Samsung's excellent 34-inch Odyssey G5 ultrawide gaming monitor is on for less than $300 for Black Friday

23.11.2023 - 22:25 / pcgamer.com

Samsung Odyssey G5 | 34-inch VA | 3440 x 1440 | 250 nits |1ms MPRT | $549.99 $299.99 at Newegg (save $250 with promo code BFDAYWCYA789)
34-inch ultrawide 1440p gaming remains one of our firm favourites. It's a great compromise between lots of detail and decent frame rates. This Samsung panel gives you all that with 3,440 by 1,440 pixels, 165Hz refresh and 1ms response. It's not the brightest at 250 nits. But if you can live with that, it's an awful lot of monitor for the money.

Price check: Best Buy $369.99

I have three monitors on my desk. It's ridiculous. It's also extremely useful, which is why I put up with it, but sometimes I think, what if I could corral all these wires and mounts and buttons into one? And then I see that Newegg has Samsung's excellent 34" Odyssey G5 curved gaming monitor on for less than $300 at Newegg for Black Friday, and I think, that might just be the way to go.

Yes, it's only one penny under $300, but «technically correct» is my favorite kind of correct, and even if you want to round it up to a flat $300, that's still a really good deal—we were impressed when it dipped under $400 back in March.

So what do you get for the money? Size is obviously the big hook: At 34 inches, the Odyssey G5 offers a lot of real estate to play with, at 3440 x 1440 resolution with a fast 165Hz refresh rate, 1 ms response time, and a nicely immersive wraparound thanks to its 1000R curve.

There are some compromises made to get a monitor this beefy at this price point. It's a VA panel, which is sort of a middle-ground between the speed of TN panels and the color quality of IPS, and the brightness is rated at 250 nits, which is on the lower end of the scale. Connectivity is limited to one HDMI 2.0 port, and one DisplayPort 1.4: HDMI 2.0 maxes out at 144Hz at 2K, so if you want to take advantage of the full speed of the G5's 165Hz refresh rate, you'll need to use the DisplayPort connector.

So there are tradeoffs, but for a lot of gamers that's perfectly fine. It all comes down to needs and expectations: I picked up a cheap Samsung monitor a while back because I wanted to dip my toes into the waters of 4K gaming—against the advice of a friend, who said its lowly 60Hz refresh rate would disappoint—and you know what? It suits me perfectly, and I love it. (Sorry, DJ.)

The bottom line is that the Samsung Odyssey G5 is a lot of monitor for a very good price right now, If you're looking for a big, high-speed screen, this is definitely worth your attention. One thing to note: The listed price is $369.99, which is $180 off the regular price—you'll need to apply the coupon code BFDAYWCYA789 at checkout to get the extra $70 off. Don't forget!