G9 Odyssey Neo problems

[NezMonik]

Over the past few weeks I've been looking into other customer complains and reviews of the G9, and just recently came across an updated post from Tim from hardware unboxed sharing his thoughts:

 

Quote

A lot of people have been asking us about the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9's broken HDR while gaming with retail units. At this stage, until Samsung fixes it, we DON'T recommend buying it. Do not buy or pre-order the display until it's fixed because it's a major flaw/defect. We've been discussing the issue with Samsung for a week and a half now and will update you when they explain the issue or fix it. We aren't sure whether it's an issue with the display firmware, GPU drivers, or Windows. We've been able to replicate it using an Nvidia test system with the latest firmware, but not to the same extent on AMD test systems, which is odd. Unfortunately we can't test every configuration of input hardware in our reviews so we missed this flaw, although still found other flaws with HDR performance that we talked about in the review. Obviously if HDR gaming doesn't work properly on some GPUs there's no point spending $2500 on this monitor.

 

https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugz5I3n7nv5fl7TDxN14AaABCQ

 

That said, I've been hearing mixed things from online anecdotes. Assuming anyone here has received the monitor, can anyone vouch with the HDR-related problems? I was hoping LTT would do a more indepth review on the monitor but so far they've only released a sponsored video.

 

[Stahlmann]

Ooof. Samsung had a lot of trouble with the release of last year's G7 and G9, of which many problems are not even fixed yet. Now the new models are released with major flaws again. The chance i'll be buying a Samsung monitor in the future is getting slimmer and slimmer. A this point i would absolutely not recommend buying one "hoping that the issue will be resolved in a future firmware update". And this is just plain unacceptable with a $2500 monitor. Just stay away from it and wait until the competition releases actual good products to compete.

[Maticks]

HDR gaming is the least of its issues.

I've had mine for 3 days now and the flickering even loading a webpage is so annoying.

It's full screen flickering.

I have found a workaround where changing the color from RGB to 444 and creating a custom refresh rate of 100Hz has stopped it.

G9 Neo clearly went to Alpha testing and the customers are Beta testing it for Samsung.

 

So basically getting rid of the colors and dropping the refresh rate fixes it 99% turning off Adaptive Sync at 120Hz completely fixes it.

But whats the point of this display having no features lol.

 

And if you have an Nvidia GPU you need VRR Control On in the System menu to stop game flickering regardless of this workaround.

Here it the funny part, every setting in the monitor is remembed but the VRR Control, everytime the monitor goes into Standby you need to turn it back on.

 

For a $2,999 monitor it very much has $1,200 feel..

 

 

[NezMonik]

Well crap. Leave it to Samsung to flub the software. It annoys me as someone looking for a 40+ ultrawide, only to find out that the best "on paper" spec thing is the G9. Was actually hoping the "neo" was just a way for samsung to announce a full on refresh. Next best option would be the LG ultrawides, but they have low refresh rates.

 

Out of curiosity Maticks, are you on the 1005 firmware version?

 

 

 

 

[Maticks]

20 minutes ago, NezMonik said:

Well crap. Leave it to Samsung to flub the software. It annoys me as someone looking for a 40+ ultrawide, only to find out that the best "on paper" spec thing is the G9. Was actually hoping the "neo" was just a way for samsung to announce a full on refresh. Next best option would be the LG ultrawides, but they have low refresh rates.

 

Out of curiosity Maticks, are you on the 1005 firmware version?

 

 

 

 

Yep i am on 1005.0 it shipped with it. 

Not sure if i have a faulty unit or this is just standard for this monitor. not many are out the wild it seems.

 

That was my fix i worked out after trying every setting in the monitor on and off in different combo's and Nvidia settings also.

If you switch Adaptive sync off it doesnt seem to do it. i still think i am seeing the odd backlight flicker as well but if i turn local dimming off then its basically the same as the original G9. lol.

There is a second between the dimming and the content so if you move a white box away it takes like .5 seconds to turn the dimming zones sometimes you catch that when scrolling pages.

 

 

[inquam]

I have issues with turning on HDR in Windows makes entire screen "washed out". Could be a windows thing though. HDR videos look great. Turning on LAD on desktop even in SDR actually look a bit similar to the washed out issue. So perhaps it's a matter of the screen needing to properly enable that only when HDR content is shown?

 

I also have noticed a strange issue where having Gsync enabled and running CSGO in 240Hz mode is silky smooth. The info of the screen shows its working. Then I alt-tab to desktop and back to the game and it claims to be running 240Hz, the game has high framerate but everything feels sluggish. Looking at the info screen of the monitor then shows it stuck at 60Hz. Turning it off and back on an everything is back to being silky smooth again.

 

So a few kinds for Samsun, and perhaps MS and Nvidia too, to fix.

 

For in SDR most of the time it's working fine for me. I have not had any flickering, lines or anything like that.

 

But I wanted to get a good HDR experience so I'm hoping Samsung responds and have a plan ASAP or I might return it. Sure its a great monitor (when it works) even in SDR at 240Hz... But for the price everything should work.

For context I'm running a 3080Ti Suprim X and came from two 27" 16:9 monitors.

[Daethz]

I wouldn't spend $2500 on a ultrawide unless it was 5k/144hz+ with hdr1000+ and actually capable of reaching 1000nits in independent tests

I think samsung figured this is the best one on the market so we can make it cost 5x its value!

[xg32]

3 hours ago, Daethz said:

I wouldn't spend $2500 on a ultrawide unless it was 5k/144hz+ with hdr1000+ and actually capable of reaching 1000nits in independent tests

I think samsung figured this is the best one on the market so we can make it cost 5x its value!

they used the same panel as the old g9 and just tacked mini-led and fald onto it, that was already a big red flag, the panel itself isn't good enough for hdr, the colors look so weird in person, not to mention the official specs are already quite crappy, and i wouldn't trust samsung's specs. From minitors, qleds tto fridges, i wouldn't buy samsung, if the cut corners on the ssds too it'd be the whole product stack.

[Maticks]

Spoke with Samsung today.. waiting for them to get back to me but yeah its all firmware related. i would cancel your preorder if you have one.

Hopefully they work these issues out.. but for now what should be a great experience is turning into a nightmare.

the local dimming is weird as well sometimes it over responds brightening 2/3 of the whole panel over one little section being lit.

 

The flickering is somewhat resolved by using custom as the picture profile instead of SRGB as it seems sRGB bugs the screen making it flicker.

 

I did find a way to make it flawless.

If i turn off adaptive sync, turn off local dimming and switch it down to 120Hz then it works fine..

But at that point just buy a $400 screen ?

 

regardless of what you do, you still have scanlines to deal with.. i don't think that's fixable from what i am seeing.

 

Samsung G9 Neo in a word = compromise.

 

If you are not willing to compromise then don't buy it.

[inquam]

2 hours ago, Maticks said:

Spoke with Samsung today.. waiting for them to get back to me but yeah its all firmware related. i would cancel your preorder if you have one.

Hopefully they work these issues out.. but for now what should be a great experience is turning into a nightmare.

the local dimming is weird as well sometimes it over responds brightening 2/3 of the whole panel over one little section being lit.

 

The flickering is somewhat resolved by using custom as the picture profile instead of SRGB as it seems sRGB bugs the screen making it flicker.

 

I did find a way to make it flawless.

If i turn off adaptive sync, turn off local dimming and switch it down to 120Hz then it works fine..

But at that point just buy a $400 screen ?

 

regardless of what you do, you still have scanlines to deal with.. i don't think that's fixable from what i am seeing.

 

Samsung G9 Neo in a word = compromise.

 

If you are not willing to compromise then don't buy it.

You spoke to them on phone? Or do you have email that you could quote?
Did they mention anything about a ETA on a fix? Because I know several people who have the screen and are waiting for a public statement/fix but if nothing comes soon they will return the monitor.

[Maticks]

well i fixed scanlines on the G9 Neo in all real world testing..

Black Equalizer cannot be on 15 or higher. once its on 14 for some reason all scanlines are gone...

at least from a real world perspective i couldn't load facebook in dark mode or even the macrumors default site without scanlines.

 

When i do the UFO test for inversion that still creates scanlines but thats not real world.

 

It's so shocking that we are beta testing this product we paid full price for

If Black Equalizer doesn't work past 14 then don't make it go to 20. this is also the source of random brightness screen flashing that is happening.

I am not talking about flickering there is this bightness bloom that happens across the whole screen sometimes. it stopped once Black Equalizer was at 14.

This is the local dimming weirdness i was speaking of.

 

When i spoke with Samsung they are constantly wanting me to factory reset the monitor to fix it. it's clear now that will set Black Equalizer to 9 which is below 15 so it will "fix it".

But how about they actually say what is broken so i can change the setting.

 

[NickFirzen]

Well it seems to be ok for me, only HDR Dynamic mode makes skin colors off...

But ofc this is my first HDR experience, and have to use it with oldie 1070 laptop at 60hz via HDMI 2.0, which is surprisingly survivable, until I can get new PC, when prices would finally fall...

My dream monitor at last...

[KronosMarauder]

I've been reading along and feel its my duty to report from a rather experienced approach (I'll explain). 
I owned (still do) the previous G9 model and dealt with the myriad of issues... from scanlines, poor dimming zones, nvidia driver updates that makes things worse, 240hz related problems, HDR dullness, etc.
I kept the original G9 (vs returning) because the "extra" size on the sides helped make games more immersive for me. I do think sometimes it gave me a competitive edge (sometimes seeing players offside when a normal monitor wouldn't have, as well as for work, witch gives me lots of room for multiple windows (MSFT Teams, Excel, Outlook, Browsers, etc)).
I was excited when the "next" version (NEO) was announced, as I hopped it resolved ALL the negatives of the current G9 Model. More peak brightness (NITS), Mini-LED's for more dimming zones and so on. So here are my notes on the new NEO (Windows 10, Nvidia 3090FE)

• HDR doesn't work. Yes you can toggle it, but it's unusable. Its so dim/dull, and the monitor settings can't fix this, nor do the NVIDIA settings for contrast and brightness make any significant impact.
• Scan lines - They still exist (not rare, expect this in all sort of use cases), same as previous model. 240hz is a mess. Dark mode triggers this like no other. 
• New dimming zones - Way better than before, you actually have true zones instead of "columns of light". With that said, there's still ghosting/hallo around bright images. Also when you drag windows there's a clear "catch up" bloom effect.

Recommendation. I'm one of the lazy/sucker ones that's probably willing to wait on a firmware update. At the price point this is unacceptable, but "they" don't have a lot of competition in this space. so.......

 

[Maticks]

Samsung confirmed with me today that they will be releasing a firmware tomorrow to patch some things no big detail on what is fixed though.

[Stahlmann]

11 hours ago, NickFirzen said:

Well it seems to be ok for me, only HDR Dynamic mode makes skin colors off...

But ofc this is my first HDR experience, and have to use it with oldie 1070 laptop at 60hz via HDMI 2.0, which is surprisingly survivable, until I can get new PC, when prices would finally fall...

My dream monitor at last...

Man you're taking a huge gamle. You cannot even test if your monitor works correctly at the refresh rate, etc. you paid for. And that while knowing the monitor has severe issues that are not visible at lower OSD settings. I would not let a Samsung monitor go out of it's return window until i thoroughly tested it. 

[Stahlmann]

10 hours ago, KronosMarauder said:

Recommendation. I'm one of the lazy/sucker ones that's probably willing to wait on a firmware update. At the price point this is unacceptable, but "they" don't have a lot of competition in this space. so.......

That doesn't mean it's okay to release a horrible product with issues all over the place. Especially issues that have been existing with the previous model. If anything, "not having competition" is an excuse.

 

If i'd buy a $2500 monitor i wouldn't accept anything less than perfect. Every small defect would instantly make me return it.

 

Either don't buy it or return it if you have one. This is the only way Samsung will know that it's not good business to release unfinished garbage. Somehow nowadays people are okay with keeping products they bought based on misleading marketing. And this way Samsung and other companies will never learn.

 

People keeping the monitor while saying HDR is unuseable and they need to run it at 120Hz: Get a fucking CRG9 and call it a day. You'll save a lot of money. Or keep paying for features you don't get if you're happy about it.

[KronosMarauder]

2 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

That doesn't mean it's okay to release a horrible product with issues all over the place. Especially issues that have been existing with the previous model. If anything, "not having competition" is an excuse.

 

If i'd buy a $2500 monitor i wouldn't accept anything less than perfect. Every small defect would instantly make me return it.

 

Either don't buy it or return it if you have one. This is the only way Samsung will know that it's not good business to release unfinished garbage. Somehow nowadays people are okay with keeping products they bought based on misleading marketing. And this way Samsung and other companies will never learn.

 

People keeping the monitor while saying HDR is unuseable and they need to run it at 120Hz: Get a fucking CRG9 and call it a day. You'll save a lot of money. Or keep paying for features you don't get if you're happy about it.

I agree with your thoughts here. I've only had it for 24 hours and am seriously considering returning it if things don't get resolved within the return window (which they likely won't in time). 

[Spinningdorito]

I just got mine today and yeah the HDR is busted. I'm thinking it's just really aggressively tonemapping content to match the 1015 nit peak brightness it's reporting via edid. In dynamic mode it seems to be trying to scale 1000 nit content up to 2000 nits. 

 

I'm also getting the horizontal lines across bright colors at the top of the screen, especially at the corners. It goes away when I run hdmi 2.1 at 144Hz and also 60Hz via displayport. 

[KronosMarauder]

FYI, new firmware 1006.1 was posted on the site, but the download button doesn't work yet. Hopefully we can test soon to see what was and what wasn't resolved.

Samsung Download Center: Owner's Manuals, Firmware Updates & Drivers | Samsung US

[Maticks]

13 hours ago, KronosMarauder said:

FYI, new firmware 1006.1 was posted on the site, but the download button doesn't work yet. Hopefully we can test soon to see what was and what wasn't resolved.

Samsung Download Center: Owner's Manuals, Firmware Updates & Drivers | Samsung US

Yep.. download link doesn’t work still 12 hours now

[buttersweet]

I have this checkerbox flicker problem everytime you turn on for 5sec.

[Maticks]

On 8/27/2021 at 1:07 PM, Spinningdorito said:

I just got mine today and yeah the HDR is busted. I'm thinking it's just really aggressively tonemapping content to match the 1015 nit peak brightness it's reporting via edid. In dynamic mode it seems to be trying to scale 1000 nit content up to 2000 nits. 

 

I'm also getting the horizontal lines across bright colors at the top of the screen, especially at the corners. It goes away when I run hdmi 2.1 at 144Hz and also 60Hz via displayport. 

i turned mine from 240Hz down to 120Hz, and all my issues went away with a few changes i got 240Hz working without flickering, but there was the odd even that i had something strange happen either the odd line, the odd backlight flash. but once below 240Hz none of those things.

 

Must be the same panel as in the CRG9 that runs at 120Hz and they've overclocked it to 240Hz it doesn't sound like a lot of the screens like 240Hz.

Maybe its a binning things, screens that fail badly go to the CRG9 the ones that don't go into the G9's a few issues maybe don't get picked up?

 

Since HDMI 2.1 caps out at 144Hz sounds like that might be stable also. Happy with 120Hz on Displayport don't have a GPU that can push past that with all settings turned up.

False advertising from Samsung though, at least i know if i want an extra 24FPS i can put in an HDMI cable.

 

Given these issues were present on the G9 and still unresolved, is this a firmware thing that can be fixed or a Quality Control thing that if a panel has an issue at 240Hz it will always?

[Maticks]

installed the new firmware.. seems to have fixed the VRR Control issue it now stays on when the monitor goes into standby.

Flickering now is present at Black Equalizer 13 which it wasn't before now it stops flickering at 9.

Not sure if that means they've changed other things but now can run at 240Hz without flickering.

 

Still see scanlines present on benchmarks https://www.testufo.com/inversion#pattern=uniformity&ppf=5

 

[Maticks]

revised... still seeing weird once off flickering gaming it's not often its one flicker every 30 minutes on average but still annoying on firmware 1006.1

dropped from 240Hz down to 120Hz no more flickering for 4 hours now so still something strange is happening at 240Hz even though FPS are averaging 150-160FPS.

Always the top 5CM's in a band flickers to a black then back to the screen when it happens its 1 second its horizontal the whole screen.

never everywhere else on the screen, really annoying.

[KronosMarauder]

I wanted to provide a comprehensive update, from someone that owns the 2020 G9 model and the new 2021 G9 NEO and my thoughts.

First, I paid $1,400 for G9. It was/is plagued with issues, but after several firmware updates some have improved. For the G9 I'm on 1012.01 (latest FW). I can say it still has bad scanlines, especially when my browsers are in dark mode. Yes you can change some brightness/contrast settings here and there to limit, but the "right" scenario that causes the scanlines still happens often. Now for HDR on the original G9. Yes it looks duller when you turn on in WIN10. The WIN10 SDR to HDR slider does help compensate a bit. To me its good enough that I leave it on, and can still browse, work, etc (non-gaming scenarios). I've always been satisfied with brightness, and yes the blacks are washed out, as there were only 10 zones and not a true FALD display, so I knew that when I bought the monitor.

Now bring in the G9 Neo. Supposed to solve all the little gripes I had with the G9 (but for $2,499 US, so that's over $1,000 from previous model). Even with all the improvements it's still hard to justify $1000 more, but I decided to give it a go. Here's where the story gets extremely disappointing. Surely they fixed scanlines right?! nope. On 240hrz mode you just can't get them to go away 100%. Sure you can play with brightness/contrast/black equalizer, etc, but it still presents itself here and there. On 120hrz DP or 144hrz HDMI this doesn't happen. I believe the consensus is that at 240Hrz the monitor has been overclocked and can't natively handle it properly, but Samsung did not advertise that anywhere that I know of, and the claim is that it is a true 240hrz capable monitor. The blacks are way better with local dimming now, the true upgrade on this monitor with the new zones. No major light bleed or blooming in my experience on SDR< more to come on that (love it). Peak brightness I think is a little less than desired. When you advertise 2000 peak over the previous model G9 only having 1000 peak, call me excited to see this puppy shine. However most have now discovered it's a bit gimmicky, hard to reproduce and for me, hard to notice a difference between monitors. Where and when it can hit higher brightness, its for a very short period of time, for a small area. We were kinda let on by their marketing on this one. Now the STAR of the show (don't mean that in a good way)! HDR is TERRIBLE. So the second I turn HDR on in WIN10, the screen becomes super dimm "grey", so I'm like, ok lets move the WIN10 SDR/HDR slider to fix this.... oh, its at max already... ok Nvidia settings... oh that made it worse... ok monitor settings.. oh not much better. Remember, I have the previous G9 to compare, and its night/day difference. So for everyone saying its just WIN10 issue, bla bla, I'm telling you this monitor has some separate issues with HDR. I also get blooming around windows and a darker veil around bright ones when I drag windows around. Its just weird and bad, its unusable for my day to day stuff. It does look better in games a bit on dynamic, but still worse than the previous G9. Also turning local dimming FALD off, does seem to solve the problem, however thats the whole reason "WE" got this monitor was for local dimming and HDR (not one or the other). Now maybe some people truly have a model that isn't having these issues and some possible "lottery" on good/bad units shipped, but I'm inclined to say that that's not the case, and people just don't have the previous model and new model to compare side-to-side, and they use game settings to try and overcome the dullness and think that's acceptable. To be clear, SDR content looks great on the NEO when HDR is turned off, but thats not what we paid for, nor am I going to WIN HDR settings and turning that thing on and off every time I want to play a game (for games that require this). The latest firmware 1006.1 didn't change anything for me  (from what I read from others, it fixed the VRR from turning off each time the monitor went to sleep and some screen glitching which I never experienced). I for one am not willing to pay $1000 more for a broken product and wait to see if they fix it via firmware (doubt the scanlines will be fixed via FW if they couldn't get the previous model fixed). So yeah, that's where I'm at. This thing could have been amazing. Also I purchased from BestBuy, so was going to leave a review on Amazon and got a message that they detected "unusual" activity for reviews for this monitor so only Amazon purchasers can leave one. So it seems lots of people are trying to report these problems anywhere they can.
One small note, my original G9 still makes popping sounds (corners of the bezel) when the monitor turns on and is warming up from being cold (I got used to them). The new G9 NEO has NOT presented any pops at all, and I noticed a slight change in the bottom bezel between both models, so maybe they addressed that issue.