Wider than ultra-wide – The advent of 32:9 monitors

What if you could replace those two monitors with one? Numerous extra-wide 21:9 monitors have hit the market in recent years and have already caused some to say goodbye to their two-screen setup. However, two 16:9 monitors are still significantly wider than one 21:9 one, so the double screens are not out of the world yet.

The use of two screens also has disadvantages, because watching movies or playing games is impossible. The edge in the middle throws a spanner in the works. Samsung launched the first 32:9 monitor this year, effectively merging two 16:9 screens. Philips has announced that it will come up with the same screen, based on Samsung’s panel. We have been using Samsung’s extra-wide screen for a while to experience how such a ‘two-in-one’ screen works in practice.

Huge size

The first 32:9 monitor not only stands out for its extremely wide aspect ratio, but also for its enormous size. Samsung has opted for a panel with a diagonal of 49″, or about 125cm. The Samsung C49HG90 has a curved panel with a significant curvature of 1800R, equivalent to that of a circle with a radius of 1.8 meters. curved monitors have a curvature of 3000R, which is equivalent to the curvature of a circle with a radius of 3 meters, so they are less curved.

Although we usually find a curved panel in TVs nonsensical, that is not an unnecessary luxury with this monitor. Due to the enormous size and the short viewing distance that is usual with a monitor, the curvature means that you can still see the corners of the image. This would be more difficult with a flat panel.

The 49″ panel is of the VA type. If you look at the monitor from a considerable angle from the side or top, the brightness decreases enormously and you see significant color deviations. You also see some reflections on the screen. If you sit right in front of the screen, you will hardly be bothered by it.

Count pixels

The size of Samsung’s ultra-wide screen monitor is impressive, but the resolution of 3840×1080 pixels is not. In fact, it’s a half 4k screen and when combined with the large panel, that leads to a very low pixel density of 81ppi. If you take a seat behind the screen, you immediately notice it. The rendering of text is coarse and you can clearly see the pixels. The pixel density is therefore comparable to that of a 16:9 full HD monitor in the 27″ format. Most will not find this pleasant, especially if you are used to the high pixel density of a smartphone, tablet or monitor with a high resolution, it is a significant decline.

A solution may be that you adopt a slightly larger viewing distance than usual with a monitor. Because of the large size, that is certainly possible, although you must have a deep desk. Due to the curvature and the large base, the screen itself also takes up quite a bit of space with a depth of over 38cm.

Software

A screen with a 32:9 ratio is wide enough to display three or even four windows side by side. Unfortunately, Windows 10’s Snap feature is unable to auto-tilt more than two windows side by side. Samsung supplies Easy Setting Box software, which should be able to do that. In practice, however, this is not always a good solution.

It seems convenient; you can divide your screen into zones, for example three planes next to each other. Software then gets an icon with which you can move windows to one of the planes. Folders in Windows have that icon, Chrome windows too, but Edge windows, for example, do not. With Media Player Classic, we even suddenly saw the icon in the middle of the screen, instead of in the top corner. In addition, the windows do not close together neatly, as they do with Windows’ Snap function, but there is a bit of space between them. It is also not possible to divide the image into more than three zones next to each other. The software is therefore not specially made for the 32:9 monitor; you can tell by the interface on which a monitor with a regular 16:9 ratio is displayed.

Nevertheless, the 32:9 format is also more convenient in some ways than two separate 16:9 monitors for productivity. With two monitors, you cannot properly divide the image into three, because you have an edge in the middle. It would be nice if Windows came with better Snap functionality that would allow you to divide windows better. For the time being you will have to work with other software or arrange your windows manually.

Gaming at 32:9

Due to the low pixel density, the C49HG90 is not recommended for digital reading and writing, but Samsung mainly targets gamers with the screen. This can be seen in features such as the refresh rate of 144Hz and the response time of 1ms. The huge screen also invites you to start your favorite game. The low resolution is a lot less noticeable with fast moving images than with text and the experience in games is impressive. The extra experience that the large screen gives immediately leaves a positive impression in games. To see how the 32:9 resolution works out in practice, we tried a number of different games.

shooters

To start with, we played a game of the hugely popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. This works without any problems at the resolution of 3840×1080 pixels and the extra screen space results in a much wider field of view. Handy, because you see twice as much of the environment as someone playing with a 16:9 monitor, so you can spot an enemy earlier.

The fact that an extra wide monitor can provide an advantage in games is a reason for some developers not to support different aspect ratios or to crop the image in such a way that there is no advantage anymore. For example, for a long time the 21:9 ratio was not supported in Overwatch. That support is now there, but those who play the game on an extra wide screen see less of the image, because a crop is simply made where information is lost at the top and bottom.

However, most shooters leave users free to choose their screen, despite the advantage over other players. For example, we played Battlefield 1, Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Order on the Samsung screen without any problems. In all those games, the wide angle of view adds a lot to the experience. On screenshots, the image may look a bit distorted in the corners, but if you are sitting directly in front of the screen and those corners are really only visible in the corner of your eye, then that is not disturbing.

Racing games

The extra wide field of view is especially useful for games that you play from a cockpit, such as racing games and flight sims. We started working with Eurotruck Simulator 2, Project Cars 2, F1 2017 and Forza Motorsport 7. All those games can handle the wide format perfectly, but in some games you still have to adjust the field of view yourself to actually get more seen in width. This is the case with Project Cars 2, for example. That game gives you numerous options for camera settings and you can adjust the fov per view.

With Forza Motorsport 7, the fov is not adjustable, but it is actually right when you play the game in 32:9 resolution. the image is simply wider than on a 16:9 monitor, so that when you use the cockpit view, you suddenly have a good view of the side mirror and rear view mirror. The widescreen experience greatly improves racing games, because you can better see the curves coming or keep an eye on your opponents.

There are also games, mostly older titles, that need a little help to run well at widescreen resolutions. That help comes in the form of the Flawless Widescreen software, which contains fixes for numerous games. Installing that program automatically detects problematic games and applies patches that improve them.

If a game really can’t handle the 32:9 ratio, that doesn’t mean you can’t play the game. It is of course possible to choose a different resolution with a regular aspect ratio, resulting in black bars on the side.

Try 32:9 on your own monitor

Gaming at the 32:9 ratio is not reserved for owners of the huge Samsung screen. It is possible to simulate the same aspect ratio on any monitor or TV by setting a custom resolution. Of course, this is accompanied by black bars at the top and bottom of the screen if you do this on a 16:9 or 21:9 monitor.

Both Nvidia and AMD video cards allow you to add custom resolutions to the driver software. For example, if you have a 21:9 monitor with a resolution of 3440×1440 pixels, you can create a 32:9 resolution of 3440×968 pixels. With a 16:9 full HD monitor you can imitate the extra wide ratio by making a resolution of 1920×540 pixels. You don’t always have to set your monitor to that resolution. Once you have created these resolutions, you can select them in a game, for example, while on the desktop you use the native resolution of the screen.

Using a custom resolution is a handy way to see if the 32:9 aspect ratio is right for you. If you have a small 16:9 monitor, then of course little of the image remains. You also miss the extra experience that the large screen size gives. On a large monitor or a TV and with a short viewing distance, you can better replicate the effect of the wide aspect ratio.

Another advantage of using a custom, wider resolution is that you can get higher frame rates because fewer pixels need to be rendered. For example, if you have a 4k monitor and you set a game to the 32:9 resolution of 3840×1080 pixels, it’s suddenly a lot easier for your video card to achieve a decent frame rate.

High dynamic range

The Samsung C49HG90 is not only special because of its extremely wide aspect ratio; it’s also one of the first hdr monitors you can buy. High peak brightness and good black reproduction are important for HDR reproduction; with those properties a high contrast is possible. If you display a completely white screen, the brightness of the C49HG90 is up to 263cd/m ^² . In HDR mode, however, that is 654cd/ ^m² , which is very clear for a monitor. The monitor is therefore able to display a peak in brightness very well. Because Samsung uses a VA panel, the minimum black value is very good, resulting in an excellent contrast of over 2500:1.

Microsoft has added support for HDR screens with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. An option ‘HDR and advanced colors’ has appeared in the display settings in the control panel. If you switch it on, HDR is activated, but the image then becomes very faded and there seems to be a gray haze over it. Windows 10 itself is not made to display in HDR; you should therefore only enable this mode when you plan to play an HDR game or watch an HDR video, for example. For example, if the mode is enabled, YouTube will recognize that you have an HDR monitor and videos that support it will be played in HDR.

We occasionally encountered a problem when switching on the HDR mode. The image then became confused, pixels were displayed double, as it were. Only a reboot of the system fixed that. This may be due to the combination of monitor and video card, the driver or a problem in Windows 10.

HDR in games

There aren’t many games that support HDR yet, but they are on the rise. The fact that both the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X can display games with HDR probably contributes to the arrival of more games with HDR. After all, many games are developed for both consoles and PC. An example of this is Forza Motorsport 7; that offers HDR playback on both the Xbox One X and the PC.

Another game that displays HDR convincingly is Battlefield 1. The sun breaking through the clouds or emerging from behind a mountain gives an impressive effect. The image that comes from the C49HG90 is not blindingly bright if you play in a lit room during the day, the maximum brightness is too low for that. If you play in a darkened room or at night, it looks a lot better. Not everything seems to be going well with the HDR display of games in Windows. We were able to activate HDR in F1 2017, but the colors then looked paler, while you would expect the opposite from good HDR reproduction.

Games that do not support HDR can benefit from the backlight in the Samsung monitor, because it can dim locally. You can set that function in the OSD of the monitor and when using it, the brightness of the backlight is adjusted to what is displayed on the screen. However, that is not the same as full HDR display and if you turn on the function in the Windows environment, it will have disturbing effects. For example, you will see the brightness suddenly jump when you open a browser window or folder with a white background.