Samsung Odyssey OLED G81SF S27FG810S  Monitor Review

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 G81SF has a straightforward appearance, with black and silver plastic and a metal base. It fits in well to both a gaming and office environment, though its LED lighting on the back shows its gamer focus.

The build quality is excellent. The plastics don't have much flex, though there's a slight creak when swiveling the monitor. The vertical part of the stand and the monitor housing feel solid and have a smooth finish, while the base of the monitor is slightly more textured.

The ergonomics are fantastic. You can make any common adjustment with it, and most adjustments offer a very wide range of movement. However, it doesn't offer as wide a swivel range as some monitors. It also has a loop in the stand for cable management.

The stand holds the monitor well. The monitor doesn't wobble much when bumped, and afterward it recovers quickly.

The 0.5-inch (1.2 cm) bezel measurement includes the monitor's physical bezels, which are 1.1 cm, as well as 0.1 cm of extra pixels that allow the monitor to move the image to help prevent burn-in.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G81SF has a joystick on the back of the monitor to adjust the on-screen settings and turn the monitor on and off.

The Samsung Odyssey G81SF has near-infinite contrast in dark rooms, resulting in deep, inky blacks next to bright highlights.

The Samsung G81SF 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 (after calibration)
• Brightness: Max
• Color Space: Native
• Color Tone: Warm1

The SDR brightness is fair. At most window sizes, it maintains its brightness well, though if most of your screen is displaying very bright content, the whole screen dims. While it's bright enough to be easily seen in a well-lit room, it isn't bright enough to overcome glare in bright environments. Additionally, this monitor has a high minimum brightness, which you might find distracting if you're using it in a very dark room.

Settings

• Picture Mode: Graphic
• Brightness: Max
• Peak Brightness: High
• Contrast Enhancer: Off
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static

The HDR brightness is adequate. While it gets bright enough for small highlights to pop, larger highlights don't. It follows the PQ EOTF curve well until it gets near peak brightness, where it has a slow roll-off. This prevents highlights from getting as bright as possible, but it helps preserve bright details.

It has several different HDR picture modes. The 'Graphic', 'Eco', and 'Original' modes all have the same EOTF performance and color accuracy. These modes use the 'Warm 1' Color Tone, while other HDR modes use the 'Cool' or 'Standard' settings.

The peak brightness is much higher when Peak Brightness is set to 'High', which is why we chose it over 'Medium', despite 'Medium' having better EOTF tracking. You can see the monitor's brightness when it's set to 'Medium' or 'Off' below:

The gray uniformity is excellent, and the entire screen has quite uniform brightness. This monitor also has good 5% gray uniformity.

The monitor has perfect black uniformity and displays an even black level throughout.

The accuracy before calibration is excellent when Color Space Settings is set to 'Auto'. While this isn't a dedicated sRGB mode, the setting clamps the gamut to the sRGB space quite effectively, and the monitor has great white balance, color accuracy, and color temperature. However, gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve very well, as dark parts of scenes are too dark, and the other 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 superb. It displays all colors in sRGB and most colors in Adobe RGB. While some colors are inaccurate in Adobe RGB, you may be able to avoid this issue with a color-managed app.

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

The HDR color volume is amazing. It displays bright and dark colors very well in dark rooms, resulting in vivid images. However, dark colors desaturate fairly quickly in bright rooms.

The horizontal viewing angle is remarkable. Although it technically isn't perfect, you won't see any inconsistencies when viewing at a wide angle.

The text clarity is superb. Although it has a small amount of fringing around edges or letters with ClearType on (top photo), it's very hard to see in person, and text looks as sharp as a 27-inch, 4k LCD display. It also has an aggressive matte coating, so there's a bit more haziness with text than other matte monitors. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

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

The black levels are poor in a bright room. While it's better than some QD-OLEDs, the lack of a polarizer means that blacks still look purple in bright rooms. You need to use it in a dark room to get perfect black levels.

This monitor has minimal reflected light and reduces glare well. Even glare from strong light sources isn't distracting. The matte coating is more aggressive than other matte displays, like the Samsung Odyssey OLED G80SD S32DG80, but that means images are a bit hazier.

The gradient handling is remarkable, and there's minimal banding between shades of similar colors.

Your graphics card needs to use Display Stream Compression (DSC) to reach the max refresh over HDMI and DisplayPort.

The Samsung G81SF supports FreeSync VRR and HDMI Forum VRR, and it has G-SYNC compatibility.

The Samsung Odyssey G81SF has fantastic motion handling across its VRR range. CAD remains low throughout, and the only blur you see is persistence.

The refresh rate compliance is incredible. Its response time is fast enough to make full-color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame.

At framerates of 120 FPS and lower, the monitor doesn't display darker content at a consistent brightness, as you can see in the graph above. This creates a pulsing effect in darker parts of scenes that's very similar to VRR flicker. The effect is worse at lower frame rates.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 240Hz is remarkable. Motion looks extremely sharp, and there isn't any noticeable blur.

The CAD at 120Hz is fantastic. Motion looks very sharp, though there's a bit of persistence blur.

The CAD at 60Hz is fantastic. Motion looks very sharp, and any blur you see is persistence.

This monitor doesn't have a black frame insertion feature to reduce persistence blur.

This monitor has noticeable VRR flicker with changing frame rates if VRR Control is 'Off', particularly in darker parts of scenes. However, if VRR Control is 'On', then there's almost no VRR flicker, as you can see in the VRR flicker graph and VRR flicker video. However, enabling it adds a full frame of input lag and causes some stutter.

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

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G81SF has very low input lag for a responsive feel. However, input lag is much higher if VRR Control is 'On', as you can see below:

The Xbox Series X|S only supports HDR with 4k signals, so this isn't a limitation of the monitor.

We encountered an unusual issue when first using the monitor with either HDMI port. The monitor would detect that the HDMI cable was connected, but no image appeared on-screen. We tried using four different cables, including the one that came with the monitor, but they didn't work. We also tried power cycling the monitor, factory resetting it, changing the PC/AV Mode setting, and the Input Port Ver. settings, and none of these settings resolved the issue. This issue occurred with multiple different PCs, including desktops, a laptop, and a MacBook.

However, on an older MacBook with HDMI 2.0 it did display an image on screen. After this we toggled the Input Port Ver. setting a few times, and the monitor has since worked over HDMI with all devices.

Tested With: Sequoia 15.5

The monitor works well with macOS. VRR works well, and HDR looks good in most cases. Over USB-C to DisplayPort, the 'Game Standard' Picture Mode looks most accurate, though its color temperature is a bit cool if you don't change any settings. Over HDMI, HDR doesn't look quite as accurate as over DisplayPort. The 'Eco' and 'Game Standard' modes look best, though 'Eco' is too warm, and 'Game Standard' is too cool.

If you connect the monitor to a MacBook with an HDMI or USB-C cable and the MacBook is plugged into power, windows migrate to the monitor when you close the lid. Additionally, they return to their previous position if the MacBook is reopened.

However, if the MacBook isn't plugged into power and you close the lid, the MacBook and monitor go to sleep. When you reopen the MacBook windows resume in their previous position.

This monitor has several extra features, including:

• Eye Saver Mode: Decreases blue light output to help reduce eye strain.
• PIP: Allows you to display images from two inputs at once and adjust the size and position of the second input.
• SeeColors Mode: Adjusts the image for those with color blindness.
• Panel Care: Features to reduce the risk of burn-in associated with OLEDs, including:
  • 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.