 Sorry guys, I am feeling a little sick coming into this video. That is to say, I'm sick of ultra-wide monitors costing so much. Okay, no, but seriously. So this company, Ziotac, reached out to me offering to send their 34 inch LED curves monitor to have a look at. And initially I was just like, it's another cheap Korean monitor off eBay. And then I was like, right, it's a cheap Korean monitor off eBay that's 34 inch ultra-wide. And it is anywhere from $400 to $500 cheaper than the ones that you can get from brand names. So is it up to snuff? Let's find out. Music Massdrop is now featuring their custom configured AKG K7XX audiophile headphones. Check them and other drops out at the link in the video description. Alright, so let's get this baby open. So honestly, I wasn't even gonna look at this. Like I said in the intro, but for more reasons than just... It's an eBay monitor. The reason that I didn't care was that I thought it was pretty similar in spec, but just cheaper compared to any other ultra-wide you could get. What I didn't realize until I looked a little closer was it's 3440 by 1440, 34 inch ultra-wide at 100 Hz with FreeSync for $400 to $500 less than what you would pay for either an Acer Predator or Asus' ROG equivalent at that size with G-Sync. So you are definitely giving up the tearing resistance of G-Sync, and you are giving up the like A-plus panel or whatever it is that you would get with a brand name, but you're still getting the ultra-wide experience, which I personally think is amazing. You're still getting high refresh rate. Anything above 60 is a very noticeable improvement. Going past 100 to 120, I'd say the gains start to drop off, but up to 100, it makes a huge difference, and you're getting it at a way lower price. So inside the box, we get a DisplayPort cable, we get a Korean power cable with a North American adapter that's bent, that's okay. We get an arm. Oh, look, there's an arm in there! That kind of arm. We get a foot. Oh, look, there's a foot in there! That's funny. We get some screws, and we get some instructions, entirely in Korean. But there are a few useful specs in here. So it's using a Samsung VA panel, that's good to know. It runs at 60 Hz according to this, but it said 100 Hz on the eBay page. R1800, so this is a very, very curved monitor. Look how happy that makes me. So let's put this baby together. The foot bone's connected to the arm bone. The screw bone's connected to the foot bone. The arm bone's connected to the back bone. The back bone's connected to the monitor bone. And we lift it all up, and it goes a little something like that. Overall, I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed. I think they did a pretty good job aesthetically for, like, an off-brand monitor. The bezels are pretty thin. It does get a little bit fat near the back, but I like the silver chin bar. It's not that big. I like that it's made of metal. It's got, like, these screws on the bottom that give it kind of like an industrial kind of look. I wish the foot and the arm were not so glossy and such fingerprint magnets. If you take such a heavy monitor like this and you put it on a really tall arm, as soon as the user goes to type, you get a lot of monitor wobble, and that's really not the case with this one. Another polarizing bit is these little covers at the back. I personally am not a fan because all they seem to really do to me is force this wire to come out at the bottom, where you're gonna see it from the front. Whereas if they were, like, over here and they routed over here or something, I would see more of a justification for them, but, like, you can't really do that. Ed likes them, though, so I think that tells us everything we need to know about Ed's taste. The microboard monitor is missing an audio output, so if you wanted to pass through to your headphones, you will not have that capability. But what it has is DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2, and DVI of all things. So what I don't know yet is exactly what resolutions and refresh rates it's gonna run at for all of those interfaces, but darn it, I'm gonna find out. So running off a GTX 1080 here, 6950X, 128 gigs of RAM. Is it turning on? The on-screen control buttons and placements are not a strong point, although, from my perspective, you can actually use the base as a mirror to see them. Hey, and it turned on anyway. There's no other way to see, like, any of the buttons. No, that's not intentional. I refuse to accept that that was their intent. Okay, so we got it fired up, and I will say this. Any sort of uncertainty with respect to the specifications of the refresh rate, we can put that to rest because this is clearly running at 100Hz. Let's go ahead and fire up a game. Well, if there was any doubt that it magically had a G-Sync module in it, that tearing should put that to rest, but, uh, dang, it actually looks pretty good. Oh, and the menu's in Korean. Okay, there we go. Oh, oh, this navigation is awful. What do the buttons do? Okay. Sometimes you get what you pay for. Okay, so FreeSync is included. Response time is off. Usually the medium setting is best. I had noticed immediately that Motion Blur was more than I'm accustomed to in modern monitors, so let's see if that helped a little bit. So, Motion Blur, still definitely a thing. Even with the higher refresh rate, that's not going to compensate for the pixels themselves not switching that quickly, and Samsung's MVA technology is not known to be, like, the fastest, especially compared to things like OLED or TN. With that said, and I've said this before, the higher refresh rate makes a huge difference to the responsiveness overall of the feel of the game, and I would take that over a crisper 60Hz image any day of the week. So, gaming experience, actually pretty solid, but one risk that you take with these monitors is dead pixels. So, we're going to use dead pixel, buddy, and have a quick look. Now, the odds of them sending a reviewer one that has a bazillion dead pixels is obviously a little lower, and actually, I'm impressed. There are no dead pixels at all. Cool! I like that dead pixel, buddy, is just a website now. Coming back to that whole 10-bit mode thing, there's a 10-bit test ramp Photoshop file that you can get to find out if your display is actually 10-bit, and that looks like not. But just because the panel is not 10-bit, and it never promised to be, so I was like, ooh, did we get a little bonus? Well, we didn't. Doesn't mean it couldn't be used for basic content creation. This, on the other hand, does. These are about the most all-over-the-map results that I've seen since I got my i1 Pro from X-Rite and this Calaman Ultimate for Business software from SpectraCal. I mean, look at these points. Some of them aren't even in the same neighborhood as the colors that they are supposed to be hitting here. Okay, so the last thing that's left is to check out all the different interfaces. So I've never used an ultra-wide with DVI before, but there you go. Dual-link DVI, 60 Hz, 3440 x 1440. Actually, not bad. I'd never actually run the numbers to see what we were going to get, but I know that on HDMI 1.4, you've been stuck with 50 Hz on most ultra-wide monitors. The good news, though, HDMI 2.0 seems to work perfectly. So it just switches on its own and boom, there we are. 3440 x 1440, I'm pretty sure we're running at 100 Hz, and the UFO test on Blurbusters will back me up there. So, bottom line then, I had Ed play some Counter-Strike Global Offensive, and his conclusion is pretty much this. If the option is between this and a faster pixel response time display, like the 144 Hz TN that he has at home, he'll take the 144 Hz TN. But if the choice is between spending another $100 to get 25 fewer Hz, somewhat more accurate color, I actually did review this display from Acer in the past, and no HDMI 2.0, then this one actually looks like a pretty darn good option if you're only planning to game and you don't plan to do any serious color work, because that was not as compelling of a story. Ting! Yes, my friends, that is the sound that is made by the word that is the name of the sponsor for today. Which I'm sure you guys figured out by now. So, Ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and satisfaction. When you call them, you do not get put through to a robot, you speak directly to a person, and that follows through to their billing policies as well. The average Ting bill is only $23 a month per device because you only pay for what you use. And if you're stuck in a contract and switch to Ting, they'll cover 25% of your cancellation fee up to $75. But how do you know if it's worth it for you to switch? Well, you use their savings calculator, which we have linked in the video description. You enter your last few bills and it'll spit out a number that goes, hey, you'll save money on Ting, or hey, actually, maybe you won't. But there's a good chance you will because data is now just $10 per gig beyond the first gigabyte. So check it out. Head over to linus.ting.com and try out their savings calculator today. When you use our link, you'll get $25 in service credit or towards a new device. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, you can do that. If you liked it, hit the like button, get subscribed, maybe consider checking out where to buy this product at the link in the video description. Checking out our merch store, which has cool shirts like actually neither of the ones I'm wearing right now. But don't worry too much about that. There's other stuff there. It's all good. And joining our community forum, which is a great place to hang out and talk shop. That is to say, if your shop is tech, if your shop is a wood shop, then you might find less stimulating conversation there. Thanks again for watching and see you next time.