The Samsung C49RG90 is the latest ultra-wide to hit the market and takes things to the next level with the super ultrawide format.
A quick glance at the specs you would think at 49 inches running at 5120 x 1440 QHD it is the most over the top and ridiculous thing possible. However, due to its 32:9 aspect ratio, this is comparable to two 27-inch 1440p monitors side by side minus the bezels, so, while this display is expansive, it is in fact perfectly sized if you like a dual monitor set-up.
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Last updated on 4th August 2019 8:15 am
Samsung C49RG90 Specifications
- Screen Size: 49 Inches
- Resolution:5120 x 1440 QHD
- Aspect Ratio: 32:9
- Panel Technology: Vertical Alignment(VA)
- Refresh Rate:120Hz
- Response Time:4 ms
- Contrast Ratio: 3000:1 (Static)
- Brightness: 600 cd/m²(1000 cd/m² Peak)
- Colour – 1.07 billion (8-bit + FRC)
- Colour Gamut – 95% DCI Coverage, sRGB Coverage 125%(Typ.), Adobe RGB Coverage 92%(Typ.)
- Stand: Height–Yes
- Stand: Tilt – Yes
- Stand: Swivel–Yes
- VESA Compatibility: Yes (100 x 100)
- Connectivity: DisplayPort 1.4 x 2,HDMI0 x 1, USB 3.0 x 5, 3.5mm Jack
- Dimension (W x H x D): 47.22” x 20.59” x 77”
- Weight: 14.6 kg with stand, 11.6 kg without
Design and Features
As you would expect for the price, this is both a good looking and well-made monitor. It looks stylish without adopting some of the gaming orientated aesthetics you might find on an ASUS or Acer monitor.
The one design flourish, the circular mounting point on the
rear of the display also has an LED ring that glows blue which can be
synchronised to your PC’s audio output. You can set it to static or turn it off.
It is a fixed colour though, so no fancy RGB.
The Samsung C49RG9 display offers additional gaming features
including Black Stabilizer (improves visibility in dark scenes), Virtual Aim
Point (custom crosshairs), and pre-calibrated picture presets for FPS, RTS,
RPG, and AOS genres.
There’s also the Eye Saver mode which filters out the
harmful low-blue lights which in addition to the flicker-free backlight of the
Samsung C49RG9 ensures a comfortable viewing experience even after prolonged
use.
The backlight of the Samsung C49RG9 monitor features a quantum dot enhanced film (QDEF) layer which improves its colour gamut to 95% DCI-P3 (equal to 125% sRGB) for more vibrant and lifelike colours. It is worth noting that this is edge-lit with twelve dimming zones compared to the full-array local dimming that is used on some premium monitors such as the Acer 27″ Predator X27.
There are a few omissions compared to other monitors, there is no Thunderbolt, USB-C, speakers or a KVM. None of these affects me personally if you are spending this much on a monitor I would expect you to have dedicated speakers. Due to the size and PBP features a KVM would likely be very useful to some people.
Set up
Some thought has been put into this for users setting it up.
I didn’t read the instructions so didn’t follow things exactly, but you attach
the stand while the monitor is still in the box. This avoids you having to
awkwardly balance things when installing it and reduces the chances of damage.
It also makes getting the monitor out of the box much easier.
While the stand quality is excellent, due to the overall design
and weight of the monitor the stand is very deep, which therefore brings the
monitor very close to you and you lose quite a bit of desk space. If you set up
can accommodate it, this would benefit greatly wall mounting. As this was a
review unit I didn’t want to commit to buying a new wall mount to see how well
it worked, you would obviously need to take into account the weight of this
when choosing one for yourself.
You can tilt, swivel, and adjust the monitor’s height, as you might expect, there is no option to switch to portrait mode.
The OSD is better than average for a monitor. The power button works as a navigation stick, so browsing around and changing all the options is superior than button only navigation.
Performance Considerations
UHD 4K monitors have 8,294,400 pixels with a resolution of
3840×2160.
The C49RG90 has 7,372,800 pixels with a resolution of
5120×1440. This is 88.89% of the pixel count of a UHD 4K monitor, and 83.33% of
the pixel count of a true 4K monitor. You shouldn’t have issues with a 2080
keeping at least 60 fps, but you’ll need something seriously beefy like a
2080ti to be pushing 100fps regularly with maximum graphics settings.
In order to get 120Hz at 5120×1440, you will need to limit
the colour depth to 8-bit. At 10-bit, the refresh rate is limited to 100Hz
which is still plenty
Sadly I only have a GTX1070 so nowhere near enough to drive
this to its full extent, if I only intended to game on it, the 1080p CHG90
model would have been a better choice (or getting a better GPU). However, for
me, productivity is more important, and that is why I would take the C49RG90.
Performance
Unfortunately, I don’t have a colourimeter to test the out
of box calibration of if the colour quality claims are true. Subjectively,
performance is excellent, brightness is jacked up out of the box so for day to
day work I had to turn that down considerably.
I was unable to distinguish any backlight bleed and blacks
looks solid and consistent across the monitor, there were also no dead pixels
that I could find.
Gaming
Due to my ageing GPU, I had to dial down the settings for
most games. In Far Cry 5, for example, I barely hit 40FPS average under high
settings with HD textures. If I chose to buy this, I would inevitably end up
upgrading my GPU too, which will be an expensive affair.
I think all the games I tried worked with 32:9 so there were
technically no issues here, however, with some games where you have menu items on
the screen, these will quite often be in the usual far left or right, which is
not ideal due to the size of the screen.
HDR games look fantastic, probably better if I had a better GPU too. I noted that some people have reported the HDR can look washed out in some games, but I have no experienced this myself. YouTube videos in HDR look equally spectacular.
While this is not G-Sync validated, you can enable the
function within the NVIDIA control panel. During my use, this helped quite a
bit, and I experience no issues with the lack of validation.
I am not sure how applicable this will be for a lot of
readers, but using Zwift virtual cycling had some minor issues, often when a
cyclist is near you, the name looks stretched out. The actual environment scaled
well with the resolution, just some interface issues.
Work
Improved productivity is why I was interested in this monitor
mainly. I spend 40+ hours a week sitting at my PC, primarily writing or reading,
if I can make this is a little more pleasant, or even improve my productivity by
X% then the cost of the monitor is easily justified.
During my time with it, it has not disappointed, I do genuinely
feel more productive with it. With two 2560×1440 windows pretty much everything
displays perfectly with all the information on the screen at once. Websites are
always displayed correctly with no left or right scrolling. With Outlook, I
have 4 columns, and again I never have to scroll, unless it is downwards.
Admittedly, for writing, there is not much difference
between this and two 27-inch monitors, it is perhaps more a luxury than a
necessity, but the combination of this and it is gaming performance is a major
factor.
I don’t go a great deal of graphic design or video editing,
but this is clearly one of the areas that the monitor excels at, and the excellent
colour reproduction compared to other 5120 x 1440 displays will likely make
this a popular choice for content creators.
I have found the Eye Saver mode gives everything a bit of a
grey tint, and while I don’t mind it, I ended up settling on using the monitor
as normal but heavily turning down the brightness and tweaking the contrast.
With multi-monitor setups and high resolution, a not
uncommon problem is be losing my mouse cursor, this still happens here, but
less so compared to my former 4K and side screen set up.
Perhaps one slightly negative thing I can think of about day
to day use, is when you want to have just one screen open. Similar to gaming,
when you have an app or website open at the full resolution, navigation items
are shoved all the way to the left or right, so you have to move your eyes/head/mouse
quite a bit. Snaping a screen to the left or right is OK but am then always
looking slightly to one direction rather than central. So it would be good to
use a shortcut to snap a window at 2560×1440 central to the screen. I am sure I
can do this with 3rd party software, and it is something I need to explore
more.
Conclusion
The Samsung C49RG90 is the cream of the crop for consumer
monitors, its flagship specs command a flagship price. From what I can tell
there is no direct competition at the moment and if you look at the Dell U4919DW,
it is priced about the same, but less appealing specs, so technically the Samsung
is well priced.
While I couldn’t push the performance of this monitor for
gaming, it is incredible, games performed better in the super ultra-wide than I
had expected, although some games could do with a little more optimising.
However, some consideration does need to be taken into
account, not only do you need a more powerful GPU to run this, a lot of people
prefer the 21:9 format over 32:9 for gaming, so 3440×1440. This is purely a
subjective preference, and I have no strong feelings either way. If you are on
the fence about it though, you could save yourself a big chunk of change with something
like the Samsung C49HG90.
For productivity, depending on one what you do for work, I
feel like the Samsung C49RG90 is unmatched, and I love it. The only other
monitors on the market with this resolution is the Philips 499P9H and the Dell U4919DW
neither can do 120Hz or have adaptive sync.
When it comes to writing, I could achieve the same result
with two monitors for less money, but then this set up wouldn’t work as well
for gaming.
So for me, this monitor is the best solution on the market right now, it has a superb performance for both gaming and productivity, and I suspect a lot of gamers that work from home will feel the same.
Post from: Mighty Gadget – Gadget and Technology Blog
