The first-ever QD-OLED monitor from Samsung Electronics has finally gone on sale in the U.S., almost a year after Dell Alienware debuted the first model of its kind. 

Samsung’s 34-inch curved Odyssey G8 monitor was first announced at IFA 2022 last September, and is the company’s first monitor boasting a QD-OLED display. While it has been available in Europe for a while, it has been a long wait for the product to arrive in North American stores, with reports that Samsung was first building such a monitor emerging at CES 2022 when Dell Alienware announced its own. It offers a 175Hz refresh rate, making it ideal for gamers. 

Later this year, Samsung said, it will be joined by a 49-inch G9 QD-OLED monitor that has an even faster refresh rate of 240Hz, but it’s not clear exactly when that model will go on sale. 

Unfortunately, the Samsung G8 won’t come cheap. While some may have hoped Samsung might be tempted to undercut its rival Dell, it has instead decided that its brand name might carry enough weight to warrant a more expensive price tag of $1,500, which is around $300 more than the Alienware QD-OLED monitor, priced at about $1,200. MSI also sells a QD-OLED monitor based on the same panel, for around the same price as Alienware’s.

Samsung listed other specs such as 3440x1440 resolution, a 21:9 aspect ratio, 0.003ms response time, support for AMD FreeSync, DisplayPort connectivity, HDMI 2.1 and 2.0 slots and USB-C charging at up to a maximum of 65 watts. 

All in all, the Samsung G8 is no different from the QD-OLED displays sold by Alienware and MSI, however it does have one significant advantage over those monitors. It integrates Samsung’s Tizen Smart TV platform, which comes with the new Gaming Hub that provides access to game streaming apps such as Xbox and Nvidia GeForce Now. This means gamers can stream video games from the cloud, with no need to purchase and connect a console. Owners will also be able to watch TV content from streaming apps like Netflix. 

The main advantage of QD-OLED monitors is that they can render PC and console games in HDR picture quality with deep blacks and high brightness, enabling superior contrast without any compromises on speed and lag. 

That said, the QD-OLED displays are probably not the best choice for those looking to get some work done. Due to QD-OLED’s triangular pixel structure, tasks such as video and photo editing are better performed on standard OLED and LCD monitors. 

Samsung said the 34-inch G8 monitor is on sale now in the U.S. for $1,500, while it costs £1,300 in the U.K. 

For more details on what kind of picture to expect from the Samsung G8, check out HDTVTest's review of the rival Alienware AW3423DW: