Mark D
Background: Looking for a size upgrade from a 27" Samsung IPS display, I purchased this monitor on Prime Day for a very good price. It was my first curved monitor. I ended up using it for just under a month before deciding to return it as the cons vastly outweighed the pros listed below. Pros: - Screen size was fantastic. Big enough that I could finally sit back in my chair and not deal with eye strain. - Color: matched my white theme perfectly (I have white accents on my computer/keyboard/mouse etc) - Curve: gives a nice feel in games/movies, I didnt find it as a negative for browsing either Cons: - Image Quality: in a word: washed-out. Given the vastly good reviews on this monitors image quality, I was extremely disappointed. I messed with every combination of settings. I used the windows color calibration. I disabled f.lux and tried again. Regardless of what I did, it just had a smoky grey cast on everything. Like your kitchen when you burn something in the oven. I messed with the settings almost daily and tried to make it work, it just never looked anywhere near as good as my old IPS display (which is odd, because if anything the blacks should have been better with this VA panel). - Resolution: not really a surprise here, but full HD at 32" is bad up close for detail, i.e. text. For games and movies, it was a non issue. For reading/browsing, it was quite bad. The farther away you sat the better, of course. At normal desk viewing distance ~ 2 ft, it was unbearable. I actually made the final decision to return it while browsing Amazon to find the return deadline, and realizing that I just couldnt justify keeping something that while good for games/movies was so bad for browsing. - Back-light uniformity: bad. With the black screen (screen saver) you notice immediately that the combination of curvature and back light leads to many areas of bright and dark - Reflectivity/gloss: a highly reflective screen plus the curved shape is maddening during the daytime if there is anything besides a blank wall behind you (because you not only have a reflection, but a distorted one). My office has windows on 2 sides and couldnt find a comfortable setup (without completely re-arranging my office) that reduced the refection to a manageable point. I will never buy a glossy monitor again. In conclusion, this monitor is good for a few things, namely viewing movies/games at night at viewing distances of 3-4 ft. If this represents the bulk of your usage, youll probably be satisfied for the price. However, if daytime usage, text readability, or full depth color are important to you, I would highly recommend you look at QHD. I have since upgraded to a 32"QHD panel by AOC, which while not matching the color theme of white, and while not being curved, eliminates every one of the cons listed above, and looks beautiful. Better yet, at this moment, its only $25 more than the monitor reviewed here. No brainer really, in my opinion. Alternatively, there is a Samsung curved QHD monitor which retains the white theme and would likely solve these cons as well, but at this time it is close to $500, double what I paid for this reviewed product. I really tried to make this work. I wanted it to work. I regard Samsung as a top manufacturer of lcd screens (I previously owned 3 monitors/tvs, and have been very satisfied). Did I get a bad screen? Was I too critical? Is my environment/usage that much more difficult than all those 4 and 5 star reviewers? I dont know. If you look, there are plenty of reviews echoing my sentiments (though they are a vast minority) so these issues are clearly not isolated to my monitor alone. Thanks for reading, hope this helped give you some perspective on a potential purchase.
