Superb OLED Visuals. Bargain Price.
Every now and then I like to treat myself. I’m not a big spender but I do know what I like. I’ve been an OLED display fan for as long as I remember and my first OLED was a tablet, another Samsung product. To my eye , I’ve yet to see another display type that offers the same levels of color fidelity, black levels and sharpness.

I’m not a gamer so things like super-fast refresh rates are somewhat moot to me but I do work on a computer a lot and consume a lot of media in the form of movies and TV. My main display is an LG OLED but in my bedroom system (which also includes 5.1 audio) I was suffering with a 27″ LCD TV doubling as a monitor. That was OK for office work and browsing but its gray like black levels were a distraction when watching content with the lights off.

The prices of OLED monitors were putting me off but when this model dropped under four hundred bucks I decided to go for it. I’m glad I did. I’m unfortunately not able to go with a larger size in the space I have available, otherwise I would probably have gone for a dual purpose 42″ or 48″ TV/OLED monitor a while back. This 27′ size is, however perfect for my current needs.

It is an entry level model. The body is plastic, it has limited inputs: one HDMI and one Display Port. It does have a USB-A socket but that’s for service only; it won’t accept media files for display. The resolution is 1440p. I was a bit concerned at the lack of 4K but that proved not to be a problem. There are no speakers but you can pass-through audio via a 3.5 mm socket for headphones or computer speaker hookup.

I didn’t use the included stand, instead choosing to mount the screen on a cantilever arm for ease and flexibility.

When I first turned on the TV, connected to my computer over Display Port, the colors seemed overbright (this is common) and the color balance was way off. This was quickly cured by entering the “original” mode and matching the visuals with my LG laptop which this works in tandem with when I’m computing.

For AV consumption, I’m feeding the HDMI input with sources from a Roku Express 4K streamer and an Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray player. At first I thought the visuals were a bit “meh!” but then I realized that my surround receiver, which these devices were routed via, topped out at 1080p resolution. When I connected the monitor directly to the Roku via HDMI, the Roku was fooled into thinking the Samsung was a 4K device and the monitor down-rezzed the signal to 1440p without issue. I have to say, the difference between 1080p upscaled and 4K downscaled was like night and day. Fed with a decent 4K HDR signal, I was hard pressed to tell any difference in quality between what I was seeing on this monitor and the picture on my much larger 4K LG OLED TV in the living room. The picture was superb. Of course that meant I had to ditch my older Marantz receiver and replace it with a more recent version with 4K capability in order to get the best out of the screen. The newer Marantz is also able to upscale my Blu-Ray discs from the OPPO and they look great on this device.

Now I couldn’t be happier. I can watch movies and TV in bed in the highest quality imaginable. Everything is super-sharp. Colors are still maybe a little overblown (especially in the blue thru’ teal area) but it’s not a dealbreaker. Skin tones, light reflection, space scenes; everything looks mind blowing.

The menu system is quite intuitive once you get used to it and I’m now capable of navigating around quite freely. That said, I have downloaded Samsung Display Manager to my computer to perform the most common tasks like input switching without using the main power/menu input button. I’ve heard this can be quite fragile and break easily and is often refused warranty coverage. Frankly, I’ll do anything to keep this going as long as possible. It’s perfect for my needs. Whether browsing web pages, typing documents, watching YouTube videos or consuming content from other devices, everything looks stunning on this. HDR works great despite a relatively low 200 nits average peak brightness level and black levels and shadow detail in the darkest areas are sublime.

This might not be the absolute best choice in OLED monitors (especially for avid gamers) but for most people, I don’t think they’d be missing the kind of specs that can cost hundreds of dollars more. This is a fine product at a very tempting price.