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Dell U3415W vs LG 34UC98-W vs Samsung S34E790C comparison and review

Krzych

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Keep in mind that this thread is one year old. There are many new 3440x1440 displays on the market and prices have come down considerably and you can get 100 Hz display for about what I played for my LG 34UC98 a year ago. Recommendations are no longer as easy as year ago when LG 34UC88 and UC98 were the only usable ultrawides on the market. There are much more options now and those LGs are not looking as good right now, especially considering that their price haven't dropped almost at all.

 

For my current recommendations, if you just want 60 Hz IPS, get Dell U3417W, the same panel as LG 34UC98 but with some issues addressed, miles better than U3415W reviewed in this thread, and if you want more than 60 Hz, look at new 100 Hz VA displays. I cannot recommend them because I haven't seen any of these and I have very little trust for VA, but there are 100 Hz 3440x1440 VA displays that can be bought for around $800-900, one even with G-sync, so this is definitely something to check out.

 

Also there are some 37.5" 3840x1600 21:9 displays appearing on the market, but with those ones I'd say stick with LG, because as far as I know only Acer and Asus announced their models with those panels and those manufacturers are not worth considering in my opinion and experience.

 

Hi,

 

Recently I decided to upgrade to 21:9 and unfortunately I encountered a lot of problems and had to exchange and return monitors few times. I had two Dell's U3415W, one Samsung S34E790C and one LG 34UC98-W. I will share my experiences here, maybe someone will find it useful while deciding which ultrawide monitor to buy. 

 

Please mind that I am not monitor expert and this comparison review is based only on personal impressions. Also, I am not native English so this review will contain some language mistakes. I am copying strait out of Libre Office so it may be not the most esthetic review ever, there are some problems with centering and etc.

 

There are huge price variations in different countries, for example here in Poland Dell is 890$, Samsung is 900$ and LG is 950$, while in the US its 750, 850 and 1200 respectively, so this why this review doesn't contain any price comparisons. 

 

                                                               Package and Safety

 

Dell U3415W

Samsung S34E790C

LG 34UC98-W

Package

Very big and heavy, cartons themselves are over 6 kg

Big but not that heavy

Slim and light, very easy to carry

Safety

Screen is well secured with cartons and something like sponge, stand and screen covered with soft foil. Lack of any other foils on bezels or on on the back

Screen is well secured with styrofoam, stand and screen covered with soft foil. Additional foils on bezels

Screen is well secured with styrofoam, stand and screen covered with soft foil. Additional foils on bezel, on the back, on stand, basically everywhere

  

 

 

        External build quality, Stand, Bezels, Esthetics, Ports placement, Cable management

 

 

Dell U3415W

Samsung S34E790C

LG 34UC98-W

External build quality(back, sides and etc)

Very solid plastic, nothing is delicate or easy to break

Also very solid, nothing is breaking in hands, you can carry and move this screen without worrying

Also nothing bad to say about build quality

Stand

Well built, steady and overly anti-skidding, its very hard to move screen from place. Practical shape, you can hide for example central speaker between stand and panel.

Easy height adjustment. A bit easy to scratch. Practical shape on the back, goes deep into desk without hitting wall to while screen is still close to you

Not as solid as on Dell, plastic feels a bit delicate while carrying or moving monitor. Unpractical shape, taking more usable desk space than Dell's, but there is some flat space to put your central speaker on. Easier to move than Dell because stand is less anti-skidding. Unpractical shape on the back, hits the wall while screen is still too close to you, you need deep desk

Solid and well built but similar to one from Samsung so its also not practical and also I had to stick my central speaker with tape. Monitor is very easy to move because stand is not overly anti-skidding. Practical shape on the back, goes very deep into desk without hitting wall

Weight and size

Big, thick and heavy, hard to carry and move

Easier to move thanks no less anti-skidding stand but still heavy and thick

Very light and slim, very easy to move

Bezel

Nice and slim enough bezels upstairs and on sides hidden in glass, down bezel is quite big but not intrusive and matt

Nasty glassy physical bezels all around that are reflecting ambient light and light from screen. They are thin, but still annoying

Bezels similar to Dell but down bezel is very small and it basically looks same as other bezels. Everything finished with very thin silver frame that is not intrusive

Esthetics

Dark matt plastic finish with silver stand and gray down bezel, looks just normal and toned

Dark mat finish on the back, glassy bezel and silver stand, looks fine

Great look. Silver frame finish matches well to silver stand and glassy but not overly glassy white finish on the back also looks well and fits white cables included with screen. Great design

Ports placement

Unpractical and annoying ports placement, hard to reach and use and they gave miniDP to annoy you even more

Ports simply placed at the back without hiding them anywhere, simple to use and reach

Same as on Samsung, good ports placement easy to use and reach

Cable management

Hole in stand for cable management, not bad solution

There is something on the back on stand, but since stand is already very deep its unpractical to put cables there

Small clip that can be attached on the back of the stand, it makes monitor deeper so it may not be practical if you have limited desk depth

 

                                                                  PSU and coil whine

 

 

Dell U3415W

Samsung S34E790C

LG 34UC98-W

Placement

Internal

External

External

Coil whine while on

Moderate

 

Annoying while working/reading in silence, not a problem during listening to music or gaming. Got it on both units

None

 

No sign of coil whine even while working in silence

Almost none

 

Very little, audible only if you really try to hear it in total silence at night

Coil whine while off(but plugged into power source)

Excessive for about 30 seconds after turning off, then goes back to moderate. You need to unplug it from power source to stop it

Crazy whining after turning off, unplugging from power source badly needed

Almost none

 

Audible only if you use your monitor and psu as pillow and I think nobody does that

 

                 Picture quality, sharpness, uniformity, backlight bleed, brightness

 

 

Dell U3415W

Samsung S34E790C

LG 34UC98-W

Picture quality of the box

Washed out, very cold and eye hurting picture, ICC profile or calibration needed

Terrible

Washed out, very cold and eye hurting*, ICC profile or calibration needed. Some bright backgrounds look a bit grainy**(probably related to coating, I am not sure). Image retention sometimes happen (more info in conclusion)

Picture after tweaking

After using ICC profile from TFT Cental picture is great, colors are beautiful but blacks and whites still not perfect

Nothing really helped, side by side comparison with Dell was a first round knockout by Dell even after hours of tweaking on Samsung

Currently I am using same ICC like on Dell and they look quite similar, both beautiful, only blacks and whites are noticeably better on LG

Sharpness

Very sharp picture and very good sharpness adjustment in OSD

Terrible and unrepairable sharpness problems, basically you have to choose between sharp text plus oversharped and grainy picture or relatively good picture but blurry text. Balance is not reachable with OSD settings.

Mostly very sharp picture, both text and picture, but sometimes some fonts appear a bit blurry and sharpness adjustment from OSD is useless(its going by 10, you can set only ...40,50,60…, 60 is oversharped and 40 is blurry, 52-53 would be perfect, but I have to use default 50 that is not exactly perfect)

Color uniformity

Very good, only a bit darker very close to bezels. While viewing single color on whole screen you really need to look for any uniformity problems to notice something

Noticeably more vibrant in center and less vibrant on the sides. Basically visible only while viewing the same color on whole screen which has nothing to deal with real everyday use.

While viewing white or gray on whole or the most part of screen, there are some uniformity problems visible. Nothing intrusive but uniformity is certainly not perfect

Backlight bleed

Intrusive

(photo)

 

Intrusive backlight bleed on both units I had, yellow stains in 3 corners and purple in one corner. Dark scenes in games, movies or dark pictures very uncomfortable to play, watch or view. Backlight bleed gets through not only very dark scenes, but also through gray/dark blue ones like nights in games, sometimes even a bit darker picture for example during sunset in games is enough for bleed to cover significant area on screen. Not acceptable.

Almost None

 

Practically non existent, there were some brighter and darker spots on black screen but nothing noticeable in any kind of monitor use except watching blank black screen

Little

(photo - purple color is reflection, not backlight bleed, better quality photo from other user)

 

Acceptable blueish bleed in down corners and a bit of grayish glow near upper bezel. Not intrusive even during dark scenes in games and movies, you need total darkness on screen to see it (for example game menu with black background like in The Witcher 3). Backlight bleed on most monitors tends to get through not only totally dark scenes, but also grey/dark blue ones, like nights in games, sometimes even through sunsets, but on this monitor it is not happening. Probably because bleed on most monitors is usually yellow, and here it is gray/blue, it makes it less intrusive and picture is less vulnerable to it.

Brightness

Good editable brightness range, 0% is really dark and 100% is really really bright, good for both saving eyes and getting blind

Not as good as Dell but still good brightness range, 0% is not very intrusive and you can make this screen really bright if you want

Lack of good brightness range, 0% on LG is like 10-15% on Dell. May be a problem for sensitive eyes to view browser or Excel or work at night

* - ICC profile that is applied automatically with driver installation appear to be source of this bad picture, if you delete this ICC from color management in Windows and restart computer screen looks good, although you can still improve it with ICC profile

** - I noticed it only on LG, but I am not completely sure if its because it has worse pixel pitch than Dell or do I stared to even notice this effect after getting LG. But its obviously visible on LG and I don't think I wouldn't notice this in over 3 weeks of using Dell. This is minor problem, visible only only in web browser on sites with white or gray backgrounds or if you have wallpaper like this, in games or movies it isn't visible. 

 

OSD

 

Dell U3415W

Samsung S34E790C

LG 34UC98-W

OSD Navigation

Touch-sensitive buttons on bottom bezel

 

Not very resposive, not illuminated, not comfortable to use, especially on monitor of this size

Joystick on the back on left side

 

Joystick is much better solution, but its placement is not well designed on Samsung and is not comfortable to use

Joystick placed on the bottom of the panel in the middle

 

Perfect placement for joystick, OSD navigation is now so comfortable that I didn't even installed screen control software

OSD Esthetics

Basic but good looking

Very outdated look, OSD on my parent's I believe now 10 year old Samsung Sync Master 943 is looking exact the same

Very good looking, elegant and big OSD, nothing more to wish on this matter

OSD Options

Nothing special, standard OSD options, no RGB adjustment if I remember well

Probably all options you need are there, but this is also nothing special, this 10 year old Samsung I mentioned above has exact the same options in OSD

Also all needed options are there, plus some additional features like Black Stabilizer, I find it very useful

OSD Software

Easy and practical to use but lacking in options

Outdated and not very readable, but imporant options are there

Quite easy to use and filled with options although Dell's option is more practical in everyday use

 

Curve

 

 

Dell U3415W

Samsung S34E790C

LG 34UC98-W

3800R/3.8m

 

Nice subtle curve, enough to make some effect and better for eyes than flat screen but curve is not big enough to disturb strait lines

3800R/3.8m

 

Same as on Dell, but effect is a bit disturbed by physical bezels

1900R/1.9m

 

Twice as curved as Dell and Samsung. For games and movies this is great, but I can clearly see that strait lines are disturbed even though I am already used to curve and I love it. May be a problem for some people.

(after almost 2 months of usage curve is still visible enough to disturb strait lines)

 

 

 

Additional features

 

 

Dell U3415W

Samsung S34E790C

LG 34UC98-W

Dell's Next Business Day Warranty being the best warranty you can imagine, they send you new monitor day after you call them and take old one day after you get new one, so you are not left without monitor for even a single day. Amazing.

None

AMD FreeSync

Ability for 75 Hz Refresh rate (enabling FreeSync causes automatic 75 Hz overclock*, also on Nvidia card, but on Nvidia card it causes problems with GPU utilization)

10-bit color depth support

 

* - after enabling FreeSync, 75 Hz option appears in your Windows/Nvidia/AMD panel display setting. You need to apply it manually, screen doesn't go to 75 Hz automatically after enabling FreeSync.

 

Conclusion

 

Dell U3415W

Positives

Negatives

-Beautiful and sharp picture

-Good external build quality

-Good quality and practical stand

-Slim and hidden bezel with down physical bezel being non intrusive and matt

-Simple, esthetic look

-Nice, optimal curve

-Wide brightness adjustment range

-Bright colors uniformity

-Great Dell's warranty

-Intrusive backlight bleed on both units

-Moderate coil whine on both units

-Heavy, thick and hard to move

-Terrible ports placement

-Need for calibration or ICC profile, poor picture out of the box

-Uncomfortable OSD usage

Overall this is good screen with beautiful picture and colors but very intrusive backlight bleed made me look elsewhere.

 

 

Samsung S34E790C

Positives

Negatives

-Solid build quality

-Not bad design, nothing flashy at least

-Absolutely zero backlight bleed

-Nice, optimal curve

-No coil whine while turned on

-Good ports placement

-Despite size and weigh not that hard to move

-Poor picture quality

-Terrible sharpness problems

-Nasty glassy physical bezel

-Crazy coil whine while turned off but plugged into power source

-Heavy and thick

-Despite place for central speaker, stand is unpractical and very deep

-Bad OSD joystick placement

-In some games color banding may be a huge concern

 

Solid outside, except bezel, and zero backlight bleed, but panel has various quality problems with colors and sharpness. I wouldn't recommend this monitor to anyone.

 

 

 

LG 34UC98-W

Positives

Negatives

-Very good build quality

-Great design

-Beautiful and sharp picture

-Despite being ultrawide IPS, very little backlight bleed

-Aggressive curve great for games and movies

-Almost no coil whine

-Great OSD joystick placement, OSD usage never been easier

-Good ports placement

-Very light and slim for screen of this kind

-Nice, slim and hidden bezel with down physical bezel being very small

-Very good whites and blacks

-Slim and light package

-FreeSync and ability to go 75 Hz with it

-10 bit color depth support

-Stand is not practical

-Need for calibration or ICC profile, poor picture out of the box

-Aggressive curve may be problematic in some of professional uses

-Slight color uniformity problems, may matter in some of professional uses

-A bit narrow brightness adjustment range, screen may be too bright in dark room for sensitive eyes even on 0% brightness

-Slight sharpness problems in some cases while OSD sharpness option is not optimized and useless

-Bright backgrounds (for example in web browser) appear a bit grainy (probably related to coating, I am not sure)

-FreeSync range (55-75 Hz) is a bit narrow and limiting (although easy to hack to 40-75, some artifacts appear if hacking below 40)

-Image retention sometimes happens. Disappears after a minute or so, but may be a problem for software/content creators or someone who switch between white and dark content over and over. This however occurs only with high contrast simple "back on white" pictures like websites, not an issue in movies, games or with any other "advanced" or dynamic pictures

-75 Hz refresh rate available only on AMD cards with FreeSync enabled, frame skipping on Nvidia GPU on any overclock over 60 Hz

Outstanding screen with minor problems. I would definitely recommend it to anyone. After bad experiences with Dells and Samsung I thought I would have to abandon idea of upgrading to 21:9, but this monitor saved the day, or rather few years.

(you may also want to look at 34UC88 that is about the same as 34UC98 except design and Thunderbolt connections, and it is cheaper)

Check out this thread for more info about 34UC88/98

 

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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Thanks for linking this in the overclock.net thread!

"Coil whine while off: Audible only if you use your monitor and its PSU as pillow and I think nobody does that " xD
"sharpness adjustment from OSD is useless(its going by 10, you can set only ...40,50,60…, 60 is oversharped and 40 is blurry, 52-53 would be perfect) " : Did you mean 50 with 60? Because if 60 is too much and 40 too little, and adjustements can be made by setps of 10, why not use 50?

Btw, your english is very impressive!

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Not monitor expert? I think you certainly are!

 

Thanks a lot, I saw this after I ordered a DELL. I knew about bleed, but didn't know about coil whine. I'll update my opinion once it arrives. Given that I've a professional spyder4 to calibrate, colors are probably not an issue for me. Again thanks for the great review!

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4 hours ago, Crowcore said:

Thanks for linking this in the overclock.net thread!

"Coil whine while off: Audible only if you use your monitor and its PSU as pillow and I think nobody does that " xD
"sharpness adjustment from OSD is useless(its going by 10, you can set only ...40,50,60…, 60 is oversharped and 40 is blurry, 52-53 would be perfect) " : Did you mean 50 with 60? Because if 60 is too much and 40 too little, and adjustements can be made by setps of 10, why not use 50?

Btw, your english is very impressive!

I use 50 which is default and those slight sharpness problems are described for 50 sharpness setting. I wish I could set it to 52-53 to make it perfect, but I cannot because of not optimized OSD setting. In games its easy to fix with SweetFX and LumaSharpen option, but in browser its not possible as far as I know. Setting to 40 or 60 destroys picture completely. This is not like picture is slightly blurry on 40 and slightly oversharped on 60, picture gets destroyed on any other setting than 50. Keep in mind that those sharpness problems on 50 setting are slight and minor, only on some websites or some of fonts, so nothing to be concerned about.

 

2 hours ago, Iron Butterfly said:

Not monitor expert? I think you certainly are!

 

Thanks a lot, I saw this after I ordered a DELL. I knew about bleed, but didn't know about coil whine. I'll update my opinion once it arrives. Given that I've a professional spyder4 to calibrate, colors are probably not an issue for me. Again thanks for the great review!

Even without calibrator ICC profile from TFT Central fixes bad default picture easy, and this is very popular monitor so there are probably a lot of ICC profiles going around, so picture is not a problem on this screen at all. As for coil whine, as I mentioned, not a problem as long as you don't work in silence. Also I think most of people doesn't hear those kind of noises or they have to put their heads close to noise source. My sister and mother had to literally put their heads on working HDD to hear it while I cannot stand this noise and I am not using HDDs anymore. I am sensitive to this kind of noises, you may not even hear it or hear it only if you really try to.

 

And thanks but I am not expert, I just describe what I see, I have no knowledge about how it all works, I just describe effects, anyone can do it :)

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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So you would recommend the LG over Dell? I'm actually looking at the Dell U3415W or LG 34UC87M, but the latter is largely similar to your 34UC98-W from what I understand.

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6 hours ago, maremp said:

So you would recommend the LG over Dell? I'm actually looking at the Dell U3415W or LG 34UC87M, but the latter is largely similar to your 34UC98-W from what I understand.

I recommend 34UC98-W over Dell, I don't know how good are other models. LG seems to have the best opinion with ultrawides, but there are also a lot of complains about quality issues in a lot of reviews of older models, so they may heave similar issues to Dell. 34UC98-W is the newest model and so far every review says that this screen is almost flawless and there is no sign of major problems like backlight bleed, coil whine or picture quality problems. Probably the best ultrawide on the market, but also very expensive in most countries.

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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52 minutes ago, Krzych said:

I recommend 34UC98-W over Dell, I don't know how good are other models. LG seems to have the best opinion with ultrawides, but there are also a lot of complains about quality issues in a lot of reviews of older models, so they may heave similar issues to Dell. 34UC98-W is the newest model and so far every review says that this screen is almost flawless and there is no sign of major problems like backlight bleed, coil whine or picture quality problems. Probably the best ultrawide on the market, but also very expensive in most countries.

Both the price and availability are problematic. I could only find it on amazon and it costs 1100€. At this price, I would rather throw in a bit more and get Acer Predator X34. I'm not prepared to pay 350€ (50%!) just to be a bit more safe. If I get a display with a horrible backlight bleed, I'll try to return it and get my money back, then I'll think about paying this price premium. 

 

But the backlight bleed problems aside, I have problems deciding between the dell and lg (34UC87M). The benefits I see in dell is better stand and better customer support. On the other hand the lg has thunderbolt, which would be a nice to have, so I could plug all peripherals via a single cable to my macbook, the external psu makes it less prone to coil whine (although it sucks if you manage to break it), but the stand is not as cool with only a plastic clip for cable management and I've heard that the customer support isn't all that good. Although you claim you're not an expert, it seem like you've done a lot of research, so I'd like to hear your opinion. 

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First you should try to call or send e-mail to this Polish shop where I got my LG. They allow shipping abroad and they have English version of their website, as well as German, Czech and etc. Monitor costs 3800ZL which gives you 883€ and they will send it day after getting payment or even the same day, I ordered mine on Wednesday around 15:00 and got it day after before noon. There are 3 of them left in stock. Shipping will cost a bit but you will still save a lot of money.

 

If you don't want to do this and considering price difference between Dell and LG in your country, you should probably try your luck with Dell first, if you are not fancy about paying more for LG. You can always return or exchange Dell quickly. Getting X34 over LG may not be the best idea considering hundreds of issues Acer gaming monitors have with quality, but I never had one to test so I cannot tell for sure, but I will never buy it, especially if they are 5500ZL in Poland compared to 3800 for LG. Try Dell, and if you will experience similar issues to mine, you will find paying more for LG justified.

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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2 hours ago, Krzych said:

First you should try to call or send e-mail to this Polish shop where I got my LG. They allow shipping abroad and they have English version of their website, as well as German, Czech and etc. Monitor costs 3800ZL which gives you 883€ and they will send it day after getting payment or even the same day, I ordered mine on Wednesday around 15:00 and got it day after before noon. There are 3 of them left in stock. Shipping will cost a bit but you will still save a lot of money.

 

If you don't want to do this and considering price difference between Dell and LG in your country, you should probably try your luck with Dell first, if you are not fancy about paying more for LG. You can always return or exchange Dell quickly. Getting X34 over LG may not be the best idea considering hundreds of issues Acer gaming monitors have with quality, but I never had one to test so I cannot tell for sure, but I will never buy it, especially if they are 5500ZL in Poland compared to 3800 for LG. Try Dell, and if you will experience similar issues to mine, you will find paying more for LG justified.

Thanks for the link, I'll keep it in mind. The ~900€ still seems a bit much for a display. I'll think about it if I'll see that the other display is not working properly.

Yeah I wouldn't really buy the X34, it was just as something ridiculous, they cost way too much. 

So you would still pick the Dell over on older model of LG? Is it because the customer support or is there anything else I should know?  

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2 hours ago, maremp said:

So you would still pick the Dell over on older model of LG? Is it because the customer support or is there anything else I should know?  

Mostly because of customer support, it is much easier to exchange monitor if you get too much backlight bleed. LG doesn't have good opinion on this matter from what I heard. They are using external authorized services or something like this, you can guess how it probably works, you send them your screen and its gone for around 30 days. And older screens may have similar problems to Dell, I think they have based on reviews I read and photos I have seen, they have the same yellow stains problem, so customer support is only big difference in favor of Dell. It looks like every single ultrawide have problems with this yellowish backlight bleed except this LG 34UC98-W, even the newest 34" Asus have those problems and it looks like they didn't learn anything from previous screens. LG on the other side seem to really learned from previous ones because 34UC98-W is nearly perfect, I mean seriously nearly perfect. I really appreciate this. You can check reviews and release dates of LGs in around Dell's price point, I am not really familiar with all of them, there are so many models, maybe there is one that contains some of newer improvements by LG and will be better than Dell.

 

You just need to pick something and wish for luck. If you get bad one, get refund and buy another one. You will eventually find good one, I needed to return 3 monitors before getting this beautiful LG.

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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3 hours ago, Krzych said:

Mostly because of customer support, it is much easier to exchange monitor if you get too much backlight bleed. LG doesn't have good opinion on this matter from what I heard. They are using external authorized services or something like this, you can guess how it probably works, you send them your screen and its gone for around 30 days. And older screens may have similar problems to Dell, I think they have based on reviews I read and photos I have seen, they have the same yellow stains problem, so customer support is only big difference in favor of Dell. It looks like every single ultrawide have problems with this yellowish backlight bleed except this LG 34UC98-W, even the newest 34" Asus have those problems and it looks like they didn't learn anything from previous screens. LG on the other side seem to really learned from previous ones because 34UC98-W is nearly perfect, I mean seriously nearly perfect. I really appreciate this. You can check reviews and release dates of LGs in around Dell's price point, I am not really familiar with all of them, there are so many models, maybe there is one that contains some of newer improvements by LG and will be better than Dell.

 

You just need to pick something and wish for luck. If you get bad one, get refund and buy another one. You will eventually find good one, I needed to return 3 monitors before getting this beautiful LG.

You've convinced me about Dell. If I see too much issues with it, I'll try to get a refund and the newer LG one. I'm not buying it right away, so I might be able to save enough to get the LG right away and I won't have to worry about the issues. 

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Review updated with pictures of backlight bleed and info about pixel pitch for LG. Ah and also 10 bit color on LG, although games doesn't seem to support it, setting to 10 bit doesn't remove color banding on skies and etc.

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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I own the Samsung monitor you reviewed... not ever heard coil whine from either monitor or the power brick.

Bezels of my screen wasnt very glassy/polished, possible change in manufacturing?

 

Tested the monitor vs an old Acer IPS screen, it lacks color depth/vibrancy without making things overly vibrant, however contrast is much greater.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I added small correction to LG about cable management. I said that there is no cable management, but actually there is some tiny clip that can be attached on the back, I missed it while unpacking monitor. I watched few reviews and wondered why I don't have it, but actually it was placed along with cables and since its small and also white, I missed it xD

 

Also I added some correction to this "grainy look" on certain surfaces I described as "not the best pixel pitch". It may be also related to coating, I am not sure.

 

Also added info about 34UC88 which seems to be the same screen as UC98 but without Thunderbolt support and with all black design and it is priced at over $200 less than UC98, at around $980.

 

Also I have tried to enable FreeSync even though I am on 980 Ti to see if it goes 75 Hz. And it is, after enabling FreeSync there is 75 Hz option available in Nvidia Control Panel. FreeSync won't work of course, buy 75 Hz refresh rate seem to work okay. Problem is that there are some serious GPU utilization problems if FreeSync enabled, so getting 75 Hz this way won't work on Nvidia card.

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Updated with info about image retention on 34UC98. Correct me if I wrote something wrong because I am not really familiar with this issue and never saw it before.

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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Updated with extended info about backlight bleed and curve, added link to my overclock.net LG 34UC88/98 thread.

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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  • 1 month later...

I believe that 60 Hz+ (~80 Hz) overclocking claims are proving to be false with many users reporting frame skipping on any overclock over 60 Hz on Nvidia cards, and my unit proves it, while I didn't receive any proof for those 80 Hz overclock claims on Nvidia cards, so I am adding "75 Hz available only on AMD cards with FreeSync enabled" to 34UC98 negatives. 

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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  • 1 month later...

All I will say is.. test for yourself. You get SOME kind of IDEA when reading others reviews but do NOT EVER take it as fact for all but mostly for just what they have. I have ASUS new 34 100hz and Samsung 34 3440. Things he talked about I got rid of.. colorbanding.. easy to get rid of yet with ASUS IPS.. strange how some games and other things had the same.Hmm Coil whine.. no clue here.. never got a monitor that had this. Samsung is VA not IPS.. blacker blacks .. has allot less glow. The color on the ASUS stands out better yet.. the glow on that wide.. for ME.. I cant handle it. LOl blurry text.. yeah.. this is.. odd. I dont have this. No one sees it on this one.. I dont.. Again its VA so it wont ever be like IPS.  

 

My point is.. ALWAYS test your self.. for this praice and I got mine for like $750 NEWEGG sell. The ONY reason I bought it. And MAN I LOVE IT! People dont search read that.. this monitor had 30/50/60 with DP and 30/50 with HDMI. Yet with HDMI I can over clock to 75 and NO BLUR at all. DP? A 61.. anything past that and BLUR. I will say for ME ok.. the Asus which is for my son .. he is paying for.. he wanted it.. is NOT WORTH $1300 we paid for. No black light bleed but wow IPS GLOW.. to much on that wide of screen. And unless your playing some tiny game that get better then 70fps.. you never get that high.. play wow? There ya go.. so unless you have more then one graphics card.. or the new 1080.. dont buy one that has 100FPS or better. 

 

Make sure where ever you buy it you can RETURN IT! And DONT SETTLE for black like bleed at that price. When they show off these there is NO black light bleed anywhere. So .. 

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On 04/05/2016 at 7:17 AM, Krzych said:

Its avail for even cheaper in store from time to time. I was leaning towards the dell until i saw this one for 580 in microcenter a few months ago

Windows 10 Edu | Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming | Ryzen 9 3950x | 4x 16GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB| ROG Strix GeForce® RTX 2080 SUPER™ Advanced edition | Samsung 980 PRO 500GB + Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB + 8TB Seagate Barracuda | EVGA Supernova 650 G2 | Alienware AW3418DW + LG 34uc87c + Dell u3419w | Asus Zephyrus G14

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I am getting LG 29UC88 on Wednesday so I will probably add it to this review and also make separate 34" 3440x1440 vs 29" 2560x1080 comparison, I am really curious how those will compare for gaming, especially considering that you can get 29" 2560x1080 FreeSync along with GPU that can easily run it for less money than quality 3440x1440 display alone. It will be very interesting to see how much sense chasing the best and the most expensive solutions makes compared to some more reasonable options, we are talking about over 2 times lower price here, $370 monitor with $350 GPU compared to 750$+ display and $650+ GPU required to drive it properly. And this $370 29UC88 features FreeSync at 40-75 range, if you want something similar from 3440x1440 the price increases to $900-1200, because hacking FreeSync range doesn't work that beautifully as you would think, there is a reason why manufacturers are applying certain FreeSync ranges to their monitors.

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 12/03/2016 at 1:15 AM, Krzych said:

1900R/1.9m    Twice as curved as Dell and Samsung.

Wow. I was not aware of this before actually reading your post. Curvature of 1.9 m means, that the best viewing position is 1.9 m from the screen, which is still farther, than I usually sit while working. I am using it mostly for office work and I find the curvature perfect replacement for two monitors.

 

Btw. I am pretty sure, that Samsung S34E790C has a curve with radius of 3 m (3000R), which puts the monitor somewhere in the middle.

 

 

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  • 5 months later...

I have updated this thread with a note at the beginning just to let you know that this thread is one year old now and there are much more options than back then. 

 

Quote

 

Keep in mind that this thread is one year old. There are many new 3440x1440 displays on the market and prices have come down considerably and you can get 100 Hz display for about what I played for my LG 34UC98 a year ago. Recommendations are no longer as easy as year ago when LG 34UC88 and UC98 were the only usable ultrawides on the market. There are much more options now and those LGs are not looking as good right now, especially considering that their price haven't dropped almost at all.

 

For my current recommendations, if you just want 60 Hz IPS, get Dell U3417W, the same panel as LG 34UC98 but with some issues addressed, miles better than U3415W reviewed in this thread, and if you want more than 60 Hz, look at new 100 Hz VA displays. I cannot recommend them because I haven't seen any of these and I have very little trust for VA, but there are 100 Hz 3440x1440 VA displays that can be bought for around $800-900, one even with G-sync, so this is definitely something to check out.

 

Also there are some 37.5" 3840x1600 21:9 displays appearing on the market, but with those ones I'd say stick with LG, because as far as I know only Acer and Asus announced their models with those panels and those manufacturers are not worth considering in my opinion and experience.

 

 

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey, 

I want to buy 34 inch monitor for work. I'm programmer. Using code IDE + web browser etc. I would ask about the curve of LG 34UC88. Is the 1900r good for working? Or I should get another one? 

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On 4.04.2017 at 0:58 PM, Freezus said:

Hey, 

I want to buy 34 inch monitor for work. I'm programmer. Using code IDE + web browser etc. I would ask about the curve of LG 34UC88. Is the 1900r good for working? Or I should get another one? 

Basically the theoretical issue is that strait lines won't look exactly strait until you get used to curve. Very overblown issue in general. 

 

As for display, get Dell U3417W instead, the same panel but it has no image retention issue. It is not a problem for gaming, movies, video editing and etc, but for things like browser and some workloads it may get overly frequent. 

Spoiler

CPU: i7-6900K 4.5 GHz | Motherboard: X99 Sabertooth | GPU: RTX 2080 Ti SLi | RAM: 32GB DDR4-3400 CL13 | SSD: SX8200 PRO 512GB | PSU: Corsair AX1600i | Case: InWin 805C | Monitor: LG 38UC99-W 85Hz | Keyboard: Wooting One Analog | Keypad: Azeron Compact Analog | Mouse: Swiftpoint Z | Audio: Klipsch Reference 5.1

 

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