Alienware AW3423DW review: Quantum dot OLED renders rival monitors obsolete

Price When Reviewed

$1,300

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It’s uncommon to assessment a monitor with the potential to revolutionize the trade, however the Alienware AW3423DW may do precisely that. It packs a cutting-edge OLED panel with Quantum Dot know-how at a value surprisingly aggressive with high-end IPS ultrawide screens.

Does this new Alienware make its friends out of date? When it involves 34-inch ultrawide screens, sure—although this luxury show isn’t fairly good. Still, players will wish to snatch the AW3423DW up with out hesitation.

Alienware AW3423DW specs and options

QD-OLED panel apart, the Alienware AW3423DW’s specs are typical for an ultrawide gaming monitor. It packs a 34-inch display with a 21:9 side ratio and a decision of 3,440 x 1,440. The monitor additionally claims 99.3% protection of the DCI-P3 gamut which, although excessive, will be matched by some premium IPS panels.

• Display dimension: 34-inch
• Native decision: 3,440 x 1,440
• Panel kind: QD-OLED
• Refresh fee: 175Hz
• Adaptive Sync: Nvidia G-Sync Ultimate
• Ports: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x USB Type-B (upstream), 1x audio-out, 1x headphone out
• Stand adjustment: 110mm peak, 40 levels swivel, 25 levels tilt
• VESA mount: Yes, 100mm x 100mm
• Speakers: Included
• Price: $1,299 MSRP

The key distinction will be discovered within the monitor’s VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black certification. This guarantees a deep, inky black degree alongside an affordable degree of HDR brightness. Alienware’s AW3423DW is the primary gaming monitor to attain this certification.

Alienware AW3423DW design: Stunning, with one small drawback

Alienware unified its product in 2019 with a brand new design language, Legend, that felt straight out of a contemporary sci-fi movie. It was a hit. Alienware’s merchandise are among the many most engaging and durable obtainable. Samsung’s screens are an in depth second however lack the construct high quality to again up their look.

The AW3423DW makes use of OLED to its benefit. A thick, cumbersome rear panel shortly tapers to skinny edges which might be solely potential as a result of OLED doesn’t want a backlight. The LED accent lighting has moved from the stand to the monitor panel, as nicely, so you possibly can nonetheless get pleasure from it in the event you use a third-party monitor arm. The monitor is curved, however the 1800R radius isn’t aggressive and simple to overlook in day-to-day use.

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A large stand retains the monitor planted and adjusts for peak, tilt, and swivel. It feels good in-hand because of its heft and easy, high-quality plastic cladding, however it’s much less sensible than it seems. The stand’s legs sweep ahead, consuming into desk area, and the stand’s neck is deep. This means the display might be nearer to you when positioned on the fringe of your desk.

If Alienware’s engineers occur to learn this, please, I’m begging you: Find one other design. The depth of the stand shipped with most Alienware screens is impractical to be used with the shallow desks generally bought as we speak. Most individuals, myself included, are gaming on a desk from Ikea or Wayfair. At least there’s a 100mm x 100mm VESA mount for attaching a extra smart stand or monitor arm.

Alienware AW3423DW options: Just the fundamentals

Connectivity is one place the Alienware AW3423DW cuts corners. It gives two HDMI 2.0 ports alongside one DisplayPort 1.4. This is disappointing, because the HDMI ports can solely obtain a 100Hz refresh fee on the monitor’s native decision of 3,440 x 1,440.

USB connectivity can also be fundamental. The monitor has 4 USB Type-A downstream ports powered by one USB Type-B upstream port. Two of the USB Type-A ports are on the entrance lip and two are on the rear. All USB ports assist simply 5Gbps of bandwidth. All of that is typical for a gaming monitor, however that is 2022, so I’d like to see USB-C. Gaming manufacturers ought to acknowledge top-tier gaming shows are sometimes utilized by content material creators.

Pros will discover some perks within the menus. Setting the mode to creator permits entry to sRGB and DCI-P3 modes and customized gamma adjustment. These settings aren’t accessible outdoors creator mode, which is barely annoying, and there’s no customized colour temperature obtainable. Color adjustment is restricted to RGB.

Alienware AW3423DW SDR efficiency: Simply glorious

The Alienware AW3423DW is the primary gaming monitor obtainable with VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black certification, however SDR continues to be key. Most PC video games don’t assist HDR, and whereas Windows Auto-HDR can sometimes fix that, it doesn’t work nicely with some video games. An glorious gaming monitor should have glorious SDR. Fortunately, the AW3423DW delivers.

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First, the unhealthy information. The Alienware AW3423DW achieved a lackluster most SDR brightness of simply 246 nits. This isn’t vivid for a contemporary gaming monitor and, to make issues worse, the monitor has a shiny show coat.

Whether this turns into an issue relies on the place you utilize the monitor. A brightness of 246 nits is greater than sufficient to be used in a room with mild management. Gamers who play in a darkish room will really want to show the brightness down. If your room lacks mild management, nonetheless, or you’ll want to sport with all of the lights on, the monitor’s brightness received’t impress.

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Now we get to the great things.

The Alienware AW3423DW’s distinction ratio is so excessive that it exceeds the capabilities of my SpyderX Elite testing instrument in SDR mode. The monitor achieves this with an ideal black degree studying of zero nits. This is a consequence I’ve solely recorded from OLED televisions like LG’s C1 OLED.

This holds up in subjective actuality. Dark areas of the display look actually, completely darkish, with not a touch of luminance even when considered in a lightless room nicely after sundown. This is nice for players who like darkish, moody titles, akin to Diablo 2: Resurrected or Resident Evil: Village. It’s additionally excellent news in the event you prefer to stream Netflix to your PC.

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Color gamut is available in at 100% of sRGB, 99% of DCI-P3, and 95% of AdobeRGB. These figures fall a tad behind many different OLED shows, which extra sometimes obtain 100% of DCI-P3 and 96 to 100% of AdobeRGB, however they simply beat almost all IPS and VA panel screens bought as we speak.

Matt Smith/IDG

Color accuracy is a dream, coming in with a mean delta error nicely beneath one. This is typical of an OLED monitor however outstanding all the identical. Most IPS screens have a mean colour error between one and three, with solely the most effective dipping beneath.

The AW3423DW additionally hit the best gamma curve of two.2 and a default colour temperature of 6300Ok, simply barely off the popular 6500Ok. In brief, content material you view on this monitor will look very near what the creator meant.

Alienware AW3423DW HDR show efficiency: Generally good, however just a few quirks

The Alienware AW3423DW presents a alternative between two HDR modes: HDR400 True Black and HDR Peak 1000. HDR400 is the default mode and might be enabled in the event you activate HDR in Windows.

HDR 400 True Black is an effective HDR mode. It reached a peak sustained brightness of 325 nits and a peak 10 % window of 411 nits. Strangely, enabling this mode barely lifted the minimal black degree to a .1 nits, the bottom degree my SpyderX Elite calibration instrument can measure. It additionally narrowed the colour gamut and diminished colour accuracy in comparison with SDR.

All of this may sound dire, however my subjective impression was higher than testing instructed. The HDR400 mode’s brightness isn’t nice however excessive sufficient to look spectacular in a dim or darkish room. My gaming den is somewhat dim, with just one window on a far aspect of the room, so a sustained brightness of 325 nits is sufficient to ship additional oomph in vivid scenes.

Matt Smith/IDG

The HDR 1000 Peak mode appears pointless. In my testing, this mode achieves a most of 558 nits in a 10 % window. I’ll observe that I’m not capable of take a look at a 1% window, and reviewers who’ve examined this discovered a peak brightness above 1000 nits. With that stated, I stay unconvinced that efficiency in a 1% window is related. How usually do you play a sport the place just one % of the show’s pixels are brightly lit? Not usually, proper?

HDR 1000 Peak appears calibrated to aggressively handle the panel’s brightness with a skew in the direction of lighting small parts of the display. It’s so aggressive that I may see it in motion whereas transferring a vivid picture throughout the display and through transitions in sport cutscenes. This soured me on the HDR 1000 Peak mode.

Still, there’s little doubt the AW3423DW outperforms a mean backlit IPS ultrawide gaming monitor, and most players will discover an enormous improve in comparison with what’s already on their desk.

Alienware AW3423DW movement efficiency: OLED is difficult to beat

Gamers will benefit from the Alienware AW3423DW’s most refresh fee of 175Hz when related over DisplayPort. Most opponents have a most refresh fee of 144Hz. The monitor can also be G-Sync Ultimate licensed, which suggests Nvidia’s G-Sync know-how will work throughout all the vary of refresh fee with no flickering, stuttering, or different points, assuming you will have a appropriate GeForce graphics card.

OLED additionally has extraordinarily fast pixel response instances. Alienware quotes a response time of .1 milliseconds gray-to-gray. That’s zero-point-one, not one, the bottom determine quoted by IPS or VA gaming screens (and most solely obtain that in an overclock mode).

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The result’s glorious movement readability. You’ll see not one of the ghosting or smearing seen on a gaming monitor with an IPS or VA panel. Fast-moving objects are exceptionally crisp and textual content stays readable whilst you scroll via a doc or webpage.

To be clear, the AW3423DW isn’t a aggressive gaming monitor. Its dimension and side ratio disqualifies it from severe aggressive use. Still, its refresh fee and movement readability are helpful in a variety of titles. I loved it even in Final Fantasy XIV, the place I may pan the digital camera throughout the sport’s extra beautiful vistas with out shedding element.

Alienware AW3423DW textual content readability

The AW3423DW’s nice SDR mode and colour accuracy ought to make it splendid for normal use, however it has a minor situation that doesn’t present in checks: mediocre textual content readability. I seen aliasing round some superb textual content parts and, relying on font and background, a slight off-color or shadow to 1 aspect of textual content.

Matt Smith/IDG

It’s superb in most conditions, however textual content readability is not so good as you may anticipate from a show with almost 110 pixels per inch. Anyone who works with paperwork or pictures that embrace superb fonts might be let down and even internet pages don’t look as crisp as they might.

Alienware AW3423DW and OLED burn-in

The Alienware AW3423DW has an OLED display and, like all OLED screens, it could be inclined to burn-in. The monitor particularly features a panel refresh characteristic that, in response to the handbook, will routinely interact at 1,500 hours whether or not you need it to or not. This wouldn’t be included if burn-in couldn’t happen.

Burn-in is extra doubtless the extra usually you will have static pictures on the display and, in any case, would require no less than many lots of (and certain 1000’s) of hours displaying an identical picture to trigger burn-in. Alienware additionally contains burn-in protection within the monitor’s beneficiant three-year customary guarantee.

Should you are concerned? That relies on how lengthy you intend to make use of this monitor. I personally maintain on to screens for a lot of, a few years, so burn-in is a priority. However, many players substitute a monitor each few years. If that’s you, you’ll have much less cause to fret, as odds are you’ll swap out the display nicely earlier than burn-in may happen.

Conclusion

The Alienware AW3423DW makes each different 34-inch ultrawide gaming monitor out of date. It’s additionally a considerably flawed show that received’t be splendid for everybody.

PC players will love this monitor. SDR picture high quality is nice straight out of the field, offering a way of dimensionality and realism that’s a minimize above the competitors. HDR efficiency isn’t spectacular compared to a Mini-LED monitor, however no 34-inch ultrawide gaming monitor at present presents a Mini-LED backlight (MSI has introduced a Mini-LED mannequin, the MSI MEG 341, however it’s not at present obtainable).

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If you desire a gaming monitor to deal with content material creation and normal use, nonetheless, there are just a few drawbacks. The AW3423DW’s connectivity is disappointing, with only one DisplayPort no or USB-C. The stand is simply too massive, and too far ahead, making the monitor troublesome to make use of on modest desks. Text readability is sub-par relative to the monitor’s pixel density and may distract in the event you usually use small font sizes.

These downsides might be disappointing for individuals who hoped the Alienware AW3423DW can be the one show to rule all of them. Still, that is a formidable monitor and an important begin for QD-OLED know-how within the PC market.

Then there’s the value. $1,299 isn’t inexpensive, however it’s extremely aggressive and an additional layer of buttercream frosting on an already scrumptious cake. Most flagship gaming ultrawides with comparable specs, just like the LG Ultragear 34PG950G, are simply as costly regardless of inferior efficiency.

Gamers, don’t hesitate. You’ll wish to purchase the AW3423DW earlier than it goes out of inventory.