Samsung’s Odyssey G9 is the company’s top-of-the-line gaming monitor, and a massive one at that. This 49-inch, 1440p curved screen can wrap around your sight lines and then some, with a bright, colorful picture that will satisfy most gamers. It’s pricey at $1,429.99, but its size and gaming-specific performance help justify that price for serious players of flight sims and racers who prefer one gigantic, enveloping widescreen panel to a bank of several with seams between.
The Design: As Wide as All Indoors
The Odyssey G9’s screen is surrounded by a very thin black band flush with the panel, with only a small bezel on the bottom edge, adorned with the Samsung logo in the center. A four-direction control stick and power switch sits on the underside of the monitor, around the right third of the screen.
The back of the monitor is white, a fairly uncommon design choice we’ve also seen in Alienware’s gaming monitors. (The panel would complement one of the white-toned, a.k.a. “Lunar Light,” Alienware desktops or laptops well enough.) It connects to a relatively thin but sturdy V-necked stand that sits on a wide, V-shaped base. The stand features height adjustment, but because the monitor is so big, it doesn’t allow for any tilt.
Samsung’s “Infinity Core” lighting system sits where the stand attaches to the back of the monitor. It’s a ring of RGB lights that evokes the look of a turbine, with 52 colors and five lighting effects accessible through the monitor’s onscreen display (OSD) system.
The power connector sits to the left on the back side of the monitor, facing down. An HDMI port, two DisplayPorts, a USB hub input, and two USB ports can be found on the right side of the back of the monitor, under a snap-off shield.
Measured Performance: Surprisingly Bright, Super Color
The Odyssey G9 is a 49-inch, 5,120-by-1,440-pixel QLED monitor with a 32:9 aspect ratio. It features a 1000R curve that’s quite pronounced for its size, effectively encompassing your field of view when you’re sitting comfortably in front of it. It features a refresh rate of 240Hz with Nvidia G-Sync Compatible capabilities for adaptive sync.
When I first tested the Odyssey G9, I noticed a patch of brightness near the middle of the right edge of the screen in most conditions. This appears to be a defect of the edge-lit light source, and a replacement model that Samsung immediately sent didn’t exhibit this problem. The Odyssey G9 has a one-year limited warranty, so Samsung can replace the monitor if that patch of light appears.
We test monitor color and luminance with a Klein K-80 colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software. (See more about how we test monitors.) The Odyssey G9 shows exceedingly good contrast for a monitor, displaying a peak brightness of 193 candelas per square meter (cd/m^2, or nits) and a black level of 0.052 nits in the fairly dim Custom mode the monitor is set to at default, for a contrast ratio of 3,742:1.
Switching the panel to Full Bright mode cranks up peak brightness considerably, putting out 716 nits with a full field. With a black level of 0.118 nits in that mode, that’s a contrast ratio of 6,079:1.
As for its color performance, the Odyssey G9 performs quite well with its QLED technology allowing a very wide color gamut. The chart below shows the monitor’s color range in its default Custom mode compared with the sRGB gamut…
It far exceeds the gamut while staying quite balanced, even if magenta leans a bit warm.
The Odyssey G9 does a respectable job of covering the DCI-P3 digital cinema color space, as well…
It covers 90.2 percent of the gamut in Cinema mode, reaching farther in the reds but running just a bit undersaturated for greens.
This performance is comparable with what we saw in the Adobe RGB color space, too, as evidenced below. (The only caveat: It undershoots greens and overshoots reds even more, covering only 85 percent of the gamut.)
Input lag is a bit disappointing on the Odyssey G9. Using an HDFury 4K Diva HDMI matrix to measure lag on the monitor, we recorded 17.4 milliseconds (ms) with a 60Hz signal. Converted to the monitor’s 240Hz native refresh rate, that’s an input lag of 4.4ms. For high-end gaming monitors, we like to see input-lag readings closer to 2ms, if not lower. It still far exceeds the performance of comparable TVs, but it isn’t impressive for a gaming monitor.
Gaming and Video Content
The 240Hz Odyssey G9 offers incredibly smooth action in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Playing in native resolution, I saw almost no movement artifacts and very little screen tearing, and that usually only in the periphery and not in the center of the screen. The monitor’s Nvidia G-Sync Compatible adaptive sync appears to work very well, keeping up with frame rates that exceed the monitor’s native refresh rate.
This performance comes through in Rainbow Six: Siege, as well. With the game pushing frame rates of 140 frames per second (fps) while clocked to 120Hz, I saw no hint of motion artifacts or screen tearing. Everything looked crisp, clean, and bright.
The Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition benchmark also looks excellent on the G9. Colors are bright and vivid, and the action looks smooth. Fine details in the dark clothes show up clearly, even in the dark bonfire scene at the end of the benchmark. Skin tones also look natural, as do the greens of grass and trees in both the sunny and rainy scenes.
Video content looks fantastic on the G9, especially in the Cinema picture mode. Our streaming 4K test clip of Costa Rica looks bright and vibrant, with colors really popping out without appearing cartoonish. Fine details look crisp, with the monitor’s excellent contrast showing fine textures in shadows and bright, direct sunlight alike. You won’t likely find many videos that take up the entire screen, but that’s a reality for all ultrawide monitors.
Now That’s One Big, Beautiful Screen
The Samsung Odyssey G9 Gaming Monitor is expensive, but it offers an incredible (and huge) picture thanks to its class-leading brightness and contrast, as well as its excellent color performance. It handles fast motion very smoothly, and while input lag is slightly higher than we like to see in a high-end gaming monitor, it’s still quite low and should satisfy most gamers. If you’re looking for a massive curved gaming monitor that can easily replace three screens and wrap you up in its picture, the G9 is worth your consideration. Just be aware of the remote possibility of screen defects, and buy from a source with an easy return policy, if needed.
If money is no object and you don’t mind a smaller screen, the 35-inch Asus ROG Swift PG35VQ is even brighter and has half the input lag (2.2ms), but it costs much more than the 49-inch Odyssey G9. If you aren’t completely set on one ultrawide monitor, you can also opt for multiple smaller screens, like the excellent ViewSonic XG270QG, a 27-inch 1440p monitor that offers fantastic performance. Plus, at $600, the ViewSonic panel is cheap enough for you to buy two and still spend less than on one 49-inch screen.
