review LG 29UM65 Review

[+Nexus18 MVC]

Below is a brief review of the LG 29UM65 ultrawide monitor, which comes in at about £280.

 

Unfortunately my first two units had extremely bad backlight bleed, mainly the bottom left corner and the second one also had a dead pixel in the central area. It seems like this is quite a common problem with these LG 21.9 ultra wide monitors as a number of users on various forums have reported the same issue as well as a few of the 34" model owners... This third one is a lot better but still not "perfect", however, under normal conditions, the bleed & IPS glow is not noticeable.

 

My first monitor @ 20% brightness:

http://i.imgur.com/OxuSEOSl.jpg

 

Second monitor @ 20% brightness:

 

http://i.imgur.com/FwBuGhel.jpg

 

The photos make the bleed and IPS glow look worse than what it really was like. It was mainly the bottom left that was very noticeable even during daylight usage.

 

I contacted LG directly for the second one to see if they could repair it rather than me doing another RMA and getting an even worse one, however, their response was an absolute joke, essentially they told me to "only use the monitor during the day and with a low brightness", needless to say, I cut the guy off there and proceeded to sort a RMA out with the retailer.

 

I was determined to get a good one as there was nothing else on the market that interested me at all and I didn't fancy any of the other 29" monitors due to them having their own downfalls.

 

Packaging:

 

The box is relatively small considering the size of the monitor. The monitor and items are well protected.

 

 

Along with the monitor, we receive one HDMI cable, audio cables and the power brick (which is pretty small, it is a bit longer than a credit/debit card with the width being smaller than a credit/debit card) + power cord.

 

Features:

• Screen size - 29"
• Panel Type - IPS
• Aspect Ratio - 21:9
• Resolution - 2560x1080
• Brightness - 300 cd/m2
• Contrast Ratio - 50000000:1
• Viewing Angle - 178/178
• Colour Depth - 16.7M (8-Bit)
• Pixel Pitch - 0.315 x 0.310 mm
• Colour Gamut - sRGB
• Surface Treatment - Hard Coating (3H), Anti-Glare
• Connectivity - 1x DVI-D, 2x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
• Dimensions (with stand) - 702.5 x 181 x 418.2
• Dimensions (without stand) - 702.5 x 63.8 x 328.2
• Warranty - 2 years

Aesthetics and Stand:

 

The monitor looks absolutely gorgeous overall, due to the bezel free edges at the top and sides (as in no plastic chassis sticking out), the front looks very sleek. My only complaints with the aesthetics are; the LG symbol AND "LG" writing at the front, only need to have the one there, not both... and the glossy plastic finish, I still don't know why manufacturers insist on using glossy plastic these days, it just looks cheap and is a finger print magnet, give me a matte finish any day of the week!

 

 

 

Underneath the power LED, we have a directional joystick for controlling the OSD, which in my eyes is better than having 5+ buttons to use like you get with DELL monitors. The OSD menu is nicely laid out, it is easy to use and best of all, there is an option to turn off the power LED. Although some sections could be better organised.

 

 

The rear ports on the back face outward, which I much prefer to downward facing ports, I find it much easier to connect and disconnect cables. We also have VESA mounting holes (75x75)

 

 

The stand is very basic, you only have angle adjustment and two height choices, with the max height still being a bit too low, a box will fix this though Dell still have the best stands out there.

 

Image quality:

 

Unfortunately, my camera will not do this screen any justice so you will just have to take my word!

 

 

Out of the box, the screen looks well calibrated already although it is far too bright but then they did have the brightness set to 100%...... the cinema preset mode looks more accurate though, I will go into this more later on. I think the right side of my monitor is a bit darker than the left side. 

 

A photo/snapshot from a video of a black screen @20% brightness, once again, the camera makes the bleed/glow/blacks look worse than what it really is, the top and bottom left is IPS glow as if I move the camera and my head more towards that area, it disappears, if this was bleed, it would remain visible no matter how I view the corner.

 

 

The screen looks absolutely amazing, it is extremely bright, so much that I have the brightness set to 10% and my PC/monitor sits right beside a big velux window too.

 

After much testing and tweaking, I have found a brightness of 10% and contrast of 66 with everything else on default except colour temperature set to custom to look the most accurate to my eyes. I have set my brightness to 10% in order to achieve an ideal contrast ratio. Whilst the official specs state a "50000000:1" contrast ratio, with proper calibration for "normal" usage, this is impossible for an IPS display, you can expect the contrast ratio to be between 1000 & 1400 on this particular model, remember all panels will vary slightly though.

 

Cinema mode is probably the best preset, however, I find it to be too aggressive on the gamma and contrast, the two other presets are awful; game mode is far too blue & photo mode over saturates the colours especially red.

 

The anti-glare coating seems really good, not too aggressive and not too light, the clarity/sharpness is very good (virtually no grainy look to it), definitely better than my Dell U2311H anti-glare coating.

 

 

Once I got the monitor set to my ideal settings as above, I went to Lagom LCD test web site to properly test it:

 

Black test; all 20 grey squares are distinguishable

White saturation test; all 12 patterns are distinguishable

Gamma Calibration; to my eyes, it looks like the darker & lighter bands blend in at 2.2 (the ideal gamma setting for all displays)

Banding; If I look very closely, I can just about detect some banding

 

Once again though, in order to get the best and most accurate gamma, colour temperature, RGB values etc. you NEED a hardware calibrator.

 

As usual with good IPS panels, the viewing angles are great. The top left of this monitor is quite bad for IPS glow on a black/dark screen though once you view it from the right side.

 

Also, the "warm up" time from when you first turn the monitor on is very short i.e. it is very bright within milliseconds, with my Dell U2311H, it would take a few minutes till the brightness was at its peak.

 

The area where this monitor really shines and the sole reason I bought it is because of films, the majority of films take the full screen up so no black bars that you get with 16.9/16.10 screens. Of course there are a number of films that aren't shot in the 21.9 aspect ratio i.e. Ant Man, however, with the right media player, you can zoom in, this works pretty well for most films and the quality, sharpness still looks great especially if you sit further back. Most TV shows will have black bars at the side. With the content that has black bars at the side, the video image will be the same size as a 23" 16.9 monitor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The majority of games also work well with the 21.9 aspect ratio. Some will have no problems at all where as others might have a few issues i.e. cut scenes & menus, the screen will go back to 16.9 so black bars at the side and the UI/HUD will still be in 16.9 format i.e. Assassins Creed Syndicate and GTA 5

 

 

 

Thankfully there are a few games that have no HUD or have been developed with 21.9 in mind, some might require a bit of messing around in cfg files though i.e. Fallout 4:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can probably tell from that last photo of BF 4, you also get more FOV at the sides, which is superb for vehicle game play, especially when flying jets. Not much of a MMORPG or racing gamer but I am sure that those sort of games would look even better on this monitor.

 

You can enable the 21.9 aspect ratio via file tweaks with most games that don't support the aspect ratio out of the box.

 

There is a fantastic program that will properly support ultrawide and give the proper FOV now called flawless widescreen

 

For more info. on which games do and don't support the 21.9 aspect ratio, check this thread out as well as this youtube channel.

 

I don't have the proper equipment to test the input lag, however, going by the AOC, ASUS and other newer LG 29" monitor reviews, the input lag should be about 5-13ms. In Linus's youtube review he says that he finds this monitor noticeably snappier than the 34UM95. 

 

There are multiple settings for the response time in the OSD menu; off (highest response time), low, middle and high (lowest response time). After much testing, I have found the "high" setting to be the best, it has the least motion blur with some inverse ghosting and feels a little bit more responsive than the "medium" preset to me, I used this site to test all the options.

 

I can't say that I feel at any disadvantage in FPS shooters with this monitor, I still do well. Of course if you are a serious FPS gamer and don't mind not having the best image quality, colours, viewing angles etc. then you should be looking at TN 144Hz monitors.

 

For general usage i.e. browsing, windows etc. I don't have any complaints about the 1080P vertical height res. I see some comments from people on a number of forums who regard it to be an "utterly stupid vertical height res.", true, you have to put in a lot more effort to scroll the middle mouse wheel a bit more often to see the next line...

 

You can easily watch a video plus read a web page on this ultrawide monitor. Three windows is a bit a too cramped for my liking.

 

 

Now this is the only other area that is rather disappointing, the majority of youtube videos out there will have black borders all the way around the actual video i.e.

 

 

There are a few videos, which support the 21.9 aspect ratio though.

 

 

Thankfully there is a superb chrome extension to fix this issue.

 

Conclusion:

 

All in all, I couldn't be happier. The monitor does everything I wanted. For any type of media and even general usage for browsing, 21.9 aspect ratio is superior to 16.9/16.10 in my opinion.

 

Films and games have that cinematic look now, which simply put, feels a lot more immersive than 16.9/16.10 aspect ratio monitors.

 

There are other 29" ultrawide monitors out there using the same panel but none of them ticked all the boxes like this LG model, we have the following:

 

AOC - stand looks really bad plus is sat too far forward (problem for me since my desk depth is already very small), build issues
Dell - would have been my choice due to their superb service and swap on door service (wouldn't have minded paying the extra £100 just for that), unfortunately the input lag is very high
ASUS - seems like the best screen all round for performance and image quality etc. but there are quite a few negative posts on their customer service/RMA, issues with build quality, no VESA mounting holes and a £100 more

 

So really the only area where LG could improve this monitor is; the stand, better QC and a matte plastic finish.

 

Pros:

• Good price considering what you get
• Great image quality all round thanks to a decent contrast ratio, amazing anti glare finish & good out of the box calibration settings
• The 21.9 aspect ratio is just sublime, gaming is much more immersive and being able to watch films without black bars is stunning
• VESA 75x75mm mount
• No chassis bezel + thin bezel/black borders

Cons:

• Lottery as to if you will get a good one or not with regards to back light bleed i.e. QC testing is crap by LG
• Glossy plastic finish
• Very basic stand, only two height adjustments available, which are hindered by two screws i.e. not free moving like DELL's stands

[Phouchg]

I've got myself 29EB73-P some months ago. Your review pretty much captures my sentiment with it. There aren't many things I really like. I do like this one. Unfortunately, mine also suffers from visible bleed. Because of reasons that at this moment are obvious, I'll just let it be. It's certainly there, but not a deal-breaker. They seem to be using the same panel and process for all their current models. I placed EB73-P model above others because I liked its stand.

[+Nexus18 MVC]

I have just updated this review with some more information :)

 

EDIT:

 

I also got some LED lighting a while ago and have to say it does a decent job. Crappy pics, looks better in "real life".

 

 

 

It definitely gives the perception of an improved contrast ratio and makes the screen stand out even more.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Nexus18

[MikjoA]

it's quite surprising that there are almost no reviews yet of this monitor..
So thank you for the review, it convinced me to buy one =)

It has been over a year I'm looking for a new monitor, I wanted to wait for the perfect one but the new LG ultra-wide monitors, 34UM65, 34UM95 and 29UM65 really caught my eyes..
I think the 34UM65 was the least interesting I guess, since it has the same resolution than the 29UM65 and is nearly twice more expensive.
The 34UM95 looks fantastic, but way too expensive and... 5 million pixels is quite a bit of a challenge even for great graphic cards... It would really benefit from GSync for nvidia users, but hopefully freesynch will be possible with this one, and as Linus says the 29UM65 is noticeably snappier, and this is quite important to me.

All in all the 29UM65 is really the best choice for me, even though it is not a 34" I'm sure it will look quite big, since it shares the same height than my current 23" monitor and I never felt that it was small.
So I just ordered one yesterday evening for quite a good price, 285? VAT and shipment included.

Hopefully it will not suffer from backlight bleed too much and without any dead pixel.
I can't wait receiving it, delivery is planned for wednesday 29. The wait will be long :D

I'll post some pictures and my impressions as soon as I can.
I have no tools to make an in depth review but luckily my current monitor has an amazingly low, CRT like, input lag, http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u2312hm.htm
so I will be able to compare them and estimate it's input lag :)
Linus showed it's surprisingly quite faster than the Asus PB278Q so I already feels confident it has a low input lag.

If I can overclock its refresh rate to 75hz or more this monitor will be just perfect.

[+Nexus18 MVC]

No problem :)

 

Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

 

Regarding overclocking, a few users have tried with this and the 34" screens and haven't got any higher than 61-65Hz without frame skipping. Although I think it largely depends on what cable you use.....

 

 

Also, welcome to the forums! :)

[Krome]

Yeah nice review... Neowin should put this on the main page...

 

This monitor is perfect for anyone that wants to enjoy a real cinematic movie or those FPS game... A lot of the movies comes at this resolution I think...  Monitor looks great... I want one :)

[MikjoA]

No problem :)

 

Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

 

Regarding overclocking, a few users have tried with this and the 34" screens and haven't got any higher than 61-65Hz without frame skipping. Although I think it largely depends on what cable you use.....

 

 

Also, welcome to the forums! :)

 

Thanks =)

Hmm overclocking the refresh rate also depends on other settings such as "Front Porch" "Synch Width" "Total active pixels" etc Hopefully I'll get better results. And 29" model may handle it better or worse ^^

But you're right it also depends on the wire with DVI I would not expect anything high than 65hz. On the other hand I think any display port cable would be more than enough.

I've good hope I can overclock it above 70Hz, Most monitors I tested would easily go above 75 without noticeable frame dropping and smoother experience in fast fps.

I even managed a 3440x1440 @ 77hz on my 1920x1080 60Hz monitor.

But even if I do not manage to overclock it, it would not prevent me to enjoy it. I just need more than 60hz for just one game, all other I'm more than fine with 60.

In all case, I'll share the results and my thoughts =)

By the way how does yours handles those test ?

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php

These are very important and rarely ever done in reviews.

 

Yeah nice review... Neowin should put this on the main page...

 

This monitor is perfect for anyone that wants to enjoy a real cinematic movie or those FPS game... A lot of the movies comes at this resolution I think...  Monitor looks great... I want one :)

Yeah I think fps games are among those which would benefit most with an ultra-wide monitor, I'm convinced it is much more immersive.

I can't wait to try skyrim with this one, I've already tried on my current 23" 16:9 to make 21:9 custom resolution, and hmm it already looks awesome.

I definitely think that 4K can wait, 21:9 monitor adds much more immersion than 16:9 high pixel density + low fps.

And for movies hmmm it will be delicious I am sure!

It's funny because a year or two ago, I thought that 21:9 was a stupid idea and that it was just an other marketing reason to sell monitors.

In the meantime, my 16:9 feels a bit square :D

[+Nexus18 MVC]

 

Yeah nice review... Neowin should put this on the main page...

 

This monitor is perfect for anyone that wants to enjoy a real cinematic movie or those FPS game... A lot of the movies comes at this resolution I think...  Monitor looks great... I want one  :)

Thanks! I hope they do as well :)

 

Yup, the majority of my films are shot in this aspect ratio, it is mainly just the older films (i.e. 80s and before) that have black bars at the sides.

 

Keep an eye on overclockers.co.uk, they quite often have good deals on these LG 29" screens.

 

Thanks =)

Hmm overclocking the refresh rate also depends on other settings such as "Front Porch" "Synch Width" "Total active pixels" etc Hopefully I'll get better results. And 29" model may handle it better or worse ^^
But you're right it also depends on the wire with DVI I would not expect anything high than 65hz. On the other hand I think any display port cable would be more than enough.
I've good hope I can overclock it above 70Hz, Most monitors I tested would easily go above 75 without noticeable frame dropping and smoother experience in fast fps.
I even managed a 3440x1440 @ 77hz on my 1920x1080 60Hz monitor.
But even if I do not manage to overclock it, it would not prevent me to enjoy it. I just need more than 60hz for just one game, all other I'm more than fine with 60.

In all case, I'll share the results and my thoughts =)

By the way how does yours handles those test ?

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php

These are very important and rarely ever done in reviews.

 

Yeah I think fps games are among those which would benefit most with an ultra-wide monitor, I'm convinced it is much more immersive.
I can't wait to try skyrim with this one, I've already tried on my current 23" 16:9 to make 21:9 custom resolution, and hmm it already looks awesome.

I definitely think that 4K can wait, 21:9 monitor adds much more immersion than 16:9 high pixel density + low fps.

And for movies hmmm it will be delicious I am sure!

It's funny because a year or two ago, I thought that 21:9 was a stupid idea and that it was just an other marketing reason to sell monitors.
In the meantime, my 16:9 feels a bit square :D

Cool! Looking forward to hearing your OC results as I may try it if you get good results :D I think I read somewhere that HDMI was the best for OC?

 

 

Good shout on the lagom tests, I have updated my review with this. Thanks  :)

 

Using cinema preset and 15% brightness:

 

Black test; all 20 grey squares are distinguishable

 

White saturation test; all 12 patterns are distinguishable

 

Gamma Calibration; to my eyes, it looks like the darker & lighter bands blend in at 2.2 (the ideal gamma setting for all displays)

 

Banding; If I look very closely, I can just about detect some banding

 

 

And yup, I agree, 4k isn't ready yet, still too many issues, need 3 GPU's for 50+FPS and high/max settings + the price....... This article sums up my thoughts on 4k and 21.9 pretty well:

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/lgs-34-inch-219-monitor-has-convinced-me-that-ultrawide-is-better-than-4k/

 

 

hehe, I think all the current 21.9 monitor owners thought the same too (including myself) but now.... 21.9 seems to be really taking of! :D

[+Nexus18 MVC]

Just read that someone has been able to overclock the 29ub65 (same panel) to 70Hz without frame skipping :)

 

He is using a nvidia 970 and HDMI cable.

 

 

I just read through the guide for overclocking but see that it breaks some things i.e. hardware acceleration so will hold of for now.

[MikjoA]

[...]

 

Cool! Looking forward to hearing your OC results as I may try it if you get good results :D I think I read somewhere that HDMI was the best for OC?

 

 

Good shout on the lagom tests, I have updated my review with this. Thanks  :)

 

Using cinema preset and 15% brightness:

 

Black test; all 20 grey squares are distinguishable

 

White saturation test; all 12 patterns are distinguishable

 

Gamma Calibration; to my eyes, it looks like the darker & lighter bands blend in at 2.2 (the ideal gamma setting for all displays)

 

Banding; If I look very closely, I can just about detect some banding

 

 

And yup, I agree, 4k isn't ready yet, still too many issues, need 3 GPU's for 50+FPS and high/max settings + the price....... This article sums up my thoughts on 4k and 21.9 pretty well:

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/lgs-34-inch-219-monitor-has-convinced-me-that-ultrawide-is-better-than-4k/

 

 

hehe, I think all the current 21.9 monitor owners thought the same too (including myself) but now.... 21.9 seems to be really taking of! :D

 

Great to read that the 29UM65 perfectly handles these tests ! it sounds very promising !

That's true it is not an accurate way of measuring the gamma, but I think it is reasonable enough to say it is very good for most users :).

I'm going to use input lag test of lagom.nl to compare the input with my current display which is said to be of an average only 0.6ms.

Yeah I 100% share the opinion of the article ! The 34UM95 is really a far better option over any 4K monitors, but the price ouch, so if 21:9 is taking of, that's a really good thing, as it could bring their price down and improve games compatibilities.

Yes HDMI is often a better choice than VGA or DVI for refresh rate OC because it has much more bandwidth, but it's the Display Port which has the highest bandwidth, so Display Port is probably the best choice. With DVI at 1080p I was limited to 66 / 67 Hz

As to refresh rate OC, I have never encountered such problem. I looked for a bit about the hardware acceleration problem because I had actually never heard about it.

I do not know why it happens to some users, one of them was using several displays, with different refresh rates, hmm it could be a driver issue..

And to be honest I don't really know if it can damage the monitor or not, there are not much information about it. As long as it is not a big overclock (like the qnix qx2710 evolution II 60-> up to 140Hz), but around 75Hz, I believe it's risk free by the way 75Hz was very a common standard refresh rate a few years ago among 4:3 and 5:4 LCD monitors.

Also I think that most monitors are locked via the EDID or other internal software which strictly restrict a refresh rate range of 50 - 75Hz which is the reason that most of the time I couldn't set up more than 76 / 77Hz. And not because I'm pushing it to its limit, for instance my dad's monitor easily accepts up to 87Hz @ 1920x1080 but a few second after a message appear right in the center telling this is not the manufacturer resolution, the message can't be removed and is annoying although the monitor doesn't show any artifacts or flickering. The message appears as soon as a resolution is set above 77hz. Same for my current monitor, except than the image turn black with the same kind of message.

By the way I had forgot to mention, the LED lighting you put behind the monitor look really really good, I'd like to do the same too.

[+Nexus18 MVC]

Yup, it is pretty expensive although once other manufacturers get something out to compete with it then we should see a more sensible price (hopefully), dell and AOC will be bringing their version out relatively soon and next year Samsung will be bringing out their version but with a VA panel, hopefully they will be freesync ready too........

 

 

Cool, thanks for the info. on this OC monitor stuff. I can't say I have seen much mention of damage etc. from oc a monitor either. I might give it a go any way and see how I get on, if I experience any problems, I can just go back to 60HZ :)

 

 

I got this LED strip:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FF2CYOS/ref=pe_385721_37038051_TE_3p_dp_1

 

I had to cut of quite a bit, it is just stuck above the top VESA mounting holes.

[MikjoA]

Hey there !

Well I still don't have my monitor yet... Because I've been visiting my parents for the holidays, the monitor waits for me since tuesday in the shop x__x well I'm very very impatient.
I really like the idea of that led, I'll think I'll do it too =)

Did you try to make a custom resolution?
Well in any case I'll tell tomorrow evening when I pick up the monitor =).

And by the way, I'm a little bit crazy... kind of a compulsive buying syndrome or something, but I did buy an other monitor in the meantime rofl that was unexpected... LOL
Well it seemed like a great deal ! But the scary part... It's 16/9 and I can already hear "Noooooooooooooooooooooo" :D but and it's a TN "Omg he is lost" 24" 1080p *face palm* but it is a 144Hz 1ms ULMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur I think) and it has G-Sync :o
It is the AOC G2460PG for 252?... I just couldn't help :D

So I'll be comparing them lol although they have nothing in common... but I still believe the LG 29UM65 will be much more immersive, and look much better, while the AOC well I'll use it for some fast fps. Maybe I'll return one of them not sure which one yet lol, but I think there is many possibilities :D but I believe the LG is the one I will still prefer. TN are just awfull but I never tried high refresh rate monitor and gsync but I'm sure I'll love them too... At least for fast fps. For the rest the LG will be much better.

1 I keep them both
2 I keep the 29UM65 only
3 I return the LG only because it has an awefull backlight bleed or dead pixels and get a new one
4 I return them both because they both have problems and ask for replacement

but in any case I'll sell my U2312HM

[+Nexus18 MVC]

I wondered why you hadn't posted anything! :D

 

For ?5, you got nothing to lose tbh, honestly I can't use my monitor without the LED back lighting now, I just find it to be easier on the eyes + love how it makes the screen "float/stick" out more.

 

No, I haven't tried out a custom resolution/refresh rate yet, happy enough with 60HZ tbh.

 

 

Wow! That is a cracking price for a 144HZ GSYNC screen  :o

 

Yup, they are both very different monitors and excel in different areas, as you have said. From what I have read about gsync, it really is amazing for gaming, supposedly EXTREMELY smooth (when the FPS drops from 144 to around 60/70, people say with gsync, you don't notice it :cool:) with very little input lag + no screen tearing at all, essentially just like using vsync in games but without the problems. I am very sensitive to screen tearing so have to use vsync in every game and honestly can't say I notice input lag at all, although I do it a bit differently:

 

Either

 

- enable borderless windowed mode so that the game is then using windows native vsync + triple buffering (this was a god send for shadow of mordor, the in game vsync is useless, once you go below 60FPS, it drops to 30 where as with this method, it was always >58FPS)

 

OR

 

- cap my FPS to 59 and turn vsync on in game

 

I am using the second method for BF 4 (although have turned triple buffering off) and notice absolutely no input lag, constant 59FPS.

 

 

ULMB is supposedly very good too especially for FPS games although iirc, the colours are really bad when using that.... I would personally stick with gsync for the perfect smooth experience + no screen tearing.

 

 

For myself, the biggest difference/advantage of the AOC screen will be motion clarity, another area that I am very sensitive too :(

[MikjoA]

GOT IT !!!

I could not test it more than 10 minutes I have to go back to university, but it seems there is not noticeable light bleeding! Colours / contrast looks great, it's HUGE and WIDE

Annnnd very quick try -> 79 Hz @ 2560x1080 32bits

It looks perfect, sadly I can't even enjoy it yet...

GOT IT !!!

I could not test it more than 10 minutes I have to go back to university, but it seems there is not noticeable light bleeding! Colours / contrast looks great, it's HUGE and WIDE

Annnnd very quick try -> 79 Hz @ 2560x1080 32bits

It looks perfect, sadly I can't even enjoy it yet...

[+Nexus18 MVC]

Cool! Look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on the monitor :)

 

 

I have watched quite a lot of blu ray films on this monitor now and the quality, colours etc. are just amazing but more importantly, the aspect ratio, oh man, it is just sooooo good not having any black bars wasting screen space! Games in 21.9 are just fantastic too especially the really atmospheric ones i.e. alien isolation!

 

All I need now is a monitor which has perfect motion clarity, freesync/gsync and MUCH better blacks/contrast ratio. Hopefully Samsung will have a 29-32" VA 21.9 monitor coming out next year along with their 34" version.

 

edit:

 

Found a semi-decent review of this monitor:

 

http://en.gecid.com/disply/LG_UltraWide_29UM65-P_monitor_review_and_testing/

 

Probably the only review we are going to get :p

[MikjoA]

Hi

here it is with, standing just next to my Dell U2312HM 23", 16/9 never felt this square lol.


It was not an easy picture by the way, but it was the most realistic look I could get, brightness was set to 10% on the LG and 0 on the dell :D

This monitor is just gorgeous, and I was lucky enough to get a monitor that does not suffer from excessive backlight bleeding. There are some, at the bottom and left side.
But it's negligible really, it doesn't annoy me since I cannot notice it in normal use, it's only visible with a black image covering 90%+ of the screen. It also has 0 dead or stuck pixel !

The colors are astonishing and the contrast is high ! I only tried one game, the wider FOV and ultra wide ratio is really nice and increase a lot the immersion.
I did not try to watch movies yet, I can't wait ! :D

Well, Nexus18 already wrote a nice review, my first test with my monitor aimed to complete his review.

I focused on the gaming aspect of the monitor, I believe 21/9 is an ideal ratio for gaming. But to be a good gaming monitor, it must have a low input lag and good pixel responsiveness.
Input lag, I believe, is even more important, than pixel responsiveness when playing online FPS for instance.

So I started with its input lag, to make a proper comparison you must have a very fast LCD, CRT are actually the best, since they have no input lag at all.
Fortunately, my Dell U2312HM is probably one of the monitor that has the lowest input lag measured, even lower than the best 144Hz gaming TN monitors.

tftcentral.co.uk estimated its average input lag to be 0.6ms only ! prad.de estimated it to 1.1ms ! while most of the best gaming monitor only have around 6 to 12ms.
The Dell U2312HM use a LG panel :)

Well, the input lag of the 29UM65 is just FANTASTIC ! It was just as fast as the Dell U2312HM, showing no delay at all ! It seemed even a slightly bit faster !
To measure it, I used a high end APS-C camera and took shot at 1/4000s




Here are the other images comparing the input lag, some of them seems to give a slight advantage to the 29UM65.

I've managed to get a 100% stable 74Hz refresh rate without any frame skipping (I checked with this website and a good camera : http://www.testufo.com/#test=frameskipping)

Here is the setting I've used to get a 74Hz frame skipping free :



To measure the frame skipping, I've used this website : http://www.testufo.com/#test=frameskipping
And I took photos with 1.6 second of exposure, so all white square are captured by the sensor but rendered as grey since most of the time they were black.

v FRAME SKIPPING TEST v

Exemple of frame skipping at 73Hz


With my settings above and even more cases :

(all grey = no frame skipping !)

v INPUT LAG @74Hz v (both monitors)

Having found its maximum refresh rate useable, I did a new input lag comparison with the Dell U2312HM.
This time I've set both monitor at 74Hz and none of them suffers from frame skipping.

The 29UM65 is now nearly two frame ahead !!



Other input lag comparison @74Hz

 

I think this is probably the best 21/9 monitor for gaming !

[+Nexus18 MVC]

Very nice m8! Great test/review on the gaming side of the monitor and a nice photo showing the screen of too! :cool:

 

 

Think I am going to try overclocking my screen and see what I can get, will report back....

[MikjoA]

Hey thank you :) !

Actually I feel that this monitor is already quite snappy even at 60Hz! :D The problem is avoiding frame skipping at all cost, otherwise it will stutter and it is worse than 60Hz. And I do not know if my setting will work with everyone there might be some slight variation amongst monitors, and maybe it can depends on GPU too ? I don't know.

Also, the response time I prefer leave it on medium, I noticed some reverse ghosting on high unfortunately, it's not very noticeable though.
And this is a common issue, with monitor. It feels quite good at medium anyway.

By the way I noticed yesterday something weird on mine, lol a kind of stupid flaw..  *facepalm*



Who the hell stuck the LG logo like that ? :D

Well pretty trivial ^^

[+Nexus18 MVC]

I tried overclocking mine but get frame skipping at 70HZ and at 74HZ even with with your settings :(, this is using both display port and HDMI connections so back to default 60HZ again. As you said though, 60HZ feels pretty damn smooth already so happy enough.

 

 

The LG logo and gloss finish is just horrible, still need to get around to sanding that bottom glossy strip away to give a nice matte finish like what mrk did with his 34um95:

 

[ojay_c]

nice review! i got mine 2 weeks ago but had to get it replaced since light gray grids can be seen on the screen (not sure what the proper term is)

 

anyway, already got the replacement and loving it. just hoping that the same will not happen anymore  :p

 

has anyone calibrated this monitor yet?

can you pls. share your settings?

 

thank you!

[+Nexus18 MVC]

I haven't used a hardware calibrator, just manually tweaked mine.

 

10-20% brightness is ideal (if necessary, you can go higher but I wouldn't recommend it, most definitely not higher than 50% anyway!)

 

Either use the cinema preset, if you find the image a bit too dark overall, you can increase the gamma via nvidia or AMD's control panel.

 

OR

 

Use custom preset with these settings:

 

contrast - 65

gamma - gamma 1

custom RGB values - R/50 G/50 B/51

 

 

However, every panel is different so what might work best for one might not work best for someone else.

[MikjoA]

For my monitor and my eyes, the only calibration tool I have besides lagom.nl, so far the best settings I've found are :

Brightness : 50 (I like bright screen and the review you have found says that the highest contrast ratio of 1325:1 is achieved at 50% of brightness.)
Contrast : 55 (On my screen contrast setting can really mess up everything, it's terrible, my white color can turn yellow, it can disturbs gamma, at first I though 65  was the best, but 55 resulted in better white balance and better gamma)

Picture mode : Custom
Gamma 1

Color Temp : Custom
Red : 36
Green : 35
Blue : 50
(much more harsh values than yours here :/)

This settings enables me to get a pretty good and well balanced white, and gamma. I can see all black square on lagom.nl and all the white ones except the 254 which is hard to distinguish.

[+Nexus18 MVC]

Yeah when you increase the brightness, you will then need to decrease the contrast. I tried those two settings of yours and they do look good, unfortunately it is FAR too bright for me.

 

My screen is far too blue with your RGB settings though.

 

 

I really wish hardware calibrators were much cheaper, I just can't justify spending ?150+ on a decent one :(

[MikjoA]

I think I have a weird monitor lol

I'm having very hard time to calibrate it... My setup never really satisfy me.
as I said earlier I have no proper tools to calibrate anything accurately just my eyes, lagom.nl and an other monitor which I use for comparaison.

Now my new settings are the following :

Brightness : whatever it doesn't affect the calibration.
Contrast : 75%
Gamma : 1
Color temp : custom
Red : 30
Green : 21
Blue : 44

The settings on the colors seems really harsh but so far it's really the best I've achieved...
When I try to calibrated I look at white saturation, black level, gamma calibration, the adjust color balance of windows display color calibration and the grey colors with an other monitor.

Now the colours looks really good and well balanced, I can see every squares of the white and black test they all have neutral colours.
The only thing which is a bit messed up is the gamma. Perfect at 10 and 25%, but at 48% the blue color is arround 2.4 while red and green are arround 2.2.

I do not know what to think about my monitor lol very different settings from yours, very different from factory setup, it seems it was poorly calibrated looking way too warm (yellowish greenish) to me.
I'd be curious to have it properly calibrated with hardware calibrator probe just to see how different it would be from my current settings.

By the way, I've compared it to my AOC G2460PG TN well I'm pleasantly surprised colours look good too and was much much easier to calibrate. But they still look different although their grey scales looks similar now.
Needless to say it performs incredibly well in fps games and ULMB (can't be activated along with GSYNC and 120Hz max) does an amazing job with blur reduction, although I think I prefer G-SYNC & 144Hz over 120Hz ULMB.

Although did you notice on your that Cyan/Turquoise colors are really strong ? This is very different from my previous monitor and my current AOC G2460PG...
I tried to increase the Cyan hue to 80 and decrease saturation to 35. Hmmm but I have no idea if it's better at 50~50 or 80~35

[MikjoA]

Brightness : whatever it doesn't affect the calibration.

Contrast : 75%

Gamma : 1

Color temp : custom

Red : 30

Green : 21

Blue : 44

Contrast : 75%

Gamma : 1

Color temp : custom

Red : 22

Green : 21

Blue : 44

Looks much better !