LG 34UC98-W Ultrawide Monitor Review _ 21_9 Epicness

The LG 34UC98 Monitor: A Premium Product with Attention to Detail

If you're looking for a high-end monitor that offers a premium experience, the LG 34UC98 is definitely worth considering. This monitor features two HDMI ports, which are 2.0 and can support 4K at 60 HZ, allowing for seamless playback of high-definition content. Additionally, it has two Thunderbolt ports, which provide fast data transfer speeds. The monitor also includes a 3.5mm audio jack, allowing users to power external speakers or headphones.

The monitor's design is sleek and modern, making it perfect for those who want a professional-grade experience at their desk. The device comes with a wide range of connectivity options, including USB ports (Quick Charge USB 3) and an HDMI cable, which can be used to connect the monitor to a computer. However, it's worth noting that the Thunderbolt cables are not included in the box, so users will need to purchase them separately.

One of the standout features of this monitor is its built-in speakers. While they may not sound like high-end audio equipment, they're capable of producing decent sound for casual use. The two 7-watt speakers provide sufficient sound quality for general office work or web browsing, and are a great option for those who don't need advanced audio capabilities.

LG has also included some innovative software features in the on-screen display (OSD) panel. Screen Split 2.0 is essentially a window manager that allows users to divide their monitor into multiple zones. This feature is particularly useful for those who want to multitask or use multiple applications simultaneously. The software also includes picture and picture modes, which can be used to enhance the viewing experience.

For gamers who have a Fury or Fury X graphics card, this monitor is a dream come true. The FreeSync technology ensures that the monitor remains in sync with the graphics card, providing a seamless gaming experience. The curved design of the monitor also provides an immersive experience for games and movies.

The LG 34UC98 is a great option for those who want to watch movies or TV shows on their computer. The monitor's wide aspect ratio (21:9) makes it ideal for consuming content in this format, with movies like Blade Runner and Star Wars being well-suited for the device. Additionally, the monitor's curved design provides an immersive experience that draws users into the movie.

However, one of the main drawbacks of the LG 34UC98 is its price. At $1,099, it's certainly a premium product that comes with a hefty price tag. While this may be out of reach for some budgets, it's worth noting that the monitor offers many features and capabilities that are not available on lower-priced alternatives.

Another factor to consider when purchasing the LG 34UC98 is its comparison to similar Korean-made monitors found on eBay or other online marketplaces. These devices often offer similar specifications at a significantly lower price point, but may sacrifice some of the premium features and quality that make the LG 34UC98 stand out.

In terms of backlight bleed, the LG 34UC98 offers excellent performance, making it an ideal choice for those who want to watch movies or browse content in low-light environments. However, users can expect a more affordable option with similar specifications but with potential drawbacks in terms of quality and features.

Overall, the LG 34UC98 is a premium product that offers many features and capabilities that make it an excellent choice for professionals and gamers alike. While its price may be out of reach for some budgets, those who are willing to invest in high-quality equipment will find that this monitor provides a truly exceptional experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en21 by9 Ultra wide is a thing of beauty and this LG 34 u98 is another thing of beauty that incorporates that one thing of beauty to become a greater thing of beauty that's beautiful isn't it so this is a curved 34in 21 by9 monitor uh at 3440 by4 1440 so that's kind of like the 4K ultrawide you know thing now a lot of people love 20 by9 we'll talk about that in just a minute first thing I want to do is get through the basics of the specs and then just talk about what we're dealing with here with this monitor first off the panel it's an IPS panel it's completely beautiful it's 8 bit plus 2 bit making it like 1 point something billion colors 1.07 billion colors they call it the 10 bit monitor but it's really 8 bit with um frame rate control or or dithering it's F FRC dithering basically is what it is uh but that allows you to get more colors out of it you've got 5 millisecond gray to gray response time on this the input lag is I I couldn't tell any difference in any of the other monitors I use they do have the gaming modes that um help to reduce the input lag especially for FPS gaming that sort of thing um now this is a 60hz monitor but it has free sync the freyn is a very another one of these weird limited you know implementations I I wish they would do a bigger implementation I'm not sure what it would take as far as the controller goes or what but this one works at 55 uh Hertz all the way up to 75 Hertz that's kind of weird cuz it's 60 HZ monitor well it'll actually overclock the monitor just for free sync yay nice adaptive vsync going on there 55 is a bit high in my opinion for uh free sync especially when you consider that this is 3440 by 1440 that's a lot of pixels and there's not going to be a lot of gpus out there on the market luckily we have an AMD Fury and that one is really doing a good job at most games like 80 to 90% of the games that we've been playing are working just fine uh above 55 FPS hitting that sweet spot and taking advantage of free sync if you're playing some really really demanding games maybe some crisis games Skyrim with a ton of mods you're going to dip below the 55 FPS and it's going to affect you know you you're going to start seeing some screen tearing and and or you have to turn on vsync and get some of those issues um as well so limited implementation of free sync but it's still there but we want a better bigger implementation of freyn before we talk about the uh inputs and all that sort of thing let's talk a little bit about this curve because it's extremely noticeable and it's a very Sleek uh modern looking panel and the curve is going to be a bit weird for some people if you're doing productivity I think that this monitor is really going to be uh something you should look at but you're going to have to get used to the curve there's not really a lot of straight lines and some people use utilize straight lines I like the 21 by9 for audio editing and stuff because you can put a lot of stuff all over the screen and straight lines are important but you do get used to it as it wraps around uh you're going to be doing less of this you just you know cuz the things are in your periphery um and also you have 178 degree viewing angle so the curve does make that a little weird when you're sitting on the side it's mainly made for one person sitting in the front so the whole viewing angle thing with having your friends sit around you is going to be a little different than a regular monitor I mean some people are going to buy this for gaming and I do like it for gaming but not for some necessarily Competitive Gaming where you want like a higher refresh rate just in general but even then for 99% of us who are not Competitive Gaming I even like it for FPS games including games like quake and and uh that sort of thing contrast ratio that's 1,000 to1 uh this has really nice black levels really really nice black levels and the backlight bleed is pretty much non-existent which is another really nice thing that's that's kind of the one thing that you're paying for when you pay the premium you're paying for just attention to detail like that just you know very very low backl bleed if any um and just a nice quality in your uh black some of the best I've seen in an IPS panel speaking of Black Level it also has this thing uh that they've been doing with their LG monitors for a while where when you put it into the gaming modes it will actually adjust the black levels in game to kind of give you an advantage and you can adjust that in the menu uh on screen on screen display you can adjust that to be higher or lower so if you want to really uh kind of It kind of washes out the black levels a little bit but it'll give you an advantage maybe an unfair Advantage uh just in the black levels where it'll bump up just a little bit but it won't kill the rest of the scene like it won't make the rest of the scene look washed out just the black levels uh but that does give you an advantage so you can see things in that are in dark areas all right let's flip it around you're going to notice hey it's white sort of an interesting decision they've gone with there it's you know usually going to be behind you so you won't be looking at it but let's say if you have a setup where it's in the middle of the room it's it's going to look okay the stand on this it's a VISA Mount and it's just a simple quick release I love what they've done with the stand it's a huge upgrade uh we've got tilt you can rise it up and down it's a really really nice stand stand also has a little clip on the back so that you can Rite your cables and U then the the footprint on this is going to be a bit weird cuz it's sort of a a large you know half circle shape keeps it nice and balanced on the desk it was a little it's wobbly if you smack it but don't don't go and smack it so if you really want to maximize um your desk space you're going to need to grab like a monitor arm or something like that it's not that bad at least it's not like a giant piece of plastic you can put stuff around it so that's not a big deal let's look at the ports on the back now if you want to use uh freyn right in the middle there you're going to have to use that display port 1.2 uh a but we have lots of other options here and you know just in case you want to do whatever you want to do we've got a couple of HDMI ports those are 2.0 to allow 4K at 60 HZ we have two Thunderbolt ports that's kind of cool uh we have a 3.5 mm audio jack for you know if you want to power some speakers or not power but if you want to plug up some speakers but it's mainly made for people who want to sit at their desk and plug up their headphones and then you see there we have some USB and these are Quick Charge USB 3 and then it'll you know come with a cord that plugs into your computer as far as cords that it also comes with it comes with an HDMI and a display port cable no uh Thunderbolt cables in the box so if you want to use that you're going to have to pick it up on your own now last I want to mention that this does have speakers and they don't sound bad they're decent completely decent for crappy speakers if that makes any sense we got two 7 watt speakers and um it'll get the job done if you're not gaming and just using this in a an environment where you're doing lots of spreadsheets and that sort of thing LG has also included some interesting software in their onscreen display this is screen split 2.0 it's essentially a window manager for your monitor but instead of using software it just does it right here in the on-screen display you can set up several different screen zones it's got uh you know picture and picture if you wanted to throw that in there you can do that and you can pick your picture and picture mode there on the bottom as you can see as far as separating the different screens you can you know have some content on one side and just basically split up where your different windows are going to go and this going be nice since it's a a wide monitor with a lot of pixels you can do a lot on it at one time and possibly you know use one monitor where you would normally use two or three all right so let's talk about what I think this monitor is going to be best for uh free sync gaming if you have a fury or a fury X is beautiful on this monitor uh one of the best that I've seen for that it just looks awesome and the curve actually is okay for games you know you can see a little extra on the sides which is nice having the nice 21 by9 it's going to be great for a consuming 21 by9 content like Blade Runner and the Star Wars movie and just a lot of movies that are out today are 21 by9 watch Demitri's video and he said maybe he would shoot in 21 by9 like I maybe we could shoot in 21 by9 and kind of get a thing going I don't know if people out there in the uh the world want that now let's address uh the price it is expensive you're getting you know attention to detail you're getting free sync but let's be honest we've got some of these uh Korean generic sort of monitors coming out you'll see them on eBay and that sort of thing uh we're going to be doing some reviews on those as well but we got some of those coming out they're going to be using the same panel and they'll be substantially lower cost with that I can expect generally more backlight bleed you're not going to have the same quality controller uh you're not going to have all the options with input for sure you're probably not going to have uh usb chargers depending on the the cost of the implementation but this one is you know all the little details you're not going to have a stand like this so you're paying extra but you're getting a more premium product sort of like when you go to buy a car you can get just the the base model with you know hey it's got an engine and it goes and it's got seats that are not powered but if you want like the powered seats and the you know the the heated steering wheel and all that kind of stuff this is that monitor uh you know the better black backlight bleed for that that'll be really good if you're watching a a dark movie or something like that I do recommend this monitor to certain people out there and if you love big wide curved monitors this is about as good as it gets price point might keep some of you guys out and if you don't have a fury or a fury X it's not going to be the perfect experience for gaming still a good one but not the perfect experience for gaming so that's what I think about the LG 34 U c98 let me know what you guys think in the comments or else I'll come to your house and U eat all your soup hone you like that see you guys in the comments on the website21 by9 Ultra wide is a thing of beauty and this LG 34 u98 is another thing of beauty that incorporates that one thing of beauty to become a greater thing of beauty that's beautiful isn't it so this is a curved 34in 21 by9 monitor uh at 3440 by4 1440 so that's kind of like the 4K ultrawide you know thing now a lot of people love 20 by9 we'll talk about that in just a minute first thing I want to do is get through the basics of the specs and then just talk about what we're dealing with here with this monitor first off the panel it's an IPS panel it's completely beautiful it's 8 bit plus 2 bit making it like 1 point something billion colors 1.07 billion colors they call it the 10 bit monitor but it's really 8 bit with um frame rate control or or dithering it's F FRC dithering basically is what it is uh but that allows you to get more colors out of it you've got 5 millisecond gray to gray response time on this the input lag is I I couldn't tell any difference in any of the other monitors I use they do have the gaming modes that um help to reduce the input lag especially for FPS gaming that sort of thing um now this is a 60hz monitor but it has free sync the freyn is a very another one of these weird limited you know implementations I I wish they would do a bigger implementation I'm not sure what it would take as far as the controller goes or what but this one works at 55 uh Hertz all the way up to 75 Hertz that's kind of weird cuz it's 60 HZ monitor well it'll actually overclock the monitor just for free sync yay nice adaptive vsync going on there 55 is a bit high in my opinion for uh free sync especially when you consider that this is 3440 by 1440 that's a lot of pixels and there's not going to be a lot of gpus out there on the market luckily we have an AMD Fury and that one is really doing a good job at most games like 80 to 90% of the games that we've been playing are working just fine uh above 55 FPS hitting that sweet spot and taking advantage of free sync if you're playing some really really demanding games maybe some crisis games Skyrim with a ton of mods you're going to dip below the 55 FPS and it's going to affect you know you you're going to start seeing some screen tearing and and or you have to turn on vsync and get some of those issues um as well so limited implementation of free sync but it's still there but we want a better bigger implementation of freyn before we talk about the uh inputs and all that sort of thing let's talk a little bit about this curve because it's extremely noticeable and it's a very Sleek uh modern looking panel and the curve is going to be a bit weird for some people if you're doing productivity I think that this monitor is really going to be uh something you should look at but you're going to have to get used to the curve there's not really a lot of straight lines and some people use utilize straight lines I like the 21 by9 for audio editing and stuff because you can put a lot of stuff all over the screen and straight lines are important but you do get used to it as it wraps around uh you're going to be doing less of this you just you know cuz the things are in your periphery um and also you have 178 degree viewing angle so the curve does make that a little weird when you're sitting on the side it's mainly made for one person sitting in the front so the whole viewing angle thing with having your friends sit around you is going to be a little different than a regular monitor I mean some people are going to buy this for gaming and I do like it for gaming but not for some necessarily Competitive Gaming where you want like a higher refresh rate just in general but even then for 99% of us who are not Competitive Gaming I even like it for FPS games including games like quake and and uh that sort of thing contrast ratio that's 1,000 to1 uh this has really nice black levels really really nice black levels and the backlight bleed is pretty much non-existent which is another really nice thing that's that's kind of the one thing that you're paying for when you pay the premium you're paying for just attention to detail like that just you know very very low backl bleed if any um and just a nice quality in your uh black some of the best I've seen in an IPS panel speaking of Black Level it also has this thing uh that they've been doing with their LG monitors for a while where when you put it into the gaming modes it will actually adjust the black levels in game to kind of give you an advantage and you can adjust that in the menu uh on screen on screen display you can adjust that to be higher or lower so if you want to really uh kind of It kind of washes out the black levels a little bit but it'll give you an advantage maybe an unfair Advantage uh just in the black levels where it'll bump up just a little bit but it won't kill the rest of the scene like it won't make the rest of the scene look washed out just the black levels uh but that does give you an advantage so you can see things in that are in dark areas all right let's flip it around you're going to notice hey it's white sort of an interesting decision they've gone with there it's you know usually going to be behind you so you won't be looking at it but let's say if you have a setup where it's in the middle of the room it's it's going to look okay the stand on this it's a VISA Mount and it's just a simple quick release I love what they've done with the stand it's a huge upgrade uh we've got tilt you can rise it up and down it's a really really nice stand stand also has a little clip on the back so that you can Rite your cables and U then the the footprint on this is going to be a bit weird cuz it's sort of a a large you know half circle shape keeps it nice and balanced on the desk it was a little it's wobbly if you smack it but don't don't go and smack it so if you really want to maximize um your desk space you're going to need to grab like a monitor arm or something like that it's not that bad at least it's not like a giant piece of plastic you can put stuff around it so that's not a big deal let's look at the ports on the back now if you want to use uh freyn right in the middle there you're going to have to use that display port 1.2 uh a but we have lots of other options here and you know just in case you want to do whatever you want to do we've got a couple of HDMI ports those are 2.0 to allow 4K at 60 HZ we have two Thunderbolt ports that's kind of cool uh we have a 3.5 mm audio jack for you know if you want to power some speakers or not power but if you want to plug up some speakers but it's mainly made for people who want to sit at their desk and plug up their headphones and then you see there we have some USB and these are Quick Charge USB 3 and then it'll you know come with a cord that plugs into your computer as far as cords that it also comes with it comes with an HDMI and a display port cable no uh Thunderbolt cables in the box so if you want to use that you're going to have to pick it up on your own now last I want to mention that this does have speakers and they don't sound bad they're decent completely decent for crappy speakers if that makes any sense we got two 7 watt speakers and um it'll get the job done if you're not gaming and just using this in a an environment where you're doing lots of spreadsheets and that sort of thing LG has also included some interesting software in their onscreen display this is screen split 2.0 it's essentially a window manager for your monitor but instead of using software it just does it right here in the on-screen display you can set up several different screen zones it's got uh you know picture and picture if you wanted to throw that in there you can do that and you can pick your picture and picture mode there on the bottom as you can see as far as separating the different screens you can you know have some content on one side and just basically split up where your different windows are going to go and this going be nice since it's a a wide monitor with a lot of pixels you can do a lot on it at one time and possibly you know use one monitor where you would normally use two or three all right so let's talk about what I think this monitor is going to be best for uh free sync gaming if you have a fury or a fury X is beautiful on this monitor uh one of the best that I've seen for that it just looks awesome and the curve actually is okay for games you know you can see a little extra on the sides which is nice having the nice 21 by9 it's going to be great for a consuming 21 by9 content like Blade Runner and the Star Wars movie and just a lot of movies that are out today are 21 by9 watch Demitri's video and he said maybe he would shoot in 21 by9 like I maybe we could shoot in 21 by9 and kind of get a thing going I don't know if people out there in the uh the world want that now let's address uh the price it is expensive you're getting you know attention to detail you're getting free sync but let's be honest we've got some of these uh Korean generic sort of monitors coming out you'll see them on eBay and that sort of thing uh we're going to be doing some reviews on those as well but we got some of those coming out they're going to be using the same panel and they'll be substantially lower cost with that I can expect generally more backlight bleed you're not going to have the same quality controller uh you're not going to have all the options with input for sure you're probably not going to have uh usb chargers depending on the the cost of the implementation but this one is you know all the little details you're not going to have a stand like this so you're paying extra but you're getting a more premium product sort of like when you go to buy a car you can get just the the base model with you know hey it's got an engine and it goes and it's got seats that are not powered but if you want like the powered seats and the you know the the heated steering wheel and all that kind of stuff this is that monitor uh you know the better black backlight bleed for that that'll be really good if you're watching a a dark movie or something like that I do recommend this monitor to certain people out there and if you love big wide curved monitors this is about as good as it gets price point might keep some of you guys out and if you don't have a fury or a fury X it's not going to be the perfect experience for gaming still a good one but not the perfect experience for gaming so that's what I think about the LG 34 U c98 let me know what you guys think in the comments or else I'll come to your house and U eat all your soup hone you like that see you guys in the comments on the website\n"