Review on Nixeus Ultrawide FreeSync Certified NX EDG34S 3440x1440P Curved Screen Monitor with Tilt Adjustment, Flicker-Free Technology, Anti-Glare Coating - NX-EDG34S by Bob Zumaya

My Dell monitor with a TN 16:9 panel was having display issues, so I decided to switch to widescreen gaming. I took a small risk and bought it based on the mostly positive reviews and the price. 3440x1440 144Hz just doesn't get any cheaper. In terms of panel quality, I didn't encounter any of the quality control issues or imperfections that some others have reported. I don't see any dead pixels, faint lines on the screen, etc. Everything seems fine here. This monitor looks great when viewing a still image. Which of course you don't normally do in games and only gamers care about high frame rates. As soon as everything starts to move, all problems become obvious. Let's start with G-Sync. This monitor isn't on NVidia's official "supports G-Sync" list, but the manufacturer advertises compatibility as a feature, so we should still be able to turn it on and have fun, right? Well, something like that. It works in the very technical sense of the word, but comes with its own problems. Most of the time, loading screens cause the flickering that some people talk about, which in and of itself isn't a big deal, but another big problem is that certain colors or patterns cause the brightness of the image to fluctuate unexpectedly, causing a flickering effect a lot distracting and obviously shouldn't have happened. I'd say it's pretty clear that the manufacturer didn't do any real QA testing on G-Sync to ensure there weren't any obvious bugs or issues, so use G-Sync at your own risk. I don't have an AMD graphics card to check if these issues are G-Sync specific or affect adaptive sync in general. Let's talk about the problems that occur regardless of whether G-Sync is enabled or not. Or should I say a problem, but a problem so severe on this display that it's unforgivable even on a VA panel; image blur. What good is a high refresh rate if the pixels themselves can't update fast enough to keep up with the refresh rate? I tried tweaking every option in the menu that I could find, but most either didn't do anything or just changed the blur to halos, which isn't much of an improvement. I've attached a video to show how bad the blur is; Footage from the game City of Heroes. In particular, look at the guy in the purple pants and see how the purple smudges all over the place as I move. In almost every game I've tested, the entire game screen blurs noticeably every time I move or change my line of sight. To be clear, almost all of the above isn't much of a problem when the panel is running at 60Hz without adaptive sync enabled. but you didn't pay for that, did you? If I wanted 60Hz and no adaptive sync, there are cheaper options. Heck, the Dell Ultrawide I use for work that I got 5 years ago will work if that's what I wanted. I've paid a premium for features that only support it in the literal "you can't sue us for not supporting this" sense, not in the "would you really want to use it as is" sense become? Because of this, I have a hard time proposing this even as a budget option for the features listed. It's better to either spend more to get these features on a good display, or spend less for a display without these features, rather than overpaying for features that don't work well enough to warrant their use.