Samsung CHG70  Monitor Review

The CHG70 has a simple design, with a wide v-shaped stand that supports the monitor well, but has a relatively large footprint. There's not much in the way of cable management, but the stand has good ergonomics, and it can also be VESA mounted.

The Samsung CHG70 has a similar stand base to their other monitors, like the Samsung JG50, but without the glossy finish found on more recent models. It has a relatively large footprint, but it feels stable and provides good support.

Update 08/09/2019: There was a mistake in our swivel range scoring. The ergonomics score has increased slightly.

The ergonomic adjustments of this monitor are very different from other monitors. When moved up and down, the screen stays in the same orientation but the two pieces that make up the arm of the stand move relative to the base. It can take some time to get used to, but this offers a greater degree of flexibility than most monitors.

The rear of the monitor looks stylish. It's made of plastic but has a matte finish. Where the stand arm joins the monitor, there's a ring of LEDs that can pulse during use (see here). It's possible to mount the monitor using the included adapter.

Unfortunately, there's just a small clip on the back for cable management.

The borders look sleek and are thin. The sides are made of a silver colored plastic, which looks good.

The monitor itself is quite thin when viewed from the side; however, the stand takes up a lot of desk space. Depending on the height it's set at, the stand protrudes out the back by a different amount. When at the lowest position, the monitor can sit 13.39" (34.0 cm) from a wall (shown here). The thickness measurement above is when the monitor is set to the maximum height, visible (here).

The build quality of the Samsung C27HG70 is great. The unique design feels well-constructed, despite the plastic parts.

The Samsung CHG70 has a very good native contrast ratio. VA panels like this one generally have a better contrast ratio than IPS panels, especially when it's used in a dark environment.

The contrast ratio with local dimming set to 'On' is essentially the same as the native one. When displaying our checkerboard test pattern, the local dimming feature is ineffective at dimming the dark squares, as the dimming zones are quite large.

Like most monitors we've tested so far, including the Samsung CHG90, the local dimming feature is bad. There aren't many dimming zones, so the screen has to light up large areas at a time, which can be distracting in dark scenes.

Note that when the local dimming feature is set to 'Auto', the local dimming will only be turned on when HDR is detected.

Great SDR peak brightness. While it does fluctuate slightly depending on screen content due to its local dimming, the monitor easily gets bright enough to suit most environments. This also helps it handle reflections from lights or windows.

Decent HDR peak brightness. HDR isn't any brighter than SDR, which is disappointing. It isn't bad, but it doesn't get bright enough to define specular highlights properly and give a very significant HDR effect.

Sub-par horizontal viewing angle, which is typical for VA monitors. The Samsung C27HG70 maintains its colors and brightness decently when viewed from the side, but its black level raises significantly even when only slightly off-axis. This causes the picture to look quite flat and dull and makes text difficult to read. Fortunately, its curve helps avoid the darkening of the sides from a normal viewing position.

Poor vertical viewing angle, which is expected for a VA monitor. Unfortunately, its blacks shift rapidly, causing visible black clouding in the corners of the screen even with slight head movements. This is most distracting when viewing letterboxed content.

The Samsung CHG70 has excellent gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect, and the corners are only slightly darker than the rest of the screen. In near-dark scenes the uniformity is good, but there are some horizontal bands.

The overall black uniformity of this monitor is poor. When local dimming is turned off, some backlight bleed is visible in much of the top and bottom part of the screen, leaving only some little portion of the screen free of it.

With local dimming enabled, the overall uniformity is worse, as the large dimming zones result in a large bar across the center of the screen.

Out of the box, the Samsung C27HG70 has great accuracy. Most people won't notice any issues with colors or shades of gray. Gamma doesn't quite follow the sRGB target curve, though, as everything is displayed a bit darker than it should be.

After calibration, the CHG70's accuracy is excellent. Any remaining inaccuracies aren't noticeable, and gamma is much closer to the sRGB target, so scenes are displayed at the correct brightness.

You can download our ICC profile calibration here. This is provided for reference only and shouldn't be used, as the calibration values vary per individual unit even for the same model due to manufacturing tolerances.

Good SDR color gamut, the Samsung CHG70 has no issues covering most of the essential sRGB color gamut. It has great coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space as well.

The Samsung CHG70 has an excellent SDR color volume. A combination of good contrast and larger than average color gamut helps it cover the sRGB volume almost entirely. Even if it doesn't come packaged with native Adobe RGB calibration, it can still reproduce that color volume better than average.

Update 08/17/2020: There was a mistake in our original testing and we retested HDR color gamut with local dimming on to remain consistent with all monitors. We also retested 7 other monitors, and some results changed.

Good wide color gamut, with good coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by the majority of current HDR content.

Update 08/14/2020: There was a mistake in our original testing and we retested HDR color volume with local dimming on to remain consistent with all monitors. We also retested 7 other monitors, and some results changed.

Good color volume. The monitor's high contrast ratio and local dimming help it show its wide color gamut at a large range of brightness levels.

Like most monitors with VA panels, the C27HG70 doesn't show any signs of temporary image retention.

The Samsung CHG70 does an amazing job of displaying our gradient test image. Only some minimal color banding was noted in the darker shades of color. Besides that, not many other issues could be noted, and no 8-bit banding was visible, as this monitor has a 10-bit color depth.

The monitor is thankfully completely free of color bleed. While some very faint bleeding is visible in our vertical picture, its appearance is exacerbated by the long exposure used by the camera and isn't perceivable with normal use.

The reflection handling of this Samsung monitor is very good. The curve is advantageous in most situations, smearing reflections across the screen and reducing their intensity. The semi-matte finish also helps to diffuse reflections on the screen. Overall, it's a great result for most rooms.

Unfortunately, text clarity on the CHG70 is only decent. Even after calibrating the display with Windows' ClearType, some issues are still noticeable in text. This shouldn't cause any issues for most people, but if you require pixel-perfect text, this might be a problem.

Excellent motion blur, which is good for watching fast-moving content as only a very short trail will be seen behind objects. The monitor's 0-20% transition takes far longer than all the others, so some ghosting is visible in very dark parts of images.

Surprisingly, the monitor's overdrive can't be adjusted; the other 'Response Time' setting modes only activate BFI, as explained in the Image Flicker section. Fortunately, the monitor's default overdrive is very good, producing fast transitions without adding much overshoot.

Unfortunately, the Samsung CHG70 has a bad response time when gaming at 60Hz. There's significant overshoot, especially behind dark objects, causing a long ghost trail. The response time can't be adjusted, either, unlike most monitors on the market. This isn't a good choice for console gamers.

The C27HG70's backlight has a strange high-frequency wobble, but can be considered flicker-free as far as the human eye is concerned, so images appear smooth. The 32" model (Samsung C32HG70) has flicker in its backlight according to TFT Central's measurements, which isn't good and will produce multiple trailing images.

The monitor has two BFI modes in its 'Response Time' setting: 'Faster' and 'Fastest'; which intentionally add flicker to clear up motion when the framerate matches the flicker rate exactly. This produces very clear images when playing fast-paced games. We recommend the 'Fastest' setting if you want BFI, as 'Fastest' has a narrower pulse spread than 'Faster'. This monitor's BFI has a few limitations, however: when it's active, the brightness can't be changed; BFI can't be activated when the monitor is in HDR mode; and the BFI frequency must be manually changed in the monitor's OSD by changing the 'Game -> Refresh Rate' setting.

This monitor has an excellent native refresh rate. It also supports AMD's FreeSync variable refresh rate technology, and although it isn't officially supported, it also worked with NVIDIA's G-SYNC Compatible feature, but only when connected over DisplayPort. If you want a monitor with a higher refresh rate, check out its successor, the Samsung Odyssey G7 C32G75T.

Excellent low input lag, making this a great monitor for gaming. When gaming at 60Hz, we recommend setting the Refresh Rate setting to '60Hz' on the monitor, and enabling the Low Input Lag setting.

The monitor has a sharp 1440p resolution and a large 27" size, which are great for almost all usages. The Samsung C32HG70 has the same 1440p resolution but a larger 32" size, which is better but also more expensive.

The monitor has a 'USB Super Charging' mode that increases the voltage supplied to USB port 2 for devices that support quick charging. The monitor also has an 'Eye Saver Mode' for night time viewing, which adds an orange filter over the screen to reduce blue light. This mode does severely hurt the contrast ratio, however, so we don't recommend it unless the screen is causing discomfort at night.

The monitor's OSD is controlled by a joystick on the back of the monitor, which doubles as the power button. The joystick is a very intuitive way to navigate the OSD, better than the (up/down/back/select) button scheme used by most monitors.

There are also three buttons on the underside of the bottom right corner (faintly visible in the photo) which can switch between saved settings modes called 'Game Setting 1/2/3'. Users can save different settings configurations to these modes, and switch between them on the fly.

• Manual and drivers
• Calibration report
• USB cable
• Displayport cable
• HDMI cable
• Power brick and cable