Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 Monitor Review - Glorious 32-inch 4K gaming at a buttery smooth 240Hz

TweakTown's Rating: 93%

The Bottom Line

Samsung's OLED G8 pushes into the highest end of available 32-inch OLED gaming monitors, providing unrivaled performance, but for a hefty price.

Pros

• Incredible colors
• Enthusiast-level gaming experience
• Physical design

Cons

• Outward facing ports
• Messy/Convoluted OSD
• Pricey compared to the competition

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Newegg for $949.99 USD

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Introduction & Specification Details and Close-up

OLED gaming monitors are coming out in various sizes from a range of different brands, and leading the charge of push into QD-OLED panels for gaming monitors is Samsung.

Today, we are taking a look at Samsung's Odyssey OLED G8, a 32-inch 4K gaming monitor that will be compared to the Alienware AW3225QF, another 4K gaming monitor that I have reviewed and rated extremely highly. As for the OLED G8, Samsung has placed that glorious QD-OLED panel in a silver metal housing that makes the gaming monitor appear very sleek and futuristic.

Keeping to its visual appearance, Samsung has equipped the OLED G8 with its latest burn-in prevention technology, as the monitor features a heat-pipe system that reduces the width of the monitor while also reducing overall heat and, therefore, burn-in. The OLED G8 is aimed at enthusiast-level gamers, as the resolution of 3840 x 2160 (4K UHD), paired with the 240Hz refresh rate, can only be achieved by PC's rocking high-end graphics cards. However, if your rig can take advantage of the OLED G8's specs, is it worth spending the $1,299?

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Specifications

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Close-up

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Design

Samsung is no stranger to putting a lot of work into making its gaming monitors look premium. Another aspect worth pointing out is that Samsung's products look distinctly like "Samsung," at least in the gaming monitor market, as the company appears to have really made an effort to visually separate its products from the competition. An example of this would be the OLED G8's silver finish, which is certainly a welcomed addition in a world where almost every gaming monitor is black. Another interesting choice Samsung made was to opt for outward-facing connectivity ports.

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Personally, I prefer downward-facing ports as they guarantee that someone with limited desk space won't run into the problem of being unable to push their monitor back against a wall due to a protruding DisplayPort or HDMI capability. Obviously, this won't be a problem for buyers using the stand, but for those taking advantage of the VESA mount support via a monitor arm and having limited desk space already, this would certainly prove an issue. As for the connectivity options, Samsung has equipped the OLED G8 with the following ports: two HDMI 2.1, one DisplayPort 1.4, two USB-A ports, and a USB-B upstream port.

Keeping to the back of the monitor, Samsung has chosen to go with an extremely simplistic design that has moved the vents to the top back of the monitor and underneath. I do really like this choice as I believe it adds to the overall premium look of the OLED G8. The multidirectional joystick located next to the connectivity options feels nice to use with satisfying clicks and easy navigation of the OSD, which I will get into more in the Panel Breakdown section of this review.

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Overall, the physical design of the OLED G8 is very impressive, especially with its thinness at the edges of the panel. Samsung have done a great job to make the OLED G8 look and feel like a premium gaming monitor, while also separating itself from the sea of gaming monitors that all look extremely similar. This is something I would expect out of a $1,299 gaming monitor.

Panel Breakdown

With Samsung behind the panel technology, I expected the OLED G8 to provide incredible colors, response time, and overall performance. I was not disappointed, and just the AW3225QF, the OLED G8 panel is simply incredible, and that can be attributed to a few factors. The 3840 x 2160 resolution enables a pixel density of 140ppi, which increases image clarity significantly compared to 1440p displays. What is particularly noticeable at this resolution on QD-OLED panels is the lack of text fringing, which is a common problem for earlier generations of QD-OLED panels. I believe the 32-inch OLED G8 is rocking Samsung's third-generation Quantum Dot OLED pixel technology, which has made big improvements, specifically in text fringing, compared to previous generations.

Comparatively, throughout my testing I had the OLED G8 alongside an IPS panel which are predominately used for word-processing activities. I was unable to tell a difference between the text clarity on the OLED G8 compared to the IPS panel. With the only difference being the brightness of the text itself, but that doesn't have anything to do with clarity.

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Moving away from text the OLED G8 knocks it out of the park when it comes to producing rich, deep colors through its infinite contrast ratio that creates those extremely deep blacks. These colors can be attributed to the OLED pixels being capable of individually turning off, providing that infinite contrast ratio and color vibrancy that really pops.

Samsung has made quite a big step up in the department of anti-glare coating across its monitors, as the OLED G8 features an incredible finish that dramatically reduces any external light sources in front of the panel reflecting onto its surface as incandescent blobs.

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Unfortunately, where Samsung has dropped the ball is with its OSD options, and luckily, the company decided to throw in a remote because if I had been forced to navigate the OSD solely with the multidirectional joystick, I believe I would have raged. Ok, so there are three main settings menus, and unfortunately, not only the layout but also the navigation of each of these options is truly a pain to get to. This was a problem I complained about in my OLED G9 review, as these monitors use the same OSD, where all of the options are buried under pages.

As I wrote in the OLED G9, I believe Samsung needs to do a complete overhaul of its OSD settings, and if the company chooses to do so, they should make simplification their paramount design goal.

Performance

Gaming performance on a monitor with these specifications is nothing short of a dream. Paired with my NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, the OLED G8 completely ate up every game I threw at it, showcasing what true enthusiast-level gaming can be. As with all of my gaming monitor reviews, I like to test the display under the spotlight with a wide variety of games. I tested the OLED G8 with the following titles: Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, Black Myth: Wukong, Age of Mythology Retold, Counter-Strike 2, God of War, Cyberpunk 2077, and DOOM Eternal.

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As I previously stated, the OLED G9 provided an incredible in-game experience that I found to be completely flawless in every single title I played on it. The colors the monitor produced in vibrant titles such as Overwatch 2 and Age of Mythology: Retold was extremely immersive, but it was also able to keep up in fast-paced titles such as DOOM Eternal and Apex Legends thanks to the extremely quick response time of 0.03ms and 240Hz refresh rate.

Throughout my time testing the OLED G8 I didn't notice any forms of tearing, ghosting, or any other problem I would consider to be a red flag for a potential buyer. The OLED G8 is simply a gaming powerhouse that I believe any gamer would be more than satisfied with.

Final Thoughts

So, should you buy the OLED G8? At 32 inches, a buyer of this monitor would be looking for a jack-of-all-trades gaming monitor that, no matter what game is played on it, will provide the gamer with an incredible experience. Out of the 32-inch gaming monitors I have tested, the MSI model is priced at $949, the ASUS model at $1299, and the Alienware AW322QF at $1199.

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The OLED G8 pushes the into the highest end of the available 32-inch OLED gaming monitor options, and honestly out of the listed displays won't provide a gaming experience equal to the difference in price. At 32-inches and these specifications all of the aforementioned monitors would provide an almost identical gaming experience - unless you could test them side-by-side, but even then, the difference would be negligible.

So, where does that leave the OLED G9? If you are after just raw gaming performance for the least amount of money, choose the MSI model, but as I wrote the AW322QF review, some buyers don't mind paying a little bit extra for better aesthetics. The AW322QF and OLED G8 fall into these categories, but given the unfortunate mess that is the OLED G8's OSD options and the ease of the Alienware variants, plus the price of $1199 versus the $1299 with the Samsung OLED G8, I'm going to have to go with the AW322QF.

Ultimately, each of the 32-inch gaming monitors listed above will provide an incredible gaming experience that is indicative of what enthusiast-level gaming looks like. As for the OLED G8, it's unfortunately a little too expensive compared to its competition and suffers from some problems that it's competitiors have ironed out. However, if you don't mind paying a premium for gorgeous aesthetics, and less glare - the OLED G8 is here.