The LG 34GK950F-B is a very good monitor that provides ample screen space for productivity work as well as delivering a great gaming experience. It has a 21:9 aspect ratio, a 1440p resolution, and its IPS panel has excellent viewing angles, so the image looks good regardless of where you sit. It has an excellent response time and an optional black frame insertion feature that can further improve motion clarity, and its FreeSync support also works with recent NVIDIA graphics cards. There's HDR support, although the performance is limited by its peak brightness, and like most IPS monitors, it has significant black uniformity issues and a poor contrast ratio that makes it less ideal for dark rooms. Luckily, it has an exceptionally low input lag and a 144Hz refresh rate to provide incredible responsiveness when gaming.
The LG 34GK950F-B is a good monitor for most uses. It's a great choice for office use, especially in a brighter environment, and it has excellent screen real estate, so you can have multiple windows opened side-by-side. It's also a great gaming monitor, as it has a fast response time, low input lag, and support for FreeSync variable refresh rate. However, it isn't well-suited for dark rooms due to its poor contrast ratio and bad black uniformity, and while it supports HDR, it can't get bright enough to make highlights pop in HDR movies.
The LG 34GK950F-B is a good monitor for office use. It has a large screen size that's great for multitasking, and its 1440p resolution makes text look incredibly sharp. It has a very good peak brightness that's suitable for well-lit rooms and its wide viewing angles make it easy to share work with your colleagues. Although it can't be used in portrait mode due to its wide format, it has decent height and tilt adjustment range.
The LG 34GK950F-B is a great gaming monitor. It has a great response time, excellent low input lag, and a high refresh rate. It supports FreeSync variable refresh rate technology, which is also compatible with NVIDIA graphics cards, but unfortunately, it has limited ergonomics, and it doesn't look as good in dark rooms.
The LG 34GK950F-B is a good monitor for media consumption. The large, high-resolution screen is great for watching videos, and it has good viewing angles, perfect for sharing the latest trends with a few friends. It has excellent gray uniformity, with almost no noticeable dirty screen effect, and visibility is good in well-lit rooms due to its good peak brightness. Its reflection handling is mediocre, though, so it's best to avoid having light shining directly on the screen.
The LG 34GK950F-B is a very good monitor for media creation. It has an excellent amount of screen real estate, so you can see more of your project at once. It also has good viewing angles, perfect for sharing your screen with your clients or coworkers. Its out-of-the-box color accuracy is impressive, with full coverage of the sRGB color space and excellent coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, and it can display a wide color gamut as well.
The LG 34GK950F-B is a decent monitor for HDR gaming. It's limited by the monitor's disappointing contrast ratio and bad black uniformity, as well as its lack of a local dimming feature. Other than that, it has great gaming performance, with excellent response time, FreeSync support, and excellent low input lag.
The LG 34GK950F-B has a fairly simple design. It has thin bezels on all sides, and its wide V-shaped stand doesn't take up a significant amount of desk space. There are some red accents on the stand and on the back monitor, but it's fairly minimal and won't look out of place in a professional office environment.
The back of the monitor is plain. The red circular accent doesn't light up and there's basic cable management through a clip on the back of the stand.
The 34GK950F-B has a decent build quality overall. The external panels of the monitor are almost entirely made of plastic, but we didn't notice any potential weak spots or areas of concern. If you want a monitor with better build quality, take a look at the Dell Alienware AW3420DW.
The LG 34GK950F doesn't have a local dimming feature. The above video is provided for reference only.
Very good peak brightness. Visibility shouldn't be an issue in most rooms, but it may not be enough if there's light shining directly on the screen. It's remarkably consistent when displaying different content, which is great.
The 34GK950F-B has a decent peak brightness in HDR mode. There's almost no variation in peak brightness with different content and it's bright enough to deliver a decent HDR gaming experience, but not for HDR movies.
The 34GK950F-B has excellent horizontal viewing angles. The black levels remain relatively constant, and the brightness drop is very gradual, so the image doesn't appear washed out until a very wide angle. Colors also remain accurate to a moderate angle but lose accuracy before the brightness decreases.
This monitor has a decent vertical viewing angle. Colors lose accuracy at a minor angle, but the brightness doesn't decrease as quickly, and the black levels remain relatively flat.
Like most IPS monitors, this display has bad black uniformity. There's noticeable backlight bleed, which may be distracting in dark scenes in a dark room. There's worse bleed from the corners of the display, but due to the curvature of the monitor, the image is partially cropped, so it looks worse in person than the image suggests.
The LG 34GK950F has an impressive color accuracy out-of-the-box. The sRGB picture mode is the most accurate, but unfortunately, the only setting you can adjust in this mode is the brightness, so most people will want to use something else.
In sRGB mode, gamma follows the target curve well for brighter scenes, but dark scenes are over-darkened significantly. Colors have great accuracy, and most people won't notice any issues.
After calibration, this monitor has outstanding accuracy. Almost all inaccuracies are corrected, except for pure blue, which is still slightly inaccurate. Gamma almost follows the target curve perfectly, and the color temperature is very close to the calibration target of 6500K.
You can download our ICC profile calibration here. This is provided for reference only and should not be used, as the calibration values vary per individual unit even for the same model due to manufacturing tolerances.
The LG 34GK950F has a mediocre HDR color volume. It's limited by the HDR color gamut, and it can't display dark, saturated colors very well due to the limited contrast. Pure white is much brighter than colors in HDR.
The LG 34GK950F-B shows no signs of temporary image retention, even immediately after displaying our high-contrast static test image for 10 minutes.
Mode | Response Time Chart | Motion Blur Photo | Response Time Table |
Off | Chart | Photo | Table |
Normal | Chart | Photo | Table |
Fast | Chart | Photo | Table |
Faster | Chart | Photo | Table |
The LG 34GK950F has an excellent response time. The best overdrive setting is the 'Fast' mode, as it delivers clear motion with a very short blur trail, no noticeable overshoot, and only a bit of undershoot in some transitions. 'Faster' delivers a slightly faster response time, but there's significant overshoot in some transitions, especially in dark scenes.
Mode | Response Time Chart | Motion Blur Photo | Response Time Table |
Off | Chart | Photo | Table |
Normal | Chart | Photo | Table |
Fast | Chart | Photo | Table |
Faster | Chart | Photo | Table |
Great response time at 60Hz. It's slightly slower than when playing at maximum refresh rate, resulting in a bit more motion blur. The best overdrive setting for playing at 60Hz is 'Normal', although there's still some overshoot. The 'Fast' setting is good too, as the overshoot and undershoot don't look as bad in person.
There's an optional black-frame insertion feature that can help reduce the appearance of motion blur and it can flicker at either 120Hz or 144Hz to match the refresh rate. This feature is only supported over DisplayPort.
The LG 34GK950F has an excellent refresh rate over DisplayPort. Over HDMI, it's limited to an 85Hz refresh rate, which is decent, but in this mode, it's limited to 8-bit color. It can display 10-bit color over HDMI, but only at 60Hz. It supports FreeSync variable refresh rate technology over both HDMI and DisplayPort, but due to the limited refresh rate over HDMI, the VRR range is limited over HDMI. Over DisplayPort, the VRR range is outstanding, delivering a nearly tear-free gaming experience, even in extremely demanding scenes.
If you want a monitor with an even higher refresh rate, the LG 34GN850-B's refresh rate can be overclocked up to 160Hz.