I Was Wrong - Don’t Buy an Ultrawide Gaming Monitor

Should you buy an Ultrawide gaming monitor, and was I wrong?
Thank you to Ruipro for sponsoring this video!

I Was Wrong - Don’t Buy an Ultrawide Gaming Monitor
About a year and a half ago I put out a video where I explained the reasons why although I liked Ultrawide, ultimately, I preferred 16:9, and went over the challenges I had faced while using a 21:9 monitor.

Now this older video was definitely polarizing to put it lightly, and over the last year and a half I’ve learned a lot about monitors, made mistakes, corrected them, and definitely have a much larger pool of knowledge now vs then, so today I want to strap my monocle on and reexamine the main points of this video today to see if I still agree.

1. (I claimed ultrawide is not good for doing work).
This one I think is definitely the weakest claim and something I outright don’t agree with anymore. While the specific work I was doing at the time was actually made harder because of it being 21:9, not many people actually create 16:9 video content compared to other lines of work, and I don’t think this is a good representation of how people will use 21:9. In fact I think the opposite. I believe most people will benefit greatly from additional horizontal space and will actually love the ability to have two square windows side by side. So for reason one, EHHHH wrong.

2. (I claimed not many games support ultrawide).
This one I actually still somewhat agree with and let me explain. Every year ultrawide support gets better, and these days you’ll be hard pressed to find a modern AAA game that doesn’t support it, however my idea of support I think was, and still is, different from simply not having black bars on the sides.

True ultrawide support in my opinion is greatly increasing your horizontal FOV without massively stretching the sides or cutting down on vertical FOV, and to this day, it’s still hit or miss whether or not a game will have really good, non fisheye lens, wide field of view support.

Now when a game does, it's awesome, but when I review monitors to this day it still seems like many developers struggle to fully realize the benefits of 21:9, and I really hope that continues to improve as more people adopt this standard.

3. (I claimed ultrawide is not good for competitive gaming).
This one I’m 50/50 on today. I definitely feel like some games with that fisheye lens support feel wonky to play and can lead to my mouse movements just feeling a bit off, but those games that do have true ultrawide support, when you finally get used to the change in aspect ratio, in some ways the extra FOV can be a benefit for seeing more of your surroundings, so today I wouldn’t say its outright worse, but it depends on the game your playing, and how used to 21:9 you are.

So overall do I agree with the takes in my original video? I would say mostly no. While I did have some valid points, I think there are too many sweeping statements I made that simply don’t apply to all people or situations, and while I was overall a little negative on ultrawide back then, I think today I would actually lean overall a little positive, and I felt like my additional years of experience since then did necessitate a new more nuanced update on my older video, and honestly today I’d absolutely love to see a 21:9 5120x2160 ultrawide 4K OLED, as I think that might just be the best display you could buy today, and in fact I think I might release a video highlighting the top reasons you SHOULD buy an Ultrawide monitor in order to be fair.

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[thedisplayguy]

Thank you to Ruipro for sponsoring this video!
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About a year and a half ago I put out a video where I explained the reasons why although I liked Ultrawide, ultimately, I preferred 16:9, and went over the challenges I had faced while using a 21:9 monitor.

Now this older video was definitely polarizing to put it lightly, and over the last year and a half I’ve learned a lot about monitors, made mistakes, corrected them, and definitely have a much larger pool of knowledge now vs then, so today I want to strap my monocle on and reexamine the main points of this video today to see if I still agree.

[bb]

Ultrawide is alot like high refreshrates, It's hard to go back to a low refresh rate after experiencing a high refresh one. It's also very hard to go back to 16:9 after 21:9, it just feels cramped like someone cut off a third of your screen.

[manofyeo]

I've had an ultrawide for over 3 years and never once experienced a downfall. Every game I play has support or a way to make it work. Also for videos theres an extension called ultrawideo that lets you stretch or upscale any video thats playing in the browser. Many movies are native 21:9 and its super immersive watching them. Even for video editing I think its amazing, even when making 16:9 videos its still better for the workspace. I can't wait to get an ultrawide oled once they get a little better and cheaper.

[yt.silentknight]

4k 21:9 3rd gen or later HDR OLED would be GOLDEN 🤤

[cassieudy]

I tried UW and went back to 16:9. Ultrawide is awesome when it works, but most of the games I play don't support it. I actually had a hard time finding any games in my library that did. It's definitely a case-by-case thing and individual experiences will vary greatly. Web browsing also kind of sucked in UW. Fullscreen is a non-option.

[Jebusite]

I love my ultrawide, if a game doesn't support it, don't buy it.

[ikibrikivdamk]

After 3 months with G93SC, I must say 32:9 is a sweet spot. Everything is better, there's no exceptions. You just adapt to extra width get use to it, and than use it to your own advantage - in CS2 for example I can take way more risky angles, because I see all positions where enemy can come from. In game's like GOW or Tsushima I can see more enemies > make better decisions.

Let alone 32:9 looks stunning it's like make any game look 2x better button.

Support of ultrawide - honestly that's not really a problem, most game's support everything out of the box, some need mods to remove black bars (just type game name 32:9 drag drop mod that's it). While anything older is fixed by flawless widescreen. So honestly it's completely fine.

FOV stretching - it's complete bs, you can see it only if you watch some one playing and you staying on side, otherwise - you can't really notice it while you using monitor yourself. (Keep in mind that I'm always maxing out FOV slider - if you really sensitive to stretching, go buy 4:3 monitor because even 16:9 has it)

[victorlgcarvalho]

I never liked ultrawide monitors... The vertical view is too narrow.

Since I wanted a bigger monitor, I went straight to an OLED 42'' LG 120hz TV...

[rimlatv]

Great video. Only an honest reviewer would publicly admit and change it's mind about a previous statement.

[Games_and_Tech]

I never had an UW or even a curve monitor, I was used to dual 27 in qhd monitors... i have the 3440x1440p 165hz alienware qd oled, I am more than happy with it, I don't miss anything from my old setup, not even the 240 hz...

[JQ]

I've been using a beautiful 120hz ultrawide monitor for about six years now and I'm just about ready to go back to a standard format 1440p monitor. While it can be amazing when it does work, the added horizontal space isn't worth the ~20% tax on the GPU or any of the smaller headaches like pillar-boxing.

To have an UW gaming monitor is ultimately a promise to yourself to always be using a pinnacle GPU which, in today's market, is a very expensive affair.

[فهد_الحربي]

I think we won't see a good support for 21:9 monitor until there are 21:9 TVs like what we did when we moved from 4:3 to 16:9 . until this day I really don't like 4:3 content

[masterlee]

Went ultrawide last year(21:9 IPS one at 3440x1440). I don't ever want to go back to a 16:9 display plus I find ultrawides more interesting and they have more advantages to me.

[pxv]

I had an Eve Spectrum 27" and ordered it before they rebranded to Dough. Had issues with basic things like backlight flashing on and off when input was set to "Select automatically" and the monitor locking and unable to wake up when connecting a USB-C cable.

Got a FO32U2P this week and never looked back. The KVM works as it should. The display looks fantastic. 250€ cheaper than Asus with dubious warranty. I think the magenta tint and text fringing are way too overblown.

Keep up the good work. 👍

[CosmicMindSense]

Bought a strix 4090 last week and can't decide between the new ASUS 4k oled 32" 240hz or the LG c4 evo 42"... using it for surfing the web and playing games. any recommendations ?

[gardenia]

What is the material behind your monitor covering the wall? I want to implement the same design in my room

[avia]

What panel does it use? BOE, LG or Samsung? Being seeing a lot of BOE lately.

[Kapono]

Just me but I don’t think 1440P is enough pixel density on a 34 inch

[coleevans]

I thought I would hate a UW, but now I don't think I can go back. Playing Space Marine 2 before the UW patch and after really made me appreciate it. Now what I would really like is a 4K 34-inch UW

[moltenbullet]

I have a 1440p 27 inch, a 1600p 38 inch ultra wide, and a 4k 32 inch. I would say going from the 27 inch to the 38 inch ultrawide feels great, but going between the 32inch 4k, and the 38" ultrawide feels similar tbh.