 Have you ever bought something thinking, surely this is as good as it gets, at least for a while? This guy sure did. Blue from the writing team loved Alienware's first QD OLED gaming monitor so much when we reviewed it earlier this year that he put his name on a waiting list, paid 1300 US dollars and waited almost three months to finally get his baby. Since then, he never misses an opportunity to flex that he has the best display on the block. Even the Alienware QD OLED I have, for instance, I've just gotten my Alienware QD OLED finally. I own a display, I got it. It's crazy, right? But he's about to learn a painful lesson. Being an early adopter sucks. It's been just over six months since that monitor hit the market and Dell Alienware has already released a followup for us patient gamers. Not only is it $200 cheaper, but it's more color accurate out of the box, has more features available, comes in black and allows user firmware updates. To be honest, I didn't see this coming so soon either. Samsung doesn't even have a monitor with this panel yet and their display division makes the bloody thing. Maybe there's a catch. Maybe the new one cuts an important corner. Thankfully, our new specialist for the lab, Brandon Tu is here to help shed some light on the situation. Like I'm gonna shed some light on our sponsor. MSI, their new GeForce RTX 4080 Supreme X delivers ultra performance through 16 gigabytes of GDDR6 memory and it's tri-Frozer 3S thermal design. Learn more down below. ["Dreams of a New World"] Physically, these two are almost identical aside from the color scheme, almost. The refreshed DWF now has two DisplayPort 1.4 ports instead of two HDMI 2.0s, but the four-port USB hub with mouse and keyboard dongle friendly positioning, dual three and a half millimeter jacks and simple C13 power input should all be familiar. The RGB is slightly different though and you'll feel a difference when you pick them up. Alienware managed to shed about a pound and a half from the updated model. Firing them up, the differences are even less obvious. Our hilarious behind the scenes videos on floatplane.com have never looked better and quantum dot OLED or QD OLED for short displays are simply the best for gaming. Amazing color accuracy and wide color gamut thanks to the quantum dots, lightning fast pixel response times and inky blacks thanks to the self-emissive OLED pixels. Now, the newer F model is rated for 165 Hertz refresh rate compared to 175 for the OG one. And you won't be making up that difference with an overclock, we did try. But we've also shown that there's a point of diminishing returns for high refresh rate displays. And the difference between 165 and 175, that 10 Hertz is a lot smaller than the difference between 60 and 70, even though they're both 10 Hertz. Now, one concern we had was that Dell might have slimmed the new model by cutting down its power supply or its cooling, which could hurt HDR performance. But in practice, both of them managed to get within striking distance of their rated 1000 nits peak brightness. Meaning that whichever one you choose, you're gonna be looking at a gaming session that is buttery smooth and bright enough to flash bang yourself in a dark room. So how did they cut the weight and cost? Turns out you gotta look really closely. By not paying Nvidia, the original DW has a G-Sync ultimate module inside, which honestly Nvidia doesn't even seem to know the purpose of anymore. Something about low latency, variable refresh rate, and lifelike HDR, whatever that is. But then the new one has FreeSync Premium Pro, which on paper has all those same benefits anyway. Maybe the G-Sync module helped them push that extra 10 Hertz, we'll never know. But the reality is that variable refresh rate tech is really at its best on something like a console, where it can eliminate tearing and mask stutters when the frame rate dips below 60 FPS. On a top of the line, high refresh rate display like either of these ones with a powerful GPU, which you probably already own, you're more likely to run your frame rate uncapped anyway for the lowest possible latency. So, meh. Let's change gears then and talk about color accuracy. Both of our DWFs and our DW came factory calibrated with Delta E averages of less than two. That's accurate enough that even to the trained eye, any differences should be indiscernible. But the DWF results are even better. In both the sRGB and P3 color spaces, it managed a Delta E of less than one, straight out of the box. I mean, it's the same panel. So how did they do it? Ah, this is interesting. Based on their spec sheets here, QC at the factory is done using a more accurate testing tool now, specifically a CA410 instead of an MK550T. So it seems like in the extra time that Dell Alienware has had, they've refined their setup, yielding significantly better results. Although it is also possible that they cherry picked these units. They were provided by Dell. Now let's talk about HDR, which used to be Nvidia's primary selling point for G-Sync Ultimate. Their module was, after all, the first to support variable refresh rate and HDR at the same time. And it seems like they might still be ahead of the competition here. To be clear, there's no best approach to HDR tone mapping, but there are best practices. Unfortunately, these best practices can be different for different types of content. And Nvidia seems laser focused on gaming. For HDR gaming on Windows, the DW's Nvidia certified approach to managing super bright on-screen objects looks a lot better. And the reason is that when you go through the process of calibrating your game during setup, the point of that is to tell the game what the capabilities of your monitor are so that it can stay within them, only peeking or losing detail in the image where the developer wants it to. Let's say as part of their artistic vision for how it should feel when an interrogation light turns on. For comparison, out of the box, the DWF is gonna try to maintain detail in bright objects by compressing them into the upper range of its capabilities. This is a little hard to wrap your brain around, but bear with me here. Say you had two light sources, right next to each other in a scene, one of them at a thousand and one at 3000 nits. Well, this display might attempt to show both of them without peeking by going 900 and 950 nits to represent that this one is brighter, even if it's outside of its capabilities. Well, the theory here is sound. And this can actually be a very good thing for films that were shot and mastered for the capabilities of future displays that do have that range. But in games, it messes with that calibration process because it makes the game think that the display is capable of much higher peak brightness. So in practice, you actually end up with more clipping rather than better preserved detail. Now this may have been an intentional move from Dell. Some people prefer an HDR image that pops, even if they lose some detail. But as an artist's intent snob, it's really not my cup of tea. Thankfully, the DWF does include a source tone mapping mode as an option for those who want more accuracy, but it's still not quite as accurate as the DW. One neat trick the DWF has up its sleeve that the DW can't do though, is the ability to accept a 4K HDR signal. And this is a must if you're trying to game on an Xbox Series X with HDR enabled. That's a clear win for Mr. Blackfeet here. And it's about to get a whole lot more of them. Picture in picture or picture by picture is supported. It has more HDR color modes. The OSD is more responsive. You can change the aspect ratio to four by three for retro content. You can adjust the sharpness, hue, gain, saturation and offset while the DW can only do saturation. And if you want some test patterns for calibration or to check for defects, the AW3423DWF comes with those built in. And the dumbest part of all of this, it's probably that lack of G-Sync ultimate that you paid a whole bunch more money for. That's right. That module that we're paying extra for and not even really using, makes it next to impossible for a home user to update the firmware on the DW. We reached out to Dell and they have confirmed that if there's an issue with your display, you can send it in and they will attempt a firmware update as part of the fix, but only they can do it because of some specific tool that's required for this module. And they won't do it on demand. So if some new mode or feature gets rolled out in later revisions of the monitor, your display, if it's otherwise fine, tough break kid. The DWF however, not only comes with the latest and greatest firmware, but since we're no longer limited by the physical module, we can simply update it ourselves. So not only have you now paid $200 less by waiting nine months, but you're actually getting more features out of the box with the ability to potentially get even more over time. Wait, is that someone crying? It's already updated. Weird. To be clear, this doesn't happen with every new technology and it usually doesn't happen this quickly, but it's certainly a bummer when it does, which raises the question, should you hold off on that big purchase that you might've been considering? As funny as it's been to Joe Capote, I don't think Plouffe actually regrets his purchase. He paid a lot of money and the DWF is pretty cool, but he's also been using arguably the best gaming monitor on the planet for the last six months. And he pretty much still does. One thing that's worked out really well for him is that he pretty much never notices the text fringing issue that some have complained about with these QD OLED panels. And compared to my regular OLED gaming display that I've been using for less than a month, he has no image retention whatsoever, while I have some. So it's always a personal decision. Are you happy with what you're getting for your money? Well, if you are, then don't let some shiny new toy make you feel bad about it. There's always gonna be something better coming and often for cheaper. But we don't love our gadgets because having the best one makes us feel superior. We love them because of what they enable, like great gaming experiences. On that note, by the way, we've got some new testing equipment in the lab, a photodiode and oscilloscope that are both fast enough to measure the response times of OLEDs. And we've been looking for an excuse to throw them at the original DW. As it turns out, that's one area where somewhat predictably, both of these performed identically with just 0.16 millisecond black to white transition times. That is absolutely freaking incredible. Bye bye LCD. See you later. So regardless of which one you choose, and we're gonna have them both linked down below, it's clear that now is a heck of a time to pick up a top tier gaming display. Samsung, MSI and Phillips all have QD OLED monitors coming out over the next few months or year. Some of which are gonna have cool features that these ones don't have, like power delivery for one cable charging your laptop. But don't feel bad about that. Just enjoy the tech, like you're gonna enjoy the segue to our sponsor. Jackery from the 24th of November to the 28th, Jackery is offering up to a 1,080 US dollars off some of their products for their Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. Popular products like the Solar Generator 2000 Pro, 1000 Pro and 1000 will be eligible for a solid discount as well. Jackery and Blacksters will be giving away a travel trailer during their $250,000 giveaway on their Cyber Monday live stream. Click the link below and keep a close eye on Jackery's website and socials to learn more. Thanks for watching. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out my PG42UQ video where I upgraded my home and office. That thing is pretty sick, but I do have lines from AeroSnap down the middle.