Samsung Odyssey G65D S32BG65D  Monitor Review

The Samsung Odyssey G65D has a gaming-oriented design with an aggressively curved screen. It's made entirely of black plastic, and there are some etched designs on the back. It also features RGB lighting below the bottom bezel and on the ring where the stand attaches to the screen.

The build quality is good. It's well made without any obvious issues, but the biggest downside is that it wobbles easily.

The ergonomics are excellent. You can easily adjust it in a number of ways, which is useful if you want to share your screen with someone next to you. The stand also has a clip for cable management.

The tripod stand features wide-set feet, but there's enough space to put your keyboard and mouse between them. The thickness measurement is from the sides of the screen to the back of the screen, and the thickness from the center to the back is 10.8 inches (27.5 cm).

The thickness measurement is from the sides of the screen to the back, and the thickness from the center to the back is 3.5 inches (9.0 cm).

The Samsung Odyssey G65D comes with a remote to navigate the Tizen smart platform, and it has a mic for voice control. There's also a directional pad below bottom bezel to change settings and turn the monitor on/off.

• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Power cable and brick
• VESA mounting adapter
• Remote
• User guides

The contrast is great. It displays deep blacks next to bright highlights, and while it has a local dimming feature, it doesn't significantly improve the contrast.

The local dimming feature is terrible. It's edge-lit with only eight zones, and it fails to improve the picture quality. Any bright object against a dark background causes an entire zone to light up, which results in distracting blooming. However, most content keeps all the zones on, making the feature ineffective. The video is with Local Dimming on 'High'. If you're looking for a monitor with much better local dimming, check out the Sony INZONE M9 II.

Settings:

• Game Picture Mode: Custom (after calibration)
• Game Mode: On
• Brightness: 50 (max)
• Local Dimming: High

The SDR brightness is excellent. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare, and while there are some changes in brightness across different content, it isn't distracting.

Settings:

• Game Picture Mode: Custom
• Game HDR: On
• Game Mode: On
• Brightness: 50 (max)
• Local Dimming: High

The HDR brightness is good. It gets bright, which is great if you want to use it in a well-lit room. While it gets brightest with small highlights, the local dimming feature fails to make them pop against the rest of the image. Although most scenes are slightly overbrightened, the PQ EOTF tracking is good until there's a sharp cut-off at the peak brightness, meaning it lets highlights get the brightest they could.

The EOTF tracking is worse with Game HDR off, which you can see below:

The horizontal viewing angle is disappointing. The image quickly washes out when viewing it from off center, like if someone sitting next to you is looking at the screen. The curved screen brings the edges closer to your field of vision, so they don't look washed out if you're sitting in front of the monitor.

The vertical viewing angle is poor. The image washes out as you view it from below or above.

The gray uniformity is good. The screen looks uniform in the center, but there's noticeable backlight bleed at the bottom edge, and the sides are darker.

The black uniformity is decent. While the screen is uniform for the most part, the biggest downside is that there's backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges, and the local dimming feature doesn't improve it.

The accuracy before calibration is fantastic. There are minimal issues with the white balance, colors, and color temperature, but it isn't perfect. Gamma is a bit high, particularly in dark content, so it looks too dark. This monitor doesn't have a dedicated sRGB mode, but if you set Color Space Settings to 'Auto,' it locks colors to the sRGB color space and doesn't disable other settings.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic. It fixes most issues, but still isn't perfect.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It covers most of the common sRGB color space and has good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in content creation. However, it oversaturates red and magenta and undersaturates green and cyan in Adobe RGB.

The HDR color gamut is great. It displays a wide range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space that's used in most HDR content, and there are minimal inaccuracies. However, its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is more limited, and it has worse tone mapping.

The HDR color volume is great. It displays dark colors well, particularly in the DCI-P3 color space, but vivid colors aren't very bright.

The text clarity is good. Using Windows ClearType (top photo) helps improve the boldness of letters and makes them easier to read. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

The reflection handling is decent. The matte screen coating diffuses light fairly well, but reflections are distracting if you place it in very bright environment, like opposite a sunny window.

The gradient handling is fantastic. There's minimal banding between shades of similar colors.

You can reach the max refresh rate with any connection type, but your graphics card needs to use Display Stream Compression (DSC) to reach its max refresh rate with 10-bit signals over DisplayPort.

On top of supporting FreeSync VRR and G-SYNC compatibility, this monitor also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The Samsung Odyssey G65D has great motion handling across its VRR range. The three Response Time overdrive settings perform fairly similarly, but 'Faster' provides the best performance across the VRR range. Motion looks sharp, but there's still smearing, and it has some inverse ghosting as the refresh rate drops.

The refresh rate compliance is great. Although its response time isn't fast enough to make full color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame at the max refresh rate, it's much better at lower refresh rates.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 240Hz is great. The recommended Response Time setting is 'Extreme' because it has the least amount of motion blur, but there's still smearing and some inverse ghosting.

The CAD at 120Hz is decent. Unlike at the max refresh rate, the three overdrive settings perform nearly exactly the same, and there's blur and smearing. They're like this if you start gaming at 120Hz because they perform differently if you start at a higher refresh rate and use VRR to go down to 120Hz, as you can see in VRR Motion Performance.

The CAD at 60Hz is okay. Like at 120Hz, the three Response Time settings perform similarly, as they all have motion blur and smearing with fast-moving objects.

The Samsung Odyssey G65D has an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur, but it's limited in how you can use it. It only flickers at 60Hz and causes image duplication. 

There are two ways to enable the setting. You can enable it through the Picture Clarity Settings as long as you have VRR off and Game Mode disabled with the input label on 'Blu-ray,' which increases the input lag. If you want to use it in Game Mode with VRR enabled, you can enable the feature through the Game Motion Plus Settings instead, and you need to change the input label to 'Game Console.'

The Samsung Odyssey G65D has terrible VRR flicker with changing frame rates. It's mostly distracting in dark scenes and dark parts of brighter scenes. There's a VRR Control setting that eliminates the VRR flicker, but it introduces stutter and increases the input lag instead. You can see the results for it below:

• Graph
• Video

The backlight is completely flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain if you're sensitive to it.

Settings:

• Game Mode: On

The input lag is low for a responsive feel, as long as you have Game Mode enabled. Using VRR Control adds a full frame of input lag, and disabling Game Mode increases the input lag significantly.

This monitor works well with the PS5. It supports most signals without issue, but you can only get downscaled 4k @ 60Hz signals by disabling Game Mode, which turns off VRR and increases the input lag.

This monitor works well with the Xbox Series X|S. You can get a downscaled 4k @ 60Hz signal by disabling Game Mode, which turns VRR off and increases the input lag. However, because the Xbox only supports HDR with 4k signals, this is the only way to use HDR on the monitor.

The monitor has an RJ45 Ethernet port that's useful if your computer doesn't have one, or if you want a wired connection to stream content from Tizen OS.

The Samsung Odyssey G65D works well with macOS. There aren't any issues, and if you're using a MacBook, windows move to the screen when you close the lid, and they return to their original position when reopening the lid or waking the laptop up from sleep.

The Samsung Odyssey G65D has a few extra features, like Tizen OS, so you can stream content without a PC. It has a Multi-View feature, but it isn't a true Picture-in-Picture/Picture-by-Picture mode because you can't view two external sources at once. Rather, you can view an image from one external source and one built-in app.

There are other gaming-oriented features, including:

• Core Lighting: Controls the RGB lighting.
• Eye Saver Mode: Decreases blue light to help reduce eye strain.
• Game Mode: Provides the lowest input lag.
• Ultrawide Game View: Simulates a 21:9 aspect ratio, which adds black bars to the top and bottom of the screen.
• Virtual Aim Point: Adds a virtual crosshair on the screen.