The Samsung Odyssey G7 gaming monitor is a pretty unique entry into the gaming market. Sure Samsung has had monitors in the past, and yes, their monitors have been focussed somewhat at gaming. But With the Odyssey G7, gaming is part of its core. Its hugely impressive spec makes the slightly more expensive price tag easier to swallow, and it’s like Samsung have literally turned the heat right up to 11 with this one, to really show off what they can do with gaming panels.
The Samsung Odyssey G7 gaming monitor is extremely smart looking, with a matte black finish, although looking at it, it’s not as deep a black as you would expect from black. It’s more space grey, but we won’t get caught up on the colour when this impressive monitor has so much more to give. The top and side bezels are extremely skinny too, which ensures users look at as much screen real estate as possible, and it’s smart. The bottom bezel, which holds the joystick menu controller and probably all the tech is a little fatter coming in at around an inch at its fattest, but it doesn’t remove from how nice this monitor looks. The monitor is physically chunky too, and this is down to the fact that Samsung has implemented their QLED technology here and the fact it has local dimming too, which means there are small LEDs scattered across the rear of the monitor rather than around the edges.
The stand comprises two plastic feet measuring at around 13-inches long which take up a decent amount of real estate on a desk. Not sure if this is hugely necessary though. The screen for a 27″ monitor is pretty heavy so it might need some extra bracing towards the front. Unfortunately, there’s not enough room to put a full-sized keyboard, like my Roccat Vulkan underneath either. If you are lucky enough to be using something like a Ducky, then you could, as these are very skinny. The arm section of the stand comes in two pieces; the main metal pole section and a plastic cover. This has been designed to be a neat and tidy cable run, so your cables are away from view on your desk. However, it’s very skinny inside, so make sure your HDMI or DisplayPort cables are thin. There is a headphone peg on the rear of the monitor too for some neat storage if needed. It’s pretty flimsy though, so be careful with it.
The stand is also capable of tilt, pan and even rotate too so you can have the Samsung G7 Odyssey in a vertical position. Not sure if you would want a monitor of this calibre positioned vertically, but if you’re someone who is lucky enough to have two of them on your desk, and need something for your long Facebook feed, then it’s capable. It feels more like Samsung are trying to tick boxes with this one, and really aiming the G7 at all types of gamers.
Also round the stand is some LED detailing, which really pulls the monitor together, plus it’s also bright enough to shine off a wall that you have your monitor against. It doesn’t react to what’s being displayed on your monitor, like it does with the Philips Ambilight type technology, but it does give a nice edge glow depending on how close the monitor is to the wall. There are five different colour modes in total including a breathing effect, RGB, and a flash, but by far the best is a static light in a nice ice blue. But, for you gamers out there, RGB breathes through all the colours slowly.
Underneath the monitor, you can find one HDMI 2.0 input (no HDMI 2.1 which is a shame here on such a high-end panel), two DisplayPort 1.4 ports, a headphone jack, power input and two USB inputs which are fed through a USB passthrough cable. So, that’s a total of eight cables coming from the back of this monitor, and there’s no way they’re all fitting into the cable run down the back of the monitor. So if you wanted to keep everything neat and tidy, you’ve got to decide which cables are essential to you. Most people I think will have a DisplayPort and HDMI cable for a PC and console so it won’t be too much of an issue, but now you know.
The panel itself has a 1000R curve, so it’s still wide and curvy enough to offer a decent level of immersion. However, it’s not classed as an ultrawide monitor, like the Samsung Odyssey G9 is, and the G7 comes in at as 16:9 aspect ratio. The other surprising feature of the Samsung G7, is the fact the monitor is only 2,560 x 1,440p. I would have expected Samsung to be pumping out 4K monitors, seeing as their TVs are storming ahead of the pack with 8K resolutions.
As usual, we run the monitors we get in for review through our Datacolor SpyderX, and yes although this isn’t the most scientific way of doing things, it does give us some idea on the actual performance of the monitor. So, with that said the colour gamut test on the Samsung G7 Odyssey came back with some nice scores, although fared a little low on the AdobeRGB and NTSC colour gamuts, the sRGB came in nice and strong at 100%.
At 100% brightness, the contrast came in at 2000:1, which is a little lower than the perceived 2500:1 Samsung are claiming, but not so far off the bat like some gaming monitors fall under for advertising purposes. There is a mode attached to the monitor though, and that’s called Dynamic Brightness. Switch this off, and the contrast ratio does drop, and so does the brightness. In fact, I kept it enabled throughout the whole time testing, as after all, I am a bit of a sucker for bright vivid images, and that’s definitely what you get with the Samsung Odyssey G7 gaming monitor.
Screen colour uniformity was also pretty decent, although you can see from our testing that we measured quite a large hotspot in the middle of the screen, and this affected the entire centre of the screeen compared to the top and bottom.
The biggest issue during our testing is with the colour accuracy of the monitor. As you know, a lower score or even a score closer to 1.0 is better for a more accurate colour experience, so, with our findings initially, I wasn’t happy. The Delta-E score was pretty far off the mark, as you can see from below with an average of 3.89 although according to sources online, this is an acceptable range for gaming. The second time we tested, was after a colour calibration process, to see if we could get that Delta-E score down as far as possible, and it helped… somewhat. It again gave us a pretty high Delta-E average was quite surprising with an average of 2.41. However, take these results with a pinch of salt. We’ve not got the most cutting edge tech to test our monitors here at TechNuovo, purely because that type of equipment is super expensive to get hold of. But saying this, it didn’t hinder from the excellent gaming performance that this monitor puts out. And if you’re going to be playing games primarily using this monitor, you’re definitely not going to be disappointed. I certainly wasn’t.
Okay, so technicalities out the way, let’s get down to brass tax, and that’s gaming performance. And I must say what an absolute stellar gaming solution that Samsung has on offer. The Samsung Odyssey G7 has a VA panel, that utilises a 240Hz refresh rate, Nvidia G-SYNC and AMD Freesync compatible and even a 1ms grey-to-grey response time. It’s an unbelievable feature set and definitely warrants the expensive price point. It’s like future-proofing your monitor early, ready for when the 30-series graphics cards become readily available. I suppose the let down in this department is the 2560x1440p resolution, and not the full 4K you would have probably expected.
The screen is also HDR600 certified too, and because of the Samsung QLED backlight, it means that you get some blinding contrasts between the dark and light areas of a scene and for gaming, it’s decent. We ran a few tests using a Reddit forum to find the best HDR implementations in gaming, and of course, Shadow of the Tomb Raider showed up. And the dynamic range achieved in this game was excellent. We also ran a few missions in Star Wars Battlefront II, and I know, it’s not exactly a cutting edge game, but it still looks great none the less, and HDR again really helped with details in both bright and dark areas. It was never offputting either, you know when the light areas produce huge halo effects around objects. It was well controlled, and definitely the best implementation of HDR we’ve seen so far in a gaming monitor for sure.
I was overly impressed with the response time and refresh rate of the monitor, removing as much ghosting and trailing as possible, and even in faster games like Black Ops Cold War, I was zipping around the map and extremely happy with the results. It’s definitely worth noting that this monitor can easily outdo some of the faster IPS panels on the market, and definitely give TN technology – which you know are usually known for their response times – a run for its money. Viewing angles are also superb too, so if you’ve got some couch co-op going on and you’ve got multiple people sitting around the monitor, you’re not going to feel disappointed here if you’re the one sitting off to the side.
There’s no hiding the fact that Samsung has really knocked the G7 Odyssey out of the park. Saying this, our testing did pull up some inconsistencies, but none that I would really use to turn you away from this monitor. It’s an excellent piece of kit. Do bear in mind that this is the 27″ version we are reviewing here, and we’ve not had much hands-on time with the 32″ version outside of a showroom floor, to take it and leave it as you will, especially with our data testing. In terms of gaming performance, what else can I say other than absolutely blinding performance? If you’re a hardcore gamer and strive for the best performance you can get with no regards for budgets… this is the one to get. There’s only one model that supersedes this, and that’s the G9 Odyssey, which is an absolute beast of an ultrawide monitor, and one I hope we can get our hands on one day. But for now… I’m more than content gaming on this. The Samsung G7 Odyssey 27″ will set you back around £549 from retailers online, which okay is a little pricey for a monitor these days… but man is it superb. Check it out for yourself on the Samsung website.
