 For the ultimate no compromises compact gaming PC look no further than the obsidian series 250d from Corsair click now to learn more. I knew this video was going to be a challenge. I knew that having come from the thousand dollar plus LG 34UM95 I was going to have a hard time being quite as positive about its little brother the 29UM65 a monitor that currently retails for about a third of the price and one that has a form factor that I just never really found very compelling. But first an overview the 29UM65 is an ultra wide 21 by 9 29 inch monitor from LG that runs a resolution that LG calls ultra wide full HD but I think it's actually faster to say 2560 by 1080. It features a thin bezel a couple of functional if unexciting speakers a joystick control knob for navigating the on-screen display and a glossy plastic stand that unfortunately has only two height positions that you need a screwdriver to adjust neither of which I really found high enough but you can just kind of put it on a box like what I did if you really want to. Under its very satisfactory hard anti-glare coating is an 8-bit IPS panel for solid color performance and superior wide viewing angle performance something that's a must since just looking at the thing straight on you're going to be looking at the edges from a bit of an angle. The monitor features a fairly average 5 millisecond gray-to-gray response time rating that despite being the same as the UM95 which we looked at recently feels very noticeably snappier which would indicate that this monitor is going to have low input lag and be a gamer's delight. I've got an input lag tester on order from Leo Bodnar but it's not here yet so in the meantime I decided to do a side-by-side comparison against the PB278Q from Asus a monitor with a fairly average input lag. We shot at 240 frames per second and it looks like my subjective observations were correct. With each frame equivalent to about 4 milliseconds the difference you're seeing here is between 16 to 20 milliseconds or equivalent to the action reaching your eyes a full frame sooner than the PB. A very solid result. Motion blur is also subjectively a strong point with it being about as good as I could expect for an IPS panel. Otherwise it's got inputs galore with dual-link DVI, two HDMI inputs, display port and an audio in that can either run the two on-board speakers or pass through to the headphone out jack. These inputs support a side-by-side mode that would let you run two devices at the same time like a desktop and a notebook as if you've got two 5x4 monitors. A feature I don't personally find that useful but I'm sure for someone that will be a huge deal. A more practical use of the extra horizontal space for me is enabled by LG's Screen Split utility. It's available on Windows and Mac and allows you to split your screen up a number of different ways. It actually works a lot better than I expected but the execution needs maybe two to three more software revisions and some more customization options before I'd say it's ready to take on the likes of Display Fusion for example. I found the most useful modes for me were the three-screen left and three-screen balanced. Four-screen was just too small to be useful with a mere 1280x540 resolution per window and two-screen split can be replaced easily by just using AeroSnap within Windows. On the subject of resolution though, let's get into why I never really cared for 29-inch 21x9 ultra-wide monitors. A form factor that some others, notably Austin Evans in his gaming setup video where he talks about how great it is for widescreen movies and games, really like. I guess a big part of it is that it's really not as big as it sounds. The further you get from a one-to-one square aspect ratio, the smaller the screen area is relative to the diagonal monitor size. This 29-inch monitor is actually smaller than a 27-inch 16x9 and only about 12% bigger than a 24-inch 16x10, a size and aspect ratio that I always really liked. With that said, I am aware of the advantages. Movies that are shot in 2.39x1 cinematic aspect ratio can be watched without black bars and the advantage for gaming with a wider field of view without bezels getting in the way is obvious. And in fact, gaming is one of the strongest arguments I can make for getting this monitor. It's only about 33% more difficult to drive than a single 1080p monitor so you won't be spending a fortune on your graphics card and it delivers a very different gaming experience in supported games. Which of course brings up the usual issues that crop up every time we throw a new resolution at the gaming industry and that's that many games will not run at 2560x1080 without a little bit of tinkering. The first bit of good news though is that if you need some help figuring out if your games will work at all or getting your games running, check out Widescreen Gaming Forum. They've helped me out a couple of times in the past. And the next bit of good news is that because the vertical resolution is 1080, in games that just flat out won't run in ultra wide, you can play at 1920x1080 with black bars along the sides without any weird interpolation or other visual anomalies. Your monitor will be equivalent to about a 23 inch 1080p monitor when it's run this way. Gaming aside, the Windows Modern UI and Steam Big Picture are a couple of newer UI styles that can benefit in a big way from more horizontal space, although Valve has yet to add support for 21x9 resolutions. And I'm also acutely aware of the productivity argument that it's basically equivalent to two 17 inch 5x4 monitors with a 1280x1080 resolution each, making it great for multitasking. It's just that I didn't find that productivity was earth shatteringly different enough to justify the price premium the way that I did on the larger UM95. I never found 1080 vertical pixels to be enough and giving me the option to either stretch things out even wider or narrow them even further so I feel like it's 2007 again and I'm working on a couple of 17 inch LCDs are a couple of options that I just don't find that appealing. For just over $350 or so I can get two 23 inch 1080p monitors if productivity is a focus for me. But that's all subjective and I know a lot of people disagree with me, so with that out of the way, let's get down to the bottom line. Since the price of the 34UM95 with its higher resolution, higher pixel density, and larger size makes it completely out of reach for gamers and pretty much everyone else for now. Now that I've actually used one of these instead of just seeing them briefly at trade shows, would I recommend a 29 inch 21x9 monitor as a less expensive substitute? For productivity the answer is no. But for gaming or a mixture of the two, actually yes I would. Some people don't mind bezels and some people think that the 48x9 aspect ratio of an affinity setup is just dandy. I am not one of either of those types of people and even though I could get three 23 inch 1080p monitors for the price of one of these, which would be better for productivity, I prefer the single monitor experience for gaming and the comparatively smaller amount of hassle that comes from dealing with one monitor running a weird resolution versus three spanned monitors running a weird resolution.