Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 Review: God Help Me, I’m A Curved Monitor Guy Now

And now, a scattered, happy review of a device that left me feeling exactly that way.

The Samsung Odyssey Neo turned me into a curved monitor guy.

I’ve spent years resisting the allure of the curved monitor. It always seemed like an unnecessary extravagance. When I was growing up and building my first PCs, the monitor always represented a part of the build you could save a buck on. Not so in 2022 — choosing the right monitor can make or break your experience. They must be a match for your graphics card, able to support it at its upper limits and optimise its output.

The Odyssey Neo does this ably, pumping out 4K HDR vision on a lavish 32″ panel. This means that the onus is on you, in a sense, to give the Odyssey Neo what it needs. The bigger the graphics card you can throw at it, the more richly the monitor will reward you. Upper-tier graphics cards in Nvidia’s RTX 30-series or AMD’s upper-echelon RX 6000 series find a natural home here. Let’s quickly hit the spec sheet so you get an idea of its output:

• 4K resolution
• HDR2000 colour
• 240Hz Refresh rate
• 1ms response time
• 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio
• 350 cd/㎡ brightness (typical)
• 32″ panel
• 1000R curvature
• Matte display
• Quantum Matrix tech
• Nvidia G-Sync compatible
• AMD FreeSynch Premium Pro compatible

Even on spec, we have a monitor that goes above and beyond to please the graphics snobs.

The allure of the curved monitor is that it plays with your peripheral vision, creating a sensation of scale unavailable on a standard flat panel. It’s like an ultrawide for people who aren’t quite ready to take that leap yet or perhaps don’t have the desk space. You can even set your games to 21:9 to have it function as an ultrawide without actually having one — the Odyssey Neo will put widescreen black lines above and below the pic to compensate. If you can withstand that as a trade-off (there will be those of you who can’t, and fair enough), you can open up a little extra visual real estate for yourself.

It works for me. From the moment I fired it up, I felt like the screen was enveloping me, pulling me into whatever game I had on in the moment. Regular readers will know I play a lot of Sea of Thieves. So playing SoT on this monitor was very special — an already beautiful game by any standard, Sea of Thieves on a curved screen this grand reduced my overall grip on reality to a solid 5 or 6 per cent. A ringing endorsement, I think you’ll agree. It sent me on a tear, reinstalling old favourites to see how they looked and felt. Flight Simulator? Tremendous. Forza Horizon 5? Breathtaking. PowerWash Simulator? Grubbier and more granular than ever.

That said, the Odyssey Neo is happy to throw its weight around too. The desktop footprint it consumes compared to a flat panel is significant, so make sure you have plenty of space available. You can get it off the desk and onto an arm, but you should ensure it’s rated for extra weight as the Odyssey Neo is hefty.

But when the image is this nice, the space trade-off might be worth it. It certainly was for me. Having been converted to the curved monitor life, it was tough to give the damned thing back at the end of our review period.

Monitors like the Odyssey Neo, out of my normal price range (this particular unit currently retails for just shy of $2000 Australian dollarydoos), are loaned to outlets like ours for review content. This is one of those rare instances where I’m genuinely sad to see a review unit head home. You know you’ve had something special in your home when you see the courier van pull up to collect the package and feel a pang in your heart telling you to wrench it from their hands before they can remove it from your life forever.

Reunite us, Samsung. I need this. You can’t turn me into a curved monitor guy and then leave me hanging like this. I would replace my TV with this thing— an astonishingly great monitor with a sky-high price tag to match.

My attention now turns to Samsung’s Odyssey Ark television, a review for which we will have coming in the next few weeks. If Samsung can replicate its successes with the Odyssey Neo in a television designed explicitly for gaming, it will be entirely over for me. My conversion to curved panel life will be complete.

You can find out more about the Odyssey Neo G8 32″ Curved Gaming Monitor at the official Samsung website.

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