Samsung Odyssey G55A S27AG55  Monitor Review

The Samsung G55A 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 build quality is decent. 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 poor ergonomics, as it's hard to adjust to an ideal 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. If you want a newer monitor with much better ergonomics, check out the Samsung Odyssey G5/G51C S27CG51.

The stand's feet are wide, but they're fairly thin and leave a lot of desk space available to put your mouse and keyboard.

There's a single joystick located just below the Samsung branding at the center of the bottom bezel to control the on-screen display and to power the monitor on and off.

• DisplayPort cable
• Power supply
• Power cord
• User guides

The Samsung Odyssey G55A has a good contrast ratio, resulting in fairly deep blacks next to bright highlights 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 these videos on the monitor so you can compare the backlight performance with a monitor that has local dimming.

The SDR brightness is just okay. There's very little variation in peak brightness with different content, which is great. Sadly, it isn't bright enough to overcome glare in a really bright room, so it's better for a dark to moderately-lit room. If you want a monitor that gets brighter, check out the LG 27GR75Q-B. These measurements are from after calibration in the 'Custom' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to its max.

The HDR brightness is mediocre. It isn't bright enough to display the content creator's intent in games or movies, as highlights don't pop, 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. There aren't any Picture Modes available when you enable HDR.

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 it's still a bad choice for co-op gaming or sharing the screen with someone next to you.

The vertical viewing angle is bad. The screen looks washed out if you're standing up and looking down on it.

This monitor 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 aren't really noticeable with real content. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center.

The black uniformity is disappointing. 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 accuracy before calibration is great. There are some issues with the white balance, especially in brighter shades, but most colors are accurate. Even without a dedicated sRGB mode, colors aren't too oversaturated. 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.

This monitor has incredible accuracy after calibration. The color temperature and white balance are nearly perfect, as is gamma. Most colors are nearly perfect, but pure blues are still off a bit.

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 has more limited coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in professional editing, though.

The Samsung Odyssey G55A has a mediocre HDR color gamut. Its coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by most current HDR content isn't bad, but it has even worse coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

This monitor has mediocre color volume in HDR. It can't properly display bright and dark colors and the image looks washed out.

The text clarity is good. 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, which reduces the sharpness of text and images a bit.

This monitor has good reflection handling. The matte anti-reflective coating significantly reduces the intensity of direct reflections.

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

Due to bandwidth limitations over HDMI, you can only take full advantage of this monitor's max refresh rate over DisplayPort.

This monitor has bad motion handling across its VRR range. You can't use any of the overdrive settings with VRR enabled, and there's noticeable blur and smearing with fast-moving objects. In fact, the CAD is so high with VRR that it passes the limits of the chart, but you can see an alternative chart with it here.

This monitor has disappointing refresh rate compliance. Its response time isn't fast enough to make full transitions before the monitor draws the next frame, leading to blurry motion.

The CAD at the max refresh refresh rate of 165Hz is disappointing. You can use the Response Time settings if you disable VRR, and 'Fastest' has the fastest total response time, but there's still noticeable smearing and blur. Motion is a lot worse if you use VRR as the overdrive settings are locked.

The CAD at 120Hz is disappointing. You can use the Response Time settings if you disable VRR, and 'Fastest' has the fastest total response time, but there's still noticeable smearing and blur. Motion is a lot worse if you use VRR as the overdrive settings are locked.

The CAD at 60Hz is disappointing. You can use the Response Time settings if you disable VRR, and 'Fastest' has the fastest total response time, but there's still noticeable smearing and blur. Motion is a lot worse if you use VRR as the overdrive settings are locked.

This monitor has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly called black frame insertion, to reduce persistence blur. It only works when the Refresh Rate setting in the monitor's OSD is set to '165Hz', even if your computer is sending a lower frame rate. Unfortunately, the pulse timing is off, resulting in distracting image multiplication, and you can't adjust it.

This monitor has terrible VRR flicker with changing frame rates. It's most noticeable in dark scenes, but you can also see it in darker areas of bright scenes. This is very distracting while gaming but isn't so much of an issue with consistent frame rates.

This monitor is completely flicker-free at most brightness levels. There's a very high-frequency flicker if you set the brightness below 28, but it's so high that it isn't noticeable.

The Samsung G55A has excellent low input lag, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience. Unlike previous Samsung monitors like the Samsung Odyssey G5 C27G55T, it doesn't matter if your computer's frame rate doesn't match the Refresh Rate setting on the monitor; the input lag remains low even if there's a mismatch between them.

Besides not supporting VRR or 4k @ 120Hz due to the lack of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, this monitor has no significant compatibility issues with the PS5.

There are some limitations with how this monitor works with the Xbox Series X|S. It only supports 4k @ 60Hz downscaling if FreeSync Premium is disabled, and because the Xbox only supports HDR in 4k, you can't enable HDR and VRR at the same time with any signal.

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

This monitor 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.