 We've probably all done this at some point or another, whether it's with a gaming computer or with a car or camera setup or whatever the case may be. You make a big major upgrade. In this case, I went from a 100 Hz ultra-wide monitor to a 200 Hz one, and the results are fantastic, but there's like a couple of things that are still noticeably imperfect. In this case, when I have the Full Array local dimming on playing my recent game of choice, which is Anno 1800, I get halos that follow around the cursor, and there's no real way to avoid that until they can make monitors with so many local dimming zones that they're the size of a cursor. The other major one here is that the motion blur on it is frankly not that amazing. There is a fair bit of ghosting on this display in spite of all the tech that ASUS and Nvidia have packed into it. So, back to the thing that's probably happened to all of us, I was both frustrated and also excited when I found out that just a few weeks after I made this upgrade, LG came out with something that could solve all of my complaints while also being cheaper. This is the ultra-wide 38 GL950G. It's G-Sync, it's up to 175 Hz, it's ultra-wide, and it's not only bigger at 38 versus 35 inches, it's even cheaper. So let's find out which one ends up on my desk at the end of this video. And the video is brought to you by Ridge Wallet. With a Ridge Wallet, you can keep wallet bulge down thanks to its compact frame and RFID blocking inner plates, and you guys can use offer code LTTAUGUST to save 10% at the link below and get free worldwide shipping. So even though this is not my first encounter with this monitor, I actually saw LG show it off back at... It's either CES or Computex this year, I actually can't remember. But the thing is, their main claim to fame with it, the one millisecond response times with an IPS panel, was something that at the time I was taking with a huge mountain of salt, like this much salt, because we've heard those kinds of claims from manufacturers before. The thing is, LG has since elaborated on the technology that they're using in this display, saying that their new way of creating an IPS display can achieve response times that are comparable to TN panels, and the little brother of this monitor, the 27-inch version, has already made its way through our lab. And here's the crazy thing, the claims actually hold up. So what that means is that out of the two problems that I have with the PG35, one of which being the halos that I can actually solve just by turning off the full array local dimming, and the smearing when objects are moving around, this one solves the only one that I cannot fix just by changing settings on the other monitor. This is shadow, by the way. This is our new rotten cat. Now, before we go any further, I felt like it was important to fire up, so that it's fresh in my mind, a game that supports HDR like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, to properly appreciate what the PG35 brings to the table that LG's competitor simply doesn't. And that is that full 1000-nit peak brightness HDR experience that was such a wow factor for me when I first saw it on this monitor back when we shot the original video. It really does look spectacular. It makes lighting look more realistic. Yeah, it's kind of awesome. So that's going to be hard to give up, but the extra size, not to mention the extra resolution, and of course, the quoted one millisecond response times may be enough to make up for it. Oh, boy, I'm using it as a USB hub. Hopefully, the LG has that feature, otherwise, I may actually not have enough USB ports. So we do have a two-port USB hub, DisplayPort in, HDMI in. I wouldn't recommend using HDMI in on this thing. You're not going to be getting the most out of it. And that's pretty much it. So actually, pretty similar to the other one. Man, this thing is big. You know, it's only three inches bigger, 38 versus 35 inches. But turns out that is a lot of panel. Oh, well, it's got RGB lighting, that's for sure. OK, so I think we're going to have to make some adjustments to our resolution here. G-Sync display connected, though. That worked properly right out of the box. Let's see if we can fix what's going on here. Hey, there it is. All right, running at 60 hertz right now, though. So let's get that fixed, too. So that's it. 3840 by 1600, 144 hertz. That appears to be working perfectly. And we can already get some initial impressions for our pixel response times here just by having a look at what just dragging a window around looks like. Now, you can see there's still a hint of yellow on the trailing edge as I drag this window to the right. But that is noticeably better than the other panel. Also, I haven't even had a look at the settings yet. So response time is on fast. That's actually exactly where we want it. Faster is how you get to that one millisecond rating. But what it also does is it introduces a bunch of visual artifacts that I personally find very obnoxious. It kind of makes your games look like they're over sharpened. And it's gross. Yeah, this I think I've got a defective nipple here. Words you never thought you'd say. So thanks to the miracle of DisplayPort 1.4, this guy can actually be overclocked to 175 hertz. Theoretically, it's fine, but you never know. Sometimes when manufacturers advertise an overclocking setting, they're saying, yeah, it should work, but it might not. So interestingly, just like on the ASUS, if you crank everything, so you want 10-bit color, you want 175 hertz, full native resolution, you're going to go and you're going to apply that and you're going to discover that you've got these pink fringing artifacts that are called chromatic aberration. And it's caused by the lower chroma subsampling here. So you can see we're at YCBCR 422. What we have to do if we want to get the best possible color performance, especially for things like text, is lower our refresh rate to something more reasonable. Looks like we have to go all the way down to 120 hertz in order to apply both 10-bit color and 444. So my middle ground here is probably going to end up being 144 hertz, 8-bit color RGB and full dynamic range, which should still allow us to turn on HDR. Now I did say that this wasn't going to have the same kind of HDR capabilities as the ASUS monitor, but that doesn't mean that it isn't capable of HDR at all. So let's go ahead and fire up our game and see how it compares. Now the argument that ASUS made, and actually Acer along with them, for the previous 144 hertz 4K monitor that had that same issue when you took it beyond 120 hertz all the way to 144 with the chromatic aberration, is that in games it's not that noticeable. It's something that's more noticeable on the desktop, especially if you're looking at text. So we'll give that a shot here, but for my part I have found that I would rather not encounter it because a lot of games actually do have text in them. So HDR is working in the game, but it is immediately noticeable to me that it is not as good as the other display. Like you can see Lara's flashlight here, and that's exactly what I mean. You can see the lens of Lara's flashlight. On the PG-35 you can see a bright flare in your eyes as if you were looking directly into a flashlight. It really does make for a different experience. Now in some cases I do find that HDR can be kind of overdone in games. Like on the PG-35 a lot of these reflections off the rocks kind of are unrealistic. It makes everything look kind of shiny, like it's got an early 2000s vibe to me a little bit. But while this looks alright, I've definitely seen a couple things already where the HDR does not hold up to the PG-35 at less than half of the peak brightness. I guess that kind of makes sense. And once again here we're definitely getting the benefit of the HDR mastered version of the game. Like it does look more dynamic, but there's less detail preserved up here where the light sources are really bright, and it just looks more lifeless. And in the case of something like foliage, that matters. That makes a difference to the immersion level of the game. Another interesting observation is that with no obvious way of turning it off, so you can see I'm running in HDR and there is a setting in here for variable backlight, but it specifically says SDR variable backlight and it's grayed out. It appears as though in order to increase the advertised contrast ratio of the display, they're actually dimming the entire backlight or brightening it depending on the kind of scene you're looking at. Now when you want good HDR, you want high contrast, but an advertised contrast ratio that relies on dimming or brightening the entire backlight of the panel is not going to give you that high contrast within one scene. It's going to rely on actually brightening the display when moving from one place to another. I don't know if you guys can see it that well on camera, but it is very noticeable to the eye as I transition from looking into the cave here to looking at the waterfall. So I got to say, I was sort of expecting the outcome to be LG clear winner plot that goes on the desk, but up till this point in the video, I am kind of leaning towards putting the ASUS back on here. With that said, what we've looked at so far, an HDR game is obviously an advantage for the PG-35. Now that I'm playing something that's a little bit more down to perfect image quality as I'm whipping around on the screen, the LG comes into its own a little bit. You can really notice it in the readability of this text as I'm panning around. See that? Everything is really crisp and really clean, just like we observed on the 27 inch version of this monitor. Really impressive for an IPS display. All right, now we're up to 175 Hertz. Oh boy, there's a lot of... Okay, I'm bailing. I got to say, I love the size of this thing. There's not many monitors that just take up your entire field of view. I can only see a sliver this big, a little bit like that, and maybe this much on either side of it at a comfortable distance here. Oops. Yeah, I won. Ha ha, take that, terrorist. Now of course, I don't spend the majority of my gaming time playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider or CSGO at this point, so unless this one offers a tangibly better Anno 1800 experience, it probably doesn't make a ton of sense to change out to it. So as a game with no support for HDR, it doesn't take advantage of the most advanced capabilities of either of these displays, but one thing that it has over the ASUS is its larger size. I said before, three inches doesn't sound like much, but you can see it's actually an enormous amount of display once it's in front of you and you've got a city that you're managing with it. So it's time to make a decision, and the only honest conclusion is that whether it's at the low end or the high end, there's always going to be trade-offs. Nothing can be the best of all worlds. This one right here has up to 240Hz refresh rate if you're willing to put up with some fringing. It's got G-Sync Ultimate for a noticeably, like markedly better HDR experience, but it's going to cost an extra $500 compared to this one, which is already pricey at about $2,000 US dollars, and it gives up some other things. So the pixel response time is clearly, obviously, noticeably not as good, and if you do things other than gaming, like if you want to get some work done on the side, for example, the extra screen real estate of a 38-inch versus a 35-inch display can be a big difference maker. So I have to make a decision now. One of these has to go back to the office. I can't be hoarding all the amazing monitors, and that is a really tough call. Brandon, what would you do? If Anno's the game that you're playing the most, I feel like I'd go with the LG. Go with the LG for Anno? But like, I would feel like I want to bring this one home to play Tomb Raider or Battlefield V, anything with HDR support. You know what? Because they both cost the same to me, I think I'm going to keep the ROG Swift on the desk, but at a $500 Delta, especially depending on what I was going to do with it, LG has made an absolutely incredible contender for top gaming monitor on the market. I mean, either of these two, if you were to buy them, you'd be crazy not to be completely stoked on them. That's such a cop-out conclusion, but I'm sorry, guys. They really are very evenly matched, even though they're not equal. Speaking of things you'll be satisfied with, our sponsor, iFixit. The iFixit Essential Electronics Toolkit is compact, so it can go anywhere that you can, and you can use it to fix almost anything. It includes their most popular precision bits, and they're all held in place with high density foam so you don't have to worry about the bits falling out if you're throwing it around. It's got a lifetime warranty, and you can get it at the link in the video description for just $24.99. So guys, thanks for watching this video. If you disliked it, you can press that button, but if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link below. Both of them are fantastic, both great choices, just with pros and cons. Also linked down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join.