When comparing LG 38UC99-W vs Samsung CHG90, the Slant community recommends Samsung CHG90 for most people. In the question“What are the best monitors?” Samsung CHG90 is ranked 7th while LG 38UC99-W is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose Samsung CHG90 is:
The Samsung CHG90 offers much higher versatility than the overwhelming majority of the competitors on the market because of its picture quality, HDR support, gaming performance, and the amount of on-screen real estate.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Excellent general purpose monitor
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.
Pro Supports 85W charging over USB-C
You can charge your laptop and have display output through a single cable thanks to the monitor's USB-C port.
Pro Features On-Screen controls
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.
Pro Perfect for multi-tasking
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.
Pro Excellent for watching movies
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.
Pro Has a pair of good speakers
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.
Pro Exceptional connectivity
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.
Pro Supports dual linkup
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.
Pro Great picture quality
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.
Pro Excellent for general use
The Samsung CHG90 offers much higher versatility than the overwhelming majority of the competitors on the market because of its picture quality, HDR support, gaming performance, and the amount of on-screen real estate.
Pro Supports HDR media
Combining its color gamut, HDR peak brightness, and native contrast ratio with full HDR10 support, the Samsung CHG90 outperforms the nearly all of its competitors when it comes to the HDR media playback.
When working with HDR media, the Samsung CHG90 can display almost 90% of pure HDR colors of the DCI P3 color space because of the monitor’s wide color gamut. Such DCI P3 coverage is an uncommon feature for a general purpose monitor. DCI P3 is the color space used in HDR media production.
Moreover, the monitor has enough luster to highlight vivid objects in HDR mode where its brightness peaks at around 600 nits.
Additionally, the Samsung CHG90 is among a handful of monitors that support HDR10.
Pro Handles motion quite well
The Samsung CHG90 displays good-looking motion with only some minor traces of motion blur following fast-moving objects on the screen as the monitor’s pixels need only around 10.8 ms to change their color. Such rapid pixel transition is achieved because of the monitor’s full pixel response time of 10.8 ms.
Additionally, the monitor doesn’t suffer from any noticeable ghosting.
Furthermore, the motion looks smooth because of the monitor's 144 Hz native refresh rate, which ensures that the Samsung CHG90 displays a new frame every seven milliseconds.
Pro Has a curved screen
The Samsung CHG90 offers a highly immersive experience as you can literally feel its 1800R curve surrounding you.
Pro Fights glare
The Samsung CHG90 works very well in bright rooms with lots of windows as its light matte coating and high peak brightness does an excellent job of fighting glare and heavy reflections.
Pro Highly responsive
The Samsung CHG90 is among the most responsive monitors on the market as its input lag measures at an amazingly low value of 4.6 ms.
A monitor’s input lag is significant in gaming as it shows how much time a monitor needs to process a frame generated by a computer’s graphics card.
Pro Supports FreeSync 2
FreeSync eliminates tearing and reduces stutter because it allows the Samsung CHG90 to synchronize its refresh rate to the framerate of your AMD graphics card.
FreeSync 2 is an advanced AMD technology which combines adaptive synchronization with HDR. AMD claims that only the best HDR monitors would be compatible with FreeSync 2.
Pro Suitable for web designers and photographers
Because of its full sRGB coverage, the Samsung CHG90 is an excellent tool for media artists, such as web designers and photographers that work in the sRGB color space.
Additionally, Samsung CHG90 is suitable for those who make videos for web applications, like YouTube and Twitch, as those also use the sRGB as a default color space.
Pro Massive amount of display real-estate
The Samsung CHG90 is a fantastic tool for productivity as its 49-inch 3840x1080 display offers enough real-estate to place three Google Docs side by side comfortably. The monitor will also come in handy for those working with massive Excel sheets because of its large on-screen area.
Furthermore, the monitor’s picture-by-picture mode allows the Samsung CHG90 to display pictures from different sources simultaneously. Such a feature will make your life much easier if you use a laptop alongside your desktop computer.
Additionally, you can manage and organize your workspace using Samsung’s Easy Setting Box.
Pro Good for gaming
The Samsung CHG90 offers better gaming performance than the overwhelming majority of 40”+ competitors, as this 144 Hz monitor offers highly responsive gameplay with reasonably well-handled motion.
Additionally, due to the monitor's aspect ratio of 32:9 you’ll have a wide field of view in games like CS: GO, DotA 2, League of Legends, and Star Wars Battlefront.
Pro Good picture quality
The monitor’s native contrast ratio, peak brightness, gamma, color accuracy, and color uniformity are superior to what the overwhelming majority of competitors on the market offer.
It can display amazingly beautiful images, with a wide range of vivid and accurate colors, rich and intense blacks, and some eye-catching intermediate tones that look genuinely accurate. Colors pop,and look crisp because of the monitor’s peak brightness of 331 nits, which, combined with the CHG90’s high color uniformity, makes the colors appear consistent across the entire panel. Dark scenes look deep because of the monitor’s native contrast ratio of 3756:1 which makes its blacks appear truly dark. Mid-tones look life-like as the monitor’s gamma is less than one percent off from the ideal value.
Additionally, the Samsung CHG90 can display a higher variety of colors than the majority of its competitors because it uses a true 10-bit panel that allows it to reproduce more than a billion colors.
Furthermore, the monitor’s color inaccuracies are so insignificant that the human eye can't see those since the panel’s average color error dE is only 1.13.
Pro Good for HDR gaming
With the Samsung CHG90, you’ll be able to experience true HDR effects in games that support it like ARK: Survival Evolved and Battlefield 1.
Cons
Con Very expensive
For the same price as this monitor, you can buy three decent 27-inch ultrawide monitors.
Con Bluetooth indicator is inconvenient
The monitor's Bluetooth indicator occupies the on-screen workspace. Unfortunately, there is no way to remove the indicator while using the Bluetooth speaker option.
Con Has an external power brick
The external power supply unit of the LG 38UC99-W might cause inconvenience especially if you want to mount this monitor on a wall since the PSU is quite bulky.
Con Wobbly
The stand isn't rigid, so you might observe some minor wobbling if your work desk is flimsy,
Con OSD is quite messy
The on-screen-display of the LG 38UC99-W does not have any programmable shortcut keys and is quite hard to navigate.
For example, to enable or disable the motion blur reduction feature, you’ll need to press more than 15 keys because the menu goes very deep.
Con Unsuitable for gaming
Gaming just doesn't feel responsive because of the monitor's massive input lag.
Con Some games might not support 32:9
Games that support only the aspect ratios of 16:9 or 21:9 will have vertical black bars on the sides of the Samsung CHG90, as the monitor’s native aspect ratio is 32:9.
However, the majority of new titles do support a 32:9 aspect ratio.
Con Flickering can cause eye strain
The Samsung CHG90 flickers because it uses a PWM signal to dim its backlight. Monitor flickering can cause severe eye fatigue after extensive use.
Con Not suitable for consoles
The current generation consoles don’t support an aspect ratio of 32:9 and will leave massive black bars on the sides of the screen if connected to the Samsung CHG90.