So I was asked to review this beast of a monitor on a different forum. Naturally, I wanted to post it here because of the great CMS here (shoutout to the Chorus team! I see you).



I bought this 3440x1440, 21:9 aspect ratio(!) monitor for $849 from Newegg's Ebay store a few days ago and received it last night. Naturally, I unboxed it like an excited child (is there any other way?) and tried it out on my two computers. I use my Lenovo X230t as my primary computer, a role it is no longer really up to. The screen is falling off, it randomly reboots, etc. Even so, the monitor works properly through the laptop's Intel Integrated HD4000 GPU even though it's only DP 1.1 compliant. The story was the same on my rock solid Lenovo ThinkStation D20 running Mavericks and Windows 8.1. No issues with either except for the 50hz limit due to lack of bandwidth.

Background courtesy of Sean O'Kane

The 34UM94-P is fully loaded with ports, featuring 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports, HDMI, DisplayPort 1.2, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a USB 3.0 hub (though sadly only one port of the three available is actually USB 3). Apart from a lame one inch height adjustment which requires tools, the stand is not adjustable. Fortunately, there's a VESA 100x100mm mount on the back if you've got a stand lying around.





The Stand is PRetty bust

I do a lot of photography, so having a color accurate and big monitor is a nice plus for me. From what I can tell, this monitor is great on the accuracy front. I compared it to an iPad 3 display that I modded to act as a portable secondary display and couldn't see a color difference. The iPad 3 has 99% sRGB performance so this is a good result.

The box helpfully contains a Quality Assurance Report for display nerds.





This paper has lots of big words, some of which I actually understand

I don't play games all that often, so I can't speak to how good this is for gaming. If enough people are interested I'll record some older games in action (think Half Life 2 era and you'll have the right time period).

I did pull up a modern classic, The Dark Knight, in order to show the difference between 21:9 and 16:9 more effectively. This version was filmed in anthropomorphic 2:35:1, which is extremely close to 21:9. No black bars. I believe the pics speak for themselves:

Unfortunately, no good love affair is complete without a betrayal.. And this one's a double whammy. There's plenty of backlight bleed and IPS glow (especially in the bottom left hand corner) .

No bueno. The defects are noticeable during darker movie scenes and could be distracting in games as well. It's a pretty widespread problem for these wide panels and is the biggest negative I've found so far. I'm not sure whether it's worth RMAing it though since its otherwise flawless. I was really looking forward to using it to process a photoshoot I have scheduled for next week.





Well, that's it! Within my ability, I'll answer any questions on this thing for the next few days and run any tests you guys come up with. Credit for the awesome BMW i8 wallpaper goes to Chris Ziegler and Sean O'Kane, who wrote and photographed the best story on the site this week.

Reticulating poll splines...