Immersion is a big thing when it comes to gaming. VR has probably done this the best so far, as it puts you right in the middle of the action. But, games are limited right now. The Samsung CRG9 gaming monitor is the closest thing to that, putting as wide a screen in front of your eyes, so even your peripheral vision is covered by game.

I’ve had this monitor on my desk at time of writing this first paragraph not even an hour, and I’m already badly wanting one. Shame they cost upwards of £1000 as of writing this review. Samsung provided our test unit, so shout out to them.

Design

The Samsung CRG9 gaming monitor is huge. And that isn’t an understatement. I currently run my main gaming setup on the Youtuber’s choice of desk, the IKEA Linnmon wooden top with two Alex drawers. I have my desktop angled on the left hand side, and the monitor barely fit. You’re going to need a substantial amount of space to get this up and running nicely.

The monitor measures at around 1.2 meters wide, and that’s nearly as tall as me which is mental. Samsung are calling the ratio 32:9, which is pretty much equivalent to two standard widescreen monitors on your desk, but without the middle bezels.

But the Samsung CRG9 montior can also be considered a thing of beauty. A heavy thing of beauty. This thing weighs a tonne. I also didn’t want to keep it on my Linnmon desk for too long for fear of it bowing under the weight.

Samsung CRG9 Gaming Monitor

The four bezels are pretty skinny, with the left, right and top in the usual black, and the bottom in a more gunmetal type grey. It looks very modern and will suit a minimalist desk.

On the back are two DisplayPort 1.4s, one HDMI 2.0 and a flurry of USB 3.0 inputs. All these can be covered with an included plastic shroud, which will channel the cables out the back of a single hole. What’s disappointing though is that there is no cable routing options on the stand.

What more, there is a picture-in-picture feature for multiple inputs. For example, you can have your PS4 Pro or Xbox One X using HDMI on one half of the monitor, and a guide from your desktop on the other using DisplayPort. Very intuitive and makes for a wonderful seamless setup.

Performance

What more is there to say except… this monitor absolutely smashes it in terms of performance? It’s true. Sure, this monitor will set you back upwards of £1000, but my goodness if the image you can expect is anything less than spectacular.

The Samsung CRG9 houses one of their signature QLED panels, and delivers a peak brightness of 1,000 nits. It’s HDR1000 compatible and it really shows.

I don’t have much in terms of ultra-wide games, but the two I did play were Counter Strike: Global Offensive, which looked absolutely brilliant and extremely immersive with the added ratio on the monitor, and Planet Zoo, where ALL the colours absolutely popped off the screen, and gave me so much real estate for my menus.

Although this isn’t really an eSports monitor, although it has a 120Hz refresh rate, the G2G response time sits at closer to 4ms. There are better options on the market if you’re wanting a faster monitor. For you casuals though, there’s not really anything better, or anything that’ll give you a more immersive experience in your games.

The monitor can hit up to 125% of the sRGB spectrum which is the reason these colours are popping so much and are looking super vibrant, and even media consumption through the likes of Netflix looked absolutely glorious. Be warned though, if you’re watching standard 16:9 media, or playing games that don’t support ultra-wide viewing, then you’re stuck with black bars on either side of the image.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about media production, as I use Premiere Pro a lot here to make our YouTube videos. Having SO MUCH real estate on one screen was a real benefit, as my timeline was spread right across the bottom of the monitor, and there was enough space to keep even the most uncommon of panels open on my window. It was a truly amazing experience.

To let you know, I am running an Intel i7-9700 procesor with 32GB RAM and a GTX1070TI. Sure it’s not the most powerful rig on the market, especially when it comes to graphical performance, but I never saw any real issues with my tests. Not that I crunched the graphics inside of games to Ultra anyway, but at the 5120×1440 resolution, I managed to run games well.

Verdict

I mean, what else can I say? The Samsung CRG9 gaming monitor is really a sight to behold. We get to test some real quirky stuff here sometimes at TechNuovo, but I wasn’t expecting anything like this. Games feel super immersive and everything I needed for my media production could be right in front of my eyes. The colours are absolutely superb too which is a massive bonus.

I would like this monitor to come down in price though, that’s probably my biggest complaint. It’s incredibly expensive, but if you’re got the money to spend, the space on your desk, and the hardware to boot, then you’d be a fool not to buy one of these.