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But if you use it for a long time, you’ll start to see the cracks. Because the screen is curved, there is only one good viewing angle. This makes it hard to use as a living room TV in a shared house. At the same time, you can’t sit too close because the horizontal arrangement won’t fit in your field of view, and the vertical arrangement will make your neck hurt.
The Samsung Odyssey Ark is a monitor for gaming that doesn’t feel like the sum of its parts. With a 55-inch screen, full 4K resolution, a 165 Hz refresh rate, a lot of apps, and good speakers, the Odyssey Ark might seem like the perfect centerpiece for a living room PC gaming setup.
The limited remote doesn’t work well with the many menu options, and a lot of the content that isn’t games just doesn’t look that good. On the other hand, the Odyssey Ark is great for both PC and console games, and there aren’t many gaming monitors this size. Even though our review of the Samsung Odyssey Ark can’t give it a full recommendation, we can’t just write it off either. However, you’ll have to pay a hefty $3,500 to get it.
Samsung Odyssey Ark review: Design and Build
Samsung had to balance that monitor on a very heavy stand and use heavy parts all over to hold it all together. During my time with the Ark, we tried it in a few different ways and places, which was probably a mistake since moving this display, which weighs 91 pounds, is hard and almost impossible.
The whole thing is so heavy that it easily weighs more than any display we have ever had in my house. It was hard to set up the first time, and moving it to a good spot in my office was even harder. But all that extra weight is meant to make it easy to move the Ark once it is set up.
The counterweighted stand makes it easy to turn the Ark from portrait to landscape and up and down to make it fit your setup. You can change the colors of the LED strips on the back of the Ark by changing the settings on your TV. These aren’t very bright, but they give off a nice glow against a dark wall in a dark room.
You can change the colors of the LED strips on the back of the Ark by changing the settings on your TV. These aren’t very bright, but they give off a nice glow against a dark wall in a dark room. You can buy this gaming monitor from its official website.
Samsung Odyssey Ark review: Screen
The Odyssey Ark looks more like one of Samsung’s smart TVs than one of its gaming monitors. Given its size, it has a sturdy metal base and a smooth metal case around the curved screen. It even comes with the One Connect breakout box, which is one of Samsung’s more interesting TV ideas.
It connects to the Ark with a single cable, and the box itself is in charge of power and all the usual connections (four HDMI 2.1 ports, an optical audio connection, 3.5mm headphone jack and two USB ports). It was originally made for screens that you would mount on the wall, but it’s a great addition to the Odyssey Ark because no one wants to move a nearly 100-pound beast just to get to HDMI ports.
Samsung Odyssey Ark review: Features
A directional joystick at the back of the screen lets you move through the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu. You also get two remote controls with shortcuts that make making changes easier and faster.
The monitor comes with Samsung’s Tizen OS, which has built-in smart features like GeForce Now and Microsoft Cloud Gaming, streaming apps, voice assistants like Alexa and Bixby, Samsung TV+, DeX, Microsoft 365, and more.
Samsung Odyssey Ark review: Performance
Once you and a friend have set up Samsung’s huge monitor, you’ll be amazed by how good it is. The Quantum Mini LEDs have a black point of 0.02 nits, which is very dark, and in SDR mode, the screen gets as bright as 742 nits. The contrast is a great 4,500:1, and in HDR mode, the brightness and contrast of the Ark are 1226 nits and 61,300:1.
With these top-notch results, games look daring, deep, and full of subtleties. The Samsung screen is also great at showing colors. The Delta E of 2.29 is rock solid, and the panel rendered all of the sRGB gamut and almost all of the DCI-P3 space, so it can easily render both SDR and HDR games.
Every game, movie, and TV show on the Ark looks great. Regarding gaming monitors, it has the best performance in its class. But if you care about quality, a top OLED TV will still give you better SDR and HDR performance. The 165Hz refresh rate of the Ark makes single-player games and popular esports games look as smooth as butter.
This is higher than the 120Hz and 144Hz refresh rates of most top TVs. But a 240Hz or 360Hz screen is better if you want to play competitive games.
Samsung Odyssey Ark review: Audio
Even though we wouldn’t say the sound is “great,” it’s more than good enough. Samsung says the audio and the curve work together to create a strong, immersive gaming experience. We did feel like the sound “wrapped” me in a good way and made the whole thing better.
But as good as it is, I thought the low end was a little too weak. It did a good job with highs and mids, but the sound didn’t have the punch that comes from a strong bass. Rumble was also not there at all, which can take some of the life out of movies or video games that are very dramatic.
Even though the Ark definitely raises the bar for sound quality in a TV, I still think it’s best to use headphones or buy a separate sound system for it.
Samsung Odyssey Ark review: Picture Quality
Rarely is the quality of the display one of them, and that’s the case here as well. We our very impressed with how the Ark looks. First of all, the Ark is matte instead of shiny, which makes it very good at cutting down on glare. When we want to work on my leftmost monitor during the day on my desktop, we often have to close the blinds.
We usually have three monitors set up, and the width of the Ark is about the same as the width of this setup. When we our using the Ark, we could keep the window blinds wide open, which was different from how we usually set things up. This was true even when the left side curve was directly facing the window.
There was, of course, a bright spot that we could see if we looked for it, but the screen is bright enough and has a matte finish that this wasn’t a problem.
Samsung Odyssey Ark review: Final Words
The Odyssey Ark provides a viewing experience that is genuinely unique due to the combination of its broad sound and stunningly immersive picture. To the point that we hardly even noticed the minor distortion caused by the curved sides of the screen, movies, television shows, and even trailers gave the impression that they were bringing me into the action taking place on screen.
FAQs
Is Samsung Odyssey good for gaming?
When it comes to gaming, the Samsung Odyssey G9 is an excellent choice. Because of its low input lag, quick response time, and high refresh rate, it offers a gaming experience that is responsive and fluid at the same time. It is compatible with NVIDIA’s G-SYNC and also supports the FreeSync standard, which helps to reduce screen tearing.
How color accurate is Odyssey Ark?
The Odyssey Ark is designed to provide lifelike colour accuracy and covers 95% of the DCI-P3 gamut. It features technology known as Quantum Matrix, which works in conjunction with Quantum Mini-LEDs.
In addition, it has 1056 different dimming zones, a contrast ratio of 1 million to one, and it supports HDR10+. This results in highlights that are bright and shadows that are deep.
Is Samsung Odyssey worth it?
The Samsung Odyssey G7 is an excellent monitor in most respects. Because of its incredibly quick response time, 240 Hz refresh rate, and support for FreeSync, it delivers an exceptional gaming experience. Because it can display rich blacks, it is an excellent option for those who create content or watch movies.
Samsung Odyssey Ark Ratings