Alienware AW3423DW review: Quantum dot OLED renders rival shows primitive

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It’s uncommon to review a video display with the capacity to revolutionize the industry, but the Alienware AW3423DW may well carry out precisely that. It packs a decreasing-edge OLED panel with Quantum Dot technology at a designate surprisingly competitive with excessive-terminate IPS ultrawide shows.

Does this new Alienware create its peers primitive? By device of 34-trudge ultrawide shows, sure—even though this luxury direct their own praises isn’t reasonably most attention-grabbing. Still, gamers will are looking out to grab the AW3423DW up without hesitation.

Alienware AW3423DW specs and facets

QD-OLED panel apart, the Alienware AW3423DW’s specs are standard for an ultrawide gaming video display. It packs a 34-trudge conceal with a 21:9 side ratio and a choice of 3,440 x 1,440. The video display also claims 99.3% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut which, even though excessive, may perchance also be matched by some top fee IPS panels.

• Set size: 34-trudge
• Native choice: 3,440 x 1,440
• Panel form: QD-OLED
• Refresh fee: 175Hz
• Adaptive Sync: Nvidia G-Sync Last
• Ports: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Kind-A, 1x USB Kind-B (upstream), 1x audio-out, 1x headphone out
• Stand adjustment: 110mm prime, 40 levels swivel, 25 levels tilt
• VESA mount: Yes, 100mm x 100mm
• Speakers: Incorporated
• Sign: $1,299 MSRP

The fundamental difference may perchance also be realized within the video display’s VESA DisplayHDR 400 Appropriate Shaded certification. This guarantees a deep, inky gloomy level alongside an cheap level of HDR brightness. Alienware’s AW3423DW is the principle gaming video display to manufacture that certification.

Alienware AW3423DW create: Elegant, with one little instruct

Alienware unified its product in 2019 with a new create language, Legend, that felt straight out of a most up-to-date sci-fi film. It became a success. Alienware’s merchandise are among the many most attention-grabbing and sturdy available. Samsung’s shows are a shut 2d but lack the carry out quality to motivate up their witness.

The AW3423DW makes employ of OLED to its abet. A thick, corpulent rear panel hasty tapers to thin edges which can be most effective seemingly attributable to OLED doesn’t desire a backlight. The LED accent lights has moved from the stand to the video display panel, as successfully, so it’s seemingly you’ll additionally aloof revel in it within the occasion you utilize a third-procure collectively video display arm. The video display is curved, but the 1800R radius will not be aggressive and uncomplicated to put out of your mind in day-to-day employ.

An enormous stand retains the video display planted and adjusts for prime, tilt, and swivel. It feels good in-hand thanks to its heft and tender, excessive-quality plastic cladding, but it’s much less functional than it appears to be like. The stand’s legs sweep forward, eating into desk home, and the stand’s neck is deep. This implies the conceal would perchance be closer to you when positioned at the threshold of your desk.

If Alienware’s engineers happen to read this, please, I’m begging you: Gain one more create. The depth of the stand shipped with most Alienware shows is impractical for employ with the shallow desks generally offered this present day. Most of us, myself integrated, are gaming on a desk from Ikea or Wayfair. No lower than there’s a 100mm x 100mm VESA mount for attaching a extra shining stand or video display arm.

Alienware AW3423DW facets: Lawful the fundamentals

Connectivity is one space the Alienware AW3423DW cuts corners. It offers two HDMI 2.0 ports alongside one DisplayPort 1.4. Here is disappointing, because the HDMI ports can most effective manufacture a 100Hz refresh fee at the video display’s native choice of 3,440 x 1,440.

USB connectivity can be overall. The video display has four USB Kind-A downstream ports powered by one USB Kind-B upstream port. Two of the USB Kind-A ports are on the entrance lip and two are on the rear. All USB ports enhance stunning 5Gbps of bandwidth. All of that is standard for a gaming video display, but that is 2022, so I’d are looking out to witness USB-C. Gaming manufacturers must seem prime-tier gaming shows are in overall primitive by announce creators.

Pros will catch some perks within the menus. Setting the mode to creator enables procure admission to to sRGB and DCI-P3 modes and custom gamma adjustment. These settings are probably to be not accessible outside creator mode, which is a itsy-bitsy bit tense, and there’s no custom colour temperature available. Coloration adjustment is proscribed to RGB.

Alienware AW3423DW SDR performance: Merely beautiful

The Alienware AW3423DW is the principle gaming video display available with VESA DisplayHDR 400 Appropriate Shaded certification, but SDR is aloof key. Most PC video games carry out not enhance HDR, and while Home windows Auto-HDR can most continuously fix that, it doesn’t work successfully with some video games. An beautiful gaming video display need to have beautiful SDR. Fortunately, the AW3423DW delivers.

First, the injurious files. The Alienware AW3423DW done a lackluster most SDR brightness of stunning 246 nits. Here will not be shimmering for a most up-to-date gaming video display and, to create issues worse, the video display has a sparkling direct their own praises coat.

Whether or not this becomes a controversy depends on the build you utilize the video display. A brightness of 246 nits is better than enough for employ in a room with light motivate a watch on. Gamers who play in a unfortunate room will in actual fact prefer to shriek the brightness down. If your room lacks light motivate a watch on, on the different hand, otherwise that you must sport with the total lights on, the video display’s brightness won’t tag.

Now we procure to the upright stuff.

The Alienware AW3423DW’s difference ratio is so excessive that it exceeds the capabilities of my SpyderX Elite sorting out instrument in SDR mode. The video display achieves this with a most attention-grabbing gloomy level studying of zero nits. Here’s a result I’ve most effective recorded from OLED televisions cherish LG’s C1 OLED.

This holds up in subjective actuality. Darkish areas of the conceal witness in actual fact, perfectly sad, with not a discover of luminance even when considered in a lightless room successfully after sundown. Here is broad for gamers who cherish sad, touchy titles, equivalent to Diablo 2: Resurrected or Resident Corrupt: Village. It’s also upright files within the occasion you are looking out to toddle Netflix to your PC.

Coloration gamut comes in at 100% of sRGB, 99% of DCI-P3, and 95% of AdobeRGB. These figures drop a tad within the motivate of many varied OLED shows, which extra every so many times manufacture 100% of DCI-P3 and 96 to 100% of AdobeRGB, but they easily beat almost all IPS and VA panel shows offered this present day.

Coloration accuracy is a dream, coming in with a median delta error successfully below one. Here is standard of an OLED video display but extraordinary the total identical. Most IPS shows have a median colour error between one and three, with most effective the sole dipping below.

The AW3423DW also hit the ideal gamma curve of two.2 and a default colour temperature of 6300Ok, stunning a itsy-bitsy bit off the most well-liked 6500Ok. Briefly, announce you gaze on this video display will witness very shut to what the creator supposed.

Alienware AW3423DW HDR direct their own praises performance: Essentially upright, but about a quirks

The Alienware AW3423DW offers a different between two HDR modes: HDR400 Appropriate Shaded and HDR Peak 1000. HDR400 is the default mode and must be enabled within the occasion you suggested HDR in Home windows.

HDR 400 Appropriate Shaded is a upright HDR mode. It reached a chief sustained brightness of 325 nits and a chief 10 percent window of 411 nits. Surprisingly, enabling this mode a itsy-bitsy bit lifted the minimal gloomy level to a .1 nits, the lowest level my SpyderX Elite calibration instrument can measure. It also narrowed the colour gamut and reduced colour accuracy compared to SDR.

All of this may well sound dire, but my subjective influence became higher than sorting out suggested. The HDR400 mode’s brightness will not be broad but excessive enough to witness impressive in a shadowy or sad room. My gaming den is rather shadowy, with most effective one window on a a ways side of the room, so a sustained brightness of 325 nits is enough to bring further oomph in shimmering scenes.

The HDR 1000 Peak mode seems pointless. In my sorting out, this mode achieves a most of 558 nits in a 10 percent window. I’ll repeat that I’m not ready to ascertain a 1% window, and reviewers who’ve examined this realized a chief brightness above 1000 nits. With that said, I dwell unconvinced that performance in a 1% window is relevant. How in overall carry out you play a sport the build most effective one percent of the direct their own praises’s pixels are brightly lit? No longer in overall, upright?

HDR 1000 Peak seems calibrated to aggressively arrange the panel’s brightness with a skew in opposition to lights little portions of the conceal. It’s so aggressive that I would witness it in action while transferring a shimmering image across the conceal and for the length of transitions in sport cutscenes. This soured me on the HDR 1000 Peak mode.

Still, there’s with out a doubt the AW3423DW outperforms a median backlit IPS ultrawide gaming video display, and most gamers will discover a broad upgrade compared to what’s already on their desk.

Alienware AW3423DW motion performance: OLED is laborious to beat

Gamers will revel within the Alienware AW3423DW’s most refresh fee of 175Hz when connected over DisplayPort. Most competitors have a most refresh fee of 144Hz. The video display can be G-Sync Last certified, which device Nvidia’s G-Sync technology will work across the total fluctuate of refresh fee and not using a flickering, stuttering, or assorted concerns, assuming you have a successfully matched GeForce graphics card.

OLED also has extremely fast pixel response times. Alienware quotes a response time of .1 milliseconds gray-to-gray. That’s zero-point-one, not one, the lowest resolve quoted by IPS or VA gaming shows (and most most effective manufacture that in an overclock mode).

The terminate result is beautiful motion readability. You’ll witness not one in every of the ghosting or smearing considered on a gaming video display with an IPS or VA panel. Rapid-transferring objects are exceptionally crisp and text stays readable when you scroll thru a doc or webpage.

To make certain, the AW3423DW will not be a competitive gaming video display. Its size and side ratio disqualifies it from serious competitive employ. Still, its refresh fee and motion readability are valuable in a unfold of titles. I enjoyed it even in Closing Story XIV, the build I would pan the camera across the game’s extra beautiful vistas without shedding detail.

Alienware AW3423DW text readability

The AW3423DW’s broad SDR mode and colour accuracy must create it ideal for customary employ, but it has a minor instruct that would not repeat in assessments: mediocre text readability. I noticed aliasing spherical some superb text aspects and, looking out on font and background, a shrimp off-colour or shadow to 1 side of text.

It’s superb in most scenarios, but text readability will not be as upright as it’s seemingly you’ll demand from a direct their own praises with almost 110 pixels per trudge. Anyone who works with documents or pictures that consist of superb fonts would perchance be let down and even web sites don’t witness as crisp as they may.

Alienware AW3423DW and OLED burn-in

The Alienware AW3423DW has an OLED conceal and, cherish all OLED monitors, it’d perchance be liable to burn-in. The video display namely entails a panel refresh characteristic that, per the manual, will robotically steal at 1,500 hours whether you wish it to or not. This would not be integrated if burn-in may well not happen.

Burn-in is extra probably the extra in overall you have static pictures on the conceal and, finally, will require no lower than many hundreds (and probably hundreds) of hours showing a identical image to reason burn-in. Alienware also entails burn-in coverage within the video display’s generous three-year customary warranty.

Must aloof you apprehension? That depends on how lengthy you intend to employ this video display. I in point of fact lift on to shows for masses of, a protracted time, so burn-in is a wretchedness. Nonetheless, many gamers change a video display every few years. If that’s you, you’ll have much less reason to apprehension, as odds are you’ll swap out the conceal successfully before burn-in may well happen.

Conclusion

The Alienware AW3423DW makes every assorted 34-trudge ultrawide gaming video display primitive. It’s also a critically mistaken direct their own praises that won’t be ideal for everybody.

PC gamers will luxuriate in this video display. SDR image quality is broad straight out of the sphere, providing a intention of dimensionality and realism that’s a sever above the competitors. HDR performance will not be impressive compared to a Mini-LED video display, but no 34-trudge ultrawide gaming video display for the time being offers a Mini-LED backlight (MSI has announced a Mini-LED model, the MSI MEG 341, but it’s not for the time being available).

While it’s seemingly you’ll cherish a gaming video display to take care of announce advent and customary employ, on the different hand, there are about a drawbacks. The AW3423DW’s connectivity is disappointing, with stunning one DisplayPort no or USB-C. The stand is simply too tremendous, and too a ways forward, making the video display sophisticated to employ on modest desks. Textual announce readability is sub-par relative to the video display’s pixel density and can distract within the occasion you in overall employ little font sizes.

These downsides would perchance be disappointing for folk that hoped the Alienware AW3423DW would perchance be the one direct their own praises to rule them all. Still, that is an outstanding video display and a broad commence for QD-OLED technology within the PC market.

Then there’s the associated rate. $1,299 will not be cheap, but it’s highly competitive and an further layer of buttercream frosting on an already savory cake. Most flagship gaming ultrawides with identical specs, cherish the LG Ultragear 34PG950G, are stunning as pricey without reference to depraved performance.

Gamers, don’t hesitate. You’ll are looking out to make a choice out the AW3423DW before it goes out of stock.