This 1080p UltraWide has outstanding picture quality and color reproduction. HDR10 really makes a difference for me with this monitor too. Many games just pop with HDR on and graphic setting tuned to tastes. This monitor sits at the ideal price point of getting the best you can get at 1080p minus the ultra high refresh rate of dedicated gaming monitors.
The only problem is now that I have gone ultra wide my next monitor purchase (hopefully well into the future) will have to be a 1440 or 4k at Ultra wide . Yup hopefully this will be years away when/if they come down to a reasonable price. The extra screen real estate of Ultra Wide made a lot of difference for me in my 3D productivity applications. It was a bit scary how quickly I became used to this wider form factor after so many years of using 1080p standard format monitors.
Games are so much more enveloping for me with the wide screen as they now almost fill my entire field of view. As a real world diver playing Subnautica on this monitor I sometimes felt myself breathing through my mouth expecting to feel the bubble rising. The experience was that immersive!
What amazed me was how many older games support this resolution! I have to thank a YouTube reviewer who pointed this out as it was a big worry for me. Fallout 4 gave me a bit of an issue as it wouldn't even play in 1080p...saying my video card a 40 series wasn't supported. This may have been a video card related issue more than a monitor/resolution issue but I didn't feel like switching monitors to test on my standard 1080p. However a quick check in the NVidia control panel showed a problem with the game and a fix button and once I clicked it I was back in Fallout at full wide screen glory. Interestingly there was no driver update or any change to any settings that I hadn't tried manually since I fought with the manual setting for an hour or so trying to get it to work before I thought to look at the NVidia control panel. There must have been some esoteric setting I missed somewhere.
The pixel pitch on this monitor is almost the same as a sub 27 Inch 1080p monitor. This means you loose NOTHING for the added screen real estate. You can go right up to the monitor at a usable distance and you will not notice pixelation etc. Freesynch works on the Displayport cable which is what I am using to connect to the monitor.
A fine note to graphic connoisseurs such as myself. I don't necessarily want to play a game at 100+ fps. I want to play a game that looks the best it cam look at 60fps, ideally with the same 0.1% and 1% lows and I am fine with that. This monitor can refresh at 100Hz so "true" 100fps gaming with the right system is easy as pie. However graphic quality is always my first choice when purchasing a monitor. This monitor doesn't disappoint in that regard. Older game titles (1080p max titles usually) tended to use scaling tricks to upscale 1080p to 1080p wide...those extra ~ 600 x 1080 pixels is small as image scaling goes and not noticeable from a standard 1080p image. There is no distortion if the game support the wide screen format. HOWEVER if you are playing a game that uses higher resolution textures (newer games) the game engine sometimes down samples 1440p or even 4k textures to use that extra real estate and the effects are immediately noticeable as a much more pleasing experience! A prime example is Subnautica in my configuration.
The graphics hijinx described above is tied to graphic settings used by the developers during game development, optimizations they have implemented, hardware capabilities, driver capabilities and the engine used so don't expect the bonus graphic bump in all games. However when it does occur I am grateful for it. If you have ever uniformally scaled down an image in a graphics program and appreciated the enhanced detail and quality you will better understand the bonus graphic boost that is possible with these monitors.
As a developer myself I am anxious to experiment with this feature on my own titles and see if I can replicate these effects in a game/simulation setting. A final note, you will need a tiny bit more horsepower to push those extra pixels rather than standard 1080p. The difference is probably around 5%. With modern hardware and optimizations this difference will probably be lost in the noise.
| Standing screen display size | 26 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 2560x1080 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 2560 x 1080 Pixels |
