LG Ultra Wide Gaming Monitor Review

With how much I am involved with gaming and geek related subjects, it is very rare that I am surprised when something turns up for me to review, but that happened with this monitor. I knew from the name that it was going to be big, but until I set up the monitor and sat down in front of it, there was no way of knowing just how big.

The size of the screen is incredible, but at no point did anything I viewed on it suffer from the size, in fact everything just seemed to work. Word documents and emails all fit with lots of space for editing, in fact I was able to have both windows open at the same time, with plenty of space left over. But of course this monitor is designed for gaming, so while it is able to do a lot when your using it for work or browsing the internet, it really comes to life when you load up a game.

The games really looked impressive, even more so when the games supported the resolution that the monitor was capable of displaying. Borderlands The Pre-Sequel was one of the games that really took advantage of the wider screen and while from a gameplay point of view, it was pretty much the same as it was before, but visually the improvement to the amount of action on screen was impressive. The monitor sports a 60Hz refresh rate, which is really nice and allowed the action to flow, something that I have seen other monitors struggle with.

Project Cars was the other game I spent a lot of time in, being able to see a much wider viewing angle when inside the car was something else. Normally if a racing game starts out inside the car, the moment I can swap from that to a behind the car shot, I do, but here I was able to get a great sense of things from the internal shot and while I probably would not spend the entire game using it, it made a strong case to do so.

Sadly not ever game I tested worked out so wonderfully, there were more than a few titles that just did not support the resolution that the monitor offered and it resulted in some large black bars down the sides, the reverse of the old widescreen movie effect. Watching YouTube videos full screen also had the same effect as the standard was only 1080p, but the monitor supports up to 2560 x 1080, so while there are a few times it will be used in full by one application, most of the time that effect will be pronounced.

When the screen is not on and you are left to look at the unit as a whole, the size is something that is pretty hard to avoid, from the front it is ok, the minimal border helps keep the size down, but from the back the shiny plastic just draws your eyes to it and you will always think, wow that is big. But as you will be looking from the front most of the time it should not be an issue for you. The monitor comes with a variety of settings that you can use to help customize the colours and brightness, allowing presets to be applied with ease as well, to help keep the monitor set to the perfect conditions. It also sports two HDMI inputs, should you have a need for two.

Overall, the LG 34UM67-P, or the LG Ultra Wide 34” Monitor is a great piece of tech, the size will draw some people in and keep others away, but if you are looking for a monitor that is capable of working in both a work environment and a gaming one, this will cover all bases.

Thanks to LG Australia for supplying the monitor for review.