My fears were overblown...
Update: It’s been about two months since I started using this, zero issues, still working like a champ, will try to update periodically.

I was initially very hesitant on buying this, my prior monitor was a Sceptre 32″ curved gaming monitor (C326B-185RD), the Sceptre is a VA panel monitor, 1920×1080 with no HDR support.

I was hesitant about buying this one because it has an IPS panel, if you Google it you’ll find lots of people saying IPS panels have two problems compared to VA panels:
1. “IPS glow”
2. Blacks would appear gray.

These issues caused some hesitation, I considered going with VA again but ended up going with this instead since I’ve never tried IPS for a gaming monitor. It turned out those fears were overblown, there is a TINY amount of IPS glow but it’s at the four corners and it appears to be a viewing angle artifact, because I can make the glow move by moving my head around. It’s definitely not a physical defect like “light bleeding” where the backlight is separating from the panel or something, it’s only noticeable on a completely black screen (such as a loading screen) and even then it’s barely noticeable, it looks like a very slight hue on the very tips of the four corners. The vast majority of the time you won’t be in a situation to even be able to notice it, even the darkest areas in actual gameplay such as caves, or dark settings in movies, it’s completely unnoticeable, and the blacks do appear as deep blacks, not grays.

I attached pictures I took of the Sceptre and Samsung side-by-side with the same images shown on each monitor: a black screen and SMPTE color bars, you be the judge. Note that I turned exposure down when taking these pictures, since these were taken in a room with all lights off, I took them in a room with all lights off to demonstrate how dark the blacks are and to highlight any glow. You can clearly see that the Sceptre’s black screen looks almost light gray with a tremendous amount of glow around the edges, the colors on the Sceptre wash out as a result, the Sceptre is a VA panel that’s supposed to be better at blacks than IPS panels are, yet it’s far worse, the Samsung wins in both colors, blacks, and lesser glow.

My Samsung arrived with no defects and no dead pixels. I test that by using an all white screen and an all black screen for dead and live pixels respectively, the monitor has a self-diagnosis feature in the menu that shows you something similar to SMPTE color bars as well.

Compared to the Sceptre:
This has the same screen size as the Sceptre but a much higher resolution so the pixel density is much higher, making things look less grainy than the Sceptre, very crisp.
The IPS panel doesn’t have noticeable ghosting or black smearing compared to the Sceptre’s VA panel.
The colors on the IPS panel are extremely vivid compared to Sceptre’s VA panel. The color difference is startling, it breathes new life into even old games that appear washed out or dull in comparison.
It has HDR10 support, the Sceptre is SDR only. HDR makes a huge difference, the layman’s explanation for HDR is that things which are supposed to be bright (like sunlight or sunlit areas in games) become physically brighter by increasing the brightness/nits for the actual pixels themselves, which makes the game world pop. On monitors without HDR (SDR), all of the pixels are uniformly lit to the same brightness. I never thought I would need it but now I can’t do without it.
I use both Windows 11 and MacOS, the Sceptre had weird issues with MacOS on Apple Silicon, especially in clamshell mode where it would not wake MacOS from sleep or be recognized, this has none of those issues, works perfectly with MacOS on Apple Silicon via HDMI connected to a Belkin Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Has much more configurability and robust settings than the Sceptre has.

What don’t I like about it?
Only having two inputs: it should have one DisplayPort and two HDMI at a minimum, instead it only has one of each which is a bit paltry and stingy.
Putting the menu joystick on the back of the monitor, you have to fumble blindly for it.
There’s a feature to draw a fixed crosshair at the center of the screen, kind of “cheating” for gaming. While nice this feature was not implemented well, in that once you activate it it’s on all the time, even when you’re not playing a game, you’re browsing the web with a crosshair at the center. If you want this eye sore out of the way you have to go back to the menu, navigate through two or so levels to turn it off and repeat when you want to turn it on. The menu joystick shows the same source menu if you toggle it left or right, instead of making both left and right do the same thing they couldn’t reserve one of those for a quick on/off for the crosshair? I know you can probably toggle the virtual crosshair with Samsung’s software but I don’t really want to install that and have it running just for that.

If you do get it and you have Windows 11, after you have your new monitor in place and configured properly (the color “mode”), make sure you go to the HDR settings and click the link for the calibration tool to download it through Microsoft Store and use that to make an accurate color profile.

Overall very satisfied I chose this monitor and went through with it, a solid 9/10.