SAMSUNG 34" ViewFinity S50GC Series Ultra-WQHD Monitor, 100Hz, 5ms, HDR10, AMD FreeSync, Eye Care, Borderless Design, PIP, PBP, LS34C502GANXZA, 2023, Black

Been using this monitor for a while and the screen quality and response time of the VA pixels are much better than you’d think for a monitor at this price. The 100hz refresh rate actually looks like 100hz, and on a VA panel, this is impressive. It handles all my open windows well too as I hoped for, so that’s great. I do love how an ultrawide monitor adds a TON of emersion when playing games and watching content. First thing I did when I powered on the monitor on my PC was load up the second season of The Rings of Power, which felt somewhat small on my 16:9 32” 4k monitor that I have, but only because it is recorded as an ultra-wide, so when on this monitor it filled it corner to corner, giving me a FULL-screen ultra-wide 34”. Watching ultra wide content on this thing makes it feel actually a bigger image than on a standard 16:9 43” display to be honest, or at least the same. And when playing video games, the extra FOV is pretty nice for the emersion. The monitor does show the regular drawbacks of a VA panel though, especially with penning over darker colors on a bright background, or visa-versa, you do still get the smear-y look, but as a VA panel that it is, the monitor really makes up for it with the 100hz refresh rate and a good response time (with FreeSync support — dunno about G-Sync though I haven’t tried) to mitigate this.The colors are nothing to write home about, and the display lacks HDR, however, they are 10-bit and is seamlessly recognized by windows. So, that’s strange, it must be an 8-bit+FRC then, regardless, if you set the gamma, color, contrast/brightness settings right, it really does look like an HDR panel minus the brightness levels of course. But, in regular use, it does get very very bright still on the desk, I haven’t ever used it past 50-60% brightness, normally having it at around 30% or so with no issues seeing anything.The stand it comes with is a bit cumbersome (albeit not as bad as a lot of other monitor stands), so I would recommend putting it on a monitor arm though.Don’t bother getting a monitor with a higher refresh rate. 100hz at 1440p ultrawide (4k length x 1440p width), you are effectively pushing nearly the same amount of pixels as a 4k monitor, and you won’t ever get, let’s be real here, more than 100fps in almost all your games at 4k (I am using an AMD RX 6800XT), so the 100hz is more than sufficient for this. You’d benefit from a higher refresh rate for just general tasks around windows, but for games and content it is plenty.Oh, and when viewing 16:9 content or other aspect ratios, it’s still pretty good, it’ll just have the same resolution as a non-wide screen 27” monitor with black bars on the sides. But that brings me to my last couple points, the monitor recognizing different resolutions is automatic and scales very nicely, which I haven’t had good luck with with other monitors in this price range. For example, plugging in my nintendo switch, and the display automatically scales for 1080p, which is pretty convenient (just make sure you turn off FreeSync for that…yeah that’s really dumb). Then you also have the PiP mode, which is great if you want a couple different sources you want to reference at the same time on the same screen. Would’ve been nice though to be able to set the sources side by side or something and have it properly adjust the aspect ratio…the PiP is a bit janky to be frank, albeit still works well, just keep that in mind.

I bought this on Black Friday for about $199 for my work office. Probably one of the best monitors I've had for that purpose. Colors are fantastic and the adjustability is enough so I can match most of my other media platforms accurately. I don't use it for gameplay so I can't comment on lag or other features, but in an office setting its almost perfect.

Good quality, plug and play and super light for this size monitor. I have an older laptop which I use a port replicator on with out HDMI but it does have DVI. A DVI to HDMI cable worked perfectly without any signal loss. It's very light and the on screen controls are basic but sufficient. I bought a returned or repackaged monitor and it looked like new. No issues and registered it with Samsung. So far it's great and good value for the money.

First off, I'll say that I got this here for about twenty percent off retail, and for that I would consider it a very good value.This monitor is replacing a 27" 4k LG monitor that I gave to my daughter to use with her Macbook. The two computers that are sharing this Samsung are a file and security camera server, and a desktop computer that sees infrequent use. I wanted to replace the LG with another 27" 4k; but I've always been a little "ultrawidescreen-curious" so I jumped at the opportunity to pick up this Samsung when I saw the sale price.Most monitors at this pricepoint feel very "disposable", and considering how light this monitor is (even when it was still in the shipping box) I don't think this is any exception. The included stand does not seem particularly sturdy. With that said, it easily bolted up to my heavy duty VESA monitor stand. (I had to use my own screws though, which thankfully, I had some spares.) Kudos to Samsung for including one each of an HDMI cable and a Displayport cable.Picture quality is solid for this pricepoint. I would not use it for gaming or even my daily work (equal time spent coding and visual design), but it is more than adequate for general/casual home use. One glaring negative for me is the lack of any sort of internal speaker, although it does have a single 1/8" audio out jack for connecting to headphones or external speakers. Since I depend on audio alerts when my security system software is triggered, I'll need to hook up some speakers.Monitor settings are controlled via a single small multifunction panel, about 1" square, at the bottom center of the monitor. Much to my surprise, it works reasonably well. (I favor monitors like my BenQ that have a remote control to change source inputs and access the menu; but I realize such a feature would not be feasible at this pricepoint.)So, let's talk about why you would want ultra widescreen. It has a 21:9 aspect ratio, so it is more than twice as wide as it is tall. It's not great for movies, because they tend to be shot at 16:9, so you will have black bars on the left/right sides. It's not great for general web browsing, because most websites are designed for narrower viewports -- rightly so, because reading extremely long lines of text is visually fatiguing (I'm a web developer) -- so you have a LOT of empty space on the left and right sides of the screen. In many ways, despite being nominally "larger" than my main work monitor (34" vs 27"), it feels visually cramped because I have less vertical resolution available.So what would ultra widescreen be good for?- If you are working with wide spreadsheets that have many columns, you will definitely benefit from the extra horizontal space.- If you play panoramic, immersive games, you might like the expanded horizontal view. (But I would reiterate that a monitor at this pricepoint is probably not great for gaming.)- You are a coder and want to see long lines of code fit on one line. (But, coder-to-coder, I would argue that shorter, more readable lines of code is ideal.)- You are a designer that can benefit from the much wider view, e.g. 2-page layouts. (But again, as a designer myself, I would still favor a 16:9 monitor.)If any of the above apply to you, you might like ultra widescreen. For all other uses, I would probably stick with a conventional 16:9 monitor.[By the way, the 21:9 nature of this monitor does not impact my product rating for this monitor, since it is an intrinsic aspect of the design. I just want to make the above points in case you are new to this monitor format.]Oh! Almost forgot. Once nice little surprise (to me at least) with this monitor is the Picture-in-Picture (PIP) / Picture-by-Picture (PBP) feature! It allows you to display the screens from two of the inputs simultaneously! I can do a little web browsing on one side of my screen, while monitoring my security system cameras on the other side. However, keep in mind that the monitor's audio output can be only assigned to one of the inputs at a time; you cannot have it coming from 2 or 3 inputs simultaneously.