ViewSonic XG341C-2K Video Review by TotallydubbedHD
Video Review published by TotallydubbedHD
date : 2023-01-25 19:00:06
Video Stats: 1752 views, with 59 and 0
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Titre Original: The Worst Monitor I've EVER Reviewed: ViewSonic XG341C-2K
date : 2023-01-25 19:00:06
Video Stats: 1752 views, with 59 and 0
all the video reviews from TotallydubbedHD
Titre Original: The Worst Monitor I've EVER Reviewed: ViewSonic XG341C-2K
ViewSonic XG341C-2K Video Review by TotallydubbedHD
Video Review for the product ViewSonic XG341C-2K, published on Youtube with the title "The Worst Monitor I've EVER Reviewed: ViewSonic XG341C-2K" by TotallydubbedHD
Text of the video
The title of this video is definitely not clickbait the ViewSonic Elite xg341c-2k is arguably the worst gaming monitor I have ever reviewed and that's coming from someone who's tested 200 different panels it's quite a shame because when you look at its specs it's actually pretty tasty it's got a 34 inch Ultra wide 1440p resolution that runs up to 200 Hertz refresh rate it's also got full array local dimming with a whopping display HDR 1400 certification has got AMD freesync technology as well and does fabled HDMI 2.1 ports
now its price is a little bit off-putting at 1 500 pounds in the UK and 1 500 in the US but that's going to be the least of your worries now to kick off this independent review I do want to quickly touch upon its inputs it's got a singular DisplayPort 1.4 input with DSC and also two HDMI 2.1 inputs all of which had no issues in terms of outputting the ultrawide 1440p format at up to 200 Hertz better still I was able to select between 8 and 12 bits depending on the inputs that I was selecting
now elsewhere you do also have a USB type-c input which is very handy because it also delivers 90 watts of power and that will certainly be of interest for laptop users
now with its inputs out of the way let's dig into its refresh rate see here the manufacturer claims it'll run up to 200 Hertz and while it technically does It suffers from frame skipping you can clearly see this via the test via blurbusters which is a very handy tool and you can use it yourself if you so wish
now this means that you're going to get a dampened experience
now further emphasizing the point at 200 Hertz if for some odd reason you want to run it you'll be disappointed to learn that it effectively disables Nvidia g-sync and or AMD freesync local dimming and also pure XP which is blur reduction frankly here you're getting a dampened experience and locking yourself out of a multitude of options which just doesn't make any sense furthermore I'd be hard-pressed for anyone to tell me that they can really see a difference between 165 Hertz and 200 Hertz so with that in mind I set the monitor to 165 Hertz and started by testing
now first off objectively I was extremely impressed to see how this monitors input lag performed so you had it tested at 2.7 milliseconds and while it's not exactly the lowest that I've tested the date it's among one of the fastest out there specifically for an ultra wide monitor now subjectively as someone who shoved over 2 500 hours on competitive Counter-Strike I was certainly impressed as well my mouse clicks were very much responding exactly as I would expect them to and it just left me actually pretty jaw dropped for this Ultra wide gaming monitor to be responding so quickly to my inputs however that's where the fun kind of stopped see its input lag was seriously impressive but the same couldn't be said about its response time
now here I had it objectively tested in the different overdrive modes of ID osrtt tool
now it's standard mode preset it noted 9.66 milliseconds which you can see at the bottom left hand side of your screen noted as average initial time moving over to the fast mode preset it dropped to 8.71 milliseconds going to the faster mode preset 8.18 milliseconds going on to ultra fast 7.17 milliseconds and going on to the fastest mode preset 6.42 milliseconds now indeed the monitor's response time was actually pretty disappointing specifically for a modern panel that also costs a pretty penny furthermore the amount of inverse ghosting that I induced on terms of the fastest and Ultra fast mode presets was pretty unacceptable be it on playing a potato looking game like Counter-Strike or indeed playing it more graphically intense game such as Destiny 2. so much so that I had to dial it down to its medium setting which is faster and therefore was tested with an average initial time of 8.18 milliseconds
now while its faster mode overdrives do induce a little bit of inverse ghosting what was actually even worse was the amount of blurriness and also smearing given this has a curved VA panel it's almost no surprise but I wasn't expecting said monitor to have such a degree of problem
now via the UFO ghosting test you can see
now I should have a quick word on the pure XP option which does indeed try and reduce the blur but as I did mention before has got a pretty horrid experience furthermore it does actually lock the overdrive mode to the highest and therefore means that you can notice quite a bit of inverse ghosting I think most people will not be able to use this monitor in the pure XP option purely because the overdrive mode is ridiculous and therefore means that you're just gonna get a horrible visual experience
now I should also emphasize that this is only available over over 75 Hertz a small little Point worth making if you're running this monitor for a console and therefore if you're capped at 60 hertz you will not have access to the pure XP option
now the subject of console gaming I should also mention that this monitor will run 1440p in an ultra wide or non-ultrawide format at 120 hertz and also full HD at 120 hertz better still it also accepts a 4K signal input and therefore via my 4K Blu-ray player that was connected over HDMI I was able to Output 4K at 60 hertz
now so far the monitor's performance is rather lackluster but unfortunately as woes do not stop see here it has AMD freesync technology which isn't bad although it would have been even better to have a native g-sync module built in specifically the price point that it comes in at why is that because it would have had the full VR range from 1 to 200 Hertz or of course 165 Hertz if you don't want any sort of frame skipping issues and last over here it's limited from 48 Hertz up to 200 Hertz instead but that's not actually my main incomplete see here Adam from PC monitors and myself both noticed some VR flickering and it was very much present on the Nvidia pendulum demo it might be hard to replicate over video and on YouTube but I can safely say with my own eyes I did notice it and therefore took away from my overall experience while using said Technologies
now you might be thinking it's all very much Doom and Gloom but thankfully HDR does come to the rescue at least to a certain degree see here it has a display HDR 1400 certification thus meaning it should reach 1 400 nits and I can safely say that from my own test at least in certain test Windows it did actually reach that Peak brightness
now aside from this it does also have full array local dimming with 1152 zones and this means when you're playing an HDR game and indeed having the local dimming enabled you're gonna get an absolutely Sublime experience better still due to the fact that this monitor is a 34 inch Ultra ride with a 1 1500 R curvature running 1440p it means the overall immersion that you're retaining is absolutely incredible better still the local dimming is present on both SDR and HDR you've got different modes that you can select from and furthermore it doesn't suffer from any sort of haloing at least not something that I really threw me off when I was playing a game because here are some other monitors that have a mini LED structure or indeed maybe do not have it do suffer from Halo ink and this can therefore hamper the overall gaming or indeed viewing experience but thankfully that was not the case with this ViewSonic monitor however it's not all Rosy see if you were to discard HDR altogether and have it disabled if you want to run AMD free single Nvidia g-sync independently well unfortunately you're going to be locked in terms of brightness yep you're going to have a locked brightness with VR Technologies enabled which is a first for me when it comes to reviewing a monitor see here with local dimming enabled it's going to lock it to a Whopper 650 nits or thereabouts and if you were to disable local dimming around 450 nits which I appreciate for some people it's absolutely too bright to say the least now of course with HDR this
now further emphasizing the point if you were to enable AMD freesync or disable it you'll quickly note that HDR gets automatically enabled by the OSD very odd behavior to say the least and it might explain why the brightness is locked in said mode now with that aside I should also mention it was quite a faf enabling HDR see here when a monitor I see is an HDR signal it will automatically trigger hdr on terms of the OSD and therefore should be smart enough to say hey there's an HDR signal let me turn it on for the user so they don't have to faff around with the OSD but no ViewSonic thoughts no you'll have to enable HDR manually via your game settings or indeed windows and then you'll have to go on to the monesses OSD in order to enable it there as well or of course you can have a shortcut and enable AMD free so again video g-sync but it just seems rather silly and pointless why is HDR not automatically triggered when an HDR signal is detected by the monitor is beyond me so in the monitors baffling decisions out of the way you might think it's stopping over here but unfortunately it doesn't because a dedicated srgp emulation mode or a gamut clamp is not present which is rather odds given the fact that this monitor might be appealing to some image editors or video graders alike alas over here there is no said mode and as a result via the native mode preset I had the colors tested
now via my calibrators I noticed a gamut coverage of 99.7 srgb and 152.3 percent in terms of gamma volume and while it does seem pretty tempting in terms of its Adobe RGB and DC ip3 performances in terms of the actual color accuracy in both of the these modes it was actually pretty off now above here you can see in terms of the srgb standard it has an average delti of 3.69 and rather disappointingly high of 7.24
now when it comes to its tested contrast ratio its VA panel did excel at 3271 to 1 and while its measured white point was very impressive at 6638 Kelvin at 100 its gamma curve was slightly off the 2.2 standards which was slightly disheartening
now I appreciate not everyone is an image editor nor cares about the utmost color accuracy and in this respect if you're just a regular consumer or a gamer you'll actually appreciate the white color gamut of this monitor furthermore it doesn't suffer from any sort of clouding at least not from what I noticed nor any sort of clipping around the edges of an ultra wide format which is sometimes a problem with some of the older monitors that I've reviewed
now what will be of concern to all users is your overall brightness levels and here I had it tested with local dimming and HDR at 1400 nits which is certainly impressive it doesn't get all the way down to 65 minutes as well and furthermore given that the local dimming option is enabled in SDR as well it means that you'll have two different brightness levels at least in terms of the peak brightness levels that you can attain it is also worth noting that the pure XP option which is of course the blur reduction mode just as a reminder does have said brightness levels in the different level modes that you might select
now this does perfectly bring me onto brightness uniformity and here across the board I was actually left pretty impressed given the 34 inch Ultra wide format but it's better still its backlight bleed was very good at least for a curved VA panel there was minimal amounts of it better still the images that you can see right
now are with local dimming disabled if I were to enable it it would go completely pitch black and further bolstering the overall experience do bear in mind what I did mention in the HDR segment of this review whereby the haloing is kept down to a minimum and the fact that local dimming can be enabled on both SDR and HDR
now moving past the monitors panel perform
now moving swiftly on the monitor has got two 5 watt speakers which will suffice although I definitely suggest plugging in the headphone via the 3.5 millimeter Jack or indeed having a set of bookshelf speakers or indeed a DAC
now aside from that I should talk about the overall build quality and design and here you've got a three side borderless finish with that 1500 R curvature and of course the 34 inch ultrawide format the stand itself does hold the monitor very well and does provide height tilt and pivot adjustments of course given the size it can't be fully rotated
now the monitors stand is very very sturdy but it's absolutely humongous it doesn't fit on my Ikea Freddy desk Riser and as a result I do suspect a lot of people will have a hard time actually fitting it on their setups nonetheless if you do not want this stand you can replace it via 100 times 100 Visa compatible stand
now if you are to keep the stand you will be pleased to know that there's this handy little phone holder that can be found at the bottom of it something I haven't seen before but one that is certainly appreciated elsewhere you have got a headphone hook that does prop up towards the side of the monitor you have also got built-in Mouse anchors found towards the bottom and also some fancy Elite RGB lights which aren't exactly bright enough but of course if you do want to entertain your wall then you can always do that
now while some of these features might seem a little bit gimmicky the built-in KVM switch is certainly appreciated if for example you've got a desktop computer and you've plugged in the USB type B port and then you've got let's say a laptop that's connected over USB type-c you'll be able to plug in your peripheral such as your mouse and keyboards directly into the monitor why is this beneficial well it means that you can switch between the sources and still use your peripherals rather than having to unplug them and replug them into said devices so with all that in mind it brings me onto my verdict and as I did mention at the beginning of this video it's the worst monitor I've reviewed to date and that's coming from someone who's tested 200 different panels see here I feel that ViewSonic should pull the product all together from the market because it's a detriment to the brand which otherwise makes some really impressive gaming panels but this one isn't it It suffers from frame skipping at 200 Hertz it's got a lot of smearing and also a lot of overshoot on most of the overdrive modes therefore rendering the blur reduction pure XP Mode completely useless just to add to that it's got really poor response time across the board as well then the VR technology suffer from flickering and also limit you at the peak brightness level which doesn't make any sense then the HDR is not automatically triggered by the Morris's OSD which by the way is quite frustrating to access because if you press the button and it swatches it off all together then just to add to that it's got an elongated stand which doesn't make any sense and also a 1 500 pounds and 1 500 asking price
now it's not all doom and gloom because it does have some competencies it's HDR experience is really impressive input lag is pretty low the colors pop at least for gamers and it's also got certain features such as let's say the KVM but unfortunately these competencies are not good enough in order to cater and or indeed carry the rest of the problems that this monitor has
now I'd be intrigued to know what you make of this monitor down the comment section below if you've liked this independent detailed review definitely do consider dropping a like subscribing and hitting that Bell notification all of which are
The ViewSonic Elite XG341C-2K is a 34" ultrawide VA gaming monitor that runs up to 200Hz, has HDR1400 and FALD; find out how it performs by watching my review!
Buy the ViewSonic XG341C-2K from Amazon: https://locally.link/KFoa
Specs: https://www.viewsonic.com/global/products/lcd/XG341C-2K
Alternatives to consider:
HP X34: My favourite ultrawide gaming monitor
My review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx8vnIQn4gw
Buy the HP X34 from Amazon: https://locally.link/Fx8u
Buy the X34 from HP: https://fave.co/384niS0
AOC CU34G2X: Cheap VA alternative
My review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVnu7Hq1c6Y
Buy the AOC CU34G2X from Amazon: https://locally.link/PNlq
Philips 346B1C: Best ultrawide with KVM
My review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dje7ZrXgtxc
Buy the Philips 346B1C from Amazon: https://locally.link/W1uz
AOC AGON AG353UCG: An HDR1000 200Hz UW
My review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hEGBNb1a-c
Buy the AOC AGON AG353UCG from Amazon: https://locally.link/HwGe
AOC AG493UCX: An inexpensive super UW
My review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEEsPo1Pvno
Buy the AOC AG493UCX from Amazon: https://locally.link/abSg?
Samsung Odyssey G9: Best 49" ultrawide
My review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGSCC1P7SrQ
Buy the Samsung Odyssey G9 from Amazon: https://locally.link/DrH3
Buy the Odyssey G9 from Samsung: https://fave.co/3h5VizD
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Buy the Datacolor SpyderX Elite calibrator on Amazon: https://locally.link/dpJS?
Buy the Calibrite CC Display Plus calibrator on Amazon: https://locally.link/9IrU
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Explainers:
My favourite gaming monitors: https://youtu.be/tGH3SJpoOAQ
PlayStation & Xbox: https://youtu.be/AAIIwqUNflo
Monitor refresh rates & resolutions: https://youtu.be/daHrqIFieBU
Are 144Hz+ monitors worth it? https://youtu.be/3-kdB496GHE
UFO ghosting tests: https://www.testufo.com/ghosting
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Video timestamps:
Price & connectivity: 00:00
200Hz & frame skipping: 01:19
Gaming performance: 02:07
G-Sync & HDR: 05:32
Image quality: 09:19
Brightness & backlight: 10:48
Design & features: 11:57
Verdict: 14:12
#viewsonic
#ultrawide
#gaming
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