What just happened? Remember the days when 32 inches was considered large for a monitor? That's not really the case anymore, and Samsung is continuing to embrace the era of massive displays with a 57-inch "8K" Mini-LED model, a 49-inch OLED, and several other new products.
Samsung unveiled its slew of new monitors ahead of CES 2023, which kicks off this week. The highlight is the successor to its $2,499, 49-inch Odyssey Neo G9, a mini-LED display we awarded 95 in our review. The all-new Odyssey Neo G9 ups the screen size to an incredible 57 inches.
Samsung teased the new Neo G9 back in November when it appeared as part of AMD's Together We Advance_Gaming livestream that unveiled team red's RNDA 3-powered graphics cards. The monitor features DisplayPort 2.1, and while it's being pushed as an 8K display, that resolution in a 32:9 ultrawide monitor only applies to the horizontal dimension, making it 7,680 x 2,160, or about half the pixel count of true 8K, though that's still an impressive number of pixels, admittedly.
Like its predecessor, this is a curved Mini-LED monitor with a 240Hz refresh rate. There's also a 1ms response time, 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and support for HDR 1000. No word yet on the price, but expect to sell a kidney for this one.
Samsung also unveiled the Odyssey G95SC monitor (above), a 49-inch 5,120 x 1,440 display that it claims is the world's first 32:9 aspect ratio OLED gaming monitor. It shares many of its specs with the upcoming 34-inch Odyssey G8 QD-OLED, including the use of QD-OLED technology, a 1ms response time, 1800R curve, adaptive sync, AMD FreeSync Premium, support for Samsung's Gaming Hub, and VESA's HDR True Black 400 certification. The larger monitor also comes with a faster 240Hz refresh rate---the Odyssey G8 QD-OLED tops out at 175Hz.
Port-wise, the two monitors both offer Mini DisplayPort, Micro HDMI 2.1, and USB-C charging of up to 65W. Again, Samsung has yet to announce any pricing for these displays.
Elsewhere, Samsung announced its first 5K monitor, the 27-inch ViewFinity S9, which offers a 5,120 x 2,880 resolution on its IPS display, a 99 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and HDR 600 support. Aimed at creators, the monitor also boasts a 4K webcam, HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C ports, and it can be calibrated using the SmartThingsApp and a smartphone camera.
Finally, there's an updated version of Samsung's Smart Monitor. The company has released several versions of this display, which tries to combine the best elements of modern smart TVs and monitors. The new Smart Monitor M80C has a 32-inch 4K display, a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a detachable SlimFit Camera. There's also a new personalization feature, and, like other models, it can run Microsoft Office 365 applications via a virtual machine without the need for a PC connection.