Samsung C32HG70: an excellent 32 inch Quad HD monitor for gaming

Presentation

The C32HG70 has a 32 inch curved VA panel displaying a Quad HD definition of 2,560 x 1,440 px while supporting a refresh rate of 144 Hz. This monitor stands out from the competition, notably the AOC Agon AG322QCX by its filter quantum dot which allows to offer a very high light peak and by its reactivity announced at 1 ms. It is also one of the few monitors to be compatible with the FreeSync 2 HDR.

The Samsung C32HG70 retails for around € 700, but is sometimes around € 600. It is slightly more expensive than its main competitor, the AOC Agon AG322QCX sold at around € 580.

If it does not have a Full LED backlight system like the Asus PG27UQ, the Samsung monitor has better native contrast, which is often more interesting.

Also note that it is sold three to four times cheaper while displaying a larger diagonal, thus offering better immersion - but it is not G-Sync compatible.

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Ergonomics

It's pretty classic, especially for a monitor meant for gamers. The Korean manufacturer is sober and the screen has a sleek design that is suitable for the greatest number.

The Samsung C32HG70 operates an Edge-Led backlighting system composed of two bars located on either side of the panel which actually covers 8 areas of the screen (four on the left and four on the right).

The foot is adjustable in height by 14.5 cm and the screen tilts between -2 ° and + 15 °. The pivot system used by Samsung allows the transition to portrait mode, even if it does not have much interest with a curved screen. It also allows rotation over a few degrees left and right. You can also see that the monitor is very deep. The foot thus has a depth of 38.1 cm. You must therefore ensure that you have a desk large enough to properly take advantage of this monitor.

The back of the monitor without the covers.

The connection is hidden behind a cover, which allows to purify the rear of the monitor as much as possible. The pivot system is surrounded by a blue LED that can be activated from the OSD.

The cable management system is pretty basic. Samsung only has a hook for the thickest cables. It's better than nothing, but it's a little less efficient than the system offered on the very large Samsung C49HG90 of 49 inches.

The connectors assembled on the back of the monitor consist of a DisplayPort input, two HDMI 2.0 inputs (HDCP 2.2 compatible), a microphone input and output, a headphone output and two USB 3.0 ports. This monitor does not include speakers.

The joystick for navigating the OSD and turning on the monitor.

The joystick is always the most pleasant way to navigate the settings. Pressing the button allows you to change source, mode (presets) and access the settings (brightness, contrast, sharpness, overdrive, FreeSync, gamma, temperature, etc.). The menus are readable and navigation is done quickly. Samsung also has added three buttons to quickly access three presets.

The Samsung C32HG70 is almost comfortable on our standard 140 x 60 cm desk. If the width of this 32-inch monitor is no problem, this is not the case of the depth of the foot requires placing the keyboard at the edge of the desk resulting in a wrist almost empty during use. It is therefore necessary to provide a desk at least 80 cm deep to be able to place your keyboard normally in front of the screen.

The definition Quad HD on a 32 inch diagonal remains for us the best compromise to date. It allows you to benefit from a fairly good resolution (92 dpi) over a fairly large diagonal without sacrificing performance too much. A latest generation graphics card will be able to run a large number of games at 144 Hz with the details pushed to the maximum (or almost), which is not the case with Ultra HD monitors whose definition is still a not too greedy for current graphics cards.

With the brightness pushed to the maximum (956 cd / m²), the Samsung C32HG70 consumes 120 W. This value is reduced to 21 W once the brightness set to 150 cd / m² on our test chart, ie a relative consumption of 150 W / m². The consumption is thus much higher than the average consumption of the monitors tested (100 W / m²). At a minimum, the monitor consumes 31 W for 140 cd / m² ... and cannot go below this brightness!

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Colors and contrast

Default: average temperature at 6,750 K.

Default: gamma curve at 2.3.

Default: Delta E average at 2.0.

Right out of the box, the Samsung C32HG70 is well calibrated. The average temperature of 6,740 K is close to the 6,500 K reference and the curve is fairly stable over the entire spectrum. Same observation for the gamma curve, even if the average of 2.3 does not exactly reach the target value of 2.2. Finally, the colors are faithful. The average delta E - measured at 2.1 - is below the threshold of 3 below which the human eye no longer perceives colorimetric drifts. Only the red, green and yellow hues exceed the value of 3.

Manual adjustment: average temperature at 6,800 K.

Manual adjustment: gamma curve at 2.2.

Manual setting: Delta E medium at 2.0.

Switching to sRGB mode slightly stabilizes the gamma curve, but this mode does not have much effect on the temperature curve and color rendering. In this mode, we lowered the brightness to 1 to obtain a white close to 150 cd / m².

Calibrated: average temperature at 6,440 K.

Calibrated: gamma curve at 2.2.

Calibrated: Average Delta E at 1.9.

Even if there is always a slight peak at the ends, the calibration of the monitor using a probe makes it possible to stabilize the temperature and gamma curves. These curves are almost perfect with an average of 6,440 K for temperature and a gamma of 2.2 while the average delta E drops to 1.9. You can download the color profile of the Samsung C32HG70 via this link.

Equipped with a VA panel, this monitor offers excellent contrast. Black drops to 0.06 cd / m², which translates into a contrast ratio close to 2,610: 1. It approaches the most contrasting VA monitors, such as the AOC Q3279VWF, the Textorm TX32 or the Philips BDM4037UW whose contrast ratio exceeds 4,000: 1.

The backlighting system using two LED bars located on either side of the screen allows to obtain a uniform backlighting. In fact, we measured an average deviation of only 4% over the entire 32-inch panel, a value well below the 20% threshold beyond which the eye can perceive a difference in brightness. Our test copy was not affected by the clouding phenomenon, but we still observed slight light leaks in the corners.

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Reactivity

The Samsung C32HG70 uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to adjust its brightness. The PWM plays on a variation of intensity of the LEDs in a cyclic way, which can be perceived as flickering by certain sensitive people; in some rare cases, PWM can therefore induce eye fatigue and headaches. So be careful if you are sensitive to it.

The Samsung monitor manages the FreeSync 2 HDR which ensures compatibility between 72 and 144 Hz; this new FreeSync standard brings HDR support as well as LFC technology for Low Framerate Compensation. Simply put, this technology allows you to insert intermediate images (2 to 4 per second) when the number of images per second is too low. If the framerate drops to 24 images per second, it will be artificially pushed to 48, even 96 images per second by the insertion of precalculated intermediate images. All this to ensure fluidity on the screen. In this operating range, fluidity is at the rendezvous and the image does not suffer from tearing problems or jerks (micro-stuttering). Remember that to take advantage of FreeSync, you must use an AMD Radeon graphics card.

The monitor does not offer a separate Ultra Low Motion Blur (ULMB) mode, but does use a backlight scanning system that activates by varying the response time. This functionality which normally acts on the overdrive activates on the Samsung screen the system of insertion of black images via the scanning of the backlight. It improves the sharpness of moving objects, but halves the maximum brightness.

Reactivity is simply the best measured to date on a VA panel. With an average remanence time measured at 6 ms, the Samsung C32HG70 monitor does better than the Acer Predator Z271 (7.5 ms). It is slightly worse than the time recorded on the best TN monitors, which go down to less than 5 ms (AOC Agon AG271QX and BenQ XL2430T), but a little better than those of the best IPS monitors, measured at 8 ms (AOC Agon AG271QG).

Finally, the delay in the display is imperceptible (9.9 ms), so there is almost no lag between the sending of the image by the graphics card and its display on the screen.

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Conclusion

The Samsung C32HG70 offers everything one expects from a monitor intended for gamers: excellent reactivation, a high refresh rate, a large diagonal and a Quad HD definition particularly suited to current configurations. It even offers the luxury of HDR compatibility with a satisfying light peak and interesting contrast. There are still a few small faults, including an imposing foot and the use of pulse width modulation (PWM).

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