★★★★★ 1
Highly recommended if you get a good copy !!
INITIAL REVIEW after 5 days :
First of all, this is my rig :
- AMD 7900 XTX video card
- i9-12900k CPU
- Z790-e mono
- 32 Gb or RAM / 2TB SSD
When I was checking the net about this monitor, I could not find anybody using this monitor with an AMD video card and among those who bought this monitor and hooked it up to a NVIDIA video card ( 40 series ), almost all of them coincided in two flaws about this monitor : Scan lines and flickering ( some of them reported dead pixels as well ).
My initial report is that I do not have any of those issues : no scan lines in my desktop ( nor in my games ), no flickering and zero dead pixels ... however ... last Saturday December 9 when I turned on my PC ( and I would like to say something about this first : I always turn on my monitor, wait for the signal to appear in the screen - logo - and after that, I turn on my PC ... when I finish doing my gaming, I turn my PC off and then my monitor and this process is SUPER essential to keep your monitor working properly good ), I got a divided screen ( a vertical line dividing the screen in two screens ) and ugly and very pronounced scan lines in the whole screen. I freaked out and I thought in that very moment, to return it forever and replace it for a different monitor.
I decided to turn not my PC, I waited 5 minutes and turned the monitor back on ... this time, I waited for the DISPLAY PORT pop up small window to show on the top left of the screen ( previously I did not wait for that logo ) and as soon as I saw that my monitor was displaying that the display port was connected, I turned my PC on and it did work as intended. Again, I do not know at this point why I got a divided screen and ugly, big and pronounced scan lines before ... I spoke to my PC tech and he suggested to me that most likely it was a cable issue.
The display port cable I was using was the iVANKY 8K cable, a cable that I have for some time and was hooked up to my previous monitor and I never had any problem with it.
I think that the problem probably was, that as soon as I turned on my monitor, I turned on my PC, so I did not wait for the monitor to properly wake up, give me the signal that the display port was connected and probably, that was the problem. Again, I have no technical proof about what I am saying, but the correct process should be :
- Turn the monitor on and wait for a light in the screen ( energy is waking up your monitor ) and the signal that your display port is connected ...
- ... and then turn on your PC ...
- revert the process and this is important : once you turn off your PC and it is OFF, click on the center joystick button of your monitor, click on the 'south button' and turn the monitor off. Do not leave it on.
Since that issue that happened last Saturday, I am following that process by the letter and I have not had any issue at all, however, to be sure that this does not happens again, I decided to buy a different cable in Amazon, the : BIFALE vesa certified 6.6 feet 16K DP 2.1 cable. I started to use this cable today as soon as it arrived. So far, so good.
So, except for that issue that happened last Saturday and it did happen only one time, this monitor, so far, is working like a charm. Now, let's talk about some details :
- The curvature : I do not know what all the fuss is about this, cause for me, is beautiful ... however, I am coming from the Samsung G7 1440p 240 Hz monitor which also is curved, so for me, that is not an issue at all, but I remember that when I got my G7, it took me a couple of days to get use to and I fell in love with curved screens.
- Matte screen : I love this monitor in that regard. The screen has not reflections at all, is pure black, no light reflections and no bleeding lights at all.
- The power brick is not too big as some people described it.
- The bezel is thin and I like it better than my G7.
- If you turn on the fancy light in the front and back, I can tell you that the lights in front are not that bright and they do not bother me as other monitors did in the past.
MY OWN SETTINGS :
- Refresh Rate : 240Hz ( with my GPU AMD 7900 XTX I can play Cyberpunk - no ray tracing cause I do not like it anyway - in Ultra and get 140 FPS. I do not care if it does not get to 240, cause we do not have any video card in the world that can get 240 hz in 4k anyway and beside, I do not see why people are so concerned about a lot of hertz when 60 is sufficient and if you get more than a 100 fps is more than enough. Anyway, to each his own, but for me, there is not difference between 120 or 180 FPS so I am good with what I got ... however, I got plenty of room still so when I upgrade my video ( in 2024 ) card with the newest AMD, I will probably get around 180 fps. Again, this is not something I am crazy about but it is good to have extra than not.
- Free Sync : ON
- Black Equalizer : 13
- Brightness : 50
- Contrast : 73
- Contrast Enhancer : OFF
- Gamma : Mode 3
- Saturation : 50
- Local Dimming : AUTO
- VRR Control : ON
- Color Tone : CUSTOM
- Red = 50 / Blue = 50 and Green = 50
- I have not used this monitor with HDR. I do have Windows 11 and I am not planning to use HDR till this feature has been enhanced by Microsoft. I do not believe it is polished enough yet so I do not know how this monitor will perform using HDR ... however, I will give it a try with new upcoming games with great graphics ( perhaps via Unreal Engine 5 ) and see how well it does perform with HDR. I will update this information once I do it next year ( 2024 ), assuming that this monitor does not break before.
QUALITY OF THE SCREEN / IMAGE :
- The colors are really PUNCHY ... very saturated out of the box and kind of 'warm' image, fantastic, something that you have never seen before. The only changes I made as soon as I connected it to my PC were : Refresh Rate ( default was 120Hz, Freesync = on, Black Equalizer= 13 and Gamma = mode 3. I think that the VRR was on already and Local dimming in auto as well. So out of the box this monitor is superb.
I have had IPS monitors as well and nothing matched the punchy and burn colors of this monitor. I do not think that it needed to be calibrated at all.
- No Scan lines
- No flickering
- No Dead Pixels .... I am happy so far with this monitor but I am crossing my fingers here. Someone reported in the net that he did not have any issue during 2 months and then the scan lines started to show up. We will see if that happens and if it does happen before my refund window, I will return it immediately and replace it with a different monitor but I will never go back to this one again.
FLAWS :
- It could be sturdy but it does wobble a bit. The base is not that strong to hold the monitor really steady.
- The joystick in the bottom center of the screen to control your settings, have 5 very tiny buttons, one in the center and 4 : north, south, east and west .... those 4 are so small that in the beginning, when I try to access my monitor settings, I could not figure it out by the touch, I spent about a couple of minutes before I could sense with the tip of my finger, that there were another 4 buttons beside the middle one. In this regard, they could have done better but once you figure it out, it is easy to handle.
CONCLUSION :
I cannot find anything else bad in this monitor to be honest.
I am not using the Display Port cable that came with it. I am using my own display port cable.
I cannot advise anything related about how good this monitor is with a NVIDIA video card. All my life I used NVIDIA since I started to use PC : 1080ti and 2080ti ... I wanted to jump to the 3080 or 4080 but hey, those prices back then were too high. I will stay with AMD, which is cheaper and I have no complains at all about this awesome video card ( 7900 XTX ).
My monitor is on my very nice desk ( real wood desk and heavy ) and beside me, on my right, there is the windows that give me access to my balcony. If I open it, still this monitor does not reflect light in the screen but most of time, that window stays close.
I have a living room lamp on my left and a small desk lamp on the right of my desk and those lights does not reflect in my screen as well, so the matte coated Samsung used on this screen is something else.
The firmware version is : 1000.8 which is the last one available according to Samsung website, so I do not need to update it at all.
Well folks, for those who have an AMD card ( series 6 or 7 ), most likely, you will not have any issues with this monitor. I am saying this because I know that Samsung said that it was Nvidia fault about the scan lines and flickering in this monitor.
Even though I am rating this monitor with 5 stars in Gaming, Picture Quality and Brightness, I cannot give it an overall 5 stars cause I have not used it long enough to find out if those issues that everybody have reported ( scan lines and flickering ) will show up one of these days. I hope not and if it does not happen, then I will increase my own rating to 5 overall.
I will update this review in 2 weeks and a couple of days before my refund window close. Honestly, I am looking forward to continue using this monitor for a very long time. It does has the potential to still be very good in the future and has nothing to envy to any monitor out there, even an OLED monitor which are much better in the contrast department but still, this Samsung Neo G8 32" 4k 240Hz is excellent in that regard as well, and the OLED technology is not yet solid enough to completely defeat this monitor.
UPDATE ( 12/24/2023 ) :
Up to this point, this monitor continuos performing flawless. No scan-lines, no flickering and no dead pixels at all. I am very happy with it and will update this review in about 2 weeks.
UPDATE ( 12/30/2023 ) :
The image shows what this monitor has done twice since I bought it. I have tried 2 very good cables.
If that happens again, I will return it.
LAST UPDATE and RETURNED ( 01/03/2024 ) :
Unfortunately, the ugly scan lines + divided screen ( as you can see in the image ) were present again. I had to return it today January 4th, 2024 for a full refund ( Amazon did not offer me to replace it ... ) to my credit card. It is a shame, a waste of time when you buy an expensive monitor like this one, and you end up returning the unit due to some faulty function that could not be fixed by Samsung.
Yes, the monitor size is excellent, the curvature is awesome, the colors are punchy and it is a 4k screen with super detailed image but .... the scan lines ( as shown in the image ) completely ruined my experience and my desire to buy a replacement.
I used 3 different cables to filter the issue, believing that the culprit was probably a bad cable but it was not. I am not an Electronic Enigineer but I think that the problem is I think, related to the display port not able to output the right frequency or something like that.
Whatever you see in that picture happened 3 times in less than a month. When it happened, I had to turn my PC off and restart it back up. Anytime I did that, the monitor worked as expected, but as I said before, it did happen 3 times and that is unacceptable.
I cannot keep a monitor that is doing that with the potential to completely break down to the point that I would not be able to use it anymore or ending up in sending the unit to Samsung. Why should I waste my time and why should I deal with Samsung in the first place ?
If Samsung would have ensured that these units were working as expected, this would be the monitor to buy and never look back. There is no other better option than these monitors out there if you have an excellent copy.
I cannot recommend to anyone to buy it cause there is a great chance that you will end up returning the unit and that is a waste of time that customers should not face at all. Now I need to wait for my full refund and will probably buy a different unit. I have time to do my research and I am very sure that I will get something better. I have changed my overall rating from 4 to 1. Good luck if you get a perfect unit.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2023