Customer Ratings & Reviews

I'll keep the review simple. Pros: Picture quality Refresh rate Size Games look beautiful Customization with settings Cons: Has built in tv functionality but does not have any optical out, meaning you cant use the tv functions through the same audio output as your pc. On top of that, the only option is the built in speakers, which are terrible, or a bluetooth device. Big downside for me as i was hoping to use the interface with my audio equipment. Hdr seems to be buggy, but need to do more testing before making that claim absolute G sync does not seem to work properly, and leads to flickering or the monitor just not working anymore. Neutral: Default color settings are sun optimal Tv setup is annoying Interface can be overwhelming Overall, I'm not sure if there's a reason to get this specific monitor over some of the others that use the same panel. I would reccomend just buying the one that is the cheapest.

I thought this was just a monitor, completely unaware that it had a built-in system until I turned it on for the first time. All I wanted was a monitor to pair with my PC; for me personally, this system and built-in speakers are of no use. I don't know why it's still called G8, even though there are such significant differences from the previous generation. The monitor gives me a feeling of a slight bulge in the middle as if it's a reverse curved screen, which is very strange. I am very sure that I was extremely careful while installing it and there were no bumps. Please leave a commit if you have the same feeling. And as for the monitor itself, it’s OK. My ideal high-end HDR monitor should be able to achieve a global brightness of 300-400 nits, beyond which it starts to become glaring, but this monitor is only about 200 nits. After testing, the DP interface now permanently enables DSC, even if you set it to 60Hz. And when I use the HDMI port, only 60Hz is available, even though the same HDMI cable can run 4K 120Hz without enabling DSC on another monitor, further testing is required.

I wanted to get a bigger and new monitor, that had more color than a VA panel and ideally 4K resolution with high framerates to play games on. I’ve been thinking about getting into the OLED panels, as the technology has matured since the first-generation panels. And that’s how I landed on the Samsung 32in Odyssey OLED G8 G80SD as it was recently launched and readily available. Pros: - Thin and light for size. - Beautiful and Smooth 4K OLED panel with 240Hz refresh rate. - True Blacks and Zero Glare standout. - Minor improvements have a major impact. Cons: - Samsung’s SmartTV belongs in a TV, not a Monitor. - Back Panel Plugs are EXTREMELY LOOSE. - Must change the default settings to get best results. - Warranty does not match industry standard. Setup: I knew this monitor was going to be thin, but I was still surprised at just how thin and light the monitor was while taking it out of the box. Included in the box with the monitor is the Stand Base, Stand Arm, power brick and cable, wireless remote control, 5.25 ft Display Port 1.4 cable, a 6.5ft HDMI 2.1 cable, and a PC In USB cable for enabling the onboard USB A ports on the monitor. One major concern I had right away was while plugging in the Power and DisplayPort, the connections moved within the back panel! I’m familiar with my share of loose plugs, but this felt like the ports were just floating inside the shell of the monitor, whereas I expected them to be firmly attached to the exterior. I want to warn anyone who is even slightly forceful with their cables, BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL WHEN PLUGGING IN YOUR CONNECTION!! Otherwise, you might damage the monitor before you can even turn it on. Setup on the desk was easy, Samsung went with a tool free approach for the base stand included. You just need to line up the tabs and snap the monitor into place. The stand is one of many improvements to useability Samsung has made, not only did they get rid of the ridiculous V-base design, but the monitor can swivel and tilt into almost any position needed to get the best view. With such a large monitor, the stand handles the adjustments perfectly without tipping. Even with the stand upgrades, after some arrangements on my desk, I decided to use my existing monitor arm as it allowed me to fit everything on my desk as I wanted. Installing the monitor arm was a breeze with how light the G80SD is. The metal back panel makes the monitor feel premium and look super sleek. Additionally, there is an RBG ring on the back, CoreLighting+, which is off by default. I opted to keep it turned off, nothing against RBG or backlighting, but I won’t be focusing on the back of this panel that much. But when I do, Samsung made an improvement over prior models of Odyssey G8 monitors is the decision to face the ports out towards the back of the monitor. No 90-degree bend at the monitor or cables hanging out below the monitor because they can be secured behind the monitor to the arm. It’s so much easier to plug in the cables as well, as you don’t have to get the right angle or bend any cables up under a hood, you can just turn the monitor to the back and see which plug you want to use. Software: For better or for worse, Samsung uses its Tizen SmartTV software on the monitors, which only takes about 5 minutes to complete but includes unnecessary steps like channel selection and audio setup. It is not a great feeling to have to navigate through a TV setup on a monitor, I’d have bought a TV if I wanted to watch TV. The Menu navigate feels very scroll and select though if I used it more, I assume the recommendations would become more customized, but again the main reason I bought this Monitor was to connect it to a PC and Play Games. I understand having the TV function might be useful for some people, but I would want to use the feature and not be forced to use it. Overall, the software setup was not hard, but I wouldn’t call it painless just due to the forceful nature of having to use a TV menu on a Monitor. I prefer simpler interfaces and more focus on doing one thing well. Connectivity: The G80SD offers the standard spread of ports: 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.1, and 2x USB A 3.0 if you connect the PC in (blue square plug). Additionally next to the Ports is the Power button which also acts as the built-in menu navigator, although it is much easier to navigate the menus using the included remote. The G80SD must connect to a wireless network during setup, this allows the monitor to update, register to your Samsung account, and stream the SmartTV media. Additionally, the G80SD can connect to Bluetooth speakers to provide better sound than the built in speakers but sound quality will vary based on the quality of the connected speakers. There is no other audio out besides wireless. There is a built-in microphone which enables the ability to use smart assistants like Alexa, Bixby, or SmartThings, but I don’t really use these. Luckily Samsung included a physical microphone off switch on the bottom of the monitor, which helps ensure there is no background listening going on. Performance: I will start with the G80SD’s 4K OLED display is AMAZING, the colors just pop, at least with some tweaks to the settings. Coming from mainly VA panels, the HDR10 and HDR10+ Gaming modes make a huge difference and look accurate. Initially I was a bit concerned because on the product page the Peak brightness was listed as only 250 nits, but that doesn’t account for the HDR settings. With HDR enabled, you will have no issues with brightness, but you will want to adjust the settings to get the right coloring depending on your setup. But the blacks are truly black, even more evident when bumped up against my older VA Panel looking at the same “True Black” sample. I was also questioning the choice of using a Matte finish for the OLED panel, but after looking at the G80SD in direct sunlight, I know why Samsung made that choice. You can actually still see and enjoy, key here is enjoy, the OLED display in sunlight without having that annoying glare or bounce back. The 240Hz refresh rate makes the G80SD great for games that require fast movements and reaction times. To hit these frame rates at 4K, you will need a powerful machine even on lower setting, otherwise it is probably better to run at 2K and upscale the game with either DLSS or Super Resolution. In either case, due to the 0.03ms (grey to grey) response time, there is literally no ghosting at all based on the UFO Test. Gaming: Game wise, I started up Destiny 2 to play The Final Shape, which ended up being the only game I’ve been playing since. For reference, I was able to hit a stable frame rate of about 125 FPS at 4K and 240 FPS at 2K in destiny 2, this was on a custom PC running an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with 64GB DDR4 at 3600 MT/s with a RTX 4080. The OLED display just made the whole game world pop to life and the fluidity of the movements thanks to the high frame rates and response time, it was so much fun I just kept playing. Even though I had been playing on my VA Panel Display just the day before, the G80SD made the game feel brand new. Hands down, if you play immersive world games and have been eyeing getting an OLED Display, the time is now to dive in. TV?: Honestly, this monitor would be an AMAZING OLED monitor, if Samsung would strip out all the TV focused software and settings. If anything, the “SmartTV” part of this monitor is anything but smart and belongs in another product. I understand this serves a secondary purpose of acting as a TV, but because ALL the software is built around the TV interface, but the hardware is geared towards gaming, which results in this Monitor being built for gaming but trying to act like a TV, which results in a half thought out experience for you. Warranty: One other major concern I have is what is covered by the 36-month warranty. On Samsungs website, the warranty page for the G80SD states that parts and labor are covered for 36 months from time of delivery but does not specifically state it includes Burn-In coverage. There is a lot of different information going around about if the Warranty covers Burn-In, but I am only going off what is explicitly listed on Samsungs warranty page as navigated to from the product page, and it does not explicitly say “Burn-In Coverage” as so many other manufacturers do for their similar products. Conclusion: Overall, I’m really enjoying the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 G80SD, way more than I had thought I would from a simple monitor upgrade. The improvements from the OLED panel in picture quality and color compared to an ISP or VA panel just blow me away. The small improvements to the exterior of the display really make this an enjoyable monitor to set up and use. But two large issues make it hard to recommend the G80SD monitor, but both could be fixed in time: First is the stance on Burn-In coverage in the warranty, Samsung should clear up the confusion for customers by aligning all of their representatives and warranty info to align with what is expected. And I hope the decision is to explicitly include Burn-In coverage in the 3-year warranty. It is hard to recommend a monitor to others when there are alternatives available that include coverage in the standard warranty for a known flaw with the technology. Second, remove the Smart TV features or at the very least make it secondary to the Odyssey OLED G8 G80SD being a monitor! Once you get through much of the settings, it is a really great monitor, but the expereince to get there will turn off so many Gamers. Again, the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 G80SD is a great monitor but I can't make it my recommendation with these issues, as there are other options these days.

picture quality is incredible, but the "smart" functionality is often more trouble. Also be mindful that there is no way to sync these monitors together if you are running two. Which makes adjusting settings and inputs a challenge using the same remote. Very frustrating that Samsung did not consider dual monitor as a use case.

Let me preface by saying I have tried a large variety of the new 4K 240hz OLED monitors on the market, and while this display no doubt looks great it just was not the one for me. My biggest issue is the coating, while I am no stranger to matte coatings having owned the LG 32GS95UE and LG39GSQE I am less of a fan of this matte coating and that may be due to fact that QD-OLEDs already tend to have raised blacks in direct sunlight. Additonally, I am not particularly a fan of Samsungs Tizen OS but I can see the convience and use case it brings to people interested. Addtionally, as others have mentioned, the IO port does have give when plugging in your video cables etc, how long it will hold up is anyones guess but as long as you are not swapping cables constantly then it should suffice. Regardless of my sentiment on this monitor I feel most will be perfectly happy with this monitor, it still provides excellent color vividness and motion clarity.

I have to be honest, this monitor is amazing. Great specs that practically gives you everything you want. Can’t complain about that and is very nice looking. Worth saving up for and absolutely loving everything about it. My only complaint is my experience buying this monitor, one I had to do a return, becuase i was having discoloration issues, no big deal i was able to replace it and they honored it. What was the issue is I got an open box look alike, they said it was new, but you can tell it was tampered and the tape was cut off from both sides of the box as if someone opened it. I askes if it was new, they said “yeah yeah you’re fine” well I opened it and noticed a small scuff in the back of the monitor, nothing major but why was it there if this was a new monitor. Biggest thing is at least care enough to assure what we’re buying is actually what it is, this is a $1400 monitor after taxes!

Glad I bought the Geek warranty. As soon as I got this it started flashing after about 1hr of use then has a high pitch whine.

I loved this monitor until my screen started going in and out. Haven't had it a week smh

The monitor is nice, but it had an issue with game mode turning off by itself and not allowing you to turn it back on until you power cycle the monitor. This is a bad issue when gaming. I am receiving a replacement and am hoping it does not have the same issue. With game mode off, you will only get 120 Hz.

When I opened up the box and removed the monitor, I was impressed with the thin bezels and just how thin the monitor was (from front-to-back). The included stand does indeed support both landscape and portrait orientations, but it took me a few minutes to figure that out because I had to tilt the monitor up before rotating into portrait orientation because there is virtually no clearance between the bottom of the monitor and the base of the stand once the monitor is in that orientation (meaning the corners of the monitor kept hitting my desk when I tried to simply rotate the monitor without tilting it). That may sound like a weird complaint, but it was just one of many things that befuddled me with this particular monitor, especially given the price. Speaking of the stand, there really was no thought given to cable management at all. There is a little bracket (?... strap?) on the bottom, toward the rear of the stand that would help consolidate cords, but they are still just dangling there from the back of the monitor until they reach the desk at the back of the stand. As I continue unboxing, I also realized one of the reasons why the monitor was so thin... There is a huge power brick that must be used with the monitor. The cord is arguably long enough so that the power brick can be on the floor or out of the way, but it is rather large. When looking at the ports that are provided, I was a little surprised that there was no USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 port, so no charging your laptop while using a single USB-C/Thunderbolt cable. Along those lines, the monitor includes a USB-A hub with only two ports. As you need to use a port from your PC for the monitor's hub, this option provides you one additional port and I am a little challenged to see the value of this hub (especially as USB-C is nowhere to be found). There are two HDMI ports (one of which supports ARC) and one DisplayPort, but more on that in a second. When I turned on the monitor for the first time, I was a little surprised because of the setup process. First, Samsung included a license agreement that asked me to give permission for Samsung to share my information with advertisers. What? Never seen that on a gaming monitor before. When I clicked to the next screen, however, I realized the monitor included its own operating system and allows for streaming apps like Disney+, Hulu, YouTube, and others. Interesting. I also had to log into my wireless network as a result (no physical Ethernet cable option, so hopefully you have a strong wireless signal with adequate bandwidth). The use of this OS seemed to create some issues with my computer, however, as the monitor would recognize a computer was connected to either the DisplayPort or HDMI (I tried both), but it would not display the PC's output and would eventually timeout and turn itself off. I had to reboot my computer after the cable was connected to the monitor. Then everything seemed to work, sort of. Occasionally, the monitor would take me back to its own OS rather than sticking with my PC. The monitor also had a pop-up on the screen that told me I could install a Samsung program of some sort on my computer to control the monitor. I did not make it that far, however. Once the monitor was finally up and running, I then tried to change the settings. Whenever I did that, it took me back to the monitor's OS screen (which made it difficult to optimize some of the settings while seeing what was on the screen from the PC). The monitor included a remote control, which seemed strange until I found out the monitor can run streaming apps. Clicking the "gear" button on the remote, which I figured was a setting button, took me to some type of screen where I could only enter numbers that should show on the screen in a long string of numbers as I continued to add them. I still have absolutely no idea what that was about. At this point, I disconnected the monitor from my gaming PC and thought I would try it with my Mac. I had the same issue when connecting the monitor... It saw it was connected to a computer, but would time out without displaying an image and my Mac did not recognize the monitor (although it did see an AirPlay option). It took a reboot of the Mac to address this issue. This connection to my Mac wound up being important because I then tried to use the monitor as my main display and take advantage of its speakers (without having to use the external speakers that I was currently using, which would free up some desk space). The built-in speakers in the monitor are very tinny and horrible. Maybe by itself, I wouldn't have noticed, but I tried playing some music through them and, for the sake of comparison, switched over to my Apple Studio Display (which is only a few hundred dollars more expensive than this monitor). The difference was night-and-day. The Apple display provided rich sound with impressive bass that made the sound from the Samsung quite embarrassing, actually. While I suspect a typical gaming rig would not use built-in monitor speakers, this particular monitor is also a streaming TV (for lack of a better description) and the audio quality is brutal. There is apparently a backlight on the monitor that "matches your mood and vibe with ambient lighting." I did not even notice it and had absolutely no idea how to set that up. The funny thing is that I have not really even talked about the picture quality yet, which is why someone buys a gaming monitor in the first place. The 4K UHD OLED screen is indeed beautiful (with a 240Hz refresh rate, 0.03ms response time, and typical brightness of 250 nits). Unfortunately, the inclusion of Samsung's "Gaming Hub" (which provides access to streaming platforms, gaming consoles, and Smart TV apps) along with sub-par speakers diminished the experience for me to the point where I simply wound up going back to my previous display and sound setup. So, in the end, the picture quality is indeed stellar, but the other aspects of this monitor (the bad speakers and Tizen operating system) really diminish its value. I have never had such a challenge hooking up a monitor before and ongoing challenges with modifying settings. If you have separate speakers and are willing to tolerate the learning curve that comes with this monitor having its own operating system, it may be worth considering. Personally, though, I cannot help but think there are better options out there for the money.

The three-year warranty for Samsung's 32-inch OLED monitor does not explicitly cover burn-in, but it does include coverage for pixel defects, which may include burn-in. To be eligible for the warranty, burn-in must be determined to be a manufacturing defect rather than a result of user behavior.