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Dec 29, 2023

Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 57" review: The absolute pinnacle of gaming monitors

Are your eyes (and desk) ready for 57 inches of Mini LED display nirvana? "What on Earth is that?" "Oh my..." "That’s insane." These are but a handful of genuine recorded reactions from friends and

Are your eyes (and desk) ready for 57 inches of Mini LED display nirvana?

"What on Earth is that?" "Oh my..." "That’s insane." These are but a handful of genuine recorded reactions from friends and family entering my office and seeing the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 for the first time.

A curved, attention-sucking 57in monolith with an ultrawide 32:9 aspect ratio and a pixel-packed 7680 × 2160 Mini LED display, this is a screen unlike any other. At $2,499/£2,200, it's also an object of pure luxury, designed to dominate your vision while providing an unmatched experience of immersion while gaming and working.

Naturally, given its dimensions, price, and general overall levels of lunacy, this is not a casual purchase. But, rammed with the latest and greatest tech, it does look set to be the absolute pinnacle of gaming monitors for the foreseeable future, overshadowing even its mighty Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 sibling. But is it really worth the astronomical asking price?

Utterly bonkers thanks to its size, specs, and price, this is the equivalent of buying a supercar to tear up the track without a care in the world. If you’re an enthusiast with deep pockets, prepare to be blown away.

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The Grand Canyon. Giant Sequoia trees. The Octuple Bypass burger at Vegas' Heart Attack Grill. We all know they're huge, but no picture or video can do them justice. And the same goes for the Odyssey Neo G9 in this 57-inch screen size. If you’re looking at the picture above and thinking, "gee, that’s a massive monitor", then believe me when I say that no picture can accurately convey just how large this thing is in the flesh.

For some rough context, it's equivalent to having two 30in 4K monitors directly next to each other, with, of course, no pesky central bezel to ruin your immersion. Because of its Mini LED nature, it’s also noticeably thicker and heavier than, say, the 49in Odyssey OLED G9 which, at 9kg, is half as heavy as its 57in titan-like relative.

The Odyssey Neo G9 is so large, in fact, that merely carrying it upstairs, assembling it, and placing it on my desk was a genuine ordeal. By the time I was done, my back was hurting (which, in fairness, is dodgy at the best of times), and I was already dreading having to disassemble and pack it back up for collection at the end of the review period. At least most people won’t have to worry about the latter — if you're the soon-to-be proud owner of a monitor of this calibre, it should serve you well for many years to come. Just get a mate round to help you with the heavy lifting.

Despite the herculean effort it took to actually shift the stand and monitor's combined 19kg weight, the actual assembly of the Odyssey Neo G9 was a doddle. Simply clip in the stand, tighten four screws, slide in the v-shaped base, tighten a couple more screws, and it's done - as long as you've got someone to help you lift it up, you're good to go.

Once in situ, it's a sight to behold, practically drawing you in with its own gravitational field. With a vertical length of around 140cm, it barely fits on my regular office desk, with the v-shaped stand encroaching quite a bit into the precious keyboard and mouse territory. Needless to say, you'll want to make sure you're rocking a substantially large desktop set up to house this all-encompassing beast, or mount it to the wall for the most space-saving experience.

Sheer size aside, the Odyssey Neo G9's 1000R curve further adds to its unapologetic vastness. But, as with Samsung's other curved gaming monitors, this bend is vital to help ensure that you can more easily see the edges.

Elsewhere, the design is everything you'd expect from a top-tier Samsung gaming monitor, with the same white glossy plastic rear and LED Core Lighting to add a dash of classic Gamer Aesthetic without going completely overboard.

Unlike some of Samsung's other high-end monitors (and despite its massive asking price), the Odyssey Neo G9 doesn't have the brains of Samsung's Tizen OS encased within it. That means no apps like Netflix, no live TV, no Gaming Hub streaming, and no remote. With nothing but a standard onscreen display (OSD) and rear joystick control to tweak the settings, this is a pure monitor, through and through.

Now, one could confidently argue that the omission of all these extra features on one of the most expensive gaming monitors in the world is rather unfair. But if you happen to frequent the various corners of the internet where PC gamers and monitor enthusiasts discuss things like "subpixel layouts" and "scanlines", you'll quickly discover that the majority of users spending this sort of money on a monitor want the purest experience possible, with no unnecessary bloatware.

The same argument could be made for the lack of built-in speakers. Again, the majority of PC gamers wouldn't be caught dead using their monitor's built-in speakers, opting to use headphones or dedicated speakers instead. Whether or not these omissions are a big deal, is up to you, but anyone with the Odyssey Neo G9 on their shortlist should, at the very least, be planning on a quality dedicated sound solution to do it justice.

Extras aside, it's time to dive into the ports. There's a generous selection of them, consisting of a 3.5mm headphone jack, three HDMI 2.1 ports, a dual USB 3.0 hub, and the star of the show, a single DisplayPort 2.1 offering.

The latter stands out, as it makes the Odyssey Neo G9 one of the first monitors in the world to launch the latest version of the DisplayPort standard. Without diving too deep into the bottomless pit of port standards, the main advantage of DisplayPort 2.1 is that it practically doubles the maximum refresh rate available.

DisplayPort 1.4, for example, lets you reach a max of 480Hz, 240Hz, and 60Hz at 1440p, 4K and 8K resolutions, respectively. The new 2.1 standard however, bumps these numbers up significantly, to 900Hz, 480Hz, and 165Hz. Now, even the most powerful graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, aren't actually capable of running AAA titles at these resolution/refresh rate combos, but upcoming GPUS over the next few years will.

Naturally, this sounds like a big win for the Odyssey Neo G9, but there's a catch — it has a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz which, at first glance, appears to make the newer port format redundant. But if you allow yourself to dive into the depths of DisplayPort standards, you’ll find that 2.1 supports three times the bandwidth of 1.4 (80Gbps vs 32Gbps). This extra bandwidth means that monitors with DisplayPort 2.1 (coupled with GPUs that are powerful enough to do them justice), can reach 4K 240Hz without display stream compression. Or, to give it its more technical name, chroma subsampling.

In other words, the Odyssey Neo G9 will let you enjoy full, uncompressed colours, for the most accurate experience possible. Now, whether or not you'll actually notice a difference is up for debate, and in the real world, you more than likely won't, unless you're seriously scrutinising something like small text on a coloured background. But hey - at least you're getting the latest tech in your top-of-the-line monitor, which will support the best graphics cards for years to come.

So what's it like actually using a 57in Mini LED monster as your main monitor? In a word - immersive. The sheer expanse of screen, coupled with the aggressive curvature, means that your entire world is very much dominated by it during use. And that's without even mentioning the incredible 7680 x 2160 resolution which, while not true 8K due to the lower amount of vertical pixels, still provides an impressively sharp result for a display of this size.

Gaming is, in short, a wonderful experience, especially in titles that lend themselves to a first person view. From racing around in Forza to flying over rolling hills in Flight Simulator, there's an almost VR-like level of depth, brute-forced into your eyes by the sheer size of the display. It's really rather magical, and can even give you a competitive edge in shooters like Apex and Halo, as you're treated to a much wider field of view, letting you spot flanking enemies earlier.

The downside to this all, is the fact that if you're sat reasonably close, you'll literally have to move your neck to view the corners and ends of the screen. This isn't a problem in something like Flight Simulator, but in a fast-paced first person shooter, you don't want to waste precious seconds turning to check on your ammo or your radar. Thankfully, some games like Halo Infinite let you tweak the position of the onscreen HUD, letting you move them more towards the centre for easy viewing. In others though, you might struggle, unless you sit further away from the screen or download a mod.

Productivity by the way, is as amazing as you'd expect on a monitor this size, and being able to ditch the faff of multiple monitors during testing was a very welcome experience. The ability to have multiple windows open at once without having to alt-tab between them is a powerful productivity boost, although I did find myself with a bit of a sore neck from craning to see the far edges of the screen. Still, a small price to pay for Big Screen Ascension.

On the media front, it'll come as no surprise to learn that there's hardly any content available beyond a few YoutTube trailers and drone footage that will fill up the vast 32:9 ratio display that the Neo G9 offers. That means that anything you're likely to watch will have large black areas either side of the content. It's to be expected and is something that any ultrawide owner has to get used to, and the extra flexibility to have content side-by-side is actually a benefit.

As for the glorious 240Hz refresh rate, I could only achieve it in lighter games like Rocket League (where the performance and on-screen action at 240Hz was buttery smooth). Despite testing with AMD's mighty 7900XT (which has the latest DisplayPort 2.1), all of my other more demanding games like Halo Infinite, Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk 2077, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and more, failed to reach even close to 240fps in max settings.

From past testing on lower-resolution monitors, I know that even Nvidia's mighty RTX 4090 can't reach 240fps in higher settings either. Come the next generation or two of graphics cards though, and you'll almost certainly be able to make full use of the Neo G9's maximum refresh rate, making it a top contender for fans of future-proofing.

Specs aside, I'll also be the first to admit that by 35-year-old eyes can’t determine any reasonable difference between 120 and 240Hz either, so rest assured that you won’t be disappointed during the wait for even more powerful cards.

Onto the brightness. Capable of reaching 1,000 nits, the Mini LED nature of the display means that it's capable of eye-searing brightness. Compared to an OLED monitor like the OLED G9, the difference in brightness is, almost literally, night and day. I tried using the Neo G9 on max brightness settings initially, but soon turned it down to save my eyes from being strained. The fact that there's plenty more brightness in the tank should I need it though, is very reassuring.

On the flip side, dark areas are handled by over 2,000 local dimming zones, combined with the highest 12-bit black levels. Working together to dim darker areas with more precision to reduce things like bright halos around mouse cursors on dark backgrounds (or just to improve the contrast and experience in general), dimming zones are one of the main ways for non-OLED monitors to improve their black levels.

Samsung's efforts have not gone to waste here either, as the blacks on the Neo G9 are seriously impressive. I put it through its paces with an onslaught of OLED TV demos, and in isolation, the black levels get impressively close to true-black. The benefits of this contrast is reaped in gaming as well, especially if you're sneaking around in dark environments and don't want to miss out on any of the details.

Now, using an OLED display immediately after using the Neo G9 made it clear that even that number of dimming zones won't work miracles — and you'll notice blacks wash out if you view them from the side (not that you would position yourself that way in reality, mind).

So yes, OLED will remain king of contrast and black levels until the holy grail of Micro LED rolls around to save the day. But without an OLED screen to immediately compare it to, you will not be disappointed in what the Neo G9 offers on the contrast front. This is a big win, too, because the Neo G9 has managed to serve up impressive black levels and better-than-OLED brightness, without the fear of OLED burn-in hanging over it.

Now, I'm a particularly paranoid tech user, so the OLED screens that I do have in my house cause me no end of stress when I'm using them as a PC monitor. Despite knowing that there are preventative measures like Pixel Shift in place to avoid burn-in, I still regularly switch to a blank screen, hide the taskbar, and move windows around to reduce the risks of burn-in. To be able to use the Neo G9 freely without any of that nonsense, is liberating, to say the least.

There is just one issue though. The Neo G9 gets incredibly hot during use. After a few hours on a warm day, my office felt like a sauna compared to the rest of the house. Granted, a gaming PC churns out a lot of heat during intensive tasks like gaming which certainly doesn’t help, but I’ve never experienced this level before. You can almost feel the heat radiate off the screen if you’re too close, which I suppose is a boon for the winter months. It’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but still something to bear in mind if you run hot.

There's no dancing around the fact that $2,499/£2,199 is a staggering amount of money for a monitor. For most people, in these times, it's an immediate barrier to entry, and one that's unlikely to become more accessible any time soon.

But in the same way it's pointless lamenting the price of the latest Lamborghini, it's easier to just sit back from the sidelines of the real world and appreciate a product that's as extravagant and bonkers, as it is impressively powerful.

No other product at the time of writing will offer you the experience that the Neo G9 is capable of delivering. It's not even close. Its spec-shattering size, resolution, brightness, refresh rate, and curve, make it a unique offering for the most elite of enthusiasts to enjoy. For the rest of us, it's an object to covet, to place on the post-lottery shopping list. If you do find yourself lucky enough to experience it on your (hopefully massive) desk though, then have fun. It's a wild ride.

Esat has been writing about tech since the birth of the word “phablet,” and has previously held editorial positions at Stuff and Microsoft. Currently a freelance writer for Pocket-lint, Stuff, GQ, TechRadar, Trusted Reviews, Wired, and others, he covers everything from smartphones and gaming, to health, fitness, lifestyle, and more. He’s as passionate about tech as he is about cats and pizza (which is saying something), and is an avid connoisseur of surreal memes.