Samsung Odyssey G5 LC27G55T Monitor Review

From the front, the Samsung Odyssey G5 looks similar to its bigger sibling, the Samsung Odyssey G7 LC32G75T, with thin borders on three sides and a wide V-shaped stand. However, the back is very different, as it looks noticeably cheaper due to its small basic stand. It also lacks the RGB lighting that's present on the G7. Like the G7, it features a very aggressive curve, which might bother some people.

The Samsung G5's build quality is decent. It's entirely plastic, but it feels relatively sturdy overall. However, the VESA mounting holes don't line up with the display's center of gravity, causing the display to tilt downwards when VESA-mounted. The tilting hinge doesn't feel like it's strong enough to hold the display up, as it also causes the screen to tilt downwards to the minimum tilt angle. The stand feels cheap, and although it's easy to install, it's hard to remove.

Sadly, this monitor has terrible ergonomics. It only allows for a narrow tilt adjustment, so it might be difficult to place it in an ideal viewing position. If you want something with much better ergonomics, look into the Samsung Odyssey G3 LF27G35T. The back of the monitor is made out of textured plastic. All the inputs are bottom-facing, and there's a passthrough at the top of the stand for cable management. You don't need any tools to set up the stand; it just clicks into place.

The stand's feet are wide-set, but they're relatively thin, which leaves you a good amount of usable desk space. Unfortunately, it's a very basic stand made out of cheap plastic, and it wobbles quite a bit.

There's a single joystick located just below the Samsung branding at the center of the bottom bezel. It allows you to turn the monitor On/Off and navigate the monitor's on-screen menu.

• Power supply
• Power cord
• HDMI cable
• User guide

The Samsung Odyssey G5 has a good contrast ratio, so blacks look black in a dark room instead of gray. It's slightly higher than the advertised 2500:1; however, contrast can vary between individual units.

The Samsung Odyssey G5 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 G5 has decent SDR peak brightness. Except for the dimmer 2% window caused by frame dimming, brightness is very consistent across different content. However, it isn't bright enough to overcome intense glare, so it's better suited for a dark to moderately-lit room.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Custom' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max.

This monitor has disappointing HDR peak brightness. It isn't bright enough to make highlights stand out in HDR content, and just like in SDR, the 2% window is dimmer.

We measured the HDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Custom' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max.

Like most VA panels, the Samsung Odyssey G5 has sub-par horizontal viewing angles. The image looks inaccurate when viewed from the side, which isn't ideal for co-op gaming or sharing content. However, the newer version of this monitor, the Samsung Odyssey G5 S27AG50, has an IPS panel with wide viewing angles.

Unfortunately, this monitor also has poor vertical viewing angles. This causes the screen to look washed out if you have the monitor mounted above or below eye level.

The Samsung Odyssey G5 27 inch has fantastic gray uniformity. It's a little darker on the right edge of the screen, but thankfully, it isn't that noticeable, and there's almost no dirty screen effect.

Unfortunately, our Samsung Odyssey G5 has bad black uniformity. There's a lot of backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges of the screen, making the entire screen look gray.

Out of the box, the Samsung Odyssey G5 has decent accuracy; however, this can vary between individual units. There are visible inaccuracies with shades of gray. Most saturated colors are over-saturated a bit, and there's no sRGB mode to clamp them to the sRGB primaries. Gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve at all, causing most scenes to appear darker than intended. The color temperature is just a bit cooler than our 6500K target, which results in a slight blueish tint.

This monitor has exceptional accuracy after calibration. The white balance is nearly perfect, and gamma follows the sRGB target curve nearly perfectly. There are still some issues with color accuracy, though, and most saturated colors are under-saturated a bit. The color temperature is extremely close to our target.

The Samsung Odyssey G5 27 inch has a great SDR color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the sRGB color space used in most content, but just decent coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, so it's limited for professional content creators.

This monitor has decent SDR color volume. It can display dark colors relatively well, but it has trouble producing bright colors.

Although the Samsung Odyssey G5 supports HDR, it can't display a wide color gamut. It has mediocre coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space and poor coverage of the wider Rec. 2020.

The HDR color volume is bad, mainly due to its limited color gamut and low brightness. It has difficulty displaying bright colors as well as very dark and saturated colors.

The Samsung Odyssey G5's reflection handling is very good. Its matte anti-reflective coating does a good job of diffusing bright reflections; however, visibility can still be an issue in well-lit environments due to the monitor's low brightness.

The Samsung G5 has decent text clarity. Windows ClearType (top photo) helps with diagonal lines, like on the R and N, but it can make vertical lines look slightly thinner.

This monitor has superb gradient handling. There's a tiny amount of banding in the darker shades of gray, red, and green, but it's not noticeable in most content.

The Samsung G5 Odyssey supports FreeSync natively to reduce screen tearing. Although not officially certified by NVIDIA, it also works with their G-SYNC Compatible feature, but only over DisplayPort. If you want something with a higher 165Hz refresh rate, then check out the MSI Optix G27CQ4.

The Samsung Odyssey G5 has a good response time when running at its max refresh rate, resulting in only a short blur trail behind fast-moving objects, but it's a bit slower than most comparable monitors on the market. Like most monitors, the level of overdrive can be adjusted depending on your personal preferences.

We recommend the 'Faster' Response Time setting, as it delivers the best performance overall. The 'Fastest' setting is slightly faster, but there's significant overshoot around bright objects. Unfortunately, like most VA monitors, transitions from a dark color to a brighter one are significantly slower, resulting in noticeable black smear behind darker areas on-screen. Even the higher-end Samsung Odyssey G7 LC32G75T has this issue, but it has a much faster response time overall.

The response time at 60Hz is decent. It's a bit slow in the darker transitions, causing slightly more motion blur in dark scenes. The recommended overdrive setting is again 'Faster' because 'Fastest' causes much more overshoot. The Response Time settings are fairly consistent across refresh rates, which is great, as you can set it once and forget it.

The Samsung G5 Odyssey has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly called black frame insertion, to improve motion clarity. Like most monitors, you can't use it at the same time as the variable refresh rate feature. When enabled, the screen becomes noticeably darker, and it remains active as long as you don't adjust the screen's brightness. It sometimes causes the screen to dim so much that we can barely navigate the on-screen menu, and we could only get the brightness to return to normal after unplugging the monitor.

The Samsung G5 Odyssey is advertised to have a flicker-free backlight. It's flicker-free when the backlight is set above 0%; however, there's a 144Hz flickering when the backlight is at 0%, which matches the monitor's refresh rate. If flicker bothers you, the Dell S2722DGM is a similar monitor that's completely flicker-free.

The Samsung Odyssey G5 has exceptionally low input lag, but it's significantly higher when playing at 60Hz.

The Samsung Odyssey G5's 1440p resolution makes it great for multitasking and results in sharp images and text. There's also a larger variant with a 21:9 aspect ratio and 34 inch screen, the Samsung Odyssey G5 LC34G55T.

For the most part, this monitor works well with MacBooks. There are no issues waking up from sleep, it responds quickly, and windows are restored to their original position. VRR doesn't work properly on the desktop, though, and in-game, it only works well if your computer can maintain a high frame rate. At low frame rates, it flickers considerably and doesn't look very good.

The Samsung Odyssey G5 has only a few extra features. You can add a virtual crosshair, and there's an Eye Saver Mode that helps reduce eye strain.

We noticed during testing that the monitor's OSD doesn't reflect the active refresh rate and only shows the maximum refresh rate. This means that even if you set the refresh rate in the graphics card's control panel to 60Hz, it would still show 144Hz in the on-screen menu.