 Okay, so I don't even think it was two weeks ago that I swapped out my OLED TV for Asus' VA-based BFGD gaming display with the objective being that I was gonna get variable refresh rate and I was gonna get higher refresh rates for smoother gaming. Then all of a sudden I get an email from Alienware and they go, hey, do you remember that OLED 120 Hertz 4K gaming monitor we showed at CES? I'm like, uh-huh. Well, we're shipping it, it's in the mail. And I go, what? So now I've got a three-way decision to make. Is it OLED, high refresh rate, or both? Doesn't seem like a tough decision, does it? Just like it wasn't a tough decision to tell you about our sponsor, Ridge Wallet. A Ridge Wallet is a sleek way to keep wallet bulge down with its compact frame and RFID blocking inner plates. Use offer code LTT to get 10% off and free worldwide shipping. So with a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hertz, so 120 refreshes per second, a max resolution of 4K and an OLED panel, I'm expecting a few things. One, I'm expecting extremely smooth animations provided that I've got the hardware to drive it, which I do. Number two, I'm expecting completely pitch black blacks. I mean, that's one of the key benefits of OLED is that every single pixel can be turned off individually. And then finally, the last thing I'm expecting is something that could be a huge decision factor for me. Alienware is claiming less than 0.5 millisecond pixel response times. Now, in theory, this has always been a benefit of OLED technology, really fast pixel switching, which eliminates or at least dramatically reduces that blurring or ghosting when you've got moving objects across the screen. But it's something that really hasn't been focused on by a lot of the OLED display manufacturers up until now, because they're just, they're not really that dialed in to the gaming community. So, neat. So that's cool. I guess that explains where the included VESA adapter goes. So if you're more into using like a monitor arm or whatever else, you can get right into that by putting that there and then screwing that into whatever kind of wall or a desk mount or whatever else it is that you want is. If you're more into just setting it up on your desk, you just slide this puppy in here. We can have a look at the IO now. So we've got a single USB 3.0 uplink with four down links. Two of them are here. We've also got optical audio out, display port 1.4 in, and two HDMI 2.0 ports. And then this is cool. We've got this cable management, ow, ow. Okay, well, don't run your finger down it. So this is how I'm planning to use it. So I'm gonna go ahead and pop these screws in. Whoops, oh, shoot. I guess you're supposed to do that one first. Oh, man. Then over on this side, we've got power in, which is gonna run through this cable channel, which I will keep my fingers out of. Then when you've got all your cables managed, you go ahead, you pop this back on. Wow, that is a nice magnetic backing. I don't remember the last time I saw such an elegant monitor back cover. Back when they first showed this, it wasn't clear exactly how Nvidia's G-Sync on FreeSync monitors thing was gonna work. And we didn't know if this was gonna be a variable refresh rate display. Well, it turns out it is, it's FreeSync. And as you know, Nvidia G-Sync can be forced enabled on any FreeSync display. So we definitely wanna give that a shot. But there is one big caveat. This, while it does feature 400 nit peak brightness, is not HDR certified. So rather than installing it at my TV, I think I'm gonna take the product box literally. Did you really put a TV on your table? It's not a TV, it's a monitor. It says so on the box. Well, the box doesn't fit in here, it's big. Andy, can you take an end? Yep, I wouldn't hold it by the top. Yeah, I would, yep, I would support it by that. Okay, good, you're good? There might be an argument to be made for using a gigantic 4K display instead of a smaller one. So I'm gonna go ahead and take out my ROG Swift PG35, whatever this is, and we're gonna pop that thing in its place. I think I'm gonna need to move my 3D printer. Well, it passes the first challenge, which is not encroaching on my wife's desk. Is your 3D printer living on my desk? No, I'll move that. Sorry, I'm just doing something very important right now. I have to play this game and see if I'm getting a competitive advantage from my new monitor. And I thought this was interesting. It's very unusual for monitor manufacturers to include such a long display port cable, but this one is a 10-foot cable, because clearly Alienware, while they are marketing this as a monitor, is just not really sure where people are gonna deploy this thing. That's why they include a remote with it. Now, just like with the ASUS BFGD, I already have some concerns about the remote, because so far Alienware doesn't appear to have done anything specific to integrate with Logitech Harmony, and their remote doesn't have specific commands for like input one, input two. So in the living room, depending on your setup, it might not end up making a ton of sense, but hey, I mean, at least you have something, even if it doesn't perfectly integrate with like a super advanced setup. Oh, there go the built-in speakers. So the Windows control panel knows what's wrong. There we go. Cool. So YCBCR422, so 8-bit color. They claim about 98% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. Not bad for a high refresh rate display. So you've got all the usual sort of gaming image presets. Personally, I've always been partial to just, you know, standard the way the developer intended it. There's backlighting on the monitor that's kind of glowing off the wall. It's cool, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing. There's shortcut keys at the bottom of the monitor, and you can reconfigure what you want them to do. There is no option for pixel overdrive, because theoretically, the pixels are plenty fast enough on their own, and we can do a quick sanity check for that. And we are getting next to no smearing. Not bad. Well, it don't do 144. Ah. Okay, woo, it's just like 125. So it's not overclockable. I've heard people make the argument to me before, like, hey, Linus, you know, why bother going for an ultra-wide monitor when you could just have the whole thing, and then you could always just take your window and make it ultra-wide or whatever. Okay, so this is a chance to give the onboard speakers a shot. I've certainly heard worse. I will say this though, zero complaints so far with respect to input lag and pixel response times. That was crisp. Oh, you know what? Anno got an update. So one of my biggest complaints about Anno up until now has actually been that you can't zoom out far enough, particularly if you have a large monitor. Now I got a really big monitor, and they've updated it apparently to have a much greater zoom. That was actually like a couple months ago, but I haven't played it much in the last little bit. Okay, here we go. So it's an option under gameplay. Increased camera, oh, restart required. Okay, fine. Further out, that is so much better. Freaking awesome. Like you can really see enough of an island to actually make reasonable decisions. Like this is the old limit. Like I can't even see enough of the island to make a decision about what kind of layout I want for it. Like it's stupid. This is way better. You can really see what you're doing. We've got G-Sync enabled, and that is looking G-Sync smooth. I don't see any tearing. Like, okay, just to be clear guys, these weird anomalies that you're seeing here, those are an effective draw distance, okay? Oh, here we go actually. I have juiced two hot import nights, which I have never played, but I specifically installed for an upcoming video. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it, where I'm gonna go through and play games that I have never played that are in my Steam library. I'm sure we can all relate to that. I'd say comfortable distance for this one is a little closer than something like an RPG, where you really need the context of everything that's going on around you all at once, but not quite as close as something like Anno, where you're really doing things at your leisure, and it's okay to be looking around here. It's okay to have the peripheral vision filled up, but it's more for immersion and less for actually looking at it. Like really you've got your eyes on the road. So I'd say the distance that we're at right now is okay, but I'd recommend a newer game that doesn't have crashing issues. PC gaming. It's just so easy. I'd say to comfortably play a fast-paced FPS, I'd need to be, ooh. More than reasonable desk width away from this thing. Yeah. I think this is the least compelling of the gaming experiences we've tried out today by a long shot. Yeah, I can see how if you're prone to motion sickness too, like this would be quite overwhelming for you. What do you think, David? I think there's a reason pro shooter gamers play on 24 inch monitors. Yeah, I'm with you, dude. Now as for third person adventure type games, so this is Shadow of the Tomb Raider here. Once again, as long as you've got a chair that can do this, I don't really see the size as a huge problem. From this distance, I'm pretty comfortable but this game in particular definitely brings my attention back to the fact that this display does not support HDR. This game in HDR looks amazing and the monitor I took off my desk to put this one here does support HDR and it's a totally, totally different experience. Unfortunately, this save game is stuck at the beginning but that's fine. I do wanna try their so-called smart HDR and see if that does anything for me though. That's worthless. So all that's fine and good but the one game that more than any other one I find just impossible to enjoy on anything other than a CRT is this one. And to be clear, I understand that any game that was designed to be displayed with scan lines is never gonna look great on a progressive display like this one but when it comes to the input lag, I'm hoping that this will be the first time on anything other than a CRT that I find this game playable. Oh boy, oh boy, it's been a while. You can see there is a perceptible delay. Am I just being picky though? So the conclusion for this one is a little bit complicated. At 55 inches compared to how affordable 65 inch TVs are and how much more immersive that viewing experience is from a typical couch distance, I don't see Alienware's gaming display or monitor, whatever you wanna call it, making a play for your living room anytime soon. Then when it comes to the desktop experience, well, it ranged from really, really amazing all the way down to, wow, this isn't that playable and I almost feel like I would need an extension to my desk in order to be able to take in the information that's being bombarded at me. So I don't really see a compelling use case for it there either. Where I see this display finding its ultimate niche though, it's somewhere like this. Sorry guys, I'm totally blindsiding you with this. I don't even know if David's gonna be able to fit in here with me. The basement den or the upstairs playroom, that is where Alienware's gaming monitor really comes into its own because lacking HDR kind of kills it for me as a primary display for watching movies or for cinematic games. But the image quality, the input lag and the high refresh rate with no glitches that we encountered at least during our session with G-Sync means that as a gaming display, it's absolutely fantastic as long as you're willing to live without HDR, which for me for a second display, I absolutely would. Another reasonable place to deploy it would be somewhere like a dorm room where it can be used for everything from schoolwork to having a bunch of friends over and playing some over cooked too. The problem with every scenario that I just pitched though is of course the price. We're talking secondary displays for the den or the bedroom or something for a student. And the OLED panel is kind of a killer at that point. With that said, even if this only applies to 0.001% of customers out there, that's still a lot of gaming displays that they're gonna move because quite frankly, there is nothing else in the market quite like this. And so from that perspective, I think Dell has absolutely hit it out of the park here. I have no complaints as long as my use case for it makes sense. Speaking of things that make sense, checking out our sponsor FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the cloud-based accounting solution that's built for how you wanna work. And you can work anywhere with the FreshBooks mobile app. You can create professional looking invoices on the go. You can snap pictures of your receipts so you don't lose them. You'll never miss an update so you can see when a client has seen their invoice to put an end to the guessing games. And you don't have to take my word for it guys because you can try FreshBooks out for free for 30 days at the link in the video description. So go check it out. So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this monitor, you can check out the link to where to buy it in the video description. And if you liked this video, you can check out my recent video where I looked at the pros and cons of Asus' PG65U BFGD gaming display. It's about the only thing I'd consider to be a straight up competitor for this. But the price is higher, it's bigger, it's got HDR, but the price is higher.