Samsung Odyssey G6 S32BG65 Monitor Review

The Samsung Odyssey G6 32 looks like many other Samsung monitors. It's made of an all-black plastic body, with thin upper, left, and right bezels, and a curved screen.

The Samsung Odyssey G6's build quality is good, with sturdy plastic. However, there's some flexing on both the left and right sides of the back of the screen, and it's wobbly.

Update 07/10/2024: The ergonomics and tilt range scores have been updated, as the tilt range was scored incorrectly.

This monitor is great on the ergonomics front, offering more adjustments than most curved screens. It rotates from portrait to landscape both ways and has basic cable management behind the stand.

Despite the monitor's imposing footprint, the V-shape gives you space to place objects in front of it.

It comes with a remote to control the Tizen OS. You can navigate the menu from either the directional pad underneath the screen or the remote.

• Power supply and cable
• DisplayPort cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Remote
• VESA-mount adapter
• User guides and documentation

This monitor has a very good contrast ratio with deep blacks. The local dimming feature doesn't improve it, as it's edge-lit, and most content prompts the zones to activate.

This monitor's local dimming is very bad. It's edge-lit and is made up of eight vertical zones which remain on for most content. It also has a lot of blooming as a small source of light prompts an entire zone to light up. Similarly, the uniformity is terrible, as the monitor produces backlight bleed. While the feature handles transition well overall, there's discernable backlight flicker whenever a small object moves between zones. You can reduce this flicker with the help of VRR Control.

Even though the monitor's native applications still suffer the same flickering, they exploit the local dimming feature a little better and are the best option compared to the Windows applications.

This monitor has great SDR peak brightness, allowing it to withstand glare without any distracting changes in brightness. These results were obtained with Game Mode enabled in the 'Custom' Picture Mode with Local Dimming set to 'High'.

The HDR peak brightness is decent, but highlights don't fully stand out. The EOTF doesn't follow the target PQ curve closely enough, rendering scenes a little darker than they should be. By contrast, the EOTF gets too bright when Game HDR is enabled.

These results are in Game Mode with the Picture Mode set to 'Custom', Local Dimming on 'High', and the Brightness set to max.

The horizontal viewing angle is disappointing. There's a loss in color accuracy, and colors wash out as the viewing point shifts off-center, making it not ideal for screen sharing. In the same vein, the gamma shifts at a narrow angle, and the black level looks gray as you move away from the center.

Similar to the horizontal viewing angle, the vertical viewing angle is disappointing. The image looks inconsistent whether mounted above eye level or viewed while standing up.

The gray uniformity is excellent. Although there's backlight bleed along the bottom and a couple of slightly darker spots, the screen is uniform overall.

The Samsung G6's black uniformity is okay. There's a bit of blooming around bright objects, and there's some light backlight bleed mostly along the upper edge of the screen, which gets worse with local dimming on.

The Samsung Odyssey G6's accuracy before calibration is remarkable. Setting the Color Space setting to 'Auto' instead of its default of 'Native' locks the colors to the sRGB color space, while you can still change other settings to your liking. Colors are accurate, the white balance is marginally off, and the color temperature leans only minimally on the cooler side. On the other hand, the gamma curve is off, making most scenes somewhat dark, especially darker ones.

The accuracy post-calibration is outstanding. The colors are accurate, and the color temperature is near perfect, as is the white balance. The only inaccuracies left aren't perceptible.

The Samsung Odyssey G65B has a superb SDR color gamut. It displays a wide range of colors in the sRGB color space, which is used for most web content and SDR movies. It also has a good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing.

The Samsung Odyssey G6 has an incredible SDR color volume. It easily manages colors at a broad range of luminance levels. The contrast ratio provides deep, saturated colors while displaying bright colors.

The HDR color gamut is very good. It displays a wide range of colors with the DCI-P3 color space, which is used by most HDR content. Its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is disappointing as it's limited.

The HDR color volume is excellent. It displays colors at a wide range of luminance levels in DCI-P3 but struggles a bit more in Rec. 2020.

The reflection handling is good. There's some minor glare which is hardly visible in moderately-lit rooms. Light is mostly distracting if you place the monitor opposite a window.

This monitor has good text clarity. With ClearType on, the diagonal lines appear clearer. These pictures are with Windows 10; you can also see the pictures with Windows 11 below.

• ClearType On
• ClearType Off

The Samsung G6 monitor has fantastic gradient handling, as there's no discernable banding.

The refresh rate is superb. You can reach its maximum refresh rate with any type of signal, which is ideal for gaming.

FreeSync works across the entire refresh rate range whether you use HDMI or DisplayPort, while G-SYNC only functions over DisplayPort.

The Samsung G6 monitor has a remarkable response time. The recommended overdrive setting is 'Standard' since 'Faster' and 'Extreme' have too much overshoot.

It has a great overall response time at 120Hz. It's fast, and motion blur is very minimal, but it still has some slight smearing. All response time settings perform similarly, but the 'Standard' Response Time has the least overshoot. The response time is different if you were to send a fixed 120Hz signal with VRR enabled than if you start at a higher frame rate and drop down to 120Hz. If the frame rate drops, it results in worse motion handling than if you were to send a fixed signal. You can see the results below.

The response time at 60Hz is decent. The total response time is on the slower side, so there's some motion blur, especially in lower frame rate games. The response time is different if you were to send a fixed 60Hz signal with VRR enabled than if you start at a higher frame rate and drop down to 60Hz. If the frame rate drops, it results in worse motion handling than if you were to send a fixed signal.

With VRR Control enabled, the response time doesn't change, but stutter occurs with 60Hz signals. You can see the results below.

The Samsung Odyssey G6 has an optional backlight strobing feature to help minimize persistence blur. That said, it's limited since it only runs when sending a fixed 60Hz signal with VRR disabled. That causes the input lag to greatly increase while providing little to no improvement in clarity.

This monitor is flicker-free with VRR on and local dimming disabled, contributing to better eye comfort. If local dimming is enabled, the flicker surpasses 1000Hz, as shown on this graph.

There are various visual anomalies at lower refresh rates, like brightness, flickering, and stutter, which you can reduce by enabling the VRR Control. Furthermore, there's also some pixel inversion under specific patterns. These issues are particularly clear and distracting while using Windows' Netflix and Lightroom applications, making them unusable. However, it doesn't have scanline issues like the Samsung Odyssey G7 C32G75T.

The Samsung G65B has a low input lag at 240Hz and 120Hz, but it's a little slower at 60Hz. It's still low enough for casual gaming, but there's some visible delay with BFI enabled. At times, the input lag is inconsistent as it can increase, meaning some people may feel a bit of a delay.

This was tested with the Input label set to 'PC', Game Mode 'On', VRR disabled, and VRR Control 'Off'. Switching to an input label different than 'PC' results in higher input lag. Using VRR Control adds quite a bit of input lag, especially at 60Hz.

PS5 compatibility is fantastic. This monitor has a native resolution of 1440p but can display a 4k signal from a PS5. It results in a downscaled image, sharper than a native 1440p signal but not as detailed as a true 4k picture. To get 4k to show as a supported resolution, you must set the input label in the monitor's settings to 'Home Theater System' with Adaptive Sync disabled. If you leave the input labeled as 'PC', it only accepts 1440p, as you can see here. With firmware 1504, the monitor supports VRR on the PS5, but it doesn't work at the same time as 4k.

Its compatibility with the Xbox Series X|S is fantastic, supporting the most common formats from the console. It can accept 4k @ 60Hz signals as long as you disable VRR and set the input label to 'Home Theater System'. If you leave the input label to 'PC', it only accepts 1440p as you can see here.

You need to plug the USB-B to USB-A cable into your computer for the two USB ports on the monitor to work.

The Samsung Odyssey G6 works well with macOS. There are no issues with VRR and HDR enabled at 240Hz. However, its SDR mode looks better than the HDR as colors are washed out in the latter. If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their normal position after waking the laptop from sleep, but they don't return to their positions when you open the lid after closing it.

This monitor comes with Samsung's proprietary Tizen OS; it offers many features similar to a Samsung smart TV. You'll have access to applications like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Disney+ without a computer. You can read more about all its features in the Smart Features section of the Samsung QN90B QLED TV review. This monitor also has multiple gaming-oriented features.

• Core Lighting: Controls the RGB lighting.
• Game HDR: Helps increase the perceived brightness of the image in HDR.
• Game Mode: Gives the lowest input lag possible.
• Local Dimming: Controls the monitor's local dimming feature. It can set it to 'Off', 'Low', 'Standard', or 'High', depending on your preference.
• Ultrawide Game View: Simulates a 21:9 aspect ratio for ultrawide gaming but adds black bars on the top and bottom.
• Virtual Aim Point: Adds a virtual crosshair on the screen that the PC won't detect.
• VRR Control: Reduces flicker with VRR enabled.

Although it has a Multi-View feature, it isn't a true Picture-by-Picture/Picture-in-Picture mode because the monitor doesn't allow viewing from two sources at once. Instead, the screen splits between one external source and one built-in app.

This monitor uses the Tizen OS interface, which is similar to the one used on Samsung's Smart TVs. You can read more about these settings here.