Dell Alienware AW3423DW 34″ QD-OLED 175Hz (3440 x 1440)

Conclusion:
Lots of pros and cons for both LG and AW, one have to decide for themselves which are more important.
 
I think the real reason Cecil is leaning LG is because it offers better calibration options for absolute color accuracy, that said, if you aren't as hardline on that, the AW offers a LOT as well;
- 21:9 without the risk of unevenly wearing half of your display
- higher refresh rate
- proper Gsync module
- NO VRR gamma / raised black / flickering black issues when dropping below 120hz (this ruins VRR for many since you essentially lose OLED blacks and/or get distracting 'flickers' as it comes in and out of black)
- brighter full screen brightness, so less obvious ABL as you do day to day tasks on the desktop
- essentially perfect near black handling with no black crush due to QD OLED's inherent advantages
- no need to deactivate ASBL since it seems to not have it in the first place
- higher HDR peak brightness
- much better color saturation in HDR
- noticeably better viewing angles (though this is of limited utility tbf)
- essentially no off axis color cast/tint, which is a bit more impactful than general viewing angle imo
- less chance of burn in and likely longer lifespan in general due to the panel construction of QD OLED vs WOLED (3 layers of blue OLED material for emission, sharing the load, less sub pixels to track for refreshing, and real time pixel level adjustment to avoid burn in)
- 3 year warranty that specifically includes burn in

Unless you're using an LG OLED as a side panel for just video/game content, and therefore won't be hosting much static content on it, or you're okay with likely replacing it much sooner than the AW, then the AW just seems like the no brainer option for a desktop user.

And that's why I went with it tbh. I still have my LG OLED for TV use and console gaming however, though that might go in favor of the A95K soon :p
I've thought about trying out the new Samsung QD-OLED TVs or the corresponding Sony models, but I've been less than impressed with post-purchase software support from either company. One thing LG has been really good at is updating their OLED FW and software regularly, and fixing bugs. This, alone, is worth so much when purchasing a flagship product. As long as LG continues to stand behind their products, I will continue to buy them.
 
So I guess this monitor really can’t be calibrated all that well for color accuracy.

Is there a competing QD OLED monitor that’ll be on the market soon? Is see a few from Asus, what about those?
 
So I guess this monitor really can’t be calibrated all that well for color accuracy.

Is there a competing QD OLED monitor that’ll be on the market soon? Is see a few from Asus, what about those?
it's just lot of work from calibrator. classy was able to make every perfect but it took us around 7hrs for whole thing.
Theirs maybe some hope G8QNB have better options or Dell fix OSD.
 
anyway i was one who classy calibrated Alienware and after calibration it it so much better. PQ and such changed for better. now just waiting for A95K to launch and I order it. have classy come out to do it.
 
Conclusion:
Lots of pros and cons for both LG and AW, one have to decide for themselves which are more important.

If the 42" LG is limited to 120hz then the choice for gaming is easily the AW34....its phenomenal.

Or if you don't mind blurry motion clarity the PG32UQX "Champion of Searing Light" is getting real cheap.
 
Conclusion:
Lots of pros and cons for both LG and AW, one have to decide for themselves which are more important.
Like pretty much any monitor tech. Pick the compromises that work for you.

I think I will stick with my CX 48" for a year or two more and see where the market goes. If we start getting 32" 4K high refresh rate OLEDs or 38-40" ultrawides then I will be glad to jump in but I can't see myself going back to 3440x1440 for desktop use or gaming. For me the dealbreaker was the pixel structure as I know that's going to cause some problems. On the LG 4K OLEDs you can at least apply scaling to mitigate that but scaling on a 3440x1440 screen it's not a good option as the desktop space shrinks to shit.

I've thought about trying out the new Samsung QD-OLED TVs or the corresponding Sony models, but I've been less than impressed with post-purchase software support from either company. One thing LG has been really good at is updating their OLED FW and software regularly, and fixing bugs. This, alone, is worth so much when purchasing a flagship product. As long as LG continues to stand behind their products, I will continue to buy them.
I totally agree. I've been generally happy with my LG C9 and CX. While both had a lot of long-standing issues, LG did solve everything they reasonably could. I don't have experience with Sony in recent years but have been disappointed with Samsung. I find they usually have a lot more buggy software.
 
1647280329917.png

Per Dell to me on Twitter, the shortage is due to the stand/base. Gives me hope they ship sooner than we think.
 
I think the real reason Cecil is leaning LG is because it offers better calibration options for absolute color accuracy, that said, if you aren't as hardline on that, the AW offers a LOT as well;
- 21:9 without the risk of unevenly wearing half of your display
- higher refresh rate
- proper Gsync module
- NO VRR gamma / raised black / flickering black issues when dropping below 120hz (this ruins VRR for many since you essentially lose OLED blacks and/or get distracting 'flickers' as it comes in and out of black)
- brighter full screen brightness, so less obvious ABL as you do day to day tasks on the desktop
- essentially perfect near black handling with no black crush due to QD OLED's inherent advantages
- no need to deactivate ASBL since it seems to not have it in the first place
- higher HDR peak brightness
- much better color saturation in HDR
- noticeably better viewing angles (though this is of limited utility tbf)
- essentially no off axis color cast/tint, which is a bit more impactful than general viewing angle imo
- less chance of burn in and likely longer lifespan in general due to the panel construction of QD OLED vs WOLED (3 layers of blue OLED material for emission, sharing the load, less sub pixels to track for refreshing, and real time pixel level adjustment to avoid burn in)
- 3 year warranty that specifically includes burn in

Unless you're using an LG OLED as a side panel for just video/game content, and therefore won't be hosting much static content on it, or you're okay with likely replacing it much sooner than the AW, then the AW just seems like the no brainer option for a desktop user.

And that's why I went with it tbh. I still have my LG OLED for TV use and console gaming however, though that might go in favor of the A95K soon :p
The near black on the AW is significantly raised and the 1dlut could not correct it.
LG C1 is very easy to correct near black.
 
A very frustrating omission. The picture on my FW900 and F520s is still gorgeous. And that UFO thing best I can tell is crystal clear on the CRT. Much better than those images from the Dell. It's 2022. This should not even still be a thing at this point. Sorry. </rant>

EDIT: I'm not cancelling my orders though. QD-OLED is awesome by all accounts. Maybe a better and more meaningful comparison at this point is against other flat panel technologies as opposed to comparing it to CRT, which apparently will be taking some unique advantages to the grave...

We technically could have had superior image quality at one point with SED, and FED looked promising as a successor to the CRT, but with the advancements on LCD they decided to go down that route due to cost of manufacturing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-emission_display
https://www.engineersgarage.com/field-emission-display/
Canon did a demo of the SED tv around 2006.
https://www.slashgear.com/781681/po...-revealed-with-first-look-at-starter-pokemon/

Btw I had an FW900, I loved that thing. Got difficult because at one point they were announcing that some video cards weren't going to have ramdac anymore to drive it. I think color and motion CRT was hard to beat. The only things that improve in other technologies were geometry, display size, power consumption, less radiation emissions, resolution.
One thing I did notice going from CRT to LCD was that CRT did a very good job at hiding image imperfections.
 
I don't remember CRTs ever looking as good as OLED. I mean motion yes but inky blacks with the vivid colors, no way.
I was talking about comparing it to LCD and I used the word Was hard to beat. The FW900 was a beast of a monitor, one could almost say its the Ferrari of CRT without stepping into Bugatti territory (Reference CRT monitors) and that metaphor is a bit funny because now we have civics that make more power than some of the ferraris from the 80s. It's a shame Plasma had to dip out due to being killed off due to power consumption when scaling resolution beyond 1080P.
 
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I don't remember CRTs ever looking as good as OLED. I mean motion yes but inky blacks with the vivid colors, no way.

AW34 is way better than the FW900 for gaming now. Its motion clarity is way good enough and it schools the FW900 on every other front.

I'm not saying throw your CRTs away, they are awesome....but this display is the current king IMHO.
 
AW34 is way better than the FW900 for gaming now. Its motion clarity is way good enough and it schools the FW900 on every other front.

I'm not saying throw your CRTs away, they are awesome....but this display is the current king IMHO.
Oh the Fw900 is way gone. Nothing lasts forever, there's other guys that are more resourceful than me keeping theirs going. One of the issues for me was that at some point they stop having ramdac on some of the video cards, so there was no analog signal to use on crt anymore.

After the FW900, I moved on to an Korean overclock monitor, that was the fad at the time . That thing was pretty cool, unfortunately mine would not go past 95Hz. No gsync so I learned to hate tearing, it's one of those things that I never saw with the CRT that I couldn't unseen.

I'm tempted to go for this monitor, I wish they offered a 1600 high version of it to get a little more vertical resolution. I'm waiting to see what the C2 42' brings, I have less of an urgency because I'm waiting for the next gen of cards to upgrade unless I find a really good deal. Video card prices and availability is starting to normalize more.
 
The near black on the AW is significantly raised and the 1dlut could not correct it.
LG C1 is very easy to correct near black.

Is there anyway to fix the near black on the Dell?

And doesn't the LG have several issues near black? Associated with VRR, uniformity (i.e., banding), and some other unfortunate property maybe?
 
Asterisk with the G8QNB. I want the monitor to be great but Samsung's track record has been lacking with issues galore.
This is why I didn't bother waiting. I won't touch a Samsung monitor with a 10 foot pole. Especially after the issues the G9 Neo had/still has.
 
The near black on the AW is significantly raised and the 1dlut could not correct it.
LG C1 is very easy to correct near black.
My blacks are definitely not raised, at least not in the picture modes I am using. I've checked plenty of games and test patterns to confirm this.
 
Is there anyway to fix the near black on the Dell?

And doesn't the LG have several issues near black? Associated with VRR, uniformity (i.e., banding), and some other unfortunate property maybe?
The 1dlut didn't fix the AW from just above black to ~25 IRE from being significantly raised.



LG 2021 models are a little darkened near black which is fixable in multiple ways.



Of the three 48" C1s I've had, one had excessive vertical banding, the other two essentially none that is visible. It's a panel lottery issue, which all panels have lottery issues for various reasons.



The vrr flicker is not an exclusive problem to WRGB OLED. And it's generally only an issue in menus for most games.



The QN90A I'm testing right now also has flickering (among other worse issues).
My blacks are definitely not raised, at least not in the picture modes I am using. I've checked plenty of games and test patterns to confirm this.
I never said raised blacks. I said raised near black, very different things.
 
The 1dlut didn't fix the AW from just above black to ~25 IRE from being significantly raised.



LG 2021 models are a little darkened near black which is fixable in multiple ways.



Of the three 48" C1s I've had, one had excessive vertical banding, the other two essentially none that is visible. It's a panel lottery issue, which all panels have lottery issues for various reasons.



The vrr flicker is not an exclusive problem to WRGB OLED. And it's generally only an issue in menus for most games.



The QN90A I'm testing right now also has flickering (among other worse issues).

I never said raised blacks. I said raised near black, very different things.
Ah, fair enough I suppose...I mostly meant this thing doesn't ever really seem to black crush on me like my E8 tends to, which I certainly prefer.

That said, the CX I used definitely had noticeable issues with VRR flicker in plenty of dark games if I didn't keep close to 120fps. Wasn't that bad in games that didn't get dark as much, but it was definitely a showstopper for games like The Medium, RE: Village, etc. Though I suppose how sensitive you are to that matters a great deal as well.
 
Ah, fair enough I suppose...I mostly meant this thing doesn't ever really seem to black crush on me like my E8 tends to, which I certainly prefer.

That said, the CX I used definitely had noticeable issues with VRR flicker in plenty of dark games if I didn't keep close to 120fps. Wasn't that bad in games that didn't get dark as much, but it was definitely a showstopper for games like The Medium, RE: Village, etc. Though I suppose how sensitive you are to that matters a great deal as well.
Yeah the raised near black is the exact opposite of "black crush". So shadow details will be very visible, more than they are meant to be.
As a professional calibrator, that not being able to be corrected is more bothersome to me than LG being too dark but correctable.

It also depends on if someone is comparing to traditional monitors, where most of them have raised near black as well and/or are IPS panels, or if you are used to and comparing to OLED TVs.


As a monitor, the AW is well above average overall. Compared to OLED TVs which is my professional focus, it doesn't hold up as well.
 
I don't remember CRTs ever looking as good as OLED. I mean motion yes but inky blacks with the vivid colors, no way.
Probably you were not using it in a light controlled room. In a lit room CRT has even worse effective contrast than common LCDs because the room light is illuminating the phosphor layer from the front, and that phosphor was at best dark grey - so that raises the black level and washes out the colours of the image.
 
Yeah the raised near black is the exact opposite of "black crush". So shadow details will be very visible, more than they are meant to be.
As a professional calibrator, that not being able to be corrected is more bothersome to me than LG being too dark but correctable.

It also depends on if someone is comparing to traditional monitors, where most of them have raised near black as well and/or are IPS panels, or if you are used to and comparing to OLED TVs.


As a monitor, the AW is well above average overall. Compared to OLED TVs which is my professional focus, it doesn't hold up as well.
Oh man...I know this stuff is somewhat subjective, but I prefer crushed over raised. Is Dell good about fixing such stuff? Or are they more it's done when it comes to putting out monitors?
 
Probably you were not using it in a light controlled room. In a lit room CRT has even worse effective contrast than common LCDs because the room light is illuminating the phosphor layer from the front, and that phosphor was at best dark grey - so that raises the black level and washes out the colours of the image.

Yeah...CRT comes dramatically more alive at night or when it's cloudy out. (My blinds here are of limited effectiveness...)
 
Yeah the raised near black is the exact opposite of "black crush". So shadow details will be very visible, more than they are meant to be.
As a professional calibrator, that not being able to be corrected is more bothersome to me than LG being too dark but correctable.

It also depends on if someone is comparing to traditional monitors, where most of them have raised near black as well and/or are IPS panels, or if you are used to and comparing to OLED TVs.


As a monitor, the AW is well above average overall. Compared to OLED TVs which is my professional focus, it doesn't hold up as well.
Fair enough. I still stand by it being a much better option for a PC gamer, especially one that doesn't have all the proper equipment for calibrating either, and probably won't hire anyone to do it though.

On another note, do you think you'd be able to get better results if Calman updated and fixed the 3D LUT issue?
 
Oh man...I know this stuff is somewhat subjective, but I prefer crushed over raised. Is Dell good about fixing such stuff? Or are they more it's done when it comes to putting out monitors?
For what it's worth, dark scenes in games like MW19 in HDR still look absolutely phenomenal.
 
Fair enough. I still stand by it being a much better option for a PC gamer, especially one that doesn't have all the proper equipment for calibrating either, and probably won't hire anyone to do it though.

On another note, do you think you'd be able to get better results if Calman updated and fixed the 3D LUT issue?
There is still the ability for an ICC profile, just was very buggy in Calman. DisplayCal doesn't list support for my i1 spectro and wouldn't have a profile for qd OLED yet.
When that changes it will make it easier.
 
There is still the ability for an ICC profile, just was very buggy in Calman. DisplayCal doesn't list support for my i1 spectro and wouldn't have a profile for qd OLED yet.
When that changes it will make it easier.
Good to hear. I've been mulling over investing in some calibration tools, just haven't made the plunge yet.

Hopefully by the time I commit to that it'll be fixed up a bit...though I'm doing no color critical work atm, just needs to be somewhat close, and this seems close enough to not affect anything I do currently, so it may be a while :p

Regardless, thanks for your info.
 
There is still the ability for an ICC profile, just was very buggy in Calman. DisplayCal doesn't list support for my i1 spectro and wouldn't have a profile for qd OLED yet.
When that changes it will make it easier.
So basically the colors are no good on the AW
 
Yeah...CRT comes dramatically more alive at night or when it's cloudy out. (My blinds here are of limited effectiveness...)

Well to be fair, so does the AW34. It does well in a bright room, but at night with the lights off... WOOOOOO! True Black 400 is so sexy after dark! (That's what she said).

Now the PG32UQX, that bastard can hit so many nits it lights up an already completely bright room....its like the Chuck Norris of Nits!

5M3T.gif
 
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it's just lot of work from calibrator. classy was able to make every perfect but it took us around 7hrs for whole thing.
Theirs maybe some hope G8QNB have better options or Dell fix OSD.
What equipment is needed to calibrate the AW for max PQ and accurate colors? Assuming time isn’t an issue.

The Samsung variant, it’s probably the same thing with a different badge.
 
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