Samsung C49HG90: the extra wide 32: 9 monitor

Presentation

The Samsung C49HG90 monitor is simply monstrous. With its diagonal of 48.9 inches (124.2 cm), it occupies almost all of an office of 1.40 m. Aimed above all at gamers, this monitor has a curved VA panel displaying a definition of 3,840 x 1,080 px. The vertical definition is quite limited for everyday tasks, such as surfing or office automation, but immersion in games is ensured. FreeSync compatible, this screen can reach a refresh rate of 144 Hz.

This huge Samsung C49HG90 monitor is sold for around € 1,500, or 50% more expensive than its closest competitor, the Acer Predator Z35P, with a curved VA panel of "only" 35 inches (≈89 cm).

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Ergonomics

The Samsung monitor is simply huge. While two 27-inch side-by-side models may seem quite decent overall, the two 27-inch panels merged to create this 49-inch panel make the monitor massive. This monitor is 120.3 cm wide (screen dimensions without stand: 1203 x 369.4 x 194.4 mm) ...

The Samsung C49HG90 monitor uses an Edge-Led backlighting system composed of two bars located on either side of the panel.

The foot is adjustable in height by 12 cm and the screen tilts between -2 ° and + 15 °. The pivot system used by Samsung does not allow switching to portrait mode (which would not make much sense on such a screen), but allows rotation over a few degrees to the 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 deep enough to properly take advantage of this monitor.

Samsung has taken care of the finishes of its extra-large monitor. The connections are hidden behind a cover and a cable management system is present in the foot, so that nothing protrudes.

The screen also benefits from a helmet holder. On the other hand, the latter is placed behind the screen which does not necessarily facilitate its daily use since it is necessary to bypass the slab or contort and go under to recover its precious.

The connectors assembled on the back of the monitor consist of a DisplayPort input, a Mini-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 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 size of the monitor on a standard desk.

On our 140 x 60 cm desk, the screen looks really impressive. More than the width of 120 cm, it is the depth which is quite complicated to manage. The Y-shaped foot allows you to move the keyboard forward, but there is only 20 cm deep at the level of the mouse. In the end, you need a desk at least 80 cm deep to tame this extraordinary monitor.

If the definition of 3,840 x 1,080 px is comfortable for gaming, it limits the comfort in office use. At less than 80 cm, the texts appear coarse and the pixels are visible. With more perspective, the resolution is less disturbing. In comparison, a 34-inch monitor displaying a UWQHD definition (3,440 x 1,440 px) offers good readability with a distance of approximately 60 cm. In games, however, the definition of C49HG90 is quite effective. With a good graphics card (Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070/1080 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 56/64), this definition allows you to activate the most advanced effects and to keep a good display frequency essential to make the best use of the screen - which can display 144 frames per second. The interest of this extra large monitor is a little more mixed. The 49-inch diagonal is doing particularly well in simulation games (racing, aviation, etc.), but in FPS, if the side growths increase the immersion, they do not improve performance. The eyes are focused on the center of the screen and the edges are only visible in peripheral vision. Finally, Picture By Picture mode allows you to display two sources side by side, switch between the two and quickly switch from one to the other.

With the brightness pushed to the maximum (270 cd / m²), the Samsung C49HG90 consumes 61 W. This value is reduced to 44 W once the brightness set to 150 cd / m² on our test pattern. The relative consumption is therefore only 88 W / m². This is lower than the average consumption of the monitors tested (100 W / m²). At a minimum, the monitor consumes 23 W for 15 cd / m².

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Colors and contrast

Default: average temperature at 6.740 K.

Default: gamma curve at 2.3.

Default: Delta E average at 2.1.

By default, the Samsung C49HG90 monitor is well calibrated. The average temperature of 6,740 K is fairly 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 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 differentiates between the theoretical colors and the colors displayed. Only the red, green and yellow hues exceed the value of 3, while remaining below 4.

Manual adjustment: average temperature at 6,740 K.

Manual adjustment: gamma curve at 2.3.

Manual adjustment: Average Delta E at 1.7.

Switching to sRGB mode improves color rendering, but this mode does not have much impact on the temperature and range curves. We also lowered the brightness to 56 to obtain a white close to 150 cd / m². The temperature and gamma remain the same as the default mode. In contrast, Delta E drops to just 1.7 and all colors can now be considered true to source.

Calibrated: average temperature at 6,530 K.

Calibrated: gamma curve at 2.2.

Calibrated: Average Delta E at 1.7.

As often, calibrating the monitor using a probe helps stabilize the temperature and gamma curves. The temperature and gamma curves are perfect, and the average delta E also remains good, at 1.7. As always, the calibrated results are given for information only and are not taken into account in the rating on the screen. You can download the color profile via this link.

Equipped with a VA panel, the Samsung monitor offers excellent contrast. Black drops to 0.05 cd / m², which translates into a contrast ratio close to 3000: 1. Samsung approaches here the most contrasting VA monitors, such as the Textorm TX32 or the Philips BDM4037UW whose contrast ratio exceeds 4,000: 1.

This very large diagonal of 49 inches does not suffer from the lack of homogeneity. In fact, we have measured an average difference of only 10% over the entire slab, far 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 C49HG90 monitor does not use 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. There is no such problem on this monitor.

The Samsung monitor manages the FreeSync 2 which ensures compatibility between 36 and 144 Hz; it therefore works optimally when the graphics card sends between 36 and 144 images per second: a very wide range, which is suitable for many games and graphics cards. 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. Finally, the monitor does not offer ULMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur) mode supposed to improve the sharpness of moving objects thanks to a scan of the backlight.

Reactivity is simply the best measured on a VA panel. The Samsung monitor here is on a par with the Acer Predator Z271, with an average remanence time measured at 7.5 ms. It is a little worse than those of 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 ). The overdrive set by default offers the best rendering.

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 C49HG90 monitor is excellent on all points (image quality, contrast, response time, ergonomics), except perhaps its excessive size, which remains to be justified. It will certainly not suit everyone, but will delight video game enthusiasts who are looking for a very, very big screen ...

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