The Samsung Odyssey G9 is a great super ultrawide gaming monitor. It has a curved 49 inch screen with a 32:9 aspect ratio, spanning nearly your entire field of view to deliver an immersive gaming experience. It has a fast response time and a high refresh rate, and it supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing. It can display a wide color gamut and gets extremely bright, allowing it to produce vibrant colors and make highlights pop in HDR content. Sadly, even though it has a VA panel with a decent contrast ratio, blacks still look grayish in the dark, and its black uniformity is bad. There are also some limitations when it comes to its 240Hz refresh rate, as it's only achievable with graphics cards that have the Display Stream Compression (DSC) feature. Lastly, it has a terrible local dimming feature, which is rather disappointing.
The Samsung Odyssey G9 is an overall good monitor. It has great gaming performance thanks to its low input lag, fast response time, and high refresh rate. Its large screen provides plenty of space to work comfortably, and it has a high pixel density to render text clearly. Unfortunately, it has sub-par ergonomics and narrow viewing angles, which isn't ideal for sharing content or playing co-op games. On the bright side, it can display a wide color gamut and gets bright enough to deliver a great HDR experience.
The Samsung Odyssey G9 is decent for office use. Its 49 inch screen allows you to have multiple windows opened side-by-side, and its high pixel density results in sharp images and text. Unfortunately, it has poor ergonomics and sub-par viewing angles, making it hard to adjust the screen to your optimal viewing position or share work with your coworkers.
The Samsung Odyssey G9 is great for gaming. It has low input lag, a fast response time, and a high refresh rate, resulting in a responsive and smooth gaming experience. It supports FreeSync to reduce screen tearing and is compatible with NVIDIA's G-SYNC. However, there are limitations regarding its 240Hz refresh rate, as it's only achievable with certain graphics cards. Also, its contrast ratio is only decent, and it has bad black uniformity, so it isn't the best option for gaming in the dark.
The Samsung Odyssey G9 is good for media consumption. It has a large screen and high resolution to deliver an immersive viewing experience. However, even though it has a VA panel, its contrast ratio is only decent, and it has bad black uniformity, making it less ideal for dark rooms. Additionally, it has sub-par viewing angles and ergonomics, so it isn't the best choice for sharing content.
The Samsung Odyssey G9 is good for content creators. It has a large screen and high resolution, allowing you to work with multiple windows opened side-by-side to improve your workflow. It handles reflections well and gets bright enough to overcome glare. It isn't the best option for sharing your work, though, as it has narrow viewing angles and sub-par ergonomics. On the upside, it has near full coverage of the sRGB color space and decent color accuracy out-of-the-box.
The Samsung Odyssey G9 is decent for HDR gaming. It has low input lag, a fast response time, and a high refresh rate to deliver an incredibly smooth gaming experience. It can display a wide color gamut and gets bright enough to make highlights pop in HDR. Sadly, it has a terrible local dimming feature, bad black uniformity, and its VA panel's contrast ratio is only decent, so blacks still look grayish in the dark.
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 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/mยฒ 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/mยฒ 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 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.
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.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
Standard | Chart | Table | Photo |
Faster | Chart | Table | Photo |
Fastest | Chart | Table | Photo |
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.
Overdrive Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
Standard | Chart | Table | Photo |
Faster | Chart | Table | Photo |
Fastest | Chart | Table | Photo |
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.