spot proposition. Until proper mini-LED panels come about with reasonable curves and pricing to boot, I'm out on the high-end monitor market as it's really just ASUS and the rest grabbing good margin on the latest trends and tech buzzwords/hype.

You can get the AOC Q27G3XMN for under $300 and that's 180hz 27" VA panel with 336 zone backlight and has a good HDR experience. There's no ultrawide version of something like this period as all of the VA panel UW are edge lit or cost >$1000 (or are those gigantic Samsungs which are also expensive). It feels like the 16:9 market doesn't really have to settle but rather decide how much can be spent and pick something.

 

[DS426]

You can get the AOC Q27G3XMN for under $300 and that's 180hz 27" VA panel with 336 zone backlight and has a good HDR experience. There's no ultrawide version of something like this period as all of the VA panel UW are edge lit or cost >$1000 (or are those gigantic Samsungs which are also expensive). It feels like the 16:9 market doesn't really have to settle but rather decide how much can be spent and pick something.

Well, yes, 32" and especially 34" UW has their price premiums. I had a more basic 27" Viewsonic IPS QHD panel previously (about 5 years old), so it felt natural to up the display dimensions. UW has its place and feels more immersive in some games, but I felt there's a market premium that I'm not willing to pay [yet], so I went with regular QHD 16:9. Again, it's not a glorious display; bringing in relativity -- especially that upgrade factor -- it was a nice improvement while only coming in about $50 more than the previous display. Speaking particularly from a gaming user experience, VRR alone has probably been the biggest uplift, followed by the larger display real-estate, and then color and other quality characterstics.

Don't know why but for whatever reason, I prefer the lower contrast and brighter colors of IPS over VA. This is somewhat problematic as it seems that VA will usually net a little lower market costs than IPS, most all specs ceteris paribus besides contrast ratio. Colors just seem somewhat washed out, but maybe that was just a poor choice on my wife's Dell 32" "HDR" display and/or lack of good color calibration as I don't tend to wander too far off from factory calibrations without having a good color calibration tool on hand.

 

[thestryker]

Well, yes, 32" and especially 34" UW has their price premiums. I had a more basic 27" Viewsonic IPS QHD panel previously (about 5 years old), so it felt natural to up the display dimensions. UW has its place and feels more immersive in some games, but I felt there's a market premium that I'm not willing to pay [yet], so I went with regular QHD 16:9. Again, it's not a glorious display; bringing in relativity -- especially that upgrade factor -- it was a nice improvement while only coming in about $50 more than the previous display. Speaking particularly from a gaming user experience, VRR alone has probably been the biggest uplift, followed by the larger display real-estate, and then color and other quality characterstics.

Yeah after using a 34" UW I won't get anything other than UW for my primary display which is why I keep looking. I just find it disappointing that there just isn't the innovation in UW that has been seen elsewhere except in OLED.

Don't know why but for whatever reason, I prefer the lower contrast and brighter colors of IPS over VA. This is somewhat problematic as it seems that VA will usually net a little lower market costs than IPS, most all specs ceteris paribus besides contrast ratio. Colors just seem somewhat washed out, but maybe that was just a poor choice on my wife's Dell 32" "HDR" display and/or lack of good color calibration as I don't tend to wander too far off from factory calibrations without having a good color calibration tool on hand.

I think IPS generally looks better as well (my secondary display is a 24" 16:10 Dell IPS), but I was able to get fairly good colors on my VA UW. I have a comic with broad colors on the cover in both digital and physical form so I just matched the two and this has worked out well. The default balance felt way off and I couldn't eyeball it like I could with my previous IPS or even old TN panel.

 

[Giroro]

So I wound up demo-ing the similar 45 inch LG OLED at best buy since that would fill the exact amount of space I have, and an ultrawide monitor would solve my issue where premiere pro is absolutely unusably slow with Nvidia when it's split between 2 monitors with different scaling settings ( I should have stuck with my 6900 XT, which also had big issues with these monitors when they were different framerates, but AMD fixed that bug).

I don't really want curved monitors, but I figured I could try to deal with it since flat ultrawide OLED monitors essentially don't exist...
Anyways, That 800R curvature was horrifying, borderline nauseating. I have a hard time envisioning any use case for a monitor with such a distorted image outside of maybe a dedicated flight/driving sim station. I wouldn't want to play a shooter on it, let alone edit a video.

I wound up just buying a second copy of my main monitor, used, for $150. It's a temporary solution until I can research something better.

 

[helper800]

So I wound up demo-ing the similar 45 inch LG OLED at best buy since that would fill the exact amount of space I have, and an ultrawide monitor would solve my issue where premiere pro is absolutely unusably slow with Nvidia when it's split between 2 monitors with different scaling settings ( I should have stuck with my 6900 XT, which also had big issues with these monitors when they were different framerates, but AMD fixed that bug).

I don't really want like monitors, but I figured I could try to deal with it since flat ultrawide OLED monitors essentially don't exist...
Anyways, That 800R curvature was horrifying, borderline nauseating. I have a hard time envisioning any use case for a monitor with such a distorted image outside of maybe a dedicated flight/driving sim station. I wouldn't want to play a shooter on it, let alone edit a video.

I would up just buying a second copy of my main monitor, used, for $150. It's a temporary solution until I can research something better.

I have a feeling these monitors will be unpopular and may end up being very cheap if they over produce them. At 1000 dollars an 800r curve is a no for me, but at 450 dollars... I may just have to get used to it lol.