Why Does Samsung Keep Sponsoring Me? – Odyssey OLED G8

[Sveeno]

Thanks to Samsung for sponsoring this video! Learn more about the S34BG85 at: https://displaysolutions.samsung.com/monitor/detail/2086/S34BG85

 

Samsung's new Odyssey OLED G8 is a 34" ultrawide monitor with a 175Hz refresh rate, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, and a gorgeous QD-OLED panel. But for some reason, they don't want you to know it's QD-OLED on their website. What other secrets does this monitor hold?

 

 

 

[Quackers101]

its oled qd-oled oled monitor with qd filter on oled. 2000 nits ((1000)), 144hz (120hz) display

that is how you read some of the spec on certain sites.

[creesch]

I get the sales pitch behind the included remote and build in OS. I also get that this is a sponsored video. But, I don't really want to pay extra for "premium" features that in a few years will be outdated and probably never updated. Also, with the review of the recent Corsair Xeneon the refresh rate of 240hz was said to be "not best in class". I then mentioned I find that the attention given to that is a bit ridiculous as anything above 240hz approaches gimmick territory. However, I doubt that my feedback was incorporated that fast, so the fact that the refresh rate here is barely mentioned (175hz I think is quickly mentioned?) is a bit odd.

 

Again, I get that this is a sponsored video. It is just that the contrast with the Corsair video is fairly big given how close to each other these videos are released. And what the heck is up with the IO situation? Yes... again... sponsored video. But, mini display port and micro hdmi? There is no reason, at all, for those ports to be there in the mini and micro format. To be clear, that means that replacing cables in the future is going to be a pain in the ass and likely also cost you extra as there simply isn't that much choice available.

 

Edit: 

 

@LinusTechin the most recent Wan show you mentioned that you recently noticed that there is barely any discussion in the youtube comments. I first posted the above comment there but then refreshed the page to see this comment section (edit: just realized the image was downsized, but it was a long list of mostly "first", "nice", "cool cool" and mucht more). This was within 4 minutes of the video being posted. I admit I cheated as I saw the video on floatplane first (and also commented there as well) but if within 4 minutes the comment section looks like this most people will just give up.

There is so much low effort fluff that anyone coming in with the hopes of having a serious discussion already goes out of the window before it can even take hold. 

I know you feel like toxic/bad takes are a big issue and they are part of the problem. But part of the problem is also the scale of the channel and the internet being the internet.  I've been involved in community management of some huge communities in the past (not as much anymore as it did wore me down and it was al volunteer based). But at this scale and with how broken up and down voting is in youtube comments if you want serious discussion you can't expect it to happen automatically. In fact, you either accept that the comment section is mostly a dumpster fire or you actively start to moderate and encourage people to engage in a way you see as constructive.  Frankly, you probably could make a huge difference by automatically having all comments with 10 characters or less be filtered out. 

 

Basically if all people see is low effort comments they are likely to either not bother or engage in posting low effort comments themselves. 

[Error 52]

3 minutes ago, creesch said:

I get the sales pitch behind the included remote and build in OS. I also get that this is a sponsored video. But, I don't really want to pay extra for "premium" features that in a few years will be outdated and probably never updated.

My understanding is that dealing with 4K & HDR generally requires a CPU anyway, so it's not really costing that much more than just making it dumb.

[creesch]

Just now, Error 52 said:

My understanding is that dealing with 4K & HDR generally requires a CPU anyway, so it's not really costing that much more than just making it dumb.

 

I am sure that the base cost of materials is the same. But the operating system still needs to be made ready, maintained and updated for this monitor which is also a cost. Not to mention that for all intends and purposes it is an extra feature. Meaning they can likely justify a higher price than they would have without the "feature". So in my mind it makes an already expensive monitor even more expensive. 

[htonettti]

Its so strange that Samsung prolly asked linus to add in the fact its "good for dorms" or "good for students" , when the monitor itself costs 1299 (uk) which for most students is absurd

[Senzelian]

Unfortunately the I/O is horrible. I mean I can get behind the miniDP and even one USB C with PD, but the micro HDMI? And no full size DP either? Come on!

[pr0n]

Why are they doing a sponsored video for a product that literally cannot be purchased? It's not at any retailer and the Samsung page for it just has a marketing data gathering scam.... What's Samsung's motive here? 

[Senzelian]

10 minutes ago, pr0n said:

Why are they doing a sponsored video for a product that literally cannot be purchased? It's not at any retailer and the Samsung page for it just has a marketing data gathering scam.... What's Samsung's motive here? 

Seems to be available here in Germany. Not on Samsung's store, but on some retailers.

 

But Samsung also does these spots to attract potential customers for other monitors.

[AndreiArgeanu]

They seriously couldn't afford to put some full size video ports on the back?

[pr0n]

36 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Seems to be available here in Germany. Not on Samsung's store, but on some retailers.

 

But Samsung also does these spots to attract potential customers for other monitors.

I can't find it on Amazon for US, UK or Germany. Neo G8 is available but not the QD OLED version. This product doesn't seem to exist.

[Senzelian]

2 minutes ago, pr0n said:

Amazon

Amazon isn't the only retailer. Use Google Shopping or some other price comparison site and you might be able to find it.

 

[Skipple]

• micro-HDMI
• mini-DisplayPort

 

Seriously, it could be the best monitor in the world, but I'm not going to introduce another point of headache when I can't figure out why my display isn't working correctly and it turn out to be my mini-DisplayPort adapter. That's inexcusable on a monitor of this caliber. 

[LinusTech]

9 hours ago, creesch said:

I get the sales pitch behind the included remote and build in OS. I also get that this is a sponsored video. But, I don't really want to pay extra for "premium" features that in a few years will be outdated and probably never updated. Also, with the review of the recent Corsair Xeneon the refresh rate of 240hz was said to be "not best in class". I then mentioned I find that the attention given to that is a bit ridiculous as anything above 240hz approaches gimmick territory. However, I doubt that my feedback was incorporated that fast, so the fact that the refresh rate here is barely mentioned (175hz I think is quickly mentioned?) is a bit odd.

 

Again, I get that this is a sponsored video. It is just that the contrast with the Corsair video is fairly big given how close to each other these videos are released. And what the heck is up with the IO situation? Yes... again... sponsored video. But, mini display port and micro hdmi? There is no reason, at all, for those ports to be there in the mini and micro format. To be clear, that means that replacing cables in the future is going to be a pain in the ass and likely also cost you extra as there simply isn't that much choice available.

 

Edit: 

 

@LinusTechin the most recent Wan show you mentioned that you recently noticed that there is barely any discussion in the youtube comments. I first posted the above comment there but then refreshed the page to see this comment section (edit: just realized the image was downsized, but it was a long list of mostly "first", "nice", "cool cool" and mucht more). This was within 4 minutes of the video being posted. I admit I cheated as I saw the video on floatplane first (and also commented there as well) but if within 4 minutes the comment section looks like this most people will just give up.

There is so much low effort fluff that anyone coming in with the hopes of having a serious discussion already goes out of the window before it can even take hold. 

I know you feel like toxic/bad takes are a big issue and they are part of the problem. But part of the problem is also the scale of the channel and the internet being the internet.  I've been involved in community management of some huge communities in the past (not as much anymore as it did wore me down and it was al volunteer based). But at this scale and with how broken up and down voting is in youtube comments if you want serious discussion you can't expect it to happen automatically. In fact, you either accept that the comment section is mostly a dumpster fire or you actively start to moderate and encourage people to engage in a way you see as constructive.  Frankly, you probably could make a huge difference by automatically having all comments with 10 characters or less be filtered out. 

 

Basically if all people see is low effort comments they are likely to either not bother or engage in posting low effort comments themselves. 

Good post. I'm on my phone, so can't type much, but yes the Io is pretty annoying. I remmeber shooting something about it..... It may have gotten cut. I didn't see the final edit. 

 

As for the refresh rate comment, above 240Hz *IS* kinda irrelevant other than being cool, but it was a valid point for the corsair monitor because it's true. No part of that monitor is absolute top of the line other than its flexible display. I didn't say it made it a bad product. It's just $2k which normally means "best of the best" in some way. 

[pr0n]

3 hours ago, Senzelian said:

Amazon isn't the only retailer. Use Google Shopping or some other price comparison site and you might be able to find it.

 

Come on.... at least go to the site. This product flat out does not exist and even if it does it's not in any quantity that would make it make sense to advertise like this.
 

[ShredBird]

Hey LTT Team,

 

Your claim that HDR in Doom Eternal and high refresh don't rate work simultaneously because the game doesn't support AMD FreeSync Premium Pro is factually incorrect. FreeSync Premium Pro monitors are agnostic to game and GPU vendor for VRR + HDR support.

FreeSync Premium Pro support in games allows the game to read display capability and apply tone mapping automatically. This basically allows the gamer to skip the HDR calibration screen. It also allows the developer to control the FALD on a per scene basis to avoid excessive blooming. Games that support this are listed on AMD's website.
 

If you are testing HDR with an AMD GPU, you should know that Doom Eternal is kind of odd because you sometimes have to have HDR off in Windows to enable it in game. This is opposite of the behavior when using an Nvidia GPU which detects Windows HDR setting just fine. Most other games don't have this issue, this is the only one I know that behaves like this.

 

-Shred

[creesch]

3 hours ago, LinusTech said:

Good post. I'm on my phone, so can't type much, but yes the Io is pretty annoying. I remmeber shooting something about it..... It may have gotten cut. I didn't see the final edit. 

 

As for the refresh rate comment, above 240Hz *IS* kinda irrelevant other than being cool, but it was a valid point for the corsair monitor because it's true. No part of that monitor is absolute top of the line other than its flexible display.

 

To be fair, it was briefly touched upon but only barely.  As far as it being cut, that might be the case. Out of curiousity, how much liberty does the editor get here vs the writer? Sometimes some videos do have a bit of a disjointed feeling where it really appears (to me anyway) that some important context was lost in the process. 

 

 

Quote

I didn't say it made it a bad product. It's just $2k which normally means "best of the best" in some way. 

 

To be clear, I am not saying you implied that. It is more that I feel that once a monitor hits 240hz without overdrive shenanigans it probably should already be considered as top tier in that regard. Which I think might warrant similar language about it in reviews and such. 

I am not sure if you are familiar with the EU vacuum cleaner regulations that they introduced a few years ago, but this subject feels very similar to me. Basically as wattage was associated with better suction power manufactures started to engineer vacuum cleaners to have as high of a wattage use as possible. Simply because that gave them a perceived edge over more efficient cleaners as "the number was higher". In reality it just made those vacuums use more electricity effectively costing consumers more.  With refresh rates I feel the situation is very similar as they use more energy, cost more energy to use (you need a beefier GPU to achieve the fps), etc. 

[dhkatz]

So what reason would someone have to buy this over the Odyssey Neo G9? I get the price difference is still like $300-500 but if I'm already spending over $1000 on a monitor what does this give you that the G9 doesn't?

[LinusTech]

49 minutes ago, creesch said:

 

To be fair, it was briefly touched upon but only barely.  As far as it being cut, that might be the case. Out of curiousity, how much liberty does the editor get here vs the writer? Sometimes some videos do have a bit of a disjointed feeling where it really appears (to me anyway) that some important context was lost in the process. 

 

 

 

To be clear, I am not saying you implied that. It is more that I feel that once a monitor hits 240hz without overdrive shenanigans it probably should already be considered as top tier in that regard. Which I think might warrant similar language about it in reviews and such. 

I am not sure if you are familiar with the EU vacuum cleaner regulations that they introduced a few years ago, but this subject feels very similar to me. Basically as wattage was associated with better suction power manufactures started to engineer vacuum cleaners to have as high of a wattage use as possible. Simply because that gave them a perceived edge over more efficient cleaners as "the number was higher". In reality it just made those vacuums use more electricity effectively costing consumers more.  With refresh rates I feel the situation is very similar as they use more energy, cost more energy to use (you need a beefier GPU to achieve the fps), etc. 

On desktop refreshing the pixels faster isn't going to have the kind of ecological impact that you think. More is actually better in this case (overdrive is something else entirely), just not by much. 

[Dracarris]

5 hours ago, LinusTech said:

As for the refresh rate comment, above 240Hz *IS* kinda irrelevant other than being cool

Apart from a competitive advantage of really good competitive FPS players: Are there any blind tests where people can reliably distinguish 144Hz and 240Hz displays given sufficiently high frame rate from the GPU?

[Senzelian]

5 hours ago, pr0n said:

Come on.... at least go to the site. This product flat out does not exist and even if it does it's not in any quantity that would make it make sense to advertise like this.
 

I was on the site... But why just believe me when you can make up bs, right?

 

("Only 5 available" it says in red on this site)

 

[creesch]

1 hour ago, LinusTech said:

On desktop refreshing the pixels faster isn't going to have the kind of ecological impact that you think. More is actually better in this case (overdrive is something else entirely), just not by much. 

It of course won't have as much of an impact as the wattage number had with vacuum cleaners. Although I would be interested to find out what the actual difference is in energy usage. My point of that analogy was more about manufactures chasing higher numbers of a specific property often to the detriment of other properties. 

 

And sure it is better, but if it is mostly in theory and likely only for a very very small group of people then does it still matter in practice when people are deciding on what to buy?

 

Anyway, that are just my feelings on this specific thing. I do appreciate the response. 

[Stahlmann]

Please stop speading the misinformation that you need FreeSync Premium Pro or G-Sync Ultimate to use VRR and HDR at the same time. This hasn't been true for a long time now. Any standard FreeSync display that also supports HDR will be able to do both at the same time. If you really run into a case where you can't do both, then it's a software limitation on the monitor side of things, which is a whole other can of worms on a monitor that costs over $1000 USD.

 

Every HDR supporting monitor i've owned so far supported HDR and VRR simultaneously. Here are a few examples and their respective VRR certification tiers:

 

LG 27GP950-B - FreeSync / G-Sync compatible

Samsung Odyssey G7 (1440p model) - FreeSync / G-Sync compatible

Asus PG35VQ - (FreeSync support not official, but works) / G-Sync Ultimate

LG C9 OLED - FreeSync / G-Sync compatible

LG C2 OLED - FreeSync Premium / G-Sync compatible

 

Notice how according to the certification tiers the only monitor that should technically support VRR + HDR is the Asus PG35VQ? In reality it works on all of them. And yes, Doom: Eternal ran in HDR + VRR on all of these monitors. If you really ran into that problem, it's not because of the game not supporting a specific tier of one of the main two VRR standards.

 

 

 

 

Thank you for reading through my rant about misinformation and/or misleading advertising.

[Stahlmann]

3 hours ago, Senzelian said:

I was on the site... But why just believe me when you can make up bs, right?

 

("Only 5 available" it says in red on this site)

That pricing pretty much makes it DOA in Germany. The Dell AW3423DWF can be bought for 1099€ (also including tax). They're essentially the same monitor but the Samsung one costs almost double.

[Stahlmann]

3 hours ago, Dracarris said:

Apart from a competitive advantage of really good competitive FPS players: Are there any blind tests where people can reliably distinguish 144Hz and 240Hz displays given sufficiently high frame rate from the GPU?

Visually it depends. Most people probably wouldn't see a difference between 144Hz and 240Hz. But in terms of latency it is noticeable to most people. Especially when you play on 240Hz for a few minutes and go back down to 144Hz.