Samsung Odyssey G9 Monitor Review

The Samsung Odyssey G9 is a super ultrawide monitor with a very aggressive curve. It has relatively thin borders, a wide V-shaped stand, and some RGB lighting on the back.

The stand's feet are very wide but thin, so there's still a good amount of usable desk space in front. It doesn't support the monitor all that well as there's a lot of wobble, but that's mostly due to its super ultrawide format.

The ergonomics are sub-par, although it's somewhat expected of an ultrawide monitor with such an aggressive curve.

The back of the monitor has a futuristic design that isn't too gamer-oriented. There's some RGB lighting where the stand connects to the screen, and there's a small plastic hook near the top of the stand to hold your headphones. The stand's white plastic cover is removable, allowing you to hide the cables and route them to the bottom for cable management. You can VESA-mount it, and it comes with a VESA adaptor and screws included in the box.

The borders are relatively thin and aren't distracting.

The screen is very thick, and the stand also takes up a fair amount of space, so you need a large desk to put it on.

The Samsung Odyssey G9's build quality is great, similar to the Samsung Odyssey G7. The screen is made out of decent-quality plastic, and the stand is metal but covered with a plastic shell. This plastic shell is fairly thin and feels like it can break easily when removed; however, it shouldn't be a problem when installed. Also, the headphone hook is pretty flimsy. There aren't any issues with the overall construction, but it wobbles a lot, which is somewhat expected of a center-mounted super ultrawide monitor.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 has a VA panel, but its contrast ratio is only decent, making blacks look grayish in the dark. It's just a little lower than the advertised 2500:1; however, it can vary between individual units. The local dimming doesn't seem to do much in SDR, as the contrast remains almost unchanged. That said, it's much lower with local dimming enabled in HDR, as the large vertical dimming zones also light up the black squares in our test pattern, causing the contrast to drop to 446:1. In regular content, the contrast is expected to drop with local dimming enabled.

Unfortunately, the Samsung Odyssey G9's local dimming is terrible, and it only works in HDR, not in SDR mode. There are only vertical lighting zones, so the entire column lights up if there's a small object anywhere on the screen. When lit, the black level rises significantly and is very distracting, as there's a big difference between the zones that are lit and those that aren't. Zone transition seems to be faster in the middle than at the edges of the screen, so while the center zones react quickly to objects going in and out, the zones at the edges of the screen are almost always on. Overall, it looks better without local dimming in regular HDR content.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 has great SDR peak brightness. It's very consistent across different content and is bright enough to overcome glare in bright lighting conditions.

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

The screen can get much brighter, reaching a peak of 639 cd/m² in the 10% window, but only in the 'High Brightness' Picture Mode with Local Dimming and Dynamic Brightness enabled.

The Samsung Odyssey G9's HDR peak brightness is great. It varies a lot depending on the scene, but overall, it's bright enough to deliver a fantastic HDR experience. It's advertised as having VESA HDR1000 certification, which requires 1000cd/m² brightness in the peak 100% window, so it's only slightly below.

We measured the HDR peak brightness with the Backlight set to max and Local Dimming set to 'Auto'. Dynamic Brightness is enabled automatically when you turn on local dimming.

Like most monitors with a VA panel, the Samsung Odyssey G9 has sub-par horizontal viewing angles. Images look washed out from the sides, which isn't ideal for sharing content or playing co-op games. Due to its wide format, the edges of the screen can look inaccurate if you sit too close; however, the screen's curvature helps mitigate this issue.

The vertical viewing angles are sub-par. This causes the image to look inaccurate if you have the monitor mounted above eye level.

Our unit of the Samsung Odyssey G9 has outstanding gray uniformity. The edges appear slightly brighter than the center, and there's a bit of dirty screen effect. However, it shouldn't be noticeable in regular content. Uniformity is much better in near-dark scenes. Note that gray uniformity can vary between individual units.

Black uniformity on our unit of the Samsung Odyssey G9 is bad. Without local dimming, there's visible backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges of the screen. Additionally, due to the screen's curvature, the photo is cropped and doesn't show the corners where the backlight bleed is far worse. With local dimming enabled, the test cross causes the entire vertical lighting zone to light up, which is quite distracting. Note that black uniformity can vary between individual units.

Out-of-the-box, the color accuracy is decent. Most colors and white balance are inaccurate, and the color temperature is on the cooler side, resulting in a blueish tint. Gamma follows the sRGB curve reasonably well, but most scenes are darker than they should be. Note that color accuracy can vary between individual units.

After calibration, the Samsung Odyssey G9 has exceptional color accuracy. The remaining inaccuracies shouldn't be visible to the naked eye, and the color temperature is almost right on our 6500K target. Gamma is significantly improved, but both dark and bright scenes are now slightly over-brightened. We encountered a bug during testing, causing our calibration settings to reset and return to the default values. We'll retest it once a firmware update is available.

You can download our ICC profile calibration here. This is provided for reference only and shouldn't be used, as the calibration values vary per individual unit even for the same model due to manufacturing tolerances.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 has an outstanding SDR color gamut. It covers nearly the entire sRGB color space used in most content, and it has great coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing.

Exceptional SDR color volume. It has trouble displaying dark colors as its contrast ratio is only decent.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 has a decent HDR color gamut. It has great coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space, but its Rec. 2020 coverage is much more limited. Note that the DCI P3 coverage is lower than the advertised 95%. This is due to the way we measure DCI P3. We measure it by sending a Rec. 2020 signal, but unlike most reviewers, we limit the colors to the DCI P3 primaries. This results in a lower but arguably more accurate measurement.

Decent HDR color volume. It doesn't display dark colors well due to its lower contrast ratio, and it has difficulty with bright blues, which is typical for LCDs.

There's some image retention after displaying a high contrast image for ten minutes; however, it dissipates quickly. Note that image retention can vary between individual units.

The Samsung Odyssey G9's gradient handling is superb. There's only a little bit of banding in the greens and grays, but it shouldn't be noticeable in regular content.

There are no signs of color bleed on the Samsung Odyssey G9.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 has good reflection handling. Combined with the screen's high brightness, you shouldn't have any visibility issues in bright lighting conditions.

Text clarity is good. Window ClearType helps make the letters look more fleshed-out (top photo), especially diagonal lines. The photo of the pixels looks blurry due to the screen's anti-reflective coating.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 has a good response time when running at its max refresh rate, resulting in only a short blur trail behind fast-moving objects. The best overdrive setting is 'Standard', as it's the option with the least amount of overshoot.

The Samsung Odyssey G9's response time at 60Hz is outstanding. Again, the best overdrive setting is 'Standard' because the 'Faster' and 'Fastest' options have too much overshoot.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 uses Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight; however, the flickering frequency is extremely high and shouldn't be visible. There are reports of visible image flickering when HDR is enabled at 240Hz, but the issue isn't present on our unit.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 doesn't have an optional Black Frame Insertion feature.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 has a very high refresh rate to deliver a smooth and responsive gaming experience. It supports FreeSync and is compatible with G-SYNC as well. However, there are some limitations. The maximum refresh rate is limited to 60Hz over HDMI, and VRR isn't available. Over DisplayPort, it's only possible to get 240Hz with graphics cards that have the Display Stream Compression (DSC) feature, such as NVIDIA RTX 20- Series cards and AMD 5300 or newer. It should work with NVIDIA 30- series cards, but there are issues with the drivers, so we'll retest it once a firmware update is available. With our Radeon graphics card, we can only achieve a maximum of 120Hz. There are reports of image flickering when VRR is enabled, like on the Samsung Odyssey G7, but it isn't present on our unit.