The 5 Best 34 Inch + Monitors - Summer 2022 Reviews

The best ultrawide monitor we've tested is the Gigabyte M34WQ. It's a great monitor all-around, with a fast refresh rate, a large, high-resolution screen, and a great selection of additional features. It delivers an excellent gaming experience, with an outstanding response time at the max refresh rate, low input lag, and FreeSync support for a responsive gaming experience with little tearing. It's also great for office use, with good text clarity and great visibility in bright rooms.

This monitor has a few great office features. It has a built-in USB hub with USB-C support that can deliver up to 15W of power. While this isn't enough to fully charge your laptop, it'll help extend its battery life while you're working. It has a built-in keyboard video and mouse switch (KVM), letting you control and display two sources with a single set of keyboard and mouse. It's especially helpful if you're currently working from home and want to use your monitor with a work and personal computer.

Sadly, although it supports HDR, this adds very little, as it can't get very bright in HDR and has a low contrast ratio. It doesn't look as good in a dark room, either, as it has low contrast and mediocre black uniformity, so blacks look gray and patchy. As long as you're in a bright room, it's the best 34 inch gaming monitor we've tested.

If you often use your monitor in a dark room or want to enjoy the latest HDR games, check out the Dell S3422DWG. It's not as versatile as the Gigabyte M34WQ, as it doesn't support USB-C and doesn't have a built-in KVM switch, but it has much better contrast, so blacks look black in a dark room instead of gray. It also delivers a much better HDR experience, with brighter highlights that stand out in games. The Dell has narrow viewing angles, so it's not ideal for sharing your screen with someone else, as the image degrades at an angle. However, the curved screen helps compensate for that and delivers a more immersive gaming and movie-watching experience.

Overall, the Gigabyte is the best choice for most people, as it's more versatile and has a great selection of additional features. If you're in a dark room and want blacks to look their best, the Dell is a great alternative.

The LG 38WN95C-W is the best ultrawide 38 inch monitor we've tested. Monitors in this size are less common than 34 inch monitors, and they're mainly for productivity. It has lots of office-friendly features, and the large 38 inch screen offers a bunch of space to open multiple windows side-by-side. It has a 3840x1600 resolution, and the text clarity is good.

It has a USB-C input that supports Thunderbolt 3, which allows you to display an image from a source like your laptop and charge it at the same time, with a higher power delivery than DisplayPort Alt Mode. There are two USB 3.0 inputs if you want to charge your devices during work. It also has a Picture-by-Picture mode so you can display images from sources next to each other. While its reflection handling is just decent, it easily gets bright enough to fight glare, meaning visibility won't be an issue even in rooms with a ton of light.

Unfortunately, although it has great peak brightness in HDR to make highlights pop and displays a wide color gamut, it has a low contrast ratio. Its edge-lit local dimming feature performs terribly, meaning its HDR performance is a bit limited. It also has a 144Hz refresh rate for gamers, but because it has HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, it's limited to 75Hz over HDMI. If that isn't an issue for you, it's one of the best ultrawide monitors we've tested.

The best ultrawide 49 inch monitor we've tested is the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9. Monitors of this size are known as super ultrawide because they have a 32:9 aspect ratio. With a 5120x1440 resolution, this is the equivalent of placing two 27 inch, 1440p monitors side-by-side. It has a VA panel that delivers deep blacks, so it's a great choice for watching movies in dark rooms, but you'll see black bars if you watch movies in full-screen mode.

It delivers stunning picture quality, especially for a monitor. It uses Samsung's Mini LED backlighting technology, allowing it to get bright. It also provides greater control over the local dimming feature, resulting in the best local dimming we've tested on an LED monitor. It has a high 240Hz refresh rate and a quick response time, but like other VA panels, you'll notice black smearing in dark scenes.

Unfortunately, it has narrow viewing angles, so the images of the screen will look washed out if you sit too close, but the aggressive curve of the monitor helps reduce this problem. On the plus side, it delivers a good HDR experience thanks to its deep blacks and wide color gamut, and it gets bright enough in HDR to make highlights pop, but you need to make sure to update it to the latest firmware because past firmware versions had HDR issues. Overall, it's the best ultrawide monitor we've tested with a 49 inch size.

The best large monitor that we've tested is the LG OLED48C1. Since there are few monitors of this size on the market, the best option is to go with a TV. It has a massive 48 inch screen that feels incredibly immersive, and it's a fantastic choice for dark rooms because it produces inky blacks. It handles reflections exceptionally well, but it doesn't get very bright, so it might not be ideal for very well-lit rooms. The viewing angles are outstanding, which is great for playing co-op games or sharing content.

It delivers an excellent gaming experience. It has a 120Hz refresh rate and a near-instantaneous response time to show a clear image in fast-moving scenes. FreeSync support and G-SYNC compatibility are available to minimize screen tearing. It has four HDMI ports with HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, which means you can also use it for 4k @ 120Hz gaming with consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Input lag is as good as most desktop monitors, so gaming should feel very responsive.

Unfortunately, permanent burn-in can happen with cumulative exposure to static content, like a desktop user interface. Also, the stand doesn't allow for any ergonomic adjustments. HDR content looks amazing. It has outstanding coverage of the DCI P3, good peak brightness, and since it's an OLED TV, there's no blooming around bright objects. Overall, this is an excellent choice if you want to go with a big screen.