Frédéric Chopin
Looks like Ill be the first reviewer to post something more than "Amazing monitor!" First and foremost: these ultrawide IPS panels in general are notorious for having manufacturing defects that nobody willing to pay $1000 for a monitor is prepared to tolerate--and for good reason. The last time I tried to upgrade my monitor, I bought a 144Hz 27" IPS panel from Acer, and was mortified by the severity of the backlight bleed and color uniformity issues. I returned it immediately and decided to wait until manufacturing processes had improved significantly. Looks like thats the case. Either that, or Acer and ASUS just suck at making huge IPS panels, and LGs good at it. Theres a minuscule amount of backlight bleed on this one, but its only noticeable if youre looking for it carefully, and even then only on a perfectly black screen in a dark room. I cant find a single dead pixel. Color uniformity is not PRECISELY perfect, but I think thats only because the thing is so wide that you actually have to move your head to be looking at the edges at the proper angle to see the colors exactly as they appear dead center, which is just the nature of LCD panels. Yes, there is IPS glow, which is easy to mistake for backlight bleed, and is merely a byproduct of IPS technology rather than a result of panel defects. How to tell the difference? Move your head around while staring at a black screen in a dark room, and whatever goes away when you look at it dead-on is IPS glow, while whatever looks the same from all angles is actual backlight bleed. Anyway, that whole paragraph is just for touchy people like me; most people probably wouldnt care too much about those problems even on a panel that suffers from them. Ive noticed that many people in the ultrawide communities are deeply disappointed that this is a 1080p ultrawide rather than a 1440p one. Unfortunately, for the time being, if you want an ultrawide IPS panel, you have to choose between 3440x1400 @ 100Hz and 2560x1080 @ 144Hz. If youre a content creator first or desktop user first, by all means, the higher resolution will suit you well, but if youre a gamer, 1080p appears to be the better choice. Im running a 7700K @ 4.9GHz with a 1080 Ti and even my rig can only just barely manage more than 140 fps in games like Overwatch and Battlefield 1 at 2560x1080. If I were playing at 3440x1440 itd probably be difficult to manage even 100 fps. 1080p is much, much easier to drive than 1440p, and the higher your resolution, the more diminishing your returns are. Ill take a higher framerate at 1080p over a lower framerate at 1440p any day, and in a side by side comparison Id wager that most gamers would make the same choice. The color on this monitor is excellent. I dont have calibration equipment, but Im fastidious about my color settings and this panel has the best out-of-box colors Ive seen. It compares well to my LG OLED TV, which itself has better color than any LCD panel Ive ever seen. The various game mode settings are actually useful, rather than gimmicks that ultimately reduce the overall quality of the image. Im surprised by how well the black stabilizer improves visibility of dark areas without utterly destroying the gamma or making everything look washed out. Mines able to perform the 166Hz overclock just fine, but it does produce very minor artifacts that I was able to notice easily enough to be distracted by them, so I stick to 144Hz. Unless youre a professional CSGO player or something, I dont think youre going to need to cling to those extra 22Hz. Theres a "fast" versus "normal" and even "slow" response time setting, but comparing the three of them I cant see any visible difference. Perhaps it only affects the pixel response time in very specific situations. At any rate, I leave it set to "fast" because it doesnt appear to hurt. G-Sync is G-Sync, although I dont think its particularly useful above 120fps or so, and I leave it off to minimize input lag since Ive been playing FPS games. It hurts that Ive probably paid at least a few hundred bucks for this feature alone, but I bought this monitor because its specs are somewhat better than its Freesync counterpart, not for G-Sync in particular. Its not the most blindingly bright monitor youll ever see--the maximum setting probably wouldnt be adequate in direct sunlight, although its more than enough for a well-lit room during the day. At night, I use about 60% of maximum, and in the dark, about 40%. One of the things Im most happy about is the fact that the arm is actually tall enough to raise the monitor to eye level sitting atop my desk which is at arm level. No more cardboard box platforms for me. The OSD is snappy and easily navigable via the little joystick nub. It doesnt exactly wow me, but it works impeccably well. My biggest gripe, actually, is probably the fact that theres some very slight wobble, but not enough to be bothersome. Im a fast, aggressive typist, but I havent noticed any wobble happening as a result of any of my interactions with the mouse and keyboard. Overall, I could hardly be happier. The 34UC89G-B isnt utterly perfect (and how could it be, with a name like that), but in spite of its relatively high price it actually exceeds my expectations. If you want an ultrawide for gaming, dont want to have to compromise with a VA panel, and dont want to gamble on either Acer or ASUS who still, by the sound of it, have some serious QC issues with their current ultrawide IPS panels, this should be your choice.