Samsung Odyssey G5/G55A S27AG55 Monitor Review

The Samsung G55A looks nearly identical to the Samsung Odyssey G5 C27G55T. It has thin bezels on three sides, but there's a bit of dead space between the bezels and the first pixels, which is distracting if you're using it in a multi-monitor setup.

The Samsung G55A has decent build quality. There's very little flex in the back plastic, and the housing feels sturdy overall. The stand supports the monitor well, and although it wobbles a bit, it recovers quickly. None of the materials used feel premium, but there are no significant issues, either.

Sadly, this monitor has terrible ergonomics. It has a fairly standard tilt range, meaning you can adjust the screen a bit, but you'll need to VESA mount it to get an ideal viewing position. The inputs are bottom-facing and somewhat hard to access, and there's a loop on the top of the stand for basic cable management.

The stand's feet are wide, but they're fairly thin and leave a lot of desk space open.

There's a single joystick located just below the Samsung branding at the center of the bottom bezel.

• Power supply
• Power cord
• DisplayPort cable
• User guide

The Samsung Odyssey G55A has good contrast, resulting in deep blacks in a dark room. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve black levels.

This monitor doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film the local dimming on each monitor, so you can see how the test clip compares to a different display with local dimming.

The Samsung G55A has just okay peak brightness in SDR. There's very little variation in peak brightness with different scenes, which is great. Sadly, it's not bright enough to overcome glare in a really bright room, so it's better suited for a dark to moderately-lit room. These measurements are after calibration in the 'Custom' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max.

The Samsung G55A has mediocre peak brightness in HDR. It's not bright enough to display the content creator's intent in games or movies, and it doesn't track the PQ EOTF well. Dark scenes are darker than they're supposed to be, and there's a sharp cut-off near the monitor's peak brightness, resulting in a loss of fine details in bright scenes.

Unfortunately, this monitor has a poor horizontal viewing angle. The curved screen helps compensate for this by bringing the sides of the screen closer to your field of view, but if you're sitting close to the screen, the sides appear faded and washed out. It's not ideal for co-op gaming or sharing content, either.

The Samsung G55A has a bad vertical viewing angle. The screen looks washed out if you have the monitor mounted above you or if you're looking down on it.

The Samsung G55A has great gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center, and there are two brighter bands on each side, but they're not really noticeable with real content. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center.

The Samsung Odyssey G55A has disappointing black uniformity. There's significant backlight bleed along the top and bottom edge but very little cloudiness in the center of the screen. Sadly, there's no local dimming feature to improve black uniformity.

The Samsung G55A has great accuracy out of the box. There are some issues with the white balance, especially in brighter shades, but most colors are displayed accurately. Pure blues and reds are a bit off, but most colors look good. Gamma follows the sRGB curve well, but dark scenes are a bit too dark. The color temperature is a bit cool, giving everything a slightly bluish tint.

The Samsung G55A has incredible accuracy after calibration. The white balance is nearly perfect, as is the gamma. Most colors are nearly perfect, but pure blues are still off a bit. The color temperature is nearly perfect, and the blue tint is completely gone.

This monitor has an excellent SDR color gamut. It can display almost all of the sRGB color space used by most current desktop and web content. It can't quite display the full range of blues, but this isn't really noticeable.

The Samsung G55A has superb color volume in SDR. Most colors are bright and vibrant, but despite the good contrast ratio, it can't display dark saturated colors very well.

The Samsung Odyssey G55A has a mediocre HDR color gamut. It can't display much of the DCI-P3 color space used by most current HDR content and has even worse coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

The Samsung G55A has just okay color volume in HDR. It's mainly limited by its incomplete HDR color gamut in both DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020.

The Samsung G55A has good reflection handling. The matte anti-reflective coating significantly reduces the intensity of direct reflections. The curved screen spreads reflections out a bit, further reducing their intensity but increasing their size.

The Samsung G55A has good text clarity. With Windows ClearType disabled, diagonal lines are a bit blurry, and text isn't very clear (bottom photo), but after running the wizard, text is much sharper and easier to read (top photo). The matte coating adds a slight haze to the screen, as you can see in the pixel photo. It reduces the sharpness of text and images a bit.

The Samsung Odyssey G55A has superb gradient handling. There's almost no noticeable banding in any shade.

This monitor has a fast refresh rate for a smooth gaming experience. The maximum refresh rate over HDMI is a bit lower, especially if you want 10-bit colors, so like most monitors, DisplayPort delivers the best experience.

The Samsung G55A supports FreeSync natively to reduce screen tearing over both HDMI and DisplayPort. The advertised minimum refresh rate of 65Hz over DisplayPort and 56Hz over HDMI means that low framerate compensation kicks in at a much higher refresh rate than most displays. Although not officially certified by NVIDIA, it also works with their G-SYNC Compatible feature, but only over DisplayPort.

Unfortunately, the Samsung Odyssey G55A has a bad response time at the max refresh rate of 165Hz. Enabling FreeSync Premium locks the overdrive setting, and it performs similar to the 'Standard' Response Time setting with a fixed refresh rate. This mode has no overshoot, but most transitions are slow, especially when transitioning from a darker shade to a bright one. It results in a long dark trail behind moving objects, known as black smear. The 'Faster' Response Time setting has less black smear and looks better overall, but you can't use it with FreeSync.

The response time at 120Hz is bad, and it performs very similar to the max refresh rate. Again, the 'Faster' Response Time setting delivers clearer motion overall, but it can't be used with FreeSync Premium enabled.

Unfortunately, the Samsung G55A has a terrible response time when gaming at 60Hz. The Response Time setting is locked to 'Standard' when FreeSync Premium is enabled, and it looks terrible. Almost all transitions are too slow to finish transitioning within the refresh rate cycle. Switching to the 'Faster' mode with a fixed refresh rate looks better, but it's still way too slow.

This monitor has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly called black frame insertion, to improve motion clarity. It only works when the monitor's refresh rate is set to 165Hz from the monitor's menus. Unfortunately, the pulse timing is off, resulting in distracting image multiplication, and you can't adjust it. You can't enable this feature if FreeSync is on.

The Samsung G55A is completely flicker-free at most brightness levels. There's a very high-frequency flicker (>1000Hz) if you set the brightness below 28, but it's not noticeable.

The Samsung G55A has excellent low input lag, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience. It's a bit higher than most similar displays, but not significantly so. Unlike previous Samsung monitors like the Samsung Odyssey G5 C27G55T, it doesn't matter if your computer's refresh rate doesn't match the Refresh Rate setting on the monitor; the input lag remains low even if there's a mismatch between them.

The Samsung G55's 1440p resolution makes it great for multitasking and results in sharp images and text.

This monitor has decent compatibility with the PS5. Although the native resolution of this monitor is only 1440p, it accepts and displays a downscaled 4k image from the PS5, but only at 60Hz, and only if FreeSync Premium is disabled. Unlike previous Samsung monitors, the 'PC' and 'AV' modes have no impact on the supported formats.

This monitor is compatible with most of the Xbox Series S|X features, but there are some limitations. It only supports 4k @ 60Hz downscaling if FreeSync Premium is disabled, and the Xbox only supports HDR with a 4k signal. You have to choose between 1440p @ 120Hz gaming with VRR or 4k @ 60Hz with HDR.

For the most part, this monitor works well with MacBooks. There are no issues waking up from sleep, and windows are restored to their original position, but not when you close the lid. VRR doesn't work properly even in games.

The Samsung G55A has only a few extra features. You can add a virtual crosshair, known as Virtual Aim Point, and there's an Eye Saver Mode that helps reduce eye strain.