Samsung Odyssey G7 C32G75T  Monitor Review

The Samsung Odyssey G7 is a modern-looking gaming monitor with an aggressive curve. Its body is all black with controllable RGB lighting on the bottom bezel and a ring on the back. If you want a VA monitor without a curved screen, check out the LG 32GN650-B/32GN63T-B.

This monitor has a great build quality. It's made of good-quality plastic that feels solid, and there aren't any obvious issues with this monitor. The stand also supports the screen well, as it's sturdy.

The ergonomics are great overall, and you can easily adjust it. You can even rotate it to a portrait orientation, which is rare for a curved monitor.

The back of the monitor has textured plastic on it, and there's a ring of RGB lighting. The plastic cover comes off the stand so you can place the cables through for cable management, keeping your setup clean.

This monitor has a V-shaped stand, so you can still place objects in front of it. It has a fairly big footprint, and overall, the stand supports the monitor well.

There's a single joystick to control the on-screen display and power the monitor On/Off.

• Power brick and cable
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• Cable management clip
• VESA-mount adapter
• Manuals

The Samsung Odyssey G7 has a great contrast ratio, so it displays deep blacks. It has a local dimming feature, but it doesn't improve the contrast much, especially in scenes that leave all the dimming zones on, like with the checkerboard pattern.

Although the contrast is higher than the advertised 2,500:1 ratio, we confirmed our results with multiple measurements using different settings. With 'Black Equalizer' at 10, we measured a contrast ratio of 3,922:1, at '13' it was 3,935:1, and at '20' it was 3,892:1, so it isn't much different from these original numbers. As all of these tests are consistent, we're confident in our measurements.

This monitor has a terrible edge-lit local dimming feature. There are only eight vertical dimming zones, and it takes time for each zone to light up when there are fast-moving objects. It causes uniformity issues when an entire zone lights up, especially in the test pattern, but it isn't as distracting in real content because the algorithm doesn't seem overly aggressive either, and most zones are on all the time. Check out the Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 S32BG75 instead if you want something with better local dimming.

This monitor has great SDR brightness. It gets bright enough to combat glare, but it isn't very consistent with different content. These measurements are from after calibration with local dimming on and brightness set to its max in the 'Custom' Picture Mode. The minimum brightness is a bit high, which can be an issue if you're planning on using it in a dark room and are sensitive to light.

The HDR brightness is just okay. Small highlights are bright enough to stand out, but it's much dimmer with larger areas of bright colors. It tracks the EOTF well, but most scenes are a bit darker than they should be. There's also a sharp cut-off at the monitor's peak brightness, meaning it doesn't perform any tone mapping before your source does. There aren't any picture settings available in HDR, and it locks the brightness to its max.

The Samsung Odyssey G7 has a narrow horizontal viewing angle. The image loses its color accuracy and looks darker as you move off-center, so it isn't ideal for sharing your screen with someone sitting next to you. The curved edges are meant to bring them within your field of vision so that the edges don't look too washed out when you're sitting directly in front of it. If you want a 32-inch monitor with much better viewing angles, then check out the Corsair XENEON 32QHD165.

The Samsung G75T has a narrow vertical viewing angle. Images look inconsistent if you mount the monitor above eye level or view it while standing up.

The gray uniformity is great. The screen is uniform throughout, and even though the edges are a bit darker, it isn't too noticeable.

There are some uniformity issues when displaying a bright object in a dark scene. It looks worse in person than in the photos because the curved screen doesn't show the worst parts. Without local dimming, there's noticeable backlight bleed, and we took a high exposure photo to exaggerate what it looks like, but it isn't really what you see in person. The local dimming feature helps fix any issues, but there are still some problems, as you can see in the photo.

The accuracy before calibration in the sRGB mode is good. Most colors and shades of gray are slightly inaccurate, and the color temperature is a bit warm, giving the image a red/yellow tint. Unfortunately, gamma follows the curve terribly, and most scenes are too dark. The sRGB mode locks a few settings, but other modes have even worse accuracy, as you can see here.

After calibration, this monitor is fantastically accurate. Any remaining inaccuracies aren't noticeable without the aid of a colorimeter, but blue is a bit inaccurate. Gamma is improved and follows the curve almost perfectly.

The Samsung G7 32 has an incredible SDR color gamut. It has near-perfect coverage of the sRGB color space and good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing.

The Samsung Odyssey G7 32 has a great HDR color gamut. It displays a wide color gamut with excellent coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space, but it has limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

The HDR color volume is okay. While it displays a wide range of colors, it fails to make most of them look vivid or dark.

The text clarity is good. With ClearType enabled (top photo), the diagonal lines on the letters R and N are clearer.

The Samsung Odyssey G7 has very good reflection handling. It's fine with some light on it, but the reflections can get distracting if you place the monitor opposite a window.

This monitor exceptional gradient handling. There's almost no visible banding in any color.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, the refresh rate is limited over HDMI.

Unfortunately after firmware update 1009.3, you can't enable VRR with the refresh rate in the monitor's OSD set to 60Hz. However, you can still enable VRR if the refresh rate in the OSD is set to anything higher.

This monitor has great motion handling across its VRR range. Enabling VRR disables all of the overdrive settings, and while motion looks worse at lower refresh rates, it's still good enough for gaming.

The refresh rate compliance is great. While its response time isn't fast enough to make full color transitions at its max refresh rate, it's much better at lower refresh rates, especially 60Hz.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 240Hz is great. Motion looks sharp, without much blur trail behind fast-moving objects, but there's smearing and some inverse ghosting. All the overdrive settings perform similarly, including if you use VRR instead.

The CAD at 120Hz is great. There's a bit of blur and some smearing, but it isn't terrible, either. All three overdrive settings perform similarly, but there's more ghosting if you enable VRR instead.

The CAD at 60Hz is good, as long as you have the refresh rate in the monitor's OSD set to 240Hz, even when it's receiving a 60Hz signal. This is because it has a lot more inverse ghosting if you set the refresh rate in the OSD to 60Hz. Unlike at higher refresh rates, using VRR actually results in the lowest CAD, but this disables any of the overdrive settings, so if you want to use one of the overdrive settings with VRR disabled, then 'Standard' is the best choice.

The Samsung Odyssey G7 has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. You can enable it by setting Response Time to 'Fastest (MBR)'. Although you can enable the backlight-strobing feature as low as 60Hz, it still only flickers at 120Hz, causing distracting image duplication. You can't adjust the brightness of the display when this feature is enabled, but it'll maintain whatever brightness you set before enabling the feature.

Unfortunately, there's a glitch with the feature if you change the resolution of the image or if you turn the monitor off and back on again. Even though the feature is still actively working when you do this, motion looks different with more inverse ghosting. If you experience this, you can simply change the Response Time setting to any other of the three overdrive settings and then back to 'Fastest (MBR)' for it to work properly.

This monitor has terrible VRR flicker with changing frame rates. It's most noticeable in dark scenes, but it's still problematic in dark areas of bright scenes. There's a VRR Control setting that reduces flicker, as you can see here, but it doesn't eliminate all of it. The trade-off is that it has increased Input Lag and there's more stuttering, so you're reducing one issue and getting another with this setting. The best way to avoid this VRR flicker is by setting a frame rate cap to get more consistent frame rates, or disable VRR altogether.

The backlight is flicker-free at all backlight levels, which helps reduce eye strain. It's important to keep in mind that this is different from VRR Flicker that many people online have experienced with different content. We also noticed a different type of flicker with local dimming enabled, and the zones would turn themselves on and off, particularly during our Brightness testing. If you experience the same thing, let us know in the discussions.

This monitor has low input lag for a responsive gaming experience, but only with certain settings, like leaving VRR enabled, which is used for the results above. As of firmware 1013.2, released in Jan. 2022, the input lag varies wildly depending on the settings used in the OSD. Enabling VRR Control and also lowering the refresh rate in the monitor's OSD increases the input lag, as you can see below.

Some users have reported issues when displaying a gray, vertically-lined image at 1080p without any scaling. We can replicate this issue as it results in color bleed, which you can read more about here.

Although this monitor has a native resolution of 1440p, it can display a 4k signal from a PS5. It results in a downscaled image, which is more detailed than a native 1440p signal but not as detailed as a true 4k display. For this to work, Adaptive Sync has to be disabled on the monitor, and the monitor has to be set to 'HDMI AV' mode.

This monitor supports most common formats from the Xbox Series S|X. Like with the PS5, it can accept 4k @ 60Hz signals as long as you disable VRR and use the 'HDMI AV' mode. Because the Xbox only displays HDR with 4k signals, you also need to use these settings for HDR.

This monitor works perfectly with macOS devices, but older units with Intel processors are limited to 144Hz, as they don't properly support display stream compression (DSC).

There are a few extra features to improve the user experience. There's RGB lighting on the back that you can customize, and there are Picture-in-Picture and Picture-and-Picture modes if you want to connect two or more sources. The other features include:

• Crosshair: Add a virtual crosshair on the screen for FPS games.
• Black Stabilizer: Adjusts the gamma so you can see opponents in shadows in games.
• Frame Rate Counter: Displays the current frame rate of your signal.