Which display would you choose? Samsung G9 49" or LG CX 48"

Samsung G9 49" or LG CX 48"

  • Samsung G9 ultrawide 5120x1440 at 240hz is king! That ultrawide HDR roxors!

    Votes: 6 26.1%
  • LG CX 49" 3840x1920 at 120hz is king! If there's a choice, OLED is always the right answer!

    Votes: 17 73.9%

  • Total voters
    23

dvsman

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
3,628
So it's close to annual bonus $$$ time and I'm thinking of giving my 3090 a new display. I'll totally have to rearrange my setup for the LG CX but OLED is just hard to beat for visuals. At the same time the G9 has vertical space that I love for spread sheets, even though it's LCD and not OLED. Plus its a couple hundos cheaper than the LG at the moment.
 
I own both the Samsung CRG9 (predecessor to G9) and the CX 48". Most of the below applies to the G9 as well.

Samsung CRG9:

Pros:
  • Lots of usable desktop space. 3-4 windows side by side is a great way to work.
  • No need for DPI scaling.
  • Supports Picture by Picture mode with two inputs in either 21:9 + 11:9 or 2x 16:9 configuration.
  • G9 is capable of 240 Hz.
Cons:
  • Windows is just not built for using this aspect ratio. Taskbar and system tray go to the opposite sides of the screen making looking at those like watching a game of tennis. Displayfusion is a good tool for fixing this by splitting the display into regions.
  • Fullscreen mode (e.g fullscreen YouTube) will take the whole screen area with black bars on sides so typical 16:9 videos will render in the center of the screen.
  • Pixel response time could be better. G9 fixes this.
  • Slow startup. Don't know if G9 is better at this.
  • PbP mode prevents using HDR and VRR.
  • HDR support is rubbish. It gets very bright but the local dimming is just a pile of crap. G9 is not better in this regard. It's usable but not great by any means.
  • Not good for image editing as vertical gamma shift causes issues for that. It's not visible in regular use and noticeable only on single colors spanning the whole screen. I was fine using it for non-color critical image editing.
  • Games can have field of view distortion when run at full res. I find running at 3840x1440 custom resolution mitigates this pretty well so it's always an option. You then have black bars at the sides.
  • Not all games support the resolution correctly so some INI file editing or 3rd party patchers might be needed. Most of the time not a problem and you can always run at say 3440x1440 custom res or 2560x1440.

LG CX 48":

Pros:
  • HDR is excellent.
  • 120 Hz black frame insertion mode is a nice extra feature that works well. I don't recommend using it in anything but games running in SDR and at high framerates close to the 120 Hz level though.
  • Pixel response time is near instant.
  • 4K content renders at full res rather than being scaled down to 1440p.
  • Image quality is excellent from any viewing angle.
  • Well supported aspect ratio.
  • Can use custom resolutions and no scaling options to run at for example ~43" 3840x1600 ultrawide or ~31.5" 2560x1440.
Cons:
  • Higher input lag than CRG9/G9. Personally I don't notice any difference when the display is running at 120 Hz but someone more sensitive to input lag could. Mostly input lag is under 1 frame so it should not be noticeable.
  • Stand is crap. It is bad for cable management and prevents putting the TV close to a wall. I recommend a wall mount or floorstand instead.
  • The sheer size of it. I have mine at about 1m viewing distance which makes it more palatable. I have to use a little bit of DPI scaling to get a comfortable text size which means I have about 3200x1800 worth of desktop space when using 120% scaling.
  • Due to the subpixel array of the OLED, RGB font smoothing is not ideal. Configuring Windows for grayscale font smoothing looks better to me in most apps but it looks worse for some older apps.
  • I prefer the 3-4 windows side by side format of the CRG9 over 2x2 grid for window management.
  • Needs a HDMI 2.1 GPU for 4K 120 Hz with all bells and whistles. Club3D CAC-1085 adapter allows for that too but you need to give up VRR support.
  • Burn-in possibility. I have had mine for about 5 months and so far nothing of the sort can be seen despite using this for 8+ hours for work and personal use almost every day.
  • Burn-in mitigation techniques are recommended, like running dark modes wherever you can, hiding the taskbar, using a screensaver and turning off the display when you take a longer break. It's second nature for me at this point so it's not too much of an issue.
  • Automatic static brightness limiter is a real annoyance in desktop use as it will tend to dim the screen as you are working. It can be disabled from service menu using service remote or Android phone with IR blaster and LG service menu app. This may or may not have an effect on warranty.
  • Not necessarily suited for image editing either. OLED does have some change in color horizontally moving away from the center. Again this is not at all noticeable in normal use and only those doing color critical work would care.
My take is that I prefer the CRG9 for desktop use (excluding fullscreen content) and the LG for everything else. Like everything in the display world nothing is perfect.
 
OLED. This is the way.

Also, I have had two Samsung curved VA monitors. While overall they're pretty good, they all seem to have bugs and just stupid "gotcha" design decisions.

CHG70 (27 inch) - sRGB gamut coverage was accurate. Yay. However, couldn't adjust white balance or contrast in this mode. Why?

CFG73 (24 inch) - sRGB gamut coverage accurate. Yay. CAN adjust white balance and contrast. Yay. Cannot adjust brightness in motion clarity mode. Why?

Also - none of them are single strobed below 100hz. I think the newest newest monitors are only single strobed at their max frequency - 240hz. Which is a damn shame in my opinion.

Samsung, if you're reading this - what the hell man? If they fixed all of the above, their VA gaming monitors would smoke the competition. Add in 60hz single strobe and you'd have everyone buying them up.
 
Get one of the 38" 144-175Hz monitors. It's a better 2 page display than the Samsung (IMO) and a much more reasonable form factor.

Don't know about the OLED but it seems like a wild beast that few can tame well enough to enjoy as a proper desktop monitor - but kudos to those that are able...
 
IMG_20201124_213155.jpg

Bought it while on black week sale, for $1350 saved $550 (Danish prices)
 
I was reading the 38" Dell thread too and I forgot to even add that as an option. The only thing that I'm kinda hedging on at the moment is the possibility that there will be more OLED TVs with HDMI 2.1 which can be used as monitors, even if they aren't specifically designed as monitors. I'm an LG fan, have an LG OLED in the living room, but again the TV sizes are just still too big. if it was just a little smaller than the 48" maybe 43 or 40, I'd be totally happy for sure.

Thanks for all the feedback, guys! Back to the drawing board - and maybe take another look at the Dell.
 
I was reading the 38" Dell thread too and I forgot to even add that as an option. The only thing that I'm kinda hedging on at the moment is the possibility that there will be more OLED TVs with HDMI 2.1 which can be used as monitors, even if they aren't specifically designed as monitors. I'm an LG fan, have an LG OLED in the living room, but again the TV sizes are just still too big. if it was just a little smaller than the 48" maybe 43 or 40, I'd be totally happy for sure.

Thanks for all the feedback, guys! Back to the drawing board - and maybe take another look at the Dell.
I went for the Alienware AW3821DW. I used a LG 43” 4K TV a few months back as a monitor and it was already too big for me at that size. A 48” would definitely be unwieldy for me.

38” UW is where the sweet spot is I think. Have no issues with IPS panels for PC Gaming and this is coming from someone with 2 LG OLEDs in his house for the past 4 years (and now a 65CX as well).

Also, don’t have to worry about burn-in with IPS. Haven’t had issues with my OLED TVs with burn-in, but they don’t have static images on the screen for prolonged periods of time like you can have with PC use.
 
Since you mentioned it, I think it's funny people keep bringing up burn-in for OLED w/ PC use. There's this thing called a screen saver that we've had since the CRT days ... /shrug

:-D
 
Since you mentioned it, I think it's funny people keep bringing up burn-in for OLED w/ PC use. There's this thing called a screen saver that we've had since the CRT days ... /shrug

:-D
Each time its used, the whole screen is aged to try and match the brightness of the most burned in pixels.
 
Back
Top