The Dell S3422DWG is a 34-inch 1440p budget ultrawide gaming monitor with an 1800R curve. As a gaming-focused monitor, it has a 144Hz maximum refresh rate and FreeSync variable refresh rate (VRR) support to reduce screen tearing. It also has some added productivity features, like PIP and PBP modes, and a USB 3.2 hub with four USB-A ports, though it doesn't have USB-C.
The Dell S3422DWG is a very good monitor overall. It's designed with gamers in mind and is great for gaming. It has a high 144Hz refresh rate, low input lag for a responsive feel, and a very good response time, so there's minimal blur behind fast-moving objects. It's good for office use, and its 34-inch size and 1440p resolution produce good text clarity. However, it's somewhat difficult to share your screen with others, as it has mediocre ergonomics, and the image appears inconsistent from the sides. It's good for media consumption, and deep blacks are visible in darker rooms. It's good at media creation, though its accuracy before calibration is disappointing, so it needs a full calibration for the most accurate image. Finally, it's decent for HDR and has good HDR brightness, though highlights don't pop in brighter environments.
The Dell S3422DWG is a good monitor for office use. It has good text clarity, and its 34-inch size is large enough to open multiple windows side-by-side. It has good brightness and reflection handling, so you won't have any issues using it in a brighter room. However, it has mediocre ergonomics and narrow viewing angles, making sharing your screen with others difficult.
The Dell S3422DWG is a great gaming monitor. It has a 144Hz refresh rate for a smooth feel and supports the FreeSync VRR format to reduce screen tearing. It has a very good response time, so there's minimal blur behind fast-moving objects, and it has low input lag, so fast-paced games feel responsive. Additionally, it has good contrast, ensuring that deep blacks are visible in darker rooms. However, it can't take advantage of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on modern graphics cards.
The Dell S3422DWG is good for media consumption. Its 34-inch screen creates an immersive viewing experience, though it's limited to a 1440p resolution. It also has good contrast, ensuring that deep blacks are visible in darker rooms. However, it has narrow viewing angles, so the image is inconsistent for someone watching the monitor from the side.
The Dell S3422DWG is good for content creation. Its 34-inch, 1440p screen creates a large workspace with good text clarity. It also has good contrast, ensuring that deep blacks are visible even if you're editing images in a darker room. However, its accuracy before calibration is disappointing, and it needs a full calibration for the most accurate image. It also has mediocre ergonomics and narrow viewing angles, making sharing your screen with others difficult.
The Dell S3422DWG is decent for HDR. It has good contrast, ensuring that deep blacks are visible in darker rooms. While it has good HDR brightness, highlights don't pop against the rest of the image, and there's no local dimming feature to further improve the contrast. Finally, it does a good job displaying all the colors needed for HDR content, so colors look realistic.
We tested the 34-inch Dell S3422DWG, which is the only size available for this monitor. The results in this review are only valid for the model we tested.
Model | Size | Native Resolution | Max Refresh rate | Panel Type | Curve |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
S3422DWG | 34" | 3440 x 1440 | 144Hz | VA | 1800R |
Our unit was manufactured in May 2021; you can see the label here.
The 34-inch Dell S3422DWG is a great budget ultrawide gaming monitor with good motion handling and low input lag. Its large size provides an immersive experience, and its good contrast ensures it works well in darker rooms. It's a great choice if you're looking for an immersive gaming experience on a budget. If you're looking for a slightly more expensive 34-inch ultrawide gaming monitor with a faster response time, better viewing angles, improved ergonomics, and USB-C support, consider the Gigabyte M34WQ.
For more options, check out our recommendations for the best ultrawide gaming monitors, the best 34-49-inch monitors, and the best gaming monitors.
The Dell S3422DWG is a bit better than the Gigabyte G34WQC. The Dell has much better black uniformity, slightly better viewing angles, and a much better HDR color gamut. The Dell also has a slightly better response time and better connectivity, with a built-in USB hub. There's also a slight design difference, as the Gigabyte has a slightly more pronounced curve, which might bother some people.
The Dell S3422DWG and the Gigabyte M34WQ use different panel technologies, each with strengths and weaknesses. The Dell uses a curved VA panel, so it's a better choice for a dark room, as it has better contrast. The Gigabyte is a flat IPS monitor, so the image remains accurate at an angle. The Gigabyte also has better ergonomics and a better selection of additional features.
The Dell S3422DWG and the Samsung Odyssey G5/G51C S27CG51 are different types of monitors with similar panel types. The Dell is bigger with an ultrawide screen, offering a more immersive gaming experience and delivering better picture quality. This is because the Dell gets brighter, including in HDR, so highlights pop more. Although the Samsung model has a higher refresh rate, motion looks better on the Dell. One advantage that the Samsung monitor has is its improved ergonomics, making it easier to place in an ideal position.
The LG 34GP83A-B and the Dell S3422DWG use different panel technologies, each with strengths and weaknesses. The LG's IPS panel delivers much better viewing angles, and it has a faster response time. The VA panel on the Dell delivers much better black uniformity and better contrast. The Dell also has better reflection handling and an optional backlight strobing feature.
The ASUS TUF Gaming VG34VQL1B is slightly better than the Dell S3422DWG overall, but the Dell might still be better for some people. The ASUS has better contrast and a slightly faster refresh rate, as well as slightly better ergonomics. The Dell, on the other hand, has much better black uniformity and a faster response time at 60Hz.
The Dell S3422DWG is better than the Samsung Odyssey G5 C34G55T. The Dell has better ergonomics, slightly better viewing angles, and a much faster response time, despite the Samsung's higher refresh rate. The Samsung has better contrast, but the Dell has much better black uniformity. There's also a slight design difference, as the Samsung has a more pronounced curve, which might bother some people.
The Dell S3422DWG is better for most uses than the AOC CU34G2X. While they each use the same panel type, the Dell delivers better motion handling thanks to its faster response time, and it has better picture quality due to its higher peak brightness in SDR and HDR. The AOC has a few minor advantages, though, as it has better ergonomics because it supports swivel adjustment, and it has better accuracy before calibration.
The LG 34GN850-B and the Dell S3422DWG are both ultrawide gaming monitors, but there are a few differences due to their panel types. The LG has an IPS panel with much better motion handling and an overclock feature for a slightly higher 160Hz refresh rate. The LG also delivers a more realistic image thanks to its better accuracy before calibration. On the other hand, the Dell gets brighter in HDR for a more vivid image, and it's also the better choice for dark room gaming as it delivers deeper blacks.
The Dell S3422DWG and the HP OMEN 34c are similar ultrawide gaming monitors, but there are a few differences. While the HP has a slightly higher 165Hz refresh rate, the Dell has a quicker response time, leading to less motion blur, but each monitor has smearing with fast-moving objects. The Dell is also better to use with gaming consoles as it can downscale a 4k image, which the HP can't do. Lastly, the Dell has a few extra features, like a USB hub, making it the better choice if you need more USB ports to plug in your devices.
The Dell S3422DWG is better than the LG 35WN65C-B. The Dell is the better gaming monitor as it has a higher refresh rate and much better motion handling, and even if you want to use it for office use, it has better reflection handling. HDR also looks better on the Dell because it gets brighter, so highlights pop more.
The Dell S3422DWG and the Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx use different panel technologies, each one with their own strengths and weaknesses. The Dell has much better contrast and better black uniformity, so it's a better choice for a dark room. The Dell is also a lot brighter in both SDR and HDR. The Acer, on the other hand, has much better viewing angles and better ergonomics.
The Gigabyte M32UC is better than the Dell S3422DWG. The Gigabyte has a much higher native resolution, resulting in sharper text, and it has a faster response time, with less black smear. The Gigabyte is especially good for console gamers, as it supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on both of its HDMI ports, which enables 4k @ 120Hz gaming from the new consoles.
The Dell S3422DWG is much better than the Dell S3220DGF. The S3422DWG has a faster response time, better black uniformity, and a higher-resolution screen, resulting in better text clarity. The S3422DWG also has an optional backlight strobing feature. The S3220DGF has better ergonomics, with a better height adjustment, and the base can swivel.
The Dell S2721DGF and the Dell S3422DWG use different panel technologies, each with strengths and weaknesses. The S2721DGF uses an IPS panel, and it has much better ergonomics, better viewing angles, and a better response time. The S3422DWG has better black uniformity, better contrast, and an optional backlight strobing feature.
The Dell S3422DWG and the Gigabyte M27Q (rev. 1.0) use different panel technologies, each with strengths and weaknesses. The Dell has a VA panel with much better black uniformity and better contrast. The IPS panel on the Gigabyte has much better viewing angles and a faster response time, resulting in clearer motion with less blur behind fast-moving objects.
The Dell S3422DWG has a fairly plain design that looks great in any setting. Instead of a full RGB backlight, there's a fixed-color blue ambient downlight feature on the bottom bezel.
The ergonomics are mediocre. The stand has great height adjustment and a fantastic tilt range, so you can position it in your preferred position for individual wide-screen use. However, it can't swivel, making it difficult to share the screen with others. The stand features a clip for cable management.
The stand has a small overall footprint, so you can still place small objects in front of the monitor. It supports the monitor well, though there's a bit of wobble due to the weight of the display.
The Dell S3422DWG has a good contrast ratio. It shows deep blacks next to bright highlights, making it a good choice for content consumption or gaming in a darker room. This monitor has no local dimming feature to improve the contrast further.
This monitor doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so you can compare the backlight performance with a monitor that has local dimming.
The SDR brightness is very good and is bright enough to overcome glare in most environments. It also maintains its brightness well across different content.
These measurements are from after calibration in the 'Custom Color' Picture Mode, with the Brightness set to max.
The HDR brightness is good, though highlights don't pop against the rest of the image. It also follows the PQ EOTF curve very well. There's a sharp cut-off at the peak brightness, but this means that it doesn't tone map before your computer does.
These measurements are in the 'DisplayHDR 400' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max.
The horizontal viewing angle is mediocre. While you can still share your screen with someone else, the image is inconsistent at different angles.
This monitor has middling viewing angles. The image is inconsistent if you stand up and look down at the monitor.
The Dell S3422DWG has disappointing accuracy before calibration. The white balance is noticeably off, especially in brighter shades of gray, and the color temperature is a bit warm. Gamma doesn't follow the sRGB target curve, and most scenes are too bright. Additionally, the monitor oversaturates most colors and doesn't have an sRGB mode to correct this.
The accuracy after calibration is superb. Gamma is very close to the sRGB curve, and the white balance is nearly perfect. Colors aren't oversaturated anymore, and there are no noticeable issues with any color.
The SDR color gamut is superb. It can display nearly the entire sRGB color space used by most desktop and web content. Coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space is decent, though it's too low for professional editing.
The SDR color volume is fantastic. It can display most of the sRGB color space at all luminance levels. However, despite the relatively high contrast ratio, it can't display saturated colors at low luminance levels.
The HDR color gamut is good. It has very good coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by most current HDR content. However, coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is disappointing, and white is particularly off in this gamut.
This monitor has a fast refresh rate. If you want an ultrawide gaming monitor with a slightly higher refresh rate, look into the HP OMEN 34c, which has a 165Hz refresh rate.
This monitor supports FreeSync variable refresh rate (VRR) technology, with a wide supported range to help reduce screen tearing with an AMD graphics card.
Although it's not officially certified as G-SYNC compatible, enabling G-SYNC when using this monitor with an NVIDIA graphics card is possible, but only over DisplayPort. Unfortunately, there are some issues when using this monitor in G-SYNC compatible mode. As long as your frame rate stays above 60fps, you won't have any issues. If it drops below that, there's significant flickering that gets worse as the frame rate drops.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
Fast | Chart | Table | Photo |
Super Fast | Chart | Table | Photo |
Extreme | Chart | Table | Photo |
The response time at the max refresh rate of 144Hz is very good. The recommended Response Time setting of 'Super Fast' delivers the best overall results. There's a bit of overshoot with this mode, but it's not very noticeable. The 'Extreme' setting has a faster rise/fall time, but total response time is worse, and there's significantly more overshoot, with a visible trail of inverse ghosting.
The Dell S3422DWG 34 has a slower response time in dark scenes, resulting in significant black smear in dark areas. This is especially distracting when scrolling the web with a dark background or using a dark user interface.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
Fast | Chart | Table | Photo |
Super Fast | Chart | Table | Photo |
Extreme | Chart | Table | Photo |
The response time at 120Hz is very good. The 'Super Fast' mode still delivers the best results, with a fast average rise/fall time, but you may see dark trails behind fast-moving objects in dark scenes.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
Fast | Chart | Table | Photo |
Super Fast | Chart | Table | Photo |
Extreme | Chart | Table | Photo |
The monitor has an okay response time at 60Hz. The recommended Response Time setting of 'Fast' delivers the best overall results, as there's significantly more overshoot in the other modes. Unfortunately, this model doesn't have a variable overdrive setting, so you'll have to change the overdrive setting if your refresh rate changes for the best results.
The Dell S3422DWG has low input lag for a responsive gaming experience.
The PS5 compatibility is decent. Since the PS5 doesn't support ultrawide aspect ratios, you have to set the Aspect Ratio setting to 'Auto Resize'; otherwise, the image will be stretched to fill the space. This results in black bars on either side, but the image is displayed correctly. Even though the native resolution of this monitor is below 4k, it can accept a 4k signal and downscale it to 1440p, resulting in a slightly more detailed image than a native 1440p signal. Due to the bandwidth limits of the HDMI ports, though, it's limited to 60Hz if the console sends a 4k signal.
The PS5 sends a narrower 2560x1440 signal instead of the full widescreen resolution of 3440x1440. As a result, console bandwidth requirements are less at 1440p, so this monitor can display 1440p @ 120Hz with the PS5.
The Xbox Series X|S compatibility is superb. Since the Xbox Series X|S don't support ultrawide aspect ratios, you have to set the Aspect Ratio setting to 'Auto Resize'; otherwise, the image will be stretched to fill the space. This results in black bars on either side, but the image is displayed correctly. Even though the native resolution of this monitor is below 4k, it can accept a 4k signal and downscale it to 1440p, resulting in a slightly more detailed image than a native 1440p signal. Due to the bandwidth limits of the HDMI ports, though, it's limited to 60Hz if the console sends a 4k signal.
The Xbox Series X|S sends a narrower 2560x1440 signal instead of the full widescreen resolution of 3440x1440. As a result, console bandwidth requirements are less at 1440p, so this monitor can display 1440p @ 120Hz with the Xbox Series X|S.
There are two sets of inputs on this monitor.
This monitor has two sets of USB inputs, including two ports along the bottom bezel that are easy to access.
The Dell S3422DWG has a few additional features, including: