Review Samsung Odyssey G7 32-inch 1000R Curved Monitor Review: Extreme in Every Way

[Admin]

The Samsung Odyssey G7 C32G75T 32-inch gaming monitor has an extreme 1000R curve and other premium specs to match, resulting in competition-level gaming performance with low input lag.

Samsung Odyssey G7 32-inch 1000R Curved Monitor Review: Extreme in Every Way : Read more

 

[Zescion]

Those are all premium specs, but I wonder how many will benefit of that leap to justify more than double the price of the Gigabyte G32QC

 

[nofanneeded]

At least make two models , Flat and Curved of PC Monitors Samsung . you already do that for TVs

 

[wr3zzz]

HDMI 2.0 is not very Xtreme.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Nope! too much for a 2560x1440 Monitor, I don't care how good it is. Maybe 2 years ago, but not today.
4k gaming is on stage now and you can get a decent 4k monitor for ~ the same price. If I am spending $700 on a new gpu from Nvidia or AMD, I ain't wasting it on this.

If it was ~$500, maybe. the Benq EX3203R is 144 Hz, very nice and is on par with this. It is $599 currently on Amazon.

 

[Arbie]

What is the cord length of power brick to monitor? On my Nixeus it's too short too reach the floor, so the brick and all the cord they did give me are on the desktop! Idiotic and I don't want that again. A detail rarely mentioned in reviews.

 

[TechWizardDK]

The Samsung Odyssey G7 C32G75T 32-inch gaming monitor has an extreme 1000R curve and other premium specs to match, resulting in competition-level gaming performance with low input lag.

Samsung Odyssey G7 32-inch 1000R Curved Monitor Review: Extreme in Every Way : Read more

Hello Christian Eberle, and thanks for doing a review of this interesting monitor model from Samsung!

As I'm personally interested in static contrast fluctuations on the VA panel used in this particular model and would like to compare results between diff. monitor reviewers using display sensors in their reviews. Could you perhaps be asked to be so kind, and provide a new contrast reading, but this time done using the "industri standard" luminance of 120 nits......instead of the 200 nits used as reference in the review? Pretty please.....would make it so much easier to compare measurements results! ;-)

As I'm new to reading monitor reviews on TomsHardware, I don't know how "neerdy" you guys are......but this model from Samsung also has some raised concearns from other users, about image flickering when having VRR functionality activated(freesync and G-sync). And since you didn't mention this in the review, it could also be usefull to know, what firmware version your review monitor was using? But if you were not aware of this issue at all and perhaps was "Lucky" to get a sample with less visible flickering, you may not have paid enough attention to this issue, to be able to discover this during the time doing the review.....but purely speculation on my part!

You can read about the VRR flickering issue, from other PC monitor review sites, like forexample TFTCentral (Link = Scroll down a little undtill you see the grey text message box titled "VRR FLickering issues?" ). But if this indeed is fixed on your review sample, this would be a good thing......and interesting to know, if it has anything to do with the firmware version used by the monitor! ;-)

Otherwise great review Christian, I like monitor reviews that include actual measurements, and not just the "other ones" that relies solely on subjective observations by the reviewer!

 

[Slatts216]

There's talk of a possible class-action lawsuit regarding the flickering these monitors suffer from while using G-Sync, and this article not only fails to mention that but goes so far as to call its G-Sync performance "flawless". Why is that? Could you clarify the build date by listing the number following the letter 'n' in your particular model? Is it possible that the issue reported by ~99% of Odyssey G7 owners has been rectified by Samsung?

 

[TechWizardDK]

Nope! too much for a 2560x1440 Monitor, I don't care how good it is. Maybe 2 years ago, but not today.
4k gaming is on stage now and you can get a decent 4k monitor for ~ the same price. If I am spending $700 on a new gpu from Nvidia or AMD, I ain't wasting it on this.

If it was ~$500, maybe. the Benq EX3203R is 144 Hz, very nice and is on par with this. It is $599 currently on Amazon.

Uhh, the same? 144Hz vs 240Hz?? And since Samsung is "fameus" for making market leading VA panels......I sincerly doubt that particular BenQ monitor features a VA panel that can keep up with this latest VA panel from Samsung, that currently wears "the crown", when it comes to pixel respons times in monitors of this size. So in other words....you would get a lot more trailing/black smearing on that BenQ monitor........this, together with g-sync. support, is what you pay extra for in the Samsung monitor! And yes, you of course also automatically get less fps in graphics heavy sceenes in a future video game, because of the 4k resolution! And your gaming rig is thus less "future proof", in regards to be able to keep on cranking the gfx settings to the max in games and still enjoy playable frame rates in the future! Now! Don't know if I accidentally made myself look a bit stupid, trying to "cut out" my points! But hope my points was clear! 😛

 

[watzupken]

Personally, I feel the curve is too aggressive. Moreover, I feel the price is fairly high. Not sure if it is worth the perfect 5 stars.

 

[samopa]

When will 32" Curved 4K GSYNC certified Gaming Monitor (>120Hz) reviewed here ?
My old LG 32" 4K Monitor is no curved and only capable of 60Hz. I'm looking forward to upgrade it 😉

 

[aand16]

No mention of GSync flicker, I wonder why. 🤔
Was the review unit cherry-picked (supplied by Samsung)?

Here are a few issues with the monitor that people are complaining about, maybe you'd like to complete the review:

• flicker when enabling GSync
  • on my unit it's not as evident (cannot capture it on cell phone video), but still annoying. It makes games unplayable with GSync
  • updated to firmware 1008.0 from 1005.2 and it has worsened dramatically
• monitor doesn't turn on from stand-by - for me on display port 1 it almost never turns on so I have to use the physical button to power it off and back on; on display port 2 it turns on but takes like 10 seconds
• (this was present with firmware v1005.2 and for me is fixed in v1008.0) back-light strobing gets disabled when the monitor returns from stand-by, leaving the monitor in a strange state where it exhibits terrible overdrive artifacts - you have go in the monitor menu and manually change "Response Time" to something else and back to "Fastest (MBR)"
  
  
  Here's the full video:
  
  View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7-nKQqm_jU

 

[ceberle]

Hello Christian Eberle, and thanks for doing a review of this interesting monitor model from Samsung!

As I'm personally interested in static contrast fluctuations on the VA panel used in this particular model and would like to compare results between diff. monitor reviewers using display sensors in their reviews. Could you perhaps be asked to be so kind, and provide a new contrast reading, but this time done using the "industri standard" luminance of 120 nits......instead of the 200 nits used as reference in the review? Pretty please.....would make it so much easier to compare measurements results! ;-)

As I'm new to reading monitor reviews on TomsHardware, I don't know how "neerdy" you guys are......but this model from Samsung also has some raised concearns from other users, about image flickering when having VRR functionality activated(freesync and G-sync). And since you didn't mention this in the review, it could also be usefull to know, what firmware version your review monitor was using? But if you were not aware of this issue at all and perhaps was "Lucky" to get a sample with less visible flickering, you may not have paid enough attention to this issue, to be able to discover this during the time doing the review.....but purely speculation on my part!

You can read about the VRR flickering issue, from other PC monitor review sites, like forexample TFTCentral (Link = Scroll down a little undtill you see the grey text message box titled "VRR FLickering issues?" ). But if this indeed is fixed on your review sample, this would be a good thing......and interesting to know, if it has anything to do with the firmware version used by the monitor! ;-)

Otherwise great review Christian, I like monitor reviews that include actual measurements, and not just the "other ones" that relies solely on subjective observations by the reviewer!

I'm afraid I have already sent the sample back to Samsung so I cannot perform any more tests. I can say from past experience though that monitors almost never vary in contrast through the full range of their backlights. In the past, I measured contrast at the maximum AND minimum brightness settings and with literally one or two exceptions, I always got the same contrast ratios. It's almost certain that the G7 will have the same contrast at 120 nits as it does at 200.

To address the flickering issue - I did not observe any problems during my tests. I run the Nvidia pendulum test as well as Blur Busters patterns. I also spend several hours gaming on every review sample. I never saw any flicker when using either G-Sync or FreeSync.

It is possible I got a sample with a newer firmware version. My sample came a few weeks later than expected so I would not be surprised to learn it had been updated. Unfortunately, I did not note the firmware version before returning it so I can't verify this.

-Christian-

 

[ceberle]

There's talk of a possible class-action lawsuit regarding the flickering these monitors suffer from while using G-Sync, and this article not only fails to mention that but goes so far as to call its G-Sync performance "flawless". Why is that? Could you clarify the build date by listing the number following the letter 'n' in your particular model? Is it possible that the issue reported by ~99% of Odyssey G7 owners has been rectified by Samsung?

I have already sent the G7 back to Samsung and I did not note the firmware version. It's possible it was updated as my sample arrived a few weeks later than expected. I did not observe any issues with G-Sync both in pattern tests and while gaming.

-Christian-

 

[TechWizardDK]

I'm afraid I have already sent the sample back to Samsung so I cannot perform any more tests. I can say from past experience though that monitors almost never vary in contrast through the full range of their backlights. In the past, I measured contrast at the maximum AND minimum brightness settings and with literally one or two exceptions, I always got the same contrast ratios. It's almost certain that the G7 will have the same contrast at 120 nits as it does at 200.

To address the flickering issue - I did not observe any problems during my tests. I run the Nvidia pendulum test as well as Blur Busters patterns. I also spend several hours gaming on every review sample. I never saw any flicker when using either G-Sync or FreeSync.

It is possible I got a sample with a newer firmware version. My sample came a few weeks later than expected so I would not be surprised to learn it had been updated. Unfortunately, I did not note the firmware version before returning it so I can't verify this.

-Christian-

Yeah, though I used the word "contrast", my main interest was what black level luminance was achieved at 120 nits. The black level affects "perceived contrast" the most and the lower the better.....which is also why I find it a bit stupid, when I read about gamers buying VA monitors for the low black levels, and then crank brightness to the near max level.....makes no sense to me! Not to speak of how unhealthy to the eyes high luminance levels are! I rest my case! ;-P

How unfortunate, that you can not provide at least info about what firmware version was installed. That would have been interesting to know. However, another reason for why you may not have noticed the flickering, could be that the framerate never dropped low enough to "trigger" this behavier. TFTCentral mentioned, that the issue seemed to be noticed/reported mostly by gamers who have framerate dips in the lower range. So if your review gaming-rig, is powerfull enough to never drop below say, 120 fps in the games you tested......this could perhaps also contribute to the reason why you didn't experience the issue while testing.

Oh well.....I guess those of us who are still deciding on a purcase, is left at waiting for official answers from Samsung or feedback from reviewers communicating with Samsung suport......however frustrating that can feel, if one wants/needs a new monitor NOW! ;-)

But thanks for at least answering back, Christian! ;-)

 

[f_u_006]

Those are all premium specs, but I wonder how many will benefit of that leap to justify more than double the price of the Gigabyte G32QC

I'd not even touch Gigabyte with a 25 ft pole even if they offered a 4K 360 MHz 1000 nits Monitor for free. Just read the reviews on Newegg and Amazon. They're very well known for their shoddy products and non existence customer service. A typical RMA takes about a month or two, and there's a good chance that they'll refuse service and void the warranty as it happened to many people (per Newegg and Amazon's reviews). And they also make you pay for shipping materials for warranty service. Yup, they'll make you ship stuff to CA which will cost you around ~$200 to $300 for heavy items all because you paid for wanting a functional product.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Uhh, the same? 144Hz vs 240Hz?? And since Samsung is "fameus" for making market leading VA panels......I sincerly doubt that particular BenQ monitor features a VA panel that can keep up with this latest VA panel from Samsung, that currently wears "the crown", when it comes to pixel respons times in monitors of this size. So in other words....you would get a lot more trailing/black smearing on that BenQ monitor........this, together with g-sync. support, is what you pay extra for in the Samsung monitor! And yes, you of course also automatically get less fps in graphics heavy sceenes in a future video game, because of the 4k resolution! And your gaming rig is thus less "future proof", in regards to be able to keep on cranking the gfx settings to the max in games and still enjoy playable frame rates in the future! Now! Don't know if I accidentally made myself look a bit stupid, trying to "cut out" my points! But hope my points was clear! 😛

This is not a 4k monitor
And 240Hz, unless you play CS:Go and nothing else, sure, or if you want to spend $1500 on a 3090, which can not be found, yeah. However, In AAA titles with current offerings you are not hitting 240 FPS with decent settings, not remotely close.
The Benq is also GSync compatible, yes it is older, but if you watch Amazon it goes on sale frequently at $399.

No matter, in this day and age, IMHO I would not spend $800-900 on a 2560x1440 monitor. Thats my point.

 

[TechWizardDK]

I have already sent the G7 back to Samsung and I did not note the firmware version. It's possible it was updated as my sample arrived a few weeks later than expected. I did not observe any issues with G-Sync both in pattern tests and while gaming.

-Christian-

An alternative to this Samsung Odyssy series, could perhaps be this Acer monitor(240Hz/100.000:1 contrast etc.) = Acer Nitro XZ320Q Xbmiiphx 31.5" 1500R Curved
Any chance, one of you guys would consider giving this a review? 🙂

 

[TechWizardDK]

This is not a 4k monitor
And 240Hz, unless you play CS:Go and nothing else, sure, or if you want to spend $1500 on a 3090, which can not be found, yeah. However, In AAA titles with current offerings you are not hitting 240 FPS with decent settings, not remotely close.
The Benq is also GSync compatible, yes it is older, but if you watch Amazon it goes on sale frequently at $399.

No matter, in this day and age, IMHO I would not spend $800-900 on a 2560x1440 monitor. Thats my point.

Yeah, apologies for using the 240Hz as a "benchmark stamp" for the actual performance of the panel.....as times has shown again and again "frequency numbers are just for marketing showcase"! The actual practical pixel response times usually never allows the image to be artifact free at the reported max frequencies/refreshrates. So my point was, that this particular monitor(and it's sibling), has achieved what no other VA monitors has done before.....eliminating black smearing in a moving image, by finally succesfully having increased pixels respons performance enough in practise, to allow this......which no other VA panel monitor manufactorer has done succesfully so far! So this is a first! ;-) And why I said/meant, that you will never be getting same "image quality" performance(forget max fps thressholds, I don't care about that either), from any other VA panel based monitor currently(unless it uses same panel)! And this is what you pay extra for....that is of course, if you care about this aspect! However, I didn't factor in what price points I deem "reasonable"....I only commented on what you get from the Samsung, that you don't get from any other VA monitor currently released on the market! Alles klar? ;-)

Sorry about the 4K rant....I must have been a bit too, fast when I clicked on your link to the BenQ monitor! ;-)

 

[dimar]

There's talk of a possible class-action lawsuit regarding the flickering these monitors suffer from while using G-Sync, and this article not only fails to mention that but goes so far as to call its G-Sync performance "flawless". Why is that? Could you clarify the build date by listing the number following the letter 'n' in your particular model? Is it possible that the issue reported by ~99% of Odyssey G7 owners has been rectified by Samsung?

I was getting GSYNC flickering on my good old CHG70 27" 144Hz screen since NVIDIA started supporting FreeSync tech. From what I understand, it has something to do with the monitor not keeping the same brightness when FPS is high and low. I remember when Samsung announced these new models, and then reading reviews about the same GSYNC flickering issues, I was very disappointed, and cancelled my preorder. So I'm keeping GSYNC off. My CHG70 firmware 1020.0 is from 2018. So if Samsung never fixed it for CHG70, I don't think they'll fix it for these new models.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Yeah, apologies for using the 240Hz as a "benchmark stamp" for the actual performance of the panel.....as times has shown again and again "frequency numbers are just for marketing showcase"! The actual practical pixel response times usually never allows the image to be artifact free at the reported max frequencies/refreshrates. So my point was, that this particular monitor(and it's sibling), has achieved what no other VA monitors has done before.....eliminating black smearing in a moving image, by finally succesfully having increased pixels respons performance enough in practise, to allow this......which no other VA panel monitor manufactorer has done succesfully so far! So this is a first! ;-) And why I said/meant, that you will never be getting same "image quality" performance(forget max fps thressholds, I don't care about that either), from any other VA panel based monitor currently(unless it uses same panel)! And this is what you pay extra for....that is of course, if you care about this aspect! However, I didn't factor in what price points I deem "reasonable"....I only commented on what you get from the Samsung, that you don't get from any other VA monitor currently released on the market! Alles klar? ;-)

Sorry about the 4K rant....I must have been a bit too, fast when I clicked on your link to the BenQ monitor! ;-)

Fair enough. I see your point.

 

[quovadis123]

I have bought quite a few monitors in the past after reading Tom's Hardware reviews. Back in 2013 for example there was a review on how glamorous the Asus PB328Q was, and it was spot on. Deep blacks and perfect uniformity, and perfect color. Recently, I did the same with the Dell 32" and the Samsung Odyssey G7 32". I find it odd that Tom says that both monitors are color accurate out of the box, just fiddle with the brightness and you are good to go?! The truth of the matter, is that both these monitors are far from color accurate, and no matter how you calibrate them they will never become color accurate (you can't polish a terd"). They do have their "own color schemes" which look great in games. The G7 is unbelievably responsive. In games at 1080 or 1440p it's really slippery smooth. For production it's horrible. The curve is ridiculous for every day work. There's so much light bleeding and blooming when you drag bright objects around the screen (I have a pure black background). Dead pixels is also a problem, mine had two bright red ones in the middle. Uniformity both blacks, whites is a problem. You move your head a bit I can see shifting. So apart from a unique gaming experience this monitor is absolute trash for anything else.

 

[JA50N]

Just got my Samsung 32" Odyssey G7 and had to send it back for warranty repair already, when it is turned on, LED turns grey and then nothing, 5mins after turning on screen comes up. This includes not being able to use toggle menu on board monitor (which I tried with monitor disconnected from CPU). I even recorded it on my phone Samsung customer service if they wanted to see it.

They supply you with a substandard DisplayPort cable (DP must be used to get the 240hz), they give you a 1.0 or 1.2, but it requires a minimum DP 1.4. Didn't matter never loaded with Display port cable even with a 1.4 DSC 1.2 DP cable I bought aftermarket. HDMI caps out at 144hz.

The curvature is a little too aggressive more so if you have a multi monitor setup, mine also seemed to have a very slight wave in the screen curve that I noticed in the bottom left. where the screen seemed to be a little less curved for about 2-3 inches. When I played games it was smooth, but when doing anything else curve is way too much, and not even needed. The 34' Ultrawide I replaced with this monitor is flat and has never bother me or my wife and it is at least another 4 inches wider.

Then after some digging I came across a lot of people complaining that they were having issues with the monitor working with their 30 series GPU, which may be a problem as that is what I have installed find out when I get it back. This also was where I found that I might need to update the drivers on the monitor out of the box, to solve some of these issues. When I played games it was smooth, but when doing anything else curve is too much.

Also they list the monitor as G Sync Certified not Freesync that is G Sync compatible. Which is what my GPU listed it as.

 

[BlueFrisky]

Nope! too much for a 2560x1440 Monitor, I don't care how good it is. Maybe 2 years ago, but not today.
4k gaming is on stage now and you can get a decent 4k monitor for ~ the same price. If I am spending $700 on a new gpu from Nvidia or AMD, I ain't wasting it on this.

If it was ~$500, maybe. the Benq EX3203R is 144 Hz, very nice and is on par with this. It is $599 currently on Amazon.

The monitor you mentioned is 144Hz, 4ms response time, HDR400 with no local dimming, 1800R curve, 320 nits peak SDR brightness, only supports FreeSync and has no RGB lighting (not that it's very important but it's an added cost).

The G7 boasts 240hz, 1ms response time, HDR600 with local dimming, almost 400 nits peak brightness in SDR, 1000R curve (steeper), G-Sync & FreeSync support and RGB lighting.

Now, with this knowledge, how can you advocate for it to be CHEAPER than the $599 BenQ, which is absolutely worse in almost single metric?

With the G7 you're paying a premium for the cutting edge. If you care about competitive gaming or HDR content at all, you'll go for the G7. If you're just playing some single player games and are not competitive, and you don't think you'll use it for HDR in gaming or videos, then you can save by going for the cheaper, less capable BenQ.