Alienware was first out of the gate with a true OLED gaming monitor in the Alienware 34 AW3423DW back in early 2022. But it was arguably the revised “F” model that followed a year later that really hit the spot. Truly, the Alienware 34 AW3423DWF was a magnificent gaming monitor.
Happily, it’s now subject to a serious haircut thanks to this year’s round of Prime Day deals. Yes, please.
I preferred the F model for one very obvious reason. It has a glossy coating to the non-F’s matte anti glare finish. As I said at the time, the glossy coating really lets the OLED panel tech sing.
That the “F” model was also cheaper that added to the appeal, though “cheaper” is relative. It was still a $1,100 monitor at launch. Whatever, the $200 savings (back then) was possible because Alienware had stripped out the expensive Nvidia G-Sync chip and reduced the refresh rate from 175 Hz to 165 Hz.
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The former I’m fine with, you still get adaptive refresh with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. As for the latter, who cares? You’ve never going to feel the difference between 175 Hz and 165 Hz.
That said, what you might think you can feel is the improvement with the very latest OLED gaming monitors. Is this Alienware is now outpaced by newer OLED models? The short answer is, no, not really.
Yes, Samsung has updated its QD-OLED panel tech a couple of times since. But it’s hard to really see the difference. This first-gen panel still matches the latest models for full-screen brightness, no real advance has been made there.
And the changes Samsung made to the sub-pixel structure only make a tiny difference to things like font rendering. Even the latest QD-OLEDs don’t have a conventional RGB structure.
Meanwhile, you get the same silly-fast pixel response, perfect contrast and spectacular HDR highs. All of which means I’d rather spend $700 on this Alienware than hundreds more on a newer model that gives pretty much exactly the same subjective experience.
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