What They Say
The Dell/Alienware 34″ QD-OLED AW3423DW monitor has been getting out and been tested. We spotted a couple of recent reviews.
Toms Hardware liked the monitor although it found it had to ‘measure a tiny window’ to see the rated peak output of 1,000 cd/m² in HDR mode. It liked the wide gamut at 108% of DCI-P3 and it liked the factory calibration. Motion in gaming is ‘super-smooth and fluid’.
Overall the reviewer said that the monitor’s “execution is nothing short of revolutionary”.
Separately, image quality maven, Vincent Teoh looked at it and he found that the colour fringing issue identified by C’T magazine was not obvious to him when he adjusted the scaling and ClearType. (I discussed this with C’T and the magazine told me that they played with it and didn’t find a big difference – that’s not surprising as it would not have been optimised for the delta pixel configuration).
He doesn’t like the AR treatment of the monitor and said it is ‘less than ideal in a bright room’. Reflections were well muted but ambient light has a big effect on grey levels (I’m not convinced that’s the AR coating – editor).
Teoh doesn’t like the monitor for professional content creation because of inaccuracies in grey scale in SDR (also seen by Toms). He also doesn’t like the calibration controls in the OSD which are ‘all over the place’.
However, overall, he likes the new monitor and plans to review it side by side with a WOLED monitor and I’ll keep watching.
What We Think
The reviewer at Tom’s surprised me by saying that his measured response time was faster (at 5ms) than the Aorus 48″ OLED based on a WOLED panel and rated at 8ms. Although he suggests that QD-OLED is ‘obviously quicker’ than WOLED, my suspicion is that this is in the processing of the monitor, rather than in the materials. If any readers know otherwise, I’d be happy to be educated!
To be fair to Dell, if the firm had been aiming the new monitor at content creators, I doubt it would have sold it under its Alienware brand.
The enhanced grey levels in brighter ambient is an interesting point. Of course, the filters in LG’s WOLED will act like the filters that Samsung is using in its polariser-free OLEDs. The QD-OLED was reported by DSCC to also have a colour filter, needed to stop or reduce the potential of excitation of the QDs by ambient light. I wonder if enhanced grey levels in QD-OLED in brighter ambient will be a challenge for the technology? (BR)
