Samsung Odyssey Neo G9/G95NA S49AG95  Monitor Review

The Samsung AG900 is a large monitor with an aggressive curve. It has black borders on the front and a white panel in the back with a bit of a chrome trim. The stand is also black but has a white panel cover for cable management.

The Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 has great build quality. It's mainly made of plastic, but the stand is sturdy metal and supports the screen, especially for the large size. The plastic on the back feels decent, but the cover for the inputs is flimsy. Overall, it's a solid monitor, and there's nothing concerning about it.

The ergonomics are okay. It offers the most common adjustments, and it's easy to adjust for yourself, but the range of each adjustment is limited. The height adjustment doesn't fully stay in place at its lowest setting, as it slightly raises about an inch.

The back is mainly white with a bit of texture and black trim throughout. There's a ring that lights up in blue where the stand attaches to the screen. There's also a cover for the stand for cable management.

The stand takes up a lot of space, but the feet are spread apart, so you can still place stuff in front. The stand holds the monitor well, considering the screen size, but it doesn't eliminate all wobble.

There's a joystick and three buttons to control the on-screen display underneath the right side of the monitor.

• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Power cable
• VESA adapter
• User guides
• Not shown: Cable management covers for back panel and stand

The Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 has a great contrast ratio. The native contrast is very good, and the local dimming feature does an incredible job of improving the contrast. It displays deep blacks against bright highlights, which is great for watching content in dark rooms.

The Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 has a good full-array local dimming feature, and it has 2,048 zones. It does a fantastic job at improving the contrast to display really deep blacks with Local Dimming on 'High,' but it crushes some details in dark scenes. There's minimal blooming around bright objects and subtitles if you're looking at it directly in front, but it's more noticeable from the side due to the narrow viewing angles, which you can see in the video above. Fast-moving objects transition between the zones well, but the local dimming struggles to keep up with very fast objects. However, we don't recommend using the local dimming feature for productivity if you're using a browser in dark mode because the zones light up for small UI elements, which could get distracting.

We tested the local dimming with Adaptive Sync and Low Input Lag enabled, and there isn't much of a difference when using either of those modes.

We also filmed alternate videos so you can see how it performs:

• Real content
• Real content, side view

The Samsung AG900 has fantastic SDR brightness thanks to the Mini LED backlighting. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare in most rooms, but it doesn't maintain the high brightness across different content as full-screen windows are dimmer. That said, the change in brightness isn't noticeable with most content.

These results are from after calibration in the 'Custom' Picture Mode with Brightness at '100' and Local Dimming on 'High.'

The Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 has excellent HDR brightness. It's bright enough for an impactful HDR experience, and while it dims small highlights a bit, they're still bright. Unfortunately, it doesn't track the PQ EOTF properly, though, as dark scenes are crushed a bit, and bright scenes are overbrightened. However, with a sharp cut-off at the peak brightness, it lets highlights get the brightest they can.

These results are with firmware 1011 in the HDR Dynamic mode with Brightness at '100' and Local Dimming on 'High.' The HDR Standard mode isn't quite as bright, with a Real Scene brightness of 741 cd/m². Older firmware isn't as bright, either.

The Samsung AG900 has a narrow horizontal viewing angle. The image looks washed out if you view it off-center, but the curved screen helps bring the edges closer to you, so you won't see many inconsistencies if you're sitting in front of the screen.

The vertical viewing angle is disappointing. The image looks washed out if you're standing above the screen looking down on it.

This monitor has decent gray uniformity. Despite the large size, the entire screen looks uniform. There's very little vignetting, but the center of the screen has a bit of noticeable dirty screen effect.

The Samsung AG900 has poor black uniformity with local dimming disabled because there's a ton of backlight bleed. However, the local dimming significantly improves the uniformity as the entire screen looks black, and there isn't any backlight bleed.

The accuracy before calibration is okay. It has an sRGB mode, but colors are still oversaturated. There are inaccuracies in the white balance, and even gamma is off, as most scenes are too dark. However, the color temperature is close to the 6500K target, which is great. The sRGB locks only a few settings, and other picture modes are even more inaccurate, as you can see here.

The accuracy after a full calibration is fantastic. It fixes most inaccuracies, but gamma still isn't perfect.

The Samsung AG900 has an incredible SDR color gamut. It has perfect coverage of the commonly used sRGB color space and good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing, but it undersaturates greens and oversaturates reds.

The Samsung Odyssey Neo G9's HDR color gamut is great. It has excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used in most HDR content, but it has more limited coverage of Rec. 2020. These results are with the HDR Dynamic mode with firmware 1011, and we also measured the color gamut with HDR Standard, which performs similarly:

• DCI-P3 Coverage: 90.6%
• Tone-Mapped DCI-P3 Coverage: 90.2%
• Rec. 2020 Gamut: 67.9%

The HDR color volume is impressive. It displays bright and dark colors well, especially in the DCI-P3 color space, but it's more limited in the Rec. 2020 color space.

The Samsung AG900 has good text clarity. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) helps improve the appearance of diagonal lines as seen on the R, N, G, and S.

The direct reflection handling is mediocre. It spreads light out and has some mirror-like reflections. And because of the screen's curve, it warps objects on the screen.

This monitor does a great job at maintaining low black levels in bright rooms. Although they go up a bit, they're still fairly deep.

There are some reflections on this monitor, but they aren't overly distracting. Most of it is warped towards the center of the screen, so you may want to avoid placing it opposite a bright window.

The gradient handling is exceptional. You won't notice any banding in scenes with shades of similar colors.

Since the monitor doesn't support Display Stream Compression (DSC) over HDMI, the max refresh rate is limited, and you can only get a 240Hz signal with a DisplayPort connection.

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

The Samsung AG900 has excellent motion handling across the VRR range. Using VRR disables any of the overdrive settings, and the response time is consistently fast across the VRR range, but there's visible inverse ghosting.

The refresh rate compliance is great. Besides having low compliance at its max refresh rate, its response time is fast enough to make full color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame with 120Hz and 60Hz signals.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 240Hz is impressive. Motion looks sharp, but there's noticeable inverse ghosting. Although the recommended overdrive setting is 'Standard,' you need to disable VRR to access the overdrive settings, but the motion handling is similar with VRR enabled.

The CAD at 120Hz is impressive. Motion is sharp, but there's noticeable inverse ghosting. Unlike at its max refresh rate, using VRR has worse motion handling than the recommended overdrive of 'Standard,' so if you're playing at 120Hz, it's better to disable VRR.

The CAD at 60Hz is impressive. The 'Standard' overdrive setting performs similarly to higher refresh rates, but there's more persistence blur.

The Samsung AG900 has a backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. The feature only works between 120Hz and 240Hz because even if you set it to 60Hz it still flickers at 120Hz. This causes image duplication as you can see in this photo versus at 120Hz here.

Unfortunately, this monitor has noticeable VRR flicker with changing frame rates. It's most distracting in dark scenes, and it looks worse in person than in the video or what the score suggests. That said, you can avoid this issue if your PC can maintain consistent frame rates or if you disable VRR altogether.

This monitor has a completely flicker-free backlight, which helps reduce eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker.

Unfortunately, it has the same scanline issue as other Samsung monitors, like the Samsung Odyssey G7 C32G75T. It happens with test content like this one. We took a few uniformity photos to show you what the issue looks like:

• Scanlines
• No scanlines

The only way we've found to fix this issue is to reduce Sharpness, but this introduces other issues with picture quality, so it isn't a perfect fix. The scanline issue isn't noticeable in most content, though.

The Samsung AG900 has incredibly low input lag for a responsive gaming experience. There are a few quirks, though, depending on the settings used. It's important to make sure that the Refresh Rate setting on the monitor matches the refresh rate setting on your PC, otherwise the input lag increases drastically. Enabling VRR Control also causes a significant increase in input lag:

• 240Hz: 9.3 ms
• 120Hz: 19.3 ms
• 60Hz: 21.1 ms

The Samsung AG900 works well with the PS5, but there are some quirks. You have to change the aspect ratio manually; otherwise, the monitor stretches the image, but consoles don't support ultrawide gaming, so you'll see black bars on the sides. Unfortunately, even though it's possible to enable VRR, it doesn't work properly, and the screen turns black if you try to start a game with VRR enabled.

This monitor works well with the Xbox Series X|S, but you can only enable 1440p @ 120Hz if you disable VRR. You have to change the aspect ratio manually; otherwise, the monitor stretches the image. Strangely, this setting can't be adjusted if VRR is enabled, but you can disable VRR, change the setting, and then re-enable VRR, and everything works fine. That said, the Xbox doesn't support ultrawide gaming, and it doesn't support HDR with 1440p or 1080p signals, so you need to use a downscaled 4k signal for HDR to work.

For the most part, there are no serious issues using this monitor with macOS. The max refresh rate with an M1 MacBook Pro is 120Hz, as long as the refresh rate setting on the monitor is set to 120Hz. If you set the Refresh Rate setting on the monitor to 60Hz or 240Hz, you'll be locked at 60Hz. VRR doesn't work properly when you're not gaming. HDR works fine as well, but the color temperature appears to be a bit off.

The Samsung AG900 has a few extra features, including:

• Auto Source Switch +: Detects when a source is powered on and switches to that input.
• Black Stabilizer: Increases gamma so you can see opponents in the shadows in dark games.
• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair for FPS games.
• Dynamic Contrast: Adjusts the contrast depending on the content.
• Infinity Core Lighting: Syncs the bias lighting with on-screen content.

It doesn't have a KVM switch, but if you want a monitor that does, check out the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9/G95NC S57CG95.