Samsung Odyssey OLED G60SD S27DG602S  Monitor Review

The monitor is made of black and silver plastic, though the stand is metal. The bezel has a silver rim around it. You may find this tasteful; however, it's also possible you could find it distracting with some content.

The build quality is excellent. The plastic materials are solid, and the monitor is well-constructed. Additionally, the five-sided base is metal.

The ergonomics are superb. It has fantastic height adjustment, so it's easy to place in your preferred position for a long gaming session. It also has a good swivel range, so it's easy to share your screen with someone else. The stand features a clip for cable management.

The flat stand holds the screen well, and you can place objects on top of it. The monitor has minimal wobble when bumped and recovers quickly.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6/G60SD S27DG60 has a joystick on the back of the monitor to control the on-screen display and turn the monitor on and off.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-A to USB-B cable
• Power supply and cable
• User guides

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6/G60SD S27DG60 has a near-infinite contrast ratio, as its QD-OLED panel can turn individual pixels on and off. This means it displays deep blacks next to bright highlights in dark rooms. That said, like any QD-OLED, ambient light causes blacks to look purple.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6/G60SD S27DG60 doesn't have a backlight, so it doesn't require a local dimming feature. However, with a near-infinite contrast ratio, there isn't any blooming around bright objects, and it's the equivalent of a perfect local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so you can see how the screen performs and compare it with a monitor that has local dimming.

Settings

• Picture Mode: Graphic
• Brightness: 50
• Color Space: Native
• Color Tone: Warm1

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6/G60SD S27DG60 has okay SDR brightness. It isn't bright enough to fight intense glare, but it maintains its brightness consistently across different content. That said, if you want something that gets brighter, check out the ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27ACDNG.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6/G60SD S27DG60 has reasonable HDR brightness. It gets bright enough to make very small highlights stand out against dark backgrounds, but larger highlights aren't as bright. The PQ EOTF tracking is good, though there's a slow roll-off near peak brightness, so highlights don't get as bright as they could. These results are with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Graphic
• Brightness: 50
• Peak Brightness: High
• HDR Tone Mapping: Basic

Adjusting Peak Brightness

While setting Peak Brightness to 'High' produces the brightest image, the PQ EOTF tracking is better with it set to 'Medium.' The PQ EOTF tracking is less accurate when it's 'Off.' You can see the brightness levels below with Peak Brightness set to 'Medium' and 'Off':

This monitor has excellent gray uniformity, and there aren't any noticeable issues. However, like any OLED, there are thin gray vertical lines in dark scenes, but you won't notice them unless you look for them.

The black uniformity is fantastic, with a uniform black level across the entire screen.

The accuracy before calibration is fantastic when Color Space Settings is set to 'Auto.' The monitor doesn't have an sRGB mode, but using the 'Auto' setting clamps the color gamut to the sRGB space. Though colors are slightly oversaturated, it still has superb color accuracy. Additionally, its color temperature is fairly close to the 6500K target, and the white balance is amazing. However, the gamma is slightly off, as very dark parts of scenes are too dark, and very bright parts of scenes are too bright.

No settings are locked out when using Color Space Settings in 'Auto.'

The accuracy after calibration is superb, and you won't notice any inaccuracies.

The SDR color gamut is remarkable. It displays all colors in the common sRGB color space and a wide range of colors in the Adobe RGB color space when Color Space Settings is set to 'Native.' That said, green is quite inaccurate in Adobe RGB, and it oversaturates red.

The HDR color gamut is exceptional. It displays the full range of colors in DCI-P3 and a wide range of colors in Rec. 2020 and does so accurately.

The monitor has an excellent HDR color volume. Colors look exceptionally vivid, and the monitor displays dark and bright colors extremely well.

The horizontal viewing angle is outstanding. Although it technically isn't perfect, you visually won't see any inconsistencies when viewing from the sides or if you sit close to the screen.

The text clarity is decent, though it's not as good as some other 27-inch 1440p monitors. This is because of the monitor's triangular subpixel arrangement. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) improves the boldness of letters. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

Due to the triangular subpixel layout, there's some color fringing around letters and at the edge of windows, though it's hard to see unless you look closely at the monitor. Although we didn't experience any eye strain during testing, this changes from person to person, depending on how sensitive you are to this subpixel layout. The matte screen doesn't affect text clarity.

The reflection handling is incredible. The matte coating absorbs light, so there aren't any mirror-like reflections.

The black levels are poor in a bright room. Blacks look purple, mainly due to the fact that QD-OLEDs like this one lack a polarizer. This means that it only has perfect black levels in a bright room.

This monitor reduces glare well, and even strong light sources aren't distracting. However, it spreads light out across the screen.

The gradient handling is remarkable, and you won't notice any banding.

While you can reach the max refresh rate with a 1440p resolution and 10-bit color depth over DisplayPort and HDMI, both connections require Display Stream Compression (DSC) to do so. Most modern graphics cards support DSC on at least one of the connections.

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

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6/G60SD S27DG60 has outstanding motion handling across its entire refresh rate range with VRR enabled. CAD remains low throughout, and there's minimal blur with fast-moving objects.

The refresh rate compliance is outstanding. With a near-instantaneous response time, it makes full-color transitions before drawing the next frame.

The CAD at the maximum refresh rate is outstanding. It displays fast-moving objects as intended, and motion is extremely sharp.

The CAD at 120Hz is fantastic. Pixels transition to their target RGB level almost instantly in most cases, so there's almost no blur trail. However, the monitor takes longer than most OLEDs to transition to maximum brightness. The monitor also takes longer for black to transition to dark gray. However, these issues aren't visible during regular use.

The CAD at 60Hz is great. Pixels transition to their target RGB level almost instantly in most cases, and the most noticeable blur is persistence. It has a slower response time with transitions from black to any color, or from any color to pure white, than other OLEDs, but this is hard to notice. Its response time in these transitions is even slower before firmware update 1002.2, which Samsung released in September 2024.

The monitor doesn't have an optional black frame insertion feature to reduce persistence blur further.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6/G60SD S27DG60 has noticeable VRR flicker with changing frame rates if VRR Control is off. It can be distracting if the frame rate changes a lot, especially in darker parts of scenes. This doesn't happen if your PC can maintain consistent frame rates. These results are with firmware 1003.0, and even though there's a bit less flicker than older firmware, it still has it.

The VRR Control setting is designed to reduce VRR flicker. If you set it to 'On,' there's almost no visible flicker, but it still has some in dark scenes. However, when enabled, the input lag increases to 5.1 ms at the maximum refresh rate, which is an extra 3.2 ms of lag. Additionally, there's a lot of stuttering when it's 'On.'

The backlight isn't technically flicker-free because it has a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the 360Hz refresh rate.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6/G60SD S27DG60 has low input lag for a responsive feel. It's also a bit better with firmware 1003.0 and newer. However, when VRR Control is 'On,' input lag increases slightly to 5.1 ms at the maximum refresh rate, which is an extra 3.2 ms of lag.

The monitor can only downscale a 4k @ 60Hz signal if Adaptive Sync is off, which turns VRR off.

This monitor only displays a 4k signal from the PS5 if you change from 'PC' to 'AV' mode. However, it only works at 30Hz in 4k with the PS5, and VRR and HDR aren't available. The VRR Control setting almost completely eliminates VRR flicker on the PS5, but it adds a lot of stuttering and a bit of extra input lag.

For 1440p @ 60Hz to work, you need to enable the HDMI override setting on the console, which also disables VRR. Unlike with the PS5, you can get a downscaled 4k @ 60Hz signal by disabling Adaptive Sync on the monitor, but that means you can't get VRR and HDR at the same time, as the Xbox only supports HDR with 4k signals. The VRR Control setting almost completely eliminates VRR flicker on the Xbox Series X|S, but it adds a lot of stuttering and a bit of extra input lag.

Despite trying a number of different cables, the maximum refresh rate possible on macOS devices over DisplayPort is 240Hz. If you're using a MacBook, windows go back to their original position after reopening the lid or waking the laptop up from sleep.

The monitor has a few extra features, including:

• SeeColors Mode: Adjusts the image for those with color blindness.
• Eye Saver Mode: Decreases blue light output to help reduce eye strain.
• PIP: Allows you to display images from two inputs at once. You can place the second input in one of the screen's four corners.
• Panel Care: Features to reduce the risk of burn-in associated with OLEDs:
  • Pixel Refresh: Adjusts pixels to provide a clearer screen.
  • Adjust Logo Brightness: Automatically dims the brightness of fixed images when it detects one on the screen.
  • Pixel Shifting: We didn't notice any pixel shifting during testing, and there are no options related to pixel shifting in the monitor's settings.

The length of the warranty and its specifications can change between different regions and countries, so be sure to check for the warranty information for your region.