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"The LG 34GN850-B is an excellent ultrawide monitor for work and play."

• Excellent picture quality

• Excellent clarity of movement

• Intuitive, sharp and responsive OSD

• Classy look if you skip the booth

• Smooth and smooth curve

• Easy access to IO

• The stand is large and inconspicuous

• Bad contrast ratio

It is a good time to buy a monitor. While getting the perfect monitor is still not possible, LG ticked a lot of the right boxes on the spec sheet with its 34GN850-B including a 160Hz refresh rate on its ultrawide nano IPS panel with 98% DCI-P3 coverage, 1 ms response times, Adaptive-Sync, HDR400 and more.

These are impressive specs. It's not every day that a monitor lands those numbers for color performance coupled with gaming prestige. But there is a catch. The LG 34GN850 costs twice as much as budget ultrawides that use VA panels and is the same size, resolution, and almost the same refresh rate. Where is the money going?

design

When you unpack the LG 34GN850, you will find that most of your money is used for the panel and its performance. The back of the monitor is made of smooth, brittle plastic with a red ring around the brackets and I / O.

It's not overdeveloped as is the case with a lot of gaming hardware these days, but it's convenient and serves the purpose of enclosing the monitor, which is what matters. Our retail sample had the UltraGear logo on the back, although your device may have the standard, less garish LG badge on it.

Flip to the front of the display and we're excited to announce that LG is improving the finish where it matters. While cheap curved monitors often have unsightly gaps between the panel and the lower bezel due to manufacturing cost savings, LG glues the lower bezel flush across its width to the panel, which, along with the glossy casing on top, bottom, and sides is paired of the display makes the 34GN850 look clean and classy from the front.

The display's 1900R curve is also more consistent than cheaper displays, which often have a clear bend or two to match their curve. Instead, the LG 34GN850 has a very smooth and even curve across its width, which makes the monitor look more expensive and of higher quality.

If you put the 34GN850 on a simple monitor arm with table clamp, you get a classy looking ultrawide.

You can use the supplied stand with the monitor, but there are some issues. The stand itself is among the largest monitor stands I have come across to the point where it's awkward. This brings the monitor too far forward on a desk for comfortable use.

This makes the monitor look bigger and more impressive (which is probably why manufacturers do this). However, for productivity work, competitive gameplay, and eye comfort, you should have the display a little further back.

Combine that with the sticky look of the stand, the wobbly design, and the ineffective attempt at cable management and you'll find that spending an extra $ 60 on a simple desk clamp monitor arm isn't a crazy thought. This is disappointing given the price of this monitor.

If you choose to use the stand, you can expect the monitor to sit about 30 cm from the back of the stand. It comes with height and tilt adjustments, but does not pan or rotate to portrait orientation.

Ports & controls

Now that we've covered the drawbacks of the 34GN850, it's time to move on to the good things. It starts with the controls on the screen. As with previous LG monitors, the controls are impressive.

It's all controlled with a single direction switch at the bottom of the monitor and it's extremely easy to use. Push it forward or backward to jump directly into the brightness controls, or left and right for volume. Pressing it will trigger the menu selection tool which will take you to the main OSD of the display. This menu is crisp, crisp, and responsive, which is what we can't say about many monitors.

As someone who changes brightness a lot, I particularly appreciate the instant one-click access to brightness controls.

Inside, you'll find five sub-menus: Game Mode with a handful of image presets, Game Customization where you can choose the overclocking setting (On for 160 Hz, Off for 144 Hz), Adaptive Sync, Black Stabilizer, and a crosshair.

In the image adjustment submenu you will find controls for brightness, contrast, sharpness, gamma, color temperature and fine-tuning for the colors. Finally, the Input and General submenus give you general system settings.

You want to turn off the auto standby feature because it is set to 4 hours by default. I wasn't happy that the monitor tried to turn itself off three times a day.

Unlike most of its competitors, LG places the rear I / O horizontally rather than down. This is a good move if you ask me. I have never used a rear I / O monitor that was so easily accessible.

Granted, having the cables sticking straight out from the back isn't the most stylish look, but the vast majority of users still place the back of their monitors towards the walls.

You'll want to use the single DisplayPort 1.4a connector to unlock the 144 Hz refresh rate and 10-bit color depth, as using either of the two HDMI inputs limits your maximum refresh rate to 85 Hz for 10-bit colors.

You can overclock the display in the OSD to unlock the full 160 Hz. However, you have to either sacrifice 10-bit color for 8-bit or use YUV422 chroma subsampling while keeping 10-bit color. This results in visible margins around the text. Therefore, the 8-bit color option is preferable.

If you do a lot of graphics and only play games occasionally, it is best to keep the display at 144 Hz with 10-bit color. However, if gaming performance is your preference, you won't lose much by switching to 8-bit color to get the 160Hz refresh rate. Games may be technically inferior, but they still look good on an 8-bit panel.

Finally, the 34GN850 has a USB 3.0 hub with two ports and a headphone jack. Power is supplied via a modest external component.

performance

If you are buying an ultrawide and are looking for image quality, you've come to the right place.

The LG 34GN850 has a nano IPS panel (LG's Spin on Quantum Dots) with a resolution of 3440 x 1440. LG promises a DCI-P3 color space coverage of 98%. The wide gamut of colors creates a rich image that is really satisfactory, but be warned. Your old displays will look pretty flat once you get used to this wide area.

The color rendering, paired with a 160 Hz refresh rate, shows how far IPS technology has advanced.

The static contrast ratio is limited to just 1000: 1 for IPS, as always, and our tests show some glow in the corners (see the blue glow in the image below). This is where IPS is gradually showing its age, especially when compared to modern technologies like OLED screens and VA panels, although these have their own drawbacks.

We tested the monitor with our Datacolor Spyder X Elite and found that our retail sample can cover 88% of AdobeRGB space and 94% of DCI-P3 space, with colors reproduced in a Delta-E (different from the original) . of 1.68. The peak brightness achieved was measured at 390 nits with a contrast ratio of 900: 1. The best possible contrast value of 920: 1 was achieved with 75% brightness.

Those numbers are a hair below the factory spec, so this panel is a little below average when compared to its performance, but the difference is small. The gamma output, on the other hand, was immediately ready for use.

In our test environment, the monitor's peak brightness of almost 400 nits was too high for normal use and we would expect this to be the case for most users. We would choose to use the monitor in a room with lots of ambient light with a brightness of 50 to 75 percent and at night 40 or less.

By calibrating the monitor, we were able to cover 2% more AdobeRGB color space, but lower the peak brightness by 5 nits and reduce the maximum contrast to 840: 1. The color accuracy was much better at 0.68 so it's safe to say that you can benefit from calibrating the monitor if your use calls for it. However, if you're just playing and don't need better color accuracy, you won't be missing the monitor running on the default settings.

Aside from the numbers, this is an excellent monitor that can be used immediately after calibration. The only weakness is the low contrast ratio, a problem that all IPS panels have in common. You will find this annoying when working or playing in a dark room. Otherwise, the LG 34GN850 delivers a sharp picture with beautiful, yet realistic colors. You can only get better picture quality with the best 4K and 5K monitors, which are often even more expensive.

Gaming performance

The ultra-wide resolution of 3440 x 1440 is nothing new, but it's great for gaming. Think of it like a 27-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) monitor that is wide-spread.

Combine this with the fact that this ultra-wide resolution is still nowhere near the pixel count of 4K displays and represents a good compromise between extreme sharpness and achievable performance. The new RTX 3080 from Nvidia can easily power this display. In most games, an older high-end GPU like the GTX 1080 Ti or the Radeon VII is sufficient. A mid-sized, last-generation GPU like the AMD Radeon 5700XT or the Nvidia GTX 2070 Super would also work.

We tested the monitor with an Nvidia RTX 2080 Super graphics card and the results were impressive. The in-game settings for Horizon Zero Dawn on Ultra were around 65 to 70 FPS, depending on whether the graphics card was overclocked or not, and while that doesn't come close to the high refresh rate of 160 Hz, it's Adaptive-Sync (this display is also G certified) sync compatible), the gameplay kept fluid.

This game makes optimal use of the monitor's wide range of colors. You know the moment shortly before sunset, which is often referred to as the golden hour, when the light turns into a beautifully diffuse shade of red? The 34GN850 handled these intense colors with ease in Horizon Zero Dawn. I've never seen anything like this from a PC.

It was amazing how fast, smooth and clear the picture was at 160 Hz.

Switch to a fast-paced title like Insurgency Sandstorm or the popular Destiny 2 and the fast refresh rate comes into play. For these games, I set the graphics settings to the lowest possible value in order to get the most out of the 160 Hz refresh rate. The clarity of movement was impressive, mostly removing the ghostly trail that often follows and obscuring a fast-moving object.

Samsung's G7 series is the only monitor I've tested that outperforms this LG. In general, you can expect better performance from 240 Hz or 360 Hz displays. However, most of these displays are 24-inch or 27-inch 16: 9 monitors.

Coupled with a 1000 Hz gaming mouse and a fast keyboard, I ended up shots that I normally never landed. I'm not a hardcore gamer – the real world often keeps me too busy to play – but I felt more adept playing on this ultrawide.

HDR performance

The 34GN850 is VESA DisplayHDR400 certified. This is the lowest level HDR monitor available. That already tells you that you shouldn't expect much.

This monitor does not have dimming zones but increases and decreases the backlighting of the entire monitor depending on what needs to be displayed on the screen. If one point needs to be very bright, the entire monitor becomes brighter. That is not optimal.

As a result, the visual difference is not big enough to warrant the frames you have to jump through to make it work. So apart from testing, I left it turned off.

Our opinion

The LG 34GN850 isn't perfect, but it's very good. The build quality is certainly a few notches above the more budget-friendly displays, the picture quality is superb, and the clarity of movement in fast-paced games with the overclocked refresh rate of 160 Hz or even the standard refresh rate of 144 Hz is superb.

The 34GN850 is great not only for competitive gaming, but also for productivity. It's large, has a wide gamut, accurate colors, and provides a consistent, even, and sharp image. If you can live with the IPS drawbacks like low contrast and visible glow in dark scenes, you will fall in love with the LG 34GN850.

Is there a better alternative?

If you are looking for a monitor that is only suitable for gaming and whose absolute (color) performance is not that important, the AOC CU34G2X with its VA panel offers you the greatest contribution to the LG experience. However, the build quality is lower, the color accuracy isn't that impressive right away, and the clarity of movement is significantly poorer.

LG's 34CB99 offers a nano IPS panel and format with excellent colors for editing at two-thirds the price, but it lacks the playing strength of the 34GN850 with a high refresh rate. It's a good choice if gaming isn't important to you or if you just play slow games (like Civilization VI or Microsoft Flight Simulator).

The only monitor with similar performance in terms of gaming and productivity is the Alienware AW3420DW, which has a nicer chassis and stand, but does not match the LG in terms of performance and is significantly higher in price.

How long it will take?

The monitor itself should last as long as any monitor: at least 5 years, although LG only covers it with a warranty for the first year.

It is possible that the monitor's IPS panel will be out of date soon as OLED is much better. On the other hand, OLED has been around for a while, and monitors still haven't adopted it due to issues with price, availability, and image storage. IPS technology may remain relevant in the years to come.

Should I buy it?

Yes. Right now there is no better alternative if you want an ultrawide that is suitable for both work and leisure. Just note that LG can't seem to keep up with demand. As such, getting your hands on the LG 34GN850 may be more challenging than you think and you may have to pay up to $ 100 above MSRP.

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