Samsung U28E590D vs LG 38UC99-W

The Samsung uses a 10-bit color display panel, resulting fantastic picture quality. It can reproduce more than a billion colors, compared to the 16 million colors of 8-bit panels. The color saturation and accuracy easily compete with more expensive screens, although they are not precise enough for photo-centric work. Contrast levels are average, but the monitor is brighter than other monitors in its price group.

The brightness measures up to 300 nits after calibration and the matte screen reduces glare, making it easy to view the screen in bright conditions

It delivers a standard contrast ratio of 1:1000, although when properly calibrated, the contrast ratio goes down slightly.

This screen offers an excellent response time of only 1 ms, compared to the 5 ms (or more) of other monitors in this price range. Input lag measures at 15 ms, which is second only to dedicated gaming monitors with 10 ms response times.

This screen's connectivity consists of two HDMI 2.0 ports and one DisplayPort 1.2., which is enough for most users. Samsung offers picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture modes. Meaning that you can view two inputs side by side or one can be scaled down to a small window that you can place on one of the corners.

The screen’s 10-bit panel covers 97% of the sRGB color spectrum which is a respectable result for a budget monitor. For professional use, you will have to look for something more accurate. Color saturation and accuracy is excellent and can compete with higher priced models.

The stand takes little place and has a metallic finish and is quite stable, even if at first this doesn’t seem to be the case

This monitor offers a flicker-free backlight, which reduces strain on your eyes. It also includes a setting that reduces the amount of blue light in the screen, making the picture look softer and facilitates nighttime use.

This monitor is finished in a black plastic with metallic look borders and looks elegant and minimal.

Impressive amount of on-screen real estate, excellent picture quality, exceptional connectivity, and great color accuracy puts the LG 38UC99-W above nearly all competitors in the market.

You can charge your laptop and have display output through a single cable thanks to the monitor's USB-C port.

You can access all the general features of this monitor using your mouse and a keyboard thanks to the LG’s On-Screen Control software.

Additionally, the On-Screen Control offers many screen split presets.

Having enough display real-estate to fit three vertically aligned Google Docs windows comfortably, the LG 38UC99-W is an excellent tool to boost up the productivity in everyday office duties, CAD/CAM applications, and many other fields.

Acing the near-cinematic aspect ratio of 21:9, the LG 38UC99-W is an excellent companion to watch movies because you won't see the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching most movies.

The LG 38UC99-W features a built-in 20 Watt stereo speaker system which sounds fairly well compared to the 4-10 W speakers the competitors at this price point offer.

This monitor beats most of its premium competitors in terms of connectivity because it features a USB-C downstream port which has multiple parallel functions. First, you can use it to access the monitor's onboard USB hub. Second, it can be used for charging a USB type C compliant laptop. Finally, you can use it to receive video and audio signal from a computer.

Additionally, the LG 38UC99-W has two HDMI ports, a DisplayPort, and an inbuilt Bluetooth module.

You can connect this monitor to two computers so that each machine use half of the on-screen area. This might come in handy for those who frequently use a stationary desktop computer and a laptop.

Only the best monitors can match the LG 38UC99-W's contrast ratio, peak brightness, gamma, and color accuracy, as the monitor features one of the finest IPS panels in the industry.

The LG 38UC99-W displays beautiful pictures, with deep and rich blacks, vibrant and accurate colors, and good-looking intermediate tones. Despite the fact that the monitor's native contrast ratio is only 1000:1, the dark scenes look deep and intense as the backlight of the 38UC99-W can drop below the brightness level of 0.15 nits, which only the best monitors can do. Colors pop and look vivid, as the 38UC99-W can sustain its brightness above the 300 nits mark. The mid-tones look lifelike thanks to the monitor's near perfect gamma value, which is only 1.3% off from the ideal value.

Moreover, the monitor's color inaccuracies can't be seen by the human eye because it only has an average color error dE of 2.12.