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

You have a display with G-Sync and don’t use it? Is there a particular reason for that?
It sounds hmm not really smart to be honest…
Gsync and BFI are both largely useless above 200 fps which is the minimum of what I expect for competitive fps. I will be comparing this monitor to a 280hz IPS display but the faster pixel transitions (oled) and higher resolution will hopefully make for an improved competitive display.
 
When did you place the order?
March 22.

This QD-OLED monitor is awesome to use, but being a glossy lover i have to say this screens picture is slightly veiled, with the same type of smudginess matte monitors have. You dont have the clarity and pop only a glossy monitor gives. Although its lighter than your regular matte screen, its still there. Whoever said this monitor is "super glossy" is dead wrong, you can barely see a hint of reflections in a dim-lit room with a full black screen. Might be a deal breaker for many people expecting this to have same picture quality as glossy OLED. It still has great POP being an OLED. I still am not decided if i want to keep this screen. I guess i need to keep it to be able to compare to to LG C2 42" OLED.

Still a fantastic screen though. Will do a full write-up of pros and cons i see with this monitor later.
 
anyone else see the screen going from what i can only assume is dim (400 Nits) to (1000) when browsing in darkmode in chrome.
i have it set to 1000 in the menu. iv sorta found a workaround i just chose game 2 preset as game 1 looks way too yellowish,

and a update on the replacement confirmed Aug 25th lol.
 

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anyone else see the screen going from what i can only assume is dim (400 Nits) to (1000) when browsing in darkmode in chrome.
Do you mean dynamic brightness changes depending what is on the screen? That could be the ABL / auto brightness limiter kicking in. I avoid this by using SDR on the desktop. There's no ABL I can see on sRGB mode with a reasonable brightness. This is one area where the AW beats the C2 hands down.
 
ahhh damn i knew i had to change something in the display settings its making everything 100% HDR all the time ill go check those settings knew it couldnt for life of me remember where id changed it but now i know thank you >< (Derp moment)
 
ahhh damn i knew i had to change something in the display settings its making everything 100% HDR all the time ill go check those settings knew it couldnt for life of me remember where id changed it but now i know thank you >< (Derp moment)
If you are in Win11 you can disable auto HDR. Then you can toggle back into HDR using win+alt+b when you need it for a video or game.
 
perfect only really need it for when im in Destiny 2. dont watch movies on my monitor. ill try this tonight will solve the issue.
 
perfect only really need it for when im in Destiny 2. dont watch movies on my monitor. ill try this tonight will solve the issue.
Destiny 2 can auto trigger your monitor to go into HDR automatically once you have it set to use HDR. It's pretty neat. I'm not sure if there are any other games with this capability.
 
iv found issue if it isnt in Fullscreen mode. outriders on other hand doesnt look as good as i thought it would with DLSS set to quality and everything cranked.
 
Damn was hoping it was just a reflection it's smeared won't wipe off.
I found something similar on my first AW monitor that I've since returned, I tried wiping it with a damp microfiber and made it worse, as in wiped away the anti reflective layer. I've since returned it and am still waiting for a replacement about a month later. It really makes me concerned about the longevity of this screen if the AR coating is so fragile.
 
yeah i haven't read the EULA but are you allowed only 1 replacement or does the replacement last the 3 yrs id hate to have to replace this more then once but if we had to can we? thinking if it cant survive more then a year do we just replace / refund if it doesn't improve?
 
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Has anyone found a way to clean this thing without damaging the coating? It seems to be absurdly fragile.
 
Has anyone found a way to clean this thing without damaging the coating? It seems to be absurdly fragile.
I'm just microfibering it and using monitor wipes. No damage caused that I've seen. My screen did come with some of the light coating scratches that others have pointed out, but they're only in the top left part and they're completely invisible unless you shine a flashlight directly on the display. So I'm just ignoring them, not worth going through a replacement process.

But cleaning with wipes and microfiber have not added any new scratches. I *have* noticed that any dirt that gets on the screen seems to stick very aggressively and you basically need some kind of moisture to get it off, dry microfiber doesn't do anything.
 
Gsync and BFI are both largely useless above 200 fps which is the minimum of what I expect for competitive fps. I will be comparing this monitor to a 280hz IPS display but the faster pixel transitions (oled) and higher resolution will hopefully make for an improved competitive display.
You really can't tell the difference between Vsync off and VRR north of 200FPS? Its a night and day difference to me in smoothness.
 
I'm just microfibering it and using monitor wipes. No damage caused that I've seen.
I've had the opposite experience. I've used a lens microfiber and distilled water with a light touch and I am finding I'm leaving micro-scratches that I can see with a flashlight. Even with super light spot cleaning, I can see where I've cleaned vs where I haven't. None of these micro scratches affect the image, but it's concerning. Good thing I don't have any pets!
 
I've had the opposite experience. I've used a lens microfiber and distilled water with a light touch and I am finding I'm leaving micro-scratches that I can see with a flashlight. Even with super light spot cleaning, I can see where I've cleaned vs where I haven't. None of these micro scratches affect the image, but it's concerning. Good thing I don't have any pets!
This is the experience that I've had, but some of the scratches are visible if you are looking for them. Fortunately not very noticeable in use.
 
My replacement is now back ordered until June 30th. Not too surprised, just have to wait a bit longer.
 
Did they say you're a had priority as well there term priority seems very loose lol mines not due till August 25th.
 
How bright is this display can you turn it down and still look good? Waiting on smaller sizes but would love to try this.
 
How bright is this display can you turn it down and still look good? Waiting on smaller sizes but would love to try this.
For SDR? I run it at 40 which should be about 100 nits or so. That is plenty bright for a room with the lights on.
 
You really can't tell the difference between Vsync off and VRR north of 200FPS? Its a night and day difference to me in smoothness.

Hey, you are the same guy that has both the 42 C2 and the Alienware right? How would you compare their general HDR performances? Does the Alienware have notably dimmer high APL scenes due to its ABL compared to the LG? No true documentation of this behavior, but many seem to be dissatisfied with its ABL behavior and prefer the LG's.
 
Hey, you are the same guy that has both the 42 C2 and the Alienware right? How would you compare their general HDR performances? Does the Alienware have notably dimmer high APL scenes due to its ABL compared to the LG? No true documentation of this behavior, but many seem to be dissatisfied with its ABL behavior and prefer the LG's.
Yes to me the AW in HDR1000 mode looks far more dim in games like Forza Horizen 5 where its predominately high APL. This sounds wrong because it measures quite a bit brighter in 50%+ window sizes but I tried this in other stuff like AC series and got the same result. Whether it behaves differently in actual content vs test slides I dunno but that's what my eyes tell me and it was immediately noticeable.

Basically I consider it a wash between the two. Sometimes the AW is more impactful, other times the LG is. I would not be able to definitively tell them apart unless they were side by side and I had to take a meter out to measure between them. In best case scenario games that are dark the AW usually measured 100-150ish nits higher on small highlights. Could I see this? Yes. Could I tell it was much brighter without the C2 right beside it? I don't think so.

I don't think HDR performance should be the determining factor when choosing between the two because its so close. Resolution/formfactor/size should be.

The reality is that the AW to me isn't really a huge leap in HDR brightness over the LG OLEDs that have been available for the past few years.
 
Yes to me the AW in HDR1000 mode looks far more dim in games like Forza Horizen 5 where its predominately high APL. This sounds wrong because it measures quite a bit brighter in 50%+ window sizes but I tried this in other stuff like AC series and got the same result. Whether it behaves differently in actual content vs test slides I dunno but that's what my eyes tell me and it was immediately noticeable.

Basically I consider it a wash between the two. Sometimes the AW is more impactful, other times the LG is. I would not be able to definitively tell them apart unless they were side by side and I had to take a meter out to measure between them. In best case scenario games that are dark the AW usually measured 100-150ish nits higher on small highlights. Could I see this? Yes. Could I tell it was much brighter without the C2 right beside it? I don't think so.

I don't think HDR performance should be the determining factor when choosing between the two because its so close. Resolution/formfactor/size should be.

The reality is that the AW to me isn't really a huge leap in HDR brightness over the LG OLEDs that have been available for the past few years.

Well what about color volume then? QD-OLED was suppose to bring noticeably greater color volume over WOLED, not just peak brightness in nits.
 
Did they say you're a had priority as well there term priority seems very loose lol mines not due till August 25th.
They didn't mention me having a priority. I wouldn't be surprised if my due date slips past June 30th. Hopefully not but we'll see.
 
Yes to me the AW in HDR1000 mode looks far more dim in games like Forza Horizen 5 where its predominately high APL. This sounds wrong because it measures quite a bit brighter in 50%+ window sizes but I tried this in other stuff like AC series and got the same result. Whether it behaves differently in actual content vs test slides I dunno but that's what my eyes tell me and it was immediately noticeable.

Basically I consider it a wash between the two. Sometimes the AW is more impactful, other times the LG is. I would not be able to definitively tell them apart unless they were side by side and I had to take a meter out to measure between them. In best case scenario games that are dark the AW usually measured 100-150ish nits higher on small highlights. Could I see this? Yes. Could I tell it was much brighter without the C2 right beside it? I don't think so.

I don't think HDR performance should be the determining factor when choosing between the two because its so close. Resolution/formfactor/size should be.

The reality is that the AW to me isn't really a huge leap in HDR brightness over the LG OLEDs that have been available for the past few years.
yeah, my opinion is that the LG has lower peaks but a more gradual EOTF so the "dimming" is less noticeable and also covers a smaller portion of the screen. The AW probably looks better in dark scenes with tiny highlights due to the increased peak, but worse in bright scenes. I think I would prefer the LG's presentation in that regard, but the LG is simply a huge TV that is difficult to accommodate and lacks the tremendous convenience of a displayport.

On the other hand, the UW aspect ratio is both a boon and annoyance. I have the alienware coming in the next few weeks, so hopefully I will love it.
 
Well what about color volume then? QD-OLED was suppose to bring noticeably greater color volume over WOLED, not just peak brightness in nits.
TBH it was really hard for me to tell even with them side by side in HDR gaming content. On occasion maybe the AW looked more "saturated" but 99% of the time I couldn't tell if that were true or if there was just a calibration difference between the two.

Maybe in movie content the difference would be more noticeable but I didn't test any to come to a conclusion.
 
TBH it was really hard for me to tell even with them side by side in HDR gaming content. On occasion maybe the AW looked more "saturated" but 99% of the time I couldn't tell if that were true or if there was just a calibration difference between the two.

Maybe in movie content the difference would be more noticeable but I didn't test any to come to a conclusion.

Interesting. Even the measurements from RTings show a significant increase in color volume on the Alienware over the LG C1. If games were not made using such wide colors then that would make sense why there isn't much difference between the two in real content.

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Yeah on paper the difference should be pretty significant but even with Doom Eternal and an assortment of other games side by side I just didn't see much of a difference. HDR cloned across two monitors is wonky and I ended up actually just setting up 2 different PC's lol. Also FF7 Remake is a great game that demonstrates where the AW wins because its mostly a dark game early on and you can see its clearly brighter in the night time sections. I will say though that to the eye the difference was far less significant than on camera.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that one of the reasons the FF7R image is so much brighter than the LG is because it's 16:9 so much less ABL in play. When I tried some 21:9 fixes later on it looked much closer to the LG and went back to "without being side by side, it's hard to tell them apart."

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Yeah on paper the difference should be pretty significant but even with Doom Eternal and an assortment of other games side by side I just didn't see much of a difference. HDR cloned across two monitors is wonky and I ended up actually just setting up 2 different PC's lol. Also FF7 Remake is a great game that demonstrates where the AW wins because its mostly a dark game early on and you can see its clearly brighter in the night time sections. I will say though that to the eye the difference was far less significant than on camera.

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The aw looks washed out in the photo. Not that this is a great way to compare as you mentioned.
 
Yeah on paper the difference should be pretty significant but even with Doom Eternal and an assortment of other games side by side I just didn't see much of a difference. HDR cloned across two monitors is wonky and I ended up actually just setting up 2 different PC's lol. Also FF7 Remake is a great game that demonstrates where the AW wins because its mostly a dark game early on and you can see its clearly brighter in the night time sections. I will say though that to the eye the difference was far less significant than on camera.

Well two possible issues:

1) If you are cloning the screen it might be limiting itself to the more narrow color space because it is trying to create an identical image. No idea how all that ends up working in reality.

2) More likely is just the colors games choose to use. While HDR is generally in a Rec.2020 container and can do those primaries, game devs, movie colorists, etc are aware of the actual restrictions of monitors out there and will usually grade their output for them. No sense in using Rec.2020 primaries and having everything look washed out or clipped on DCI-P3 monitors. Given that the WOLEDs are extremely popular, I can imagine games are using colors from the space they can display and not going much out of bounds of that.

Perhaps later there will be stuff graded for QD-OLEDs but I imagine little is at this point.
 
Well two possible issues:

1) If you are cloning the screen it might be limiting itself to the more narrow color space because it is trying to create an identical image. No idea how all that ends up working in reality.

2) More likely is just the colors games choose to use. While HDR is generally in a Rec.2020 container and can do those primaries, game devs, movie colorists, etc are aware of the actual restrictions of monitors out there and will usually grade their output for them. No sense in using Rec.2020 primaries and having everything look washed out or clipped on DCI-P3 monitors. Given that the WOLEDs are extremely popular, I can imagine games are using colors from the space they can display and not going much out of bounds of that.

Perhaps later there will be stuff graded for QD-OLEDs but I imagine little is at this point.

If #2 is the case then what are people actually seeing when they claim that the higher color volume display looks "better" or the colors are "popping more"? Just a bunch of fake oversaturation?
 
If #2 is the case then what are people actually seeing when they claim that the higher color volume display looks "better" or the colors are "popping more"? Just a bunch of fake oversaturation?
Not sure. I mean on the desktop, if not in sRGB mode or with HDR disabled, they are going to look different and the Alienware will be more saturated because it doesn't control for that. In games I'm not sure. Maybe I'm wrong (this is all supposition on my part). Also it could be just difference in people's perception. Some people perceive color differences others don't, we don't all have the precise same spectral perception in our eyes (and brains).

Also maybe just how used to things people are perhaps. Like right now I have a desktop on a sRGB monitor which is set to a "paper" setting offering a muted, red kind of whitepoint for less eyestrain. Next to it is my laptop with a very wide gamut monitor set to a D6500 whitepoint and no color correction. While I can see the additional saturation on the laptop it doesn't look that intense or blown out or oversaturated to me compared to the sRGB screen. I'm used to going back and forth enough my brain does a good job of translating how things look and they both look "right".
 
You guys must be doing something wrong. When I put my PG32 next to my LG OLED, the PG32 wrecked it in color volume/saturation. LG OLEDs have pretty mediocre colors honestly (as the test data shows) and one reason why I got rid of it.
 
COD MW Remastered
COD MW2 Remastered
COD MW19
COD Cold War

All look incredible in HDR on the AW34 and they play smoother than a 19 year old colombian hookers twat!
 
You guys must be doing something wrong. When I put my PG32 next to my LG OLED, the PG32 wrecked it in color volume/saturation. LG OLEDs have pretty mediocre colors honestly (as the test data shows) and one reason why I got rid of it.
My C177s colors look way better than the dreadful 48cx, but then again my C177 has the newer evo panel and I am using it with PS5 and XS1X which don't fuck up HDR with LG displays like PC did.
 
You guys must be doing something wrong. When I put my PG32 next to my LG OLED, the PG32 wrecked it in color volume/saturation. LG OLEDs have pretty mediocre colors honestly (as the test data shows) and one reason why I got rid of it.
I didn't see this at all when I had my PG32UQX and CX stacked against each other. They looked similar most of the time except the OLEDs contrast carried it super hard making it look much nicer most of the time while the Asus colors on highlights like the flame thrower in Metro Enhanced looked more vibrant/saturated. For me the contrast and overall image quality won vs momentary highlights looking more impressive.

Reading this thread, I wish I had movies to test to really see what all this color stuff is about. Sure the taillights in Forza Horizen 5 in a tunnel looked more vibrant on the AW vs C2 but if I had to quantify, its like a 10% improvement that I can artificially add to the C2 by bumping color from 50 to 55.
 
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Our Walmart got some LG TVs with the remodel we had some like 5 years ago but the black levels hide details the thing is I looked at this screen for 2 minutes it was really tolerable for my sensitive eyes. I haven't watched TV since 2008 with a CRT TV. I used to watch Deadliest catch and Tennis.
 
I didn't see this at all when I had my PG32UQX and CX stacked against each other. They looked similar most of the time except the OLEDs contrast carried it super hard making it look much nicer most of the time while the Asus colors on highlights like the flame thrower in Metro Enhanced looked more vibrant/saturated. For me the contrast and overall image quality won vs momentary highlights looking more impressive.

Reading this thread, I wish I had movies to test to really see what all this color stuff is about. Sure the taillights in Forza Horizen 5 in a tunnel looked more vibrant on the AW vs C2 but if I had to quantify, its like a 10% improvement that I can artificially add to the C2 by bumping color from 50 to 55.

If only HDTVTest with his fancy equipment could do what he did with the Samsung S95B and measure what the output color/nit of the content is asking for vs what the display is showing. Then he could prove weather or not the Asus is displaying a color that the LG simply cannot, or if it is just being artificially boosted.
 
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