 Guys, if there is one thing that I find irresistible, it's curved ELGs. They're just so... sexy and... Wait, what?! I'm talking about computer monitors with curved screens, not... Oh my god, that's disgusting! Roll the intro. Cooler Master Neptune Series CPU coolers are available in a variety of radiator sizes to perfectly suit your next build. Click now to learn more. A couple of months ago, smack in the middle of the year of 4K, I declared 4K to be dead to me, at least for now. I had a new lover, an LG that I just wanted to put on my desk and stare at all day until... Okay, this joke is old, it's gross, and it's old, and I'm done with it. Anyway, you can watch my video of the 34UM95 here, an IPS 3440x1440 34-inch monitor that I thought struck a perfect balance between pixel density, so no terrible Windows text and icon scaling required, overall size, 34 inches sounds a lot bigger than it is when it's a 21 by 9 ultra-wide aspect ratio, and ergonomics and productivity. The ultra-wideness without annoying bezels in the middle of what you're doing makes it great for watching movies, playing games, and working, because it's about equivalent to two 20 plus-ish square monitors side by side. But this video isn't really about that. No, today's video is about the 34UC97, a display that's mostly the same, except for one huge difference compared to the previous model that I alluded to in my tasteless intro. The fact that the display is now gently curved. Unboxing and assembling this bad boy, I was about as excited as I've been about opening a monitor ever. I've been using its flat, late bloomer of a cousin as my daily driver at the office since the second Brandon finished shooting B-roll of it for our review. I grabbed that thing, and I've recommended it to tons of people, because aside from the slower pixel response times that come with IPS's beautiful colors and great viewing angles, the only complaint that I've ever really come up with about it is that I felt like it could be a bit better with a subtle curve. So getting this thing in the mail is basically like Christmas morning. Physically, the monitor is stunning. It wows everyone who looks at it before I even get a chance to turn it on for them. The panel itself has a semi-matte finish that I find delivers a great balance between contrast and color poppiness and anti-glare. The tasteful, clean bezel design from the last iteration returns, as does the unassuming plain plastic backing. As far as changes from the flat model go, these are a bit of a mixed bag for me. So the bottom bezel now features a matte finish instead of gloss, and the joystick for navigation for the OSD is a bit harder to reach. I think the TV-style chromed two-foot base is a huge visual improvement over the previous plasticy-looking one with its cumbersome two-setting height adjustment, but unlike the predecessor, the 34UC97 lacks any height adjustment at all. Just tilt. Now, this would be less of an issue if LG included a VESA-compatible arm mount on the back of it, but unfortunately, at this time, they're only planning to include that accessory in certain regions, and they don't plan to release it as a standalone accessory. Although hopefully, if we shout loud enough, they will change their minds because I would personally like to buy one. The last change is I.O. By covering the inputs with a snap-on plastic piece, the appearance of the back is dramatically improved for people who care about that, but the convenience of accessing the I.O. is reduced, so it's up to you how you feel about that. Under the cover, though, we get some more nice upgrades. We trade a couple of USB 2 and Thunderbolt 1 ports for an additional USB 3, Thunderbolt 2 20 gigabit with daisy-chain support, and an extra HDMI input. Not bad. Alright, so let's briefly go over a couple of the supposed benefits of curved displays. First of all, and this is less of an issue with a high-quality IPS display like the one in front of you, any horizontal gamma or color shifting should be reduced because as you turn your head side to side, you're actually looking more directly at the screen near the edges compared to a flat one. Number two. Aside from the angle, because the distance between your eyes and the screen should be closer to equal, at the center and looking at the edges, there should be, for a single user, less visible distortion or changes in sizes of objects moving around on the screen, making the viewing experience feel more natural. Now, to be clear, I basically laughed this stuff off when I was looking at all the curved TVs at CES this year, because when it comes to movie watching, especially, unless you're talking about massive TVs or theater projectors, at a reasonable distance, the distortion of the image from a flat panel versus a curved one is negligible. And on top of that, I don't know about you, but for me, TV and movies are often a social experience, and when I'm watching a movie with anyone but my wife, we don't sit with our heads right together. So having a sweet spot where the image looks more natural when seated dead center and a particular distance from the TV is not really desirable if it's going to make it look weird for everyone else. With a 34-inch ultra-wide PC monitor, however, it is a whole different ballgame. We sit so close to monitors that they fill enough of our field of view that the distance to the edges of a flat display versus the center, the difference is about 25%, and since most of the time we're using a PC, it will be alone, worrying about sharing that sweet spot is pretty much a moot point. So what's it like to use, then, Linus? Who is this thing for? Well, creative professionals and Mac users, often there's a fair bit of overlap there, will appreciate the greater than 99% sRGB color space support and the Thunderbolt 2 with pass-through for the storage appliances that these people inexplicably use instead of NASs. And the, in my opinion, perfect balance of resolution, size, and form factor without text scaling delivers amazing flexibility from a productivity standpoint. It's not something I care about, but it supports dual side-by-side inputs if you want, but far more interesting to me is LG's screen split software. It lets you divide up your workspace a number of different ways and automatically snaps windows to the optimal size. I'm a big fan, personally, of the three vertical split one. I use it all the time when I'm writing. But that's really only part of the story. Like, OMG, this monitor is freaking awesome for movies. If you're one of those people who prefers watching movies at a PC to a TV, and you watch anything in the more cinematic 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio, this is unlike anything else that I've ever had in my house. I was using Arne Templer Knight as one of my test cases, and I kept just finding myself watching the movie instead of working. LG's Max Audio-enabled speakers didn't impress me much for movie watching, but I didn't really expect what is basically an EQ to blow my socks off, but with some noise-isolating headphones on, sitting in front of this thing is pure bliss. And games are a similar story. Whether it's driving, third-person, first-person... I love gaming on this thing. Without the bezels that give me pause before recommending iFINITY setups to most people, the wider but not so wide that everything looks stretched without endless tinkering aspect ratio is truly much more immersive and makes for a fantastic gaming experience if you're willing to deal with the 60Hz refresh rate and increased motion blur versus a TN panel. A trade-off that elite level or even semi-competitive players who are not accustomed to gaming at lower refresh rates or with more blur and are even maybe used to 120 or 144Hz monitors might not take. Now you've probably noticed that we've gotten 10 minutes into this video without me talking about how the curve affects the viewing experience, and that's for a good reason. It's pretty obvious from above or below the monitor, but at angles where you might actually have your head, honestly, it's very subtle, and I find myself forgetting that it's there very quickly. The main difference is something that I actually feel more than I see, and it's the lack of any fluctuations in brightness, color, or contrast towards the edges, and especially in the corners. It didn't take long, actually, for me to decide to switch to this curved display at work, and I definitely plan to give you guys my longer-term impressions on the podcast and in a follow-up video because I think it's important when you're fundamentally changing the type of display that you're using, but overall, I'm just so impressed by this thing. It's not perfect. The lack of support for NVIDIA G-SYNC is keeping it off my desk at home, and it's also got some pretty noticeable backlight bleed in all four corners on dark backgrounds, at least my sample does, putting a mark on what is otherwise my new top choice for a productivity-minded workstation display. Speaking of top choices, huge thanks to Gigabyte for sponsoring this episode of Linus Tech Tips. They asked us to highlight their new P25X V2 gaming notebook, and while this actually arrived slightly before us filming this video, so I haven't had a ton of time hands-on with it, actually, it looks pretty darn awesome. It features an Intel Core i7 mobile quad-core processor, a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS display, up to 16 gigs of RAM, up to 2.5 terabytes of combined storage across one hard drive and two MSATA SSDs, and the monstrous GeForce GTX 880M with 8 gigs of GDDR5. It's available in a couple of different colors, so there's an all-black one, or, and I personally like this one quite a bit better, there's this awesome, like, mostly black, bright, freakin'... vibrant yellow one. It features a white backlit keyboard and build quality that I'm actually pretty pleased with, especially considering what kind of spec you're getting for this kind of a price. So if you're looking for a high-performance gaming notebook, and you're all like, wow, Gigabyte sponsored Linus Tech Tips, they sure are cool guys, then you're gonna wanna make sure you check out the P25X V2 at the link in the video description. Thank you guys for watching today's video on what is now, effectively, my new favorite productivity monitor. Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment letting me know, how do you feel about curved displays? Have you seen one before? What did you think? And check out the link in the video description to the support us page, where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one, give us a monthly contribution if you love our videos, and you wanna, like, help us make more of them, and I think there's one other thing, right? Change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy stuff on Amazon. Thanks again for watching, and as always, don't forget to subscribe.