Review on LG 34GN850-B UltraGear 34-Inch IPS Ultrawide Screen Monitor with 144Hz Refresh Rate, Tilt and Height Adjustments by Jeremy Hill

The problem with high-end monitors is that they add a lot of complexity to your PC. You gave up plug and play technology and now your monitor needs drivers. Calibration. even performance settings per application. A good quality monitor will help you in this optimization experience. Unfortunately, this is not one of those monitors. Perhaps the LG34GP950G is powerful hardware held back by lackluster software. but unlocking this feature is disappointing. And it comes from an IT professional with extensive experience setting up monitors for both work and home use. The biggest problem you will encounter is HDR. You can't live with it or without it. HDR is a component of Windows, so LG can be forgiven for Microsoft's flawed implementation of this feature, but LG's software is of little help and actually creates confusing roadblocks. The OSD is controlled by a cumbersome little joystick, which is a cost-saving measure for LG that doesn't belong in products in this price range. The OSD takes you to the monitor settings. This is where you'll notice that most of the settings are actually grayed out and inaccessible when HDR is enabled. That's right, enabling HDR actually limits your control over the monitor. So if you need to adjust brightness, contrast, gamma, or color, you can't do that in HDR mode. Saved "Game Mode" settings? Everything is disabled. The OSD shows you your refresh rate, G-sync status, overclocking status, HDR status and response time. Most of the available settings are trifles, and "Overclock" is particularly useless. The LG software package consists of two applications. "UltraGear," which is designed solely to adjust gamers' all-important LEDs, and "OnScreen Control," which reminds you that you can't change brightness, contrast, or black stabilizer (again, unless you disable HDR). You can set up a split screen, that's all. Why does it have to be two separate apps? And, more importantly, where are the rest of the settings from the monitor's OSD menu? This software is secondary and does not belong to what a high-end product should be. If there are explanations for these decisions, LG should build them into the software and let users know how to use Windows settings to adjust color as per HDR. I'm not kidding, this might be the best monitor out there, but if LG can't deliver the perfect experience, why would a user struggle to add value? LG should clearly communicate an app with all settings available, and HDR settings should be adjusted per profile, if not per app. At the moment I can't confirm the quality of this monitor because I spend too much time fighting for perfect color and contrast. Enabling HDR makes colors more vibrant, but contrast becomes excessive, sometimes to the point of distortion. Disabling HDR causes colors to look washed out, but contrast is slightly better. Advantages? Well, the backlight is good, not too bright. No dead pixels. G sync works. It was packed correctly. Has a VESA mount. worth your money? Absolutely not. What exactly are you paying for? Glitchy HDR implementation that disables half the functionality? If you need to be in SDR to customize your experience, then why buy an expensive HDR monitor? And if you want a high-quality HDR monitor that knows its settings better than I do, why is the software so obscure? And why should I choose between quality color or quality contrast? There's no reason to buy this because you're either happy with SDR and can invest in something cheaper, or you're looking for a high quality HDR implementation that doesn't exist. hope for this monitor? Well, the gear itself seems to be of high quality. Can this be fixed with a software update? I won't hold my breath.