Dell Alienware 34 Curved Gaming Monitor

tech x badge Nosotros've been able to regularly enjoy all the benefits that OLED panels have to offer in living-room televisions for a few years now. But it's only recently that OLED has meandered downward the hall to the gaming den, and the growing earth of console types for gaming monitors. Led by initial offerings similar the Alienware 55 OLED and LG'south CX/CG/C1 line of OLED gaming monitor/Television set hybrids, the new $1,299.99 Alienware 34 QD-OLED (QD's short for "Quantum Dot," more about which after) comes in a curved, ultrawide format that'south both highly immersive, and highly productive in the right easily.

Whether you're tracking multiple windows while taking a Zoom call at the same time, or just relaxing with a game of Elden Ring after all that work, the Alienware 34 is a great entry signal into the world of OLED desktop monitors, even if its brightness levels and desultory picture quality periodically reveal the magic fob backside its toll betoken. With a fleck of tuning and time out of the box, the Alienware 34 QD-OLED somewhen became 1 of the best monitors we've tested this twelvemonth, and while QD-OLED may not be the "one monitor tech to rule them all" just yet, Alienware's first try in the space certainly earns its Editors' Selection slot. The Alienware 34 likewise earns PCMag's TechX award as a pioneer of new console tech, with Samsung's QD-OLED pushing the category forward and creating healthy competition for previous leaders in OLED product like LG.

The Design: Alienware Meets...Apple tree?

Alienware has grown 1 thing by leaps and bounds over the past few years: its monitor design. In a category where companies trying things like the fabric-lined backing of the Razer Raptor 27 are the exception, it'south good to see Alienware have an alternative arroyo to the tired "blackness plastic shell, RGB lighting, and vents" cabinets nosotros've seen on many dozens of gaming monitors by this point.

Alienware instead has both standardized its distinctive colour scheme—primarily Apple tree-white paneling with blue accents and lighting—and its overall stand up design. Encasing a 34-inch curved panel (rated for an 1800R curvature) running at iii,440 by i,440 pixels, the Alienware 34's cabinet features a blueprint straight out of the company's more than recent playbook. Retrieve an unidentified alien craft with an almost wholly white plastic shell, salve for a few black strips and customizable LED arrays strewn around the monitor's underside. It's the same styling nosotros've seen in previous Editors' Selection picks like the Alienware 27 (AW2721D), simply further refined with fifty-fifty more tightly machined seams.

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(Photo: Chris Stobing)

To the centre, it actually looks as though the unabridged panel backing is a single piece, something that no ultrawide monitor out in that location can claim even so, not even the current winner in the design space—in this reviewer's opinion, anyway—the Samsung Odyssey G9. Again, we can't assist merely reference Apple hither, with respect to Alienware's recent cadence of refinement. If you've seen one Asus gaming monitor in recent years you've seen nearly all of them. Only Alienware is clearly putting intention and idea into how it can disrupt the gaming-model design heat well-nigh other manufacturers have fallen into.

Speaking of build quality, the stand up is just as sturdy and reliably ergonomic as previous models in this line, like the Alienware 27. I noticed effectively aught monitor shake while typing (and I'thousand a pounding typer). Plus, adjusting the monitor to my preferred position was both easy and quiet; more of the attention to machining at work, here.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

The lighting isn't locked to the default blue hue, however. Alienware continues to exist one of the most customizable brands when information technology comes to lighting, with dozens of RGB patterns and combos available to configure via the OSD or via the Alienware Command Eye(Opens in a new window) software suite.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

Every chemical element, from the pattern to the build quality of the Alienware 34 QD-OLED, is a step above nigh of what else is out there in the ultrawide-brandish market. Now, to be sure, some of this comes down to the flexibility, no pun intended, offered by OLED applied science. The panels are thinner and lighter, and they can run significantly cooler than competing panel tech in the gaming-monitor market, such every bit IPS, TN, or VA, all of which at diverse times in past years accept been at the cadre of previous Editors' Choice-winning gaming monitors.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

Weighed just as the console, before you mount it to the stand, the Alienware 34 is hands the lightest curved ultrawide gaming monitor near its size that nosotros've tested, at just 15.6 pounds, which makes it a solid pick for anyone who prefers to employ external VESA mounts. Placed on the stand, things become a lot heavier and sturdier, though, up to 35 pounds.

You'll observe ports all along the underside rear of the unit. These include two HDMI 2.0 inputs, one DisplayPort 1.4b input, and a hub of USB ports. The USB mix: Y'all get two USB 3.2 Gen 1 downstream ports on the front, and two USB 3.2 Gen ane downstreams on the dorsum, side by side to some other USB three.two Gen 1 upstream. There'southward also a line-out audio port, as well as a three.5mm jack for headphones or powered external speakers—this monitor has no congenital-in speakers.

If Alienware's 34 QD-OLED tin deliver on performance, it solves many problems of previous ultrawides at this spec tier, while besides setting a new bar for build quality and branding in the process. So, how does the monitor concord up once you cease gawking at the pigment job and actually turn information technology on?

Testing the Alienware 34: QD-OLED's Peaks and Valleys

The brandish is built on a new "Quantum Dot OLED" panel (QD-OLED) with a native refresh rate of 144Hz, which tin can be overclocked to 175Hz if you're okay kicking the colour. It features back up for VESA DisplayHDR 1000, too equally HDR 400 True Black. (Head over here to get a grip on what that all means.) The monitor likewise comes with support for Nvidia's pinnacle form of G-Sync adaptive sync applied science, One thousand-Sync Ultimate, to prevent screen tearing when used with compatible GPUs.

The Alienware 34 is built around Samsung's new QD-OLED console tech, which yous can read most in greater depth here. In so many words, QD-OLED hopes to shore up two of the biggest problems we had with the OLED-backed Alienware 55 when it first landed in PC Labs in 2019: depression peak brightness, and outsize toll. Since then, the field of OLED monitors got a lot more competitive from 2020 to present, with LG'due south Yard-Sync-uniform "C" line of gaming-monitor/Boob tube hybrids. These OLEDs take gripped the hive mind of monitor reviewers around the world as "the best of the all-time right now."

That brings us to the start of 2022 and this new gear up of QD-OLED panels from Samsung, which aim to challenge LG's current dominance of this niche.

And while nosotros haven't been able to get a C-model LG OLED in for ourselves to test against, we do take the previous Alienware 55 OLED as a launching indicate of comparison, which is all just confirmed to take used the same LG panel inside.

We tested the Alienware 34 QD-OLED using a Klein K10-A(Opens in a new window) colorimeter, and Portrait Displays' CalMAN 5(Opens in a new window) software. Here is what we saw...

In the Standard picture mode with an SDR signal, the Alienware 34 showed a peak brightness of 299.v nits (candelas per square meter) and a black level of 0 nits, of course; that's the nature of OLED. OLED is preferred for its "true blacks," wherein the pixel actually shuts off entirely, creating a zero-light zone and greater picture contrast versus IPS, VA, or TN panels. These numbers inverse significantly depending just on the brandish preset we were fix to—we measured every bit low as 85.4 nits in the preset "Game Mode 1"—and every bit we besides realized in media testing, the presets are actually a hindrance to the experience (more on that in the next section).

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

In the HDR picture mode, with an HDR bespeak pushed via DisplayPort 1.4b at full RGB, and 10-chip color enabled in both HDR True Black 400 and HDR Peak one thousand mode testing, the Alienware 34 posted a maximum effulgence reading of 677.viii nits and, over again, a black level of 0 nits. We recorded this result in an 18% window at the centre of the monitor, and things steadily got dimmer as we both expanded the size of the window, and recorded different results from various areas of the panel. For case, that result of 677.8 nits pulled from the middle of the screen dropped to the mid-400s when nosotros went to 100% window size, and got even worse (sub-300s) when we started taking recordings at the corners. These aren't the all-time results when compared confronting the 1,000-nit superlative effulgence rating on the box, admittedly. However, they technically withal represent a bound forward, given the top event of just 285 nits nosotros saw while trying to max out the Alienware 55 OLED.

Moving forth to the color results, the Alienware 34 covered 156% of the sRGB gamut and also hit some high marks in DCI-P3 at 96.four% coverage, making it a stiff option for gamers and content-lovers akin, though that much was hopefully already obvious from the "OLED" in the title.

The AdobeRGB gamut returns were also surprisingly high at 97.vii% coverage, which is way to a higher place the threshold that most gaming panels striking. This, forth with its bang-on Delta Due east issue of ii.0 in our Color Checker test, should give whatsoever professional content creators another model to consider. Given that Delta E reading, we can imagine that the monitor could achieve even amend levels of color accuracy with more tuning via the six-way saturation configuration options bachelor both in the OSD and Alienware Command Center.

Nosotros didn't accept the time to dig in this deep ourselves, and more than command, in most cases, is unremarkably a proficient thing. Usually.

Now, on to the media and gaming benchmarks. In HDR, our 4K Costa Rica test footage(Opens in a new window) (output at 1440p to lucifer the monitor's native resolution) was very good, but it still took some tuning to get right. Outset I had to terminate the Alienware from imposing one of its "gaming presets" on top of the HDR image, a perplexing configuration option to be certain. Generally HDR is supposed to have full command of the OSD color settings abroad from the user, given that HDR metadata will be telling the monitor what kind of color scheme it should display, in reductive terms.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

By allowing gamers to swap among various presets while HDR is active, they could accidentally make the HDR image look worse in means that they may not understand upfront. Considering I bargain with gaming monitors all twenty-four hour period, though, information technology wasn't long earlier I got the HDR image looking accurate past applying the "Custom Color" preset at the lesser of the menu, and maxing out all 3 values inside (R,G,B) manually.

(Photograph: Chris Stobing)

I recommend you practice the same on buy. This step isn't explained in the possessor'south transmission I was provided in the printing kit, and if information technology was momentarily confusing for me, information technology could end up becoming a major headache for Alienware'south customer back up staff later release.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

Once the Alienware 34 was configured correctly and the HDR test footage was rolling, I was impressed with the overall "richness" of the image, something OLEDs are already well known for. However, its vividness certainly could take been meliorate, and in certain scenes even HDR 400-rated Fast IPS models like the Gigabyte Aorus FI32Q produced a brighter and "punchier" image, if you volition.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

I wasn't outright disappointed by the Alienware 34's functioning in video, but I wasn't as bowled over as I was hoping for, either. The $i,299 toll shows in the panel limits here.

With the video testing out of the way, it was onto what this matter was "actually" made for anyhow, if you enquire the largest segment of people lining upwardly to buy it—games. To start off, our standard run of the Final Fantasy Fifteen(Opens in a new window) Windows criterion looked dandy in SDR, and the Alienware 34 fifty-fifty managed to pull off bang-up results with Auto HDR thrown into the mix for fun.

Next upwards, I booted a few more titles that support either Motorcar HDR or native HDR: Elden Ring, Forza Horizon 5, and Lost Ark. Each of these games had its own subtle tweaks needed to go the picture right, whether it was increasing the saturation levels in Elden Ring or checking the peak white points in Forza. In one case I got them tuned and working on a per-game basis, though, the outcome was certainly a nice one. HDR, once more, added a considerable amount of overall richness and depth to the color palette onscreen.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

Equally for traditional input lag (the corporeality of time betwixt when a monitor receives a point and the screen updates), we test that with an HDFury 4K Diva HDMI matrix(Opens in a new window). With a 60Hz test indicate, the Alienware 34 showed an input-lag measure of 3.three milliseconds (ms). This is higher than many displays in the Fast IPS category, only still very impressive for annihilation with the OLED acronym somewhere in its model name. For comparison's sake, the Alienware 55 OLED scored 29.3ms in the same examination. Just a near-10x improvement in a piffling over a year...nothing major!

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

During my multiplayer games testing in Overwatch and Valorant, I found it easy and fast to line up my sniper shots with G-Sync Ultimate on board. Screen-tearing was almost non-real, and the 175Hz overclocked refresh rate was plenty to let me proceed upwardly with the rest of my team. Note, though: Because DisplayPort 1.4b maxes out at 144Hz/x-bit colour, we did have to kicking things down to 8-bit in order to savor that 175Hz overclock.

All the same, it should be said that in full general, if yous're playing a game where a 30Hz difference in refresh charge per unit could actually change the leaderboard in your favor, the last thing on your mind is how much your enemy's blood color "pops" off the screen, correct? In gaming performance and performance alone, I was very impressed with the Alienware 34, and fifty-fifty forgetting all nigh the QD-OLED, I'd exist happy to call this my daily commuter in any of the well-nigh competitive multiplayer titles on shelves right now.

OLED: Only What Well-nigh Burn-In?

Nosotros know you were thinking it, and no, we didn't forget near fire-in. (Neither did our one-time TVs! Ha cha cha.) For those of yous wondering "what took then long" for OLED to make its motion from TVs to monitors, it could be argued the main reason nosotros haven't seen the same charge per unit of rapid adoption for OLED on either laptops or PCs as on televisions, is because of the big bad B-word.

Prototype burn-in, sometimes called "image memory" if you're a panel maker trying to make information technology sound amend, first striking the public ear back when flat-screen plasma televisions originally took off. People would find that images they left on a television for extended periods of time—for case, a 24-hr news channel with a static chyron or logo playing at a doctor'due south office all day—would get out onscreen "imprints," if you will, of the image after the channel had been changed, or even after the TV was switched off.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

This tin can happen for a host of reasons that change depending on the panel tech you're talking about. In the instance of OLED, it's downward to the way the pixels are charged to display their colors. We won't bog downwardly this already long review with any further technical details (this primer will handle the heavy lifting at that place), simply just know that Alienware thought of that before launching the 34.

Each time you plough off the display, just before the console powers off it will run through what Alienware calls its "pixel refresh protocol." In information technology, various charges are run through the panel to "unstick" (note: we are really simplifying things there) whatsoever potentially problematic pixels. Because this happens every time the monitor powers downwardly, Alienware says it'southward confident that users shouldn't see issues with, say, icons on their desktop or their Starting time Card buttons burning into the 34's panel.

Burn-in takes a long time, so fifty-fifty though nosotros had the brandish for a calendar week, it would exist silly and presumptuous to outright claim, "No, it's not a problem with QD-OLED!" What we can say is that no, we didn't notice whatsoever burnt-in images during our vii-twenty-four hours advance fourth dimension with the unit of measurement. And so far, so good!

Alienware Takes The states to The Lead...er

While display technologies like OLED are, and have been for quite some time, the outright dominant panel pick for color and quality in televisions, the story of OLED-backed PC monitors is 1 of frustrating fits and starts.

For case, it would likely be hard to proper noun an OLED television that really looks worse than any other TV panel tech out there. But in monitors, a few Fast IPS-backed options could notwithstanding requite the QD-OLED-based Alienware 34 competition under the right conditions.

Even the VA-based Asus ROG Swift PG35VQ, which nosotros've saved mentioning until now given its age and likely replacement in the stack presently, gives the Alienware 34 a run for its coin in the ultrawide/curved/HDR gaming-panel market place with higher brightness levels, similar color results, and current availability. The going street cost of $1,775, off of an MSRP of $ii,499, more often than not keeps it out of this chat for now. But if we see that toll drib to the $1,500-ish range, the Alienware 34 needs to keep its eyes glued to the rear-view mirror.

(Photo: Chris Stobing)

A major reason to get with the Alienware 34 over that model, though, is the same every bit for many OLEDs: The panel runs absurd as heck by comparison, and information technology is about one-half the poundage, to kicking. QD-OLED panels are, like OLEDs, both thinner and lighter than anything else out there, making them the ideal pick for anyone who can't put up with the heat output that VA-backed ultrawides are known for.

When we offset saw the toll of the Alienware 34, our first thought was: "What's the take hold of?" At present, later having used it for a week myself, I tin can meet while at that place are some, they don't ruin the feel to the point where information technology's still not worth the price of entry. Samsung's new QD-OLED panel tech provides a decent balance betwixt the outright centre-watering dazzler of standard OLED televisions and the gaming responsiveness we've come to expect out of the gaming-monitor segment in 2022, meeting somewhere in the centre of both.

It may non be the outright revolution in gaming-monitor panels we were expecting at its announcement, but in more than ways than one, the Alienware 34 is an evolutionary step in the right direction, and we're excited to see where QD-OLED allows the category to unfold from here.

Alienware 34 QD-OLED (AW3423DW)

The Bottom Line

The Alienware 34 QD-OLED is a fine start for this new panel technology, and it shows that with only a few more than refinements to its configuration settings and functioning peaks, QD-OLED could exist the simply display type nosotros're playing on five years from now.

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