I spent a little time with the new Samsung Odyssey Neo G95NC 57″ QLED DUHD curved ultrawide gaming monitor yesterday.
You may have guessed, from the number of words required to write its name down, the Odyssey Neo G95NC is a bit of a monster. It is. Reading over the spec sheet Samsung handed me on my way in the door, I murmured, “Bit on here.”
In case you’ve not encountered the DUHD acronym before, it is not onomatopoeia for “dud”. Rather, it stands for “Dual Ultra High Definition”. That’s a fancy way of saying it can display up to 8K resolution, and that’s what it was running when I sat down in front of it, hidden in a converted restaurant space near Sydney’s Darling Harbour. I don’t think I’ve ever played anything in 8K before, let alone anything in 8K on an ultrawide. It’s the kind of experience that, despite its wild impracticality for all but the most dedicated curved ultrawide enthusiast, triggers that little voice in your head that says, “I could get used to this.”
On the screen was Far Cry 6, a game that admittedly serves as an uneven showcase for a curved monitor. Though Far Cry 6 CAN run in an ultrawide format, and in 8K resolution, it does not natively support ultrawide. This means it subtly distorts the edges of the screen so they look a bit like a fish eye lens at the extremities. It’s also a first-person shooter, which is a bit of a wild ride on an ultrawide (or at least they are for me). Many will not notice the stretching, but the obsessives who covet curved screens and ultrawides will spot it right away.
Stretching aside, which was the fault of the game and not the monitor, it looked great! Doubly impressive considering the game was running on a high-end PC at the highest settings one can ask for when you need 60 frames in 8K ultrawide resolution.
Just running around in Far Cry 6 on the Odyssey Neo G95NC was intense. My own personal feeling was one of momentary sensory overload as I jogged around the game’s muddy, early opening zone. At a certain point, though, the Odyssey Neo G95NC started working its magic. Pretty quickly, the 57″ curved ultrawide screen started fooling that part of my brain that relies on peripheral vision to retain some level of grip on reality. Its size let it feel as though it encompassed my entire field of vision. Further, it felt (in certain moments when the light hit just right) as though I’d tumbled through the screen and into a sunny little creek town.
So it’s got that going for it. At around $AU3,500, you’d certainly hope for an out-of-body experience, and under the right circumstances, it does seem capable of providing one.
What curved monitors are great for, of course, are racing games, and though Samsung had F1 2022 set up on a separate racing sim seat, it wasn’t on this monitor. Hopefully, I’ll get to use it for racing at some stage, as I think it would be a tremendous experience.
In terms of setup, it’s a match for most of Samsung’s existing Odyssey range. The unit snaps together with a very strong single rear pillar and base. It is a heavy monitor though, weighing in at almost 19kg. Were you interested in a purchase, I would of course first recommend ensuring you have the kind of desk real estate that can contain the Odyssey Neo G95NC. Then I’d recommend making sure your desk can support that kind of weight.
Thank you for letting me editorialise for a bit. Let’s rattle off some tech specs for those who crave them:
- Dual UHD Monitor
- 1000R curved screen
- Quantum Matrix Tech
- VESA Display HDR1000
- 240Hz refresh rate, 1ms response
- AMD FreeSync Premium Pro compat
- DisplayPort 2.1, HDMI 2.1 and USB hub
- Picture-by-Picture and Picture-in-Picture
- Auto Source Switch+
- CoreSync and CoreLighting+ (you can change the lights on the back for wall lighting)
- Ergonomic stand
Samsung doesn’t have the Odyssey G95NC on sale yet but is taking expressions of interest. You can register here if you’re keen to know when preorders go live.
The author was flown to Sydney as a guest of Samsung.
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