Samsung S34E790C - 34" Curved

valkrien

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 8, 2005
Messages
271
Just exchanged my LG 34 for this one at Frys. I got tired of the ips glow and DP issues. Frys had the dell, LG's and this Samsung side by side. Hope this one has better blacks and no lightbleed issues.
 
First impressions. The curve is nice. The stand wiggles if you type so an arm is probably coming next. Text does not seem as crisp. Almost like the font is ever slightly bigger and 'cleartype" effect. Out of the box, the calibration is awful. Very washed out. Tried a few ICC's that are out there and it helped a small bit. There is zero back light bleed, darks are nice but not that huge a difference from the LG. I loaded up a few 'dark' games to see if it would justify my exchange.

STYK: Master of shadows - Darks are there, but they have this deep looking metallic effect to them. Not inky. Yes, it's darker than the LG, but the LG just looks better.

Dying Light : Something I didn't notice with the LG. With this samsung, if you go up close to textures (like in the main hideout place) and stare at the wall, it's very grainy like millions of ants. I have film grain turned off. Never seen that before. Not sure if it's a "feature" that the LG just didn't have the contrast to make stand out. It's pretty distracting up close.

Wasteland 2 : It just doesn't look as 'sharp' as the lg. The textures all have a very very slight blur to them. No AA is on. When on a high contrast screen, if you scroll left/right up/down the blacks tend to lighten up for a second until the movement stops. Not terribly distracting but there nonetheless.

I need to use it more to really get a good feel. 2nd option was the Dell for the same price at Fry's. The LG's just have too much bleed. Tried both the curved and flat. Same thing.
 
Hrmm, from what you describe my first guess is that the Samsung has crappy antiglare coating?

Also, you may have done well to just exchange your "bleed"y 34UM95 for another one. It's the luck of the draw, similar to dead pixels and other inherent flaws that happen sometimes.
 
I dont think ive ever really seen an LCD with inky blacks. Just CRT, Plasma and OLED. I've stopped expecting it because i get disappointed if i hope for it.
 
I dont think ive ever really seen an LCD with inky blacks. Just CRT, Plasma and OLED. I've stopped expecting it because i get disappointed if i hope for it.

The only real way to get inky blacks on an LCD is full array local dimming. Never seen it used on any monitors though, just some high end TVs.
 
Since there is a thread, here are all the reviews and tests I found so far for the screen.
Afraid they'll require translate

Playwares (Korean) review:
http://www.playwares.com/xe/index.php?mid=display_review&document_srl=45693531
review by =DEAD= (Russian):
http://4k-monitor.ru/news/rasshirya...ie_izognutogo_3_5k_monitora_samsung_s34e790c/
hardware.info test results:
http://uk.hardware.info/productinfo/274489/samsung-s34e790c#tab:testresults

they all come to similar conclusions and get similar test results
some takeaways: low input lag for a screen this size, contrast ~2100-2400:1, light AG, no bleed, rather strong (for VA) brightening of black towards the edges and off-angle - but looks like less than glow from the IPS
 
Curved should be a nice solution for the VA issue with gamma shifting. i do recon that newer VA panels have much better gamma uniformity than before, but if a curved dispaly can solve this issue once and for all, it would spell the end of IPS. New VA panel are finally faster at G2G transitions than IPS , without using overdrive: check the philips 4k 40" review. better blacks, faster G2G transitions, and going curved for zero gamma shift is amazing.

now give me a VA panel with strobe backlight
 
I'm bound and determined to get this monitor looking good. I tried about 10 or so different ICC's that folks are posting in addition to the monitors color settings. It seems that in order to get colors accurate, you really have to turn the brightness down (currently at around 30). That helps color tones, at the expense of vibrancy.

Ordered a SpyderPro4 Elite this morning from Amazon. I'll give that a shot tomorrow.

The blurring that is being reported is not evident really from the few games / programs I've run on it. Setting is on Faster for response time.

There are some posts on overclock.net forums that talk about a firmware upgrade to help with text clarity. Not sure where that came from, no mention of it on any Samsung forums.
 
The only real way to get inky blacks on an LCD is full array local dimming. Never seen it used on any monitors though, just some high end TVs.

Even edge-lit local dimming would help quite a bit to tame the corner IPS glow and awful blacks you get when watching full-screen 16:9 content on 21:9 displays.

It's not a perfect solution, but should be cheaper to implement. Works surprisingly well when viewing anything 4:3 on my Panasonic TV, and I really wish my 34" ultrawide had it.
 
DP 1.2 doesn't work correctly with the LG. You get constant screen flickering, snapping and popping out of the speakers of the monitor, resume from sleep issues, and screen realignment issues.

DP 1.1 has resume from standby issues and flickering every few minutes with my 7970. (got better with the 980 but still there)

I know folks are just saying well turn off DP 1.2 and use 1.1. I'm not okay with this solution on a 1000.00+ monitor.

This Samsung has zero DP 1.2 issues.

I've finally gotten the calibration set so that the whites are actually appearing correctly. The Spyder pro arrives today. The Sammy is starting to grow on me slowly. The sharpness of the text is still a bit confusing. If you take an extreme closeup of the montior it looks like the pixels are slightly stretched vertically?!
 
Calibrated with the Spyder 4 pro elite. Finally the colors are on par with the LG. Samsung must not have had their engineering cap on when they decided to ship these out with the most awful calibration I've ever seen on a stock monitor.

The various profiles folks have posted for this monitor were all off compared to the profile the spyder pro calibrated for this one.

I'm really enjoying this monitor now, much more than the LG.
 
Input lag feels less than the LG. I tried to find some blurring similar to the viral video out there using counterstrike as an example, but cannot replicate the effect they had shown. There is a slight chroma effect when going from deep black to a lighter texture but it is not noticeable.
 
Calibrated with the Spyder 4 pro elite. Finally the colors are on par with the LG. Samsung must not have had their engineering cap on when they decided to ship these out with the most awful calibration I've ever seen on a stock monitor.

The various profiles folks have posted for this monitor were all off compared to the profile the spyder pro calibrated for this one.

I'm really enjoying this monitor now, much more than the LG.

Can you check what contrast ratio you are getting with this monitor at 100% brightness using the Spyder 4? Mine is telling me its 800:1 (black level .41, brightness 325) which doesn't seem right so I was wondering if the Spyder cant read this monitor properly.
 
I've just bought one of these from Amazon's warehouse deals. $750ish. I'm excited to give it a try.
 
Does anyone find the glossy bezels distracting? Would the text be blurry for me coming from a S-PVA panel since I'm using a Dell 2408WFP?
 
Having recently purchased this display I can confirm that despite the odd shaped subpixels a 1000x1000px image displays perfectly square.

Another thing I noticed in Maya was that certain patterns cause the screen to flicker, it seems to affect only the green subpixels, can anyone confirm this with the image I took? I'd hate it if this problem was just in my unit.

2u7ruko.png
 
Having recently purchased this display I can confirm that despite the odd shaped subpixels a 1000x1000px image displays perfectly square.

Another thing I noticed in Maya was that certain patterns cause the screen to flicker, it seems to affect only the green subpixels, can anyone confirm this with the image I took? I'd hate it if this problem was just in my unit.

That's an artifact of any low-Hz PWM LED backlight and the human visual response to the extent that green is more apparent than other colors.

I don't see the flicker on any of my CCFL LCDs, and I can see it on all my low-Hz PWM displays to varying degrees including my retina MBP when I zoom out to 1:1 pixels.
 
I just received the Samsung 34" curved from Amazon...

Here is a picture of my setup (u3014 + S34E790C + 2007FP).
zatUNro.jpg


This replaces a good old PLP setup (20"+30"+20").

Here are my initial comments about the Samsung
1) Black is noticeably better than IPS (but much worst than OLED!)
2) Preset colors need work (washed out). I will shortly perform a full calibration using my X-Rite i1Pro 2 and i1Display Pro.
3) Uniformity is excellent (no visible bleeding)
4) Input lag appears very low
5) Respond time seems very fast
6) Curve is amazing for gaming.
7) The screen is a bit too narrow. I would have preferred an height of 1600 or 1800 pixels instead of 1440... I guess that this will do for now. ;)
8) Bezel is slim.

Oh yeah, the Dell 2007FP at the right will be shortly replaced by a Dell P2715Q (4K IPS).
 
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I may add that using the u3014 in portait mode is really cool, especially for web browsing.
I really like this setup.

Also, I went for the Samsung over the Dell/LG because of the much better contrast ratio and uniformity.
 
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That's an artifact of any low-Hz PWM LED backlight and the human visual response to the extent that green is more apparent than other colors.

I don't see the flicker on any of my CCFL LCDs, and I can see it on all my low-Hz PWM displays to varying degrees including my retina MBP when I zoom out to 1:1 pixels.

This monitor does not use PWM
 
This monitor does not use PWM

Hmm. Could just be ocular microtremors (constant 60-90 Hz minute-of-angle level shaking) combined with non-linear retinal brightness response for green colors particularly.

I don't see this on my old CCFL displays, but it might be because they all use very aggressive matte AG coatings, while the displays I can see it on have sharper sub-pixels because of glossy/semi-gloss coatings and just happen to be PWM, which I generally have set to high duty cycles anyway.

What you see does not appear to be a defect in your unit or model from what I can tell though.
 
I have this monitor and I love it. 4k is nice, but I don't want to have to purchase another Titan X just to get playable 4k framerates.
 
I have this monitor and I love it. 4k is nice, but I don't want to have to purchase another Titan X just to get playable 4k framerates.

You can always just use a letterboxed resolution on a 40"+ UHD display, until you get a 390/2nd TX/490/Pascal/whatever.

For a 3440x1440 monitors to be a better solution/value than UHD, you need >60Hz or adaptive sync capabilities or a need for DP inputs, etc.
The biggest issues with UHD TVs as monitors have been lack of HDMI 2.0 support in GPUs and lack of UHD@60Hz w/ 4:4:4 chroma in displays, both of which seems to be going away this spring and summer.

It's conceivable that DP 1.3 support in the R9 300 series this summer could help kick off 120 Hz UHD monitors, but I'm not that optimistic, so I see 40"+ UHD TVs as the best choice for many users for the next year or so.
 
I just got mine in yesterday. After some reworking of the colors and turning the brightness down, I'm really pleased with it. Blacks are much deeper than my cheap Asus IPS monitor it is replacing. Colors are on par. Gaming is awesome and immersive with the curve. I took a risk getting it from Amazon's Warehouse deals and it was suppose to have a small scratch on the screen. After thorough inspection, I can't find any blemish on the screen at all.



 
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I just received the Samsung 34" curved from Amazon...

Here is a picture of my setup (u3014 + S34E790C + 2007FP).
zatUNro.jpg


This replaces a good old PLP setup (20"+30"+20").

Here are my initial comments about the Samsung
1) Black is noticeably better than IPS (but much worst than OLED!)
2) Preset colors need work (washed out). I will shortly perform a full calibration using my X-Rite i1Pro 2 and i1Display Pro.
3) Uniformity is excellent (no visible bleeding)
4) Input lag appears very low
5) Respond time seems very fast
6) Curve is amazing for gaming.
7) The screen is a bit too narrow. I would have preferred an height of 1600 or 1800 pixels instead of 1440... I guess that this will do for now. ;)
8) Bezel is slim.

Oh yeah, the Dell 2007FP at the right will be shortly replaced by a Dell P2715Q (4K IPS).
How did the calibration go? Can you post settings?
 
I did not have the time to perform the calibration yet as have been having problems with twof my displayport outputs (no signal detected by the monitors).
I will perform the calibration once my displayport issue is resolved.
 
Here is a nice review by Sweclockers

http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/20515-samsung-s34e790c-valvd-med-va-panel

They also made pursuit pics, so we can see now how this Samsung SVA compares to the AOC U3477PQU (a well overdriven AH-IPS)

S34E790C
U3477PQU

and here from my AMVA+ monitor, for a comparison between the different VA matrices
XB2483HSU

they are quite similar at 60hz, but my AMVA+ requires a stronger overdrive impulse to bring down the dark transitions to the level of the Samsung SVA (they all still show some faint black trailing, typical for VA). this causes a slight corona effect during the bright transitions

and finally there is the Philips BDM4065UC

PCM
Swe 1
Swe 2

here we see the PWM artifacts below 100% brightness and it shows some faint long trails on white backgrounds that are not there on the other VA matrices
also a faint overdrive shadow during dark transitions even with SmartResponse Off
 
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The S34 looks really good in those pics. It seemed from the reviews I read that it would be, but it's nice having it confirmed like this. Still dithering over that or the BDM40 for myself. BTW those last pictures are from this review https://pcmonitors.info/reviews/philips-bdm4065uc/. You should reference it because it's one of the best reviews out there on this model.
 
Hi everyone, I'm a new owner of this wonderful Display. The first connection I used was through HDMI w/ my PS4. First impressions is that it was a viewing pleasure! Next test was to my new custom PC w/ Titan X GPU. I connected through Display Port and...........Everything is super grainy and colors are very light???

I uninstalled the GPU driver and re installed with no success. Anyone experience this or know what I'm doing wrong?
 
How's the screen coating on this monitor? Matte, semi, glossy? I hate a really noticeable coating.
 
Its a smooth light matte coating, according to pcmonitors.info "just a touch less smooth than on competing AH-IPS models"
strangely it has squished subpixels that appear to be the cause of sharpness issues some users report
This review also noted some banding/gradient issues that could not be fixed with calibration
 
just bought this monitor anyone have any recommendation when it come to mounting arm?
 
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