LG 45GX950A-B Monitor Review

The LG 45GX950A has an aggressively curved screen with a simple overall design. It features a matte gray plastic throughout, and there's some RGB lighting on the back.

The build quality is excellent. It's well-made, and the plastic materials don't flex easily. The underneath of the base of the stand is metal, but it doesn't prevent all wobble, which is expected from a monitor of this size. Although there aren't many openings for ventilation, the monitor doesn't get significantly hot. There is also no audible fan noise or coil whine either.

The ergonomics are disappointing. Each of its adjustments has a limited range, except for the height adjustment. Luckily, adjusting the screen on the stand feels smooth. It also features a cutout for cable management.

The base of the stand doesn't take up much space, and while it holds the screen well, there's still wobble. The thickness measurement is from the side of the screen to the back of the stand, and the thickness from the center of the screen to the back is 6.7" (17.0 cm).

The thickness measurement is from the side of the screen to the back, and the thickness from the center to the back is 2.0" (5.0 cm).

There's a joystick on the back of the monitor to control the on-screen display and turn it off. There's also a button underneath the bottom bezel to enable the Dual-Mode.

• DisplayPort cable (not DP 2.1-certified)
• HDMI cable
• USB-C cable
• Power cable and brick
• Mouse bungee clip
• User guides

The LG 45GX950A has a near-infinite contrast ratio in dark rooms, resulting in deep, inky blacks next to bright highlights.

Settings

• Game Mode: Gamer 1 (after calibration)
• Brightness: 100
• Peak Brightness: High
• Dual-Mode: Off (Full Wide)
• Smart Energy Saving: Off
• OLED Screen Move, OLED Screen Saver, and OLED Image Cleaning: Off

The SDR brightness is decent. While it gets bright if you have a small area of the screen displaying bright content, like a non-maximized window, it doesn't maintain this high brightness with most content. This means visibility is an issue in really bright rooms.

The change in brightness between different content can also be distracting, and if that bothers you, it's better to set Peak Brightness to 'Off' for a more consistent brightness. You should also set it to 'Off' if you want the lowest minimum brightness possible.

The brightness in the 'On (Full Wide)' Dual-Mode, which is the 2560x1080 @ 330Hz mode, is also similar, but it gets brighter in the Real Scene test (260 cd/m²) and with the 2% peak window (422 cd/m²).

Settings

• Game Mode: Gamer 1
• Brightness: 100
• Peak Brightness: High
• Dual-Mode: Off (Full Wide)
• Smart Energy Saving: Off
• OLED Screen Move, OLED Screen Saver, and OLED Image Cleaning: Off

The HDR brightness is decent. It gets brightest with small highlights, so they really pop against the rest of the image. Although it can't maintain this brightness with larger content, it's still bright enough to fight glare in a well-lit room. It also has very accurate PQ EOTF tracking, so it displays most content as intended, but with a slow roll-off near the peak brightness, it doesn't let all highlights get the brightest possible.

Using the Peak Brightness setting allows the monitor to become bright. Setting it to 'Off' results in more consistent brightness between different scenes, at the cost of a dimmer overall screen.

It gets brighter with most content in the 'On (Full Wide)' Dual-Mode, reaching 505 cd/m² in the Real Scene test. However, it's dimmer with test windows, as it's 373 cd/m² at 10% and 137 cd/m² at 100%.

The gray uniformity is excellent. It displays an even color throughout, and there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center. However, like any OLED, it has thin vertical lines in near-dark scenes, like 5% gray. It also has a feature called Convex Power Control (CPC) that dims the screen at the sides, which is hard to see with most content, but is more noticeable with full-screen images. While you can turn this off in the service menu, we don't suggest doing so, because it can void your warranty, and it turns back on whenever you power down the monitor anyway.

The LG 45GX950A has perfect black uniformity. It displays an even black level throughout.

The accuracy before calibration in the 'sRGB' Game Mode is fantastic. It locks colors well to the sRGB color space and has accurate colors, white balance, and color temperature. However, gamma tracking is off, as dark content is darker than intended, and other content is too bright.

Using the 'sRGB' Game Mode locks you out of a few settings, including Black Stabilizer, Sharpness, Gamma, Color Temp, Black Level, and Six Color. You'll have to use another, less accurate mode if you want access to these settings.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic. It fixes any issues from before calibration, and the main advantage of calibrating it is that you can adjust settings that are locked out in the 'sRGB' Game Mode.

The LG 45GX950A has a remarkable SDR color gamut. It displays the sRGB color space perfectly and also displays a wide range of colors in the Adobe RGB color space. However, it has inaccurate colors in Adobe RGB, particularly green, white, and red.

The HDR color gamut is fantastic. It has near-perfect coverage of the common DCI-P3 color space, with minimal inaccuracies. However, it has more limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

The HDR color volume is good. While it displays dark colors well, particularly in the DCI-P3 color space, it struggles to properly display bright colors.

The text clarity is great in the 'Off (Full Wide)' Dual-Mode, which uses the monitor's native 5k2k resolution. The main issues are because programs don't render text properly with the display's RGWB subpixel layout, like when using Windows ClearType (top photo). While text still looks sharp, it's not as sharp as an LCD display with similar pixel density.

These photos are in Windows 10, and you can see more text clarity photos with different modes below. Text looks worse in any of the other Dual-Modes, especially in the 2560x1080 mode.

The reflection handling is fantastic. The matte screen coating reduces glare well and minimizes reflections. However, because of the curved screen, bright reflections can look warped.

The gradient handling is superb. There isn't any visible banding between similar shades of colors.

You can reach this monitor's max refresh rate without Display Stream Compression (DSC) by using any Dual-Mode, as long as you have a DP 2.1-compatible graphics card. Otherwise, you can get 165Hz in the regular mode over DisplayPort and HDMI connections, but your graphics card needs to use DSC.

This monitor also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The LG 45GX950A has incredible motion handling across its VRR range with any of the Dual-Mode settings. Motion looks sharp, and any blur at low refresh rates is persistence blur. You can see an alternative graph showing the 330Hz Dual-Mode.

The refresh rate compliance at 165Hz is fantastic. For the most part, it makes full color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame. You can also see it in the 'On (Full Wide)' Dual-Mode below:

This monitor has fantastic CAD at 165Hz and at 330Hz. Motion looks sharp, but the main advantage of using the 330Hz Dual-Mode is that it provides a smoother look.

The LG 45GX950A has remarkable CAD at 120Hz in any Dual-Mode. Motion looks sharp, but if you have Dual-Mode enabled, images look less crisp due to its lower resolution.

The CAD at 60Hz is incredible in any Dual-Mode. Motion looks sharp, but it has persistence blur. If you have Dual-Mode enabled, images look less crisp due to its lower resolution.

This monitor doesn't have a black frame insertion feature to reduce persistence blur.

The LG 45GX950A has noticeable VRR flicker with rapidly changing frame rates, particularly in dark scenes. Although it looks better in person than the video, and it's better than some other OLEDs, it's still there.

These results are in the 'Off (Full Wide)' Dual-Mode, and you can also see them in 'On (Full Wide)':

The LG 45GX950A has very low input lag for a responsive feel. It remains low across its refresh rate range, and even though it changes a bit between different Dual-Modes, it's still responsive. You can see the results for different Dual-Modes below.

The aspect ratio and resolution change depending on the Dual-Mode you use:

This monitor works well with a PS5 or PS5 Pro, but because the console doesn't support ultrawide formats, you'll see black bars on the sides.

The LG 45GX950A-B works well with the Xbox Series X|S for the most part. You can only get 1440p @ 60Hz by using the console's HDMI override, which disables VRR. Also, the Xbox doesn't support HDR with 1440p or 1080p signals, so it isn't a limitation of the monitor. And because the console doesn't support ultrawide formats, you'll see black bars on the sides.

Although other reviewers have stated that this monitor uses UHBR13.5 ports, we confirmed that they support UHBR10 bandwidth. We used both an AMD 7800 XT and an NVIDIA RTX 5080 to confirm this.

The 3.5 mm audio jack also serves as a combo jack, supporting both audio out and mic in. It also supports DTS Headphone:X to simulate surround sound audio.

You can use the USB-C port to display an image from a laptop and charge it with one cable.

The LG 45GX950A-B works well with macOS. HDR looks good, and there aren't any issues. If you're connected over USB-C with Dual-Mode enabled, you need to enable VRR through the settings on macOS. Besides that, if you're using a MacBook over USB-C and close the lid, windows migrate to the monitor's screen, and they move back when you reopen the lid. However, when using an HDMI connection, the monitor goes to sleep when you close the lid.

The LG 45GX950A-B has a ton of additional features, including its Dual-Mode, which allows you to change the resolution, aspect ratio, and refresh rate. Other features include:

• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair that your system's anti-cheat tool won't detect.
• Black Stabilizer: Changes the black level so that it's easier to see opponents in dark scenes.
• FPS Counter: Shows the current frame rate from your source.
• Hexagon Lighting: Allows you to customize the RGB lighting on the back of the monitor.
• USB-C Option: Lets you choose between a high resolution or high data speed over USB-C.
• LG Switch: This is a downloadable program that lets you split the display into different sections.

The monitor also has different settings to reduce the risk of burn-in, which you can see below. Burn-in can occur with constant exposure to the same static elements over time, and LG advertises that the two-year warranty in the United States includes the OLED panel, although this can vary between regions.

• OLED Screen Move: Shifts the image slightly by a few pixels at a time, so that individual pixels aren't always displaying the same image.
• OLED Image Cleaning: Runs a pixel refresh cycle after every four hours of use when you turn the monitor off, or when it goes to sleep.
• OLED Screen Saver: Turns the screen off when there's inactivity.

You can learn more about the OSD with the monitor's user manual.