Samsung Unveils Stunning 49-inch, FreeSync 2 HDR Monitor

With CES right around the corner, Samsung has taken the lid off one of the most impressive monitors we’ve ever seen. The new CRG9 is an updated version of the 3440×1080 displays the company unveiled in mid-2017, with significantly improved specs. The new display is a 49-inch panel in a 32:9 aspect ratio. Samsung is calling this a 2x QHD display because the resolution is exactly double 2560×1440 (5120×1440). The aspect ratio is identical to what you’d have if you put two 16:9 panels next to each other, minus the bezel running down the center of the screen.

The CRG9 likely conforms to VESA’s DisplayHDR 1000 standard, given that Samsung is talking up its 1000 nits of brightness in press copy. DisplayHDR 1000 is the current top-end defined VESA standard for HDR gaming content, so the overall image quality should be excellent, particularly when combined with AMD’s FreeSync 2 HDR support. FreeSync 2 HDR includes features like direct tone mapping to reduce latency and improve color fidelity, alongside the smoother frame display that’s a hallmark of FreeSync panels. The DisplayHDR specification levels and standard requirements are below:

Samsung hasn’t unveiled the monitor’s price yet, but displays like this could challenge the high-end G-Sync enabled displays that Nvidia has been talking up as solutions for ultra-well-heeled gamers. Despite the size of the horizontal resolution, 5120×1440 actually isn’t quite as many pixels as 4K. That means you won’t need quite as heavy-duty a GPU to drive it at acceptable frame rates, though this kind of panel still requires a fairly hefty GPU to run at native resolution.

As always, we recommend waiting for reviews before pulling the trigger on any purchase, but as a matter of technical specs, it’s going to be hard to find much better than this in an ultra-wide (or super-ultra-wide) format. DisplayHDR 1000 is the top-end HDR spec from VESA, FreeSync 2 HDR is the latest FreeSync standard from AMD (though we still don’t know for certain if existing FreeSync displays will be compatible with Intel’s Adaptive Sync implementation, they should be). 5120×1440 is a significant step upwards from 3440×1080 in 2017, and the 120Hz refresh rate and DCI-P3 support make this a gorgeous display from just about every angle.

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