Author: Adam Simmons

Date published: March 16th 2015



For users looking for an immersive experience, a big screen that fills their Field of View (FOV) nicely is often desirable. Seeing more of their game world at once is also an important part of this. Because most games use what is known as ‘Hor+’, simply increasing screen size or indeed resolution isn’t enough to bring more of this game world on the screen at once. It actually requires a wider aspect ratio, such as that adopted by the increasingly alluring 21:9 ‘UltraWide’ models. The Samsung S34E790C features a generously sized screen (34”) in this aspect ratio, coupled with a 3440 x 1440 resolution.

This model sets itself aside from others by featuring a gently curved screen, which the manufacturer claims should help increase the ‘depth’ of the experience and make it seem more natural. Another potentially attractive feature is the inclusion of a ‘VA’ (Vertical Alignment) panel rather than ‘IPS’ (In-Plane Switching), helping the monitor set itself apart from most other ‘UltraWide’ models by providing potentially superior contrast and uniformity. This all looks rather nice on paper, but what is the experience like in reality? We put the monitor through our ruthless throng of tests to find out.





This model features a 60Hz 34” SVA (‘Super’ Vertical Alignment) panel with a ‘3000 R’ curvature, apparently sporting true 8-bit colour reproduction (no dithering*). In laymen’s terms this distinguishes itself from most other comparable models by using a VA rather than IPS panel and by being just slightly more curved. A 4ms grey to grey response time is specified, which should of course be approached with a great deal of caution – especially given the panel type used. Same goes for the ‘178°/178°’ viewing angles specified. Key talking points of the specification have been highlighted in blue below for your reading convenience.

Screen size: 34 inches

Panel type: Samsung SVA (Vertical Alignment) LCD

Native resolution: 3440 x 1440

Typical maximum brightness: 300 cd/m²

Colour support: 16.7 million (8-bits per subpixel without dithering*)

Response time (G2G): 4ms

Refresh rate:60Hz

Weight: 9.9kg

Contrast ratio: 3,000:1 (80m:1 Dynamic Contrast)

Viewing angle: 178º horizontal, 178º vertical

Power consumption: 47W typical

Backlight: WLED (White Light Emitting Diode)

Typical price as reviewed: £800 ($1250)



*Samsung have told us that this is a true 8-bit panel and shades were mainly displayed in a way we’d expect from such a panel. We observed a small amount of dithering in places, though, as noted in the Lagom tests of the review.





From the front the monitor has a number of prominent points of interest. The large screen itself is of course the main feature, in its 34” UltraWide glory. The curve is actually relatively subtle – something that we look at in more detail later. The screen surface used on the monitor is light matte anti-glare. As detailed shortly, this helps preserve a relatively high level of clarity and vibrancy compared to ‘stronger’ matte surfaces whilst effectively combating glare in a range of lighting conditions. Another noteworthy aspect includes the glossy black plastic bezels. These are fairly slender; around 11mm (0.43 inches) at the top and sides and 13mm (0.52 inches) at the bottom. Unlike on some models there is no sneaky panel border in addition to this bezel.

The T-shaped stand is also a prominent feature, following a similar curvature to the screen itself. It has a faux-metal (silver plastic) and is quite large overall; ~535mm (21 inches) wide and ~255mm (10 inches) deep at the central point. There is a small power LED at the far right of the bottom bezel. This faces forwards and glows blue when the monitor is on standby and is off when the monitor is on, by default. This behaviour can be altered in the monitor OSD (On Screen Display).





From the side the curvature of the monitor can be appreciated with the rear following the curve in a convex manner. The screen is ~23mm (0.91 inches) thick at thinnest point but protrudes back considerably further to ~60mm (2.36 inches). A matte black plastic with brushed metal texture is used at the rear. The side of the screen has a brushed metal surround, whereas the stand neck uses a matte silver plastic. The stand itself is fairly robust and gives the user a bit of ergonomic flexibility; tilt (2° forwards and 20° backwards) and 100mm (3.94 inches) of height adjustment. The bottom of the monitor sits ~96mm (3.78 inches) off the desk surface at lowest height with the top ~455mm (17.91 inches) above the desk surface. The top of the stand neck does not protrude above this. The screen itself is quite heavy and is brought forwards ~35mm (1.38 inches) from the stand neck by a reasonably small attachment joint. As a result it does wobble a bit if you knock the screen or desk, but not alarmingly so. We didn’t find it distracting us with any hypnotic gyrations whilst typing, for example.







The rear of the monitor is dominated by matte black plastic with a brushed metal texture. There is a small amount of glossy black plastics used for the ventilation grills, which face upwards and downwards from the central bulk of the monitor. The rear-facing surfaces of the stand base (but not the long neck) also use glossy black plastics. The stand attaches by 100 x 100mm VESA, so alternative mounting can be used after liberating the screen from the supplied stand, if you wish. The ports are all located to the right of the stand neck, facing directly backwards but cutting in a bit further than the surrounding ‘central bulk’ of the screen. These are; DC power input (external power brick), 2 HDMI 1.4 ports, DP 1.2, USB 3.0 upstream and 3.5mm audio output. Running down the screen at the rear, towards the right, there are also 4 USB 3.0 ports. A USB 3.0 upstream and DP cable is included in the box.







There are some more features to note at the rear. To the immediate right of the stand neck there is a K-Slot. At the base of the stand neck there is a simple cable routing system (cable tidy). There are also 7W down-firing stereo speakers hidden beneath the bottom vent grill (only visible if looking up from beneath the monitor). The speakers come with a range of ‘Sound Mode’ options, accessible in the aptly named ‘Sound’ section of the OSD; ‘Standard’, ‘Music’, ‘Movie’ and ‘Clear Voice’. The speakers provided a fairly dynamic sound with good volume and decent bass, particularly using the ‘Music’ setting. They certainly had decent power for integrated monitor speakers. They sounded a little distorted at times with a lack of distinction in some mid-tones, particularly at higher volumes. Whilst they may not replace a good set of standalone speakers they are certainly better than the majority of integrated speakers, at any rate. That can be a useful bonus on a monitor that takes up so much desk space.

Last but not least there is a JOG button (joystick) to allow you to quickly navigate through the OSD (On Screen Display) of the monitor. This control system is certainly intuitive, but due to the considerable width of the monitor can be a bit of a stretch to access at the rear of the screen, far to the right. The following video shows the menu system and the functionality within.





The screen surface of the monitor is light matte anti-glare. This offers effective glare handling in a range of lighting conditions without introducing the dirty or overly grainy appearance that some ‘stronger’ matte surfaces do. The screen surface used on LG’s current 34” curved AH-IPS panel is a touch lighter, imparting even less graininess. The screen surface used here is still pretty smooth and is one of the less grainy matte surfaces out there, however.





The monitor uses RGB (Red, Green and Blue) stripe subpixels as shown in the top image above. These are a little squatter than the subpixels used on LG’s AH-IPS panels, shown on the U3415W in the second picture. This may be a contributing factor to the slightly softer appearance of the image on the Samsung compared to the Dell. This is not correctable by adjusting sharpness on the monitor and does appear to be a pixel structure issue, which isn’t at all unique amongst VA panels. We found that ‘ClearType’ had to be adjusted on our Windows 8.1 setup in order to optimise the appearance of Windows-based text.

On Windows 8.1 and possibly other recent Windows versions you can navigate to ‘Control Panel’ – ‘Display’ – ‘Adjust ClearType text’ to access the appropriate settings. Alternatively you can simply type ‘ClearType’ into the charms search bar on the desktop or the control panel search. You are then guided step-by-step through a sort of calibration process, where you need to select which box looks best to you on each one of 5 sets of boxes. We selected the following boxes from each set, respectively:

Box 1 –> Box 2 –> Box 1 –> Box 2 –> Box 3



Not all versions of Windows have 5 sets of boxes (Windows 7 for example only has 4), but we advise you to spend some time playing around with ClearType settings to try to improve the text clarity. The sharpness on Windows-based text was improved for us following these adjustments, although it did still appear a little soft. This sharpness issue also applies more broadly and of course ClearType can’t correct images or program-specific image-based fonts. The clarity is still very good overall and the difference in sharpness compared to equivalent IPS models is not something some users will even notice.





Samsung provides a fairly cut-down selection of ‘MagicBright’ presets as well as a dedicated ‘Game Mode’. There are also a number of ‘Color Tone’ settings (alongside manual adjustments) as well as 3 discrete ‘Gamma’ modes. Rather than going through each possible combination of settings, we will instead take a look at a selection of modes which we feel are most appealing or of particular interest to people.

The table below shows some key readings taken using a Spyder4Elite colorimeter. Some general observations are also provided. Any setting not specifically mentioned in the table was left at default, with the exception of our ‘Test Settings’ where various adjustments were made. Our system used an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 connected via DP 1.2. We used the monitor in its ‘Plug and Play’ state with no additional drivers or ICC profiles loaded. We did test the supplied driver and ICC profile, but they did not change the image in any way. The monitor has everything it needs to function correctly built into its firmware – and the ICC profile is identical to the default Windows profile. It simply ensures that other profiles, such as those intended for other monitors, are deactivated.

Also note that the image is exactly the same if an HDMI cable is used, but the monitor is restricted to 50Hz by default. We were able to set it to 60Hz over HDMI using a custom resolution without any issues, however. DP 1.1 supports 60Hz on this monitor natively and gives the same image as DP 1.2. We also tested the monitor with a modern AMD GPU and found the image very similar, so the observations below are applicable to AMD GPUs as well.

Straight from the box the S34E790C was uncomfortably bright. The image was vibrant but not particularly well balanced. Although white point was fairly close to the 6500K daylight target, there was a bit of a green bias. More significant was the extra depth given to some shades, which ended up looking rather punchy but also a bit wrong. In other places, some shades appeared somewhat muted. There are two additional ‘Gamma’ settings which allow you to overcome those muted shades. Depending on the other settings you use and with ‘Mode3’ in particular those deeper shades can actually become a bit too dark and indistinct, however.

Once the brightness was reduced and some other slight tweaks were made, the image was rather rewarding. Balance was good with some vivid and eye-catching shades but a pleasing variety of shades which were faithfully represented on the whole. Because of how Vertical Alignment panels (even ‘good expensive ones’ like this) behave with relation to ‘gamma shifting’ and the like, it’s important not to put too much weight on exactly what your colorimeter or other measurement instrument is telling you. Use it as a guide, of course, but don’t disregard your own brain and eyes! As an example of this you can study the two gamma curves below. Both were recorded using our ‘Test Settings’, with the top curve using ‘Gamma2’ and the bottom curve using ‘Gamma3’.



Gamma test settings Gamma test settings (plus Gamma = Mode3) As you can see, ‘Gamma3’ tracks quite close to the 2.2 target curve for the most part, whereas ‘Gamma2’ sags a little bit in places. However; both of these modes produce an image with a level of depth vividness that you’d not typically see on a monitor when calibrating it to 2.2 gamma. The light screen surface, generous colour gamut and panel type all help bring out some really eye-catching shades. With a panel such as this it’s important not to blindly follow what a colorimeter is telling you, as this panel type is quite heavily influenced by viewing angle whereas that doesn’t influence the colorimeter readings at all. A key reason we opted for ‘Gamma2’ rather than ‘Gamma3’ for our test settings is that ‘Gamma3’ accentuates what is commonly referred to as ‘black crush’. Deep shades tend to blend into a sort of black sea using ‘Gamma3’ when viewing the monitor from a normal viewing position (directly in front of the screen). If you observe at a sharper angle, you see a lot of missing detail reveal itself. Using ‘Gamma2’ reduced this ‘black crush’ massively and allowed the monitor to combine a great atmospheric look with deep shades without losing subtle details and distinctions in the same way.



Test Settings For our test settings we made a number of adjustments to the monitor. Any OSD settings not mentioned here, such as contrast, were left as default. Please be aware that individual units will vary, so use these as a guide rather than taking them as gospel. Some users may also prefer ‘Gamma3’ for even more depth to certain colours, but be aware of our observations above regarding ‘black crush’. Due to inter-unit variation, the perils of ‘black crush’ and these limitations with respect to this monitors intended uses, we will not be providing any ICC profiles for users to download.





MagicBright= Custom MagicBright= Custom Brightness= 38 (according to preferences and lighting) Gamma= Mode2 R= 50* G= 40 B= 50 Response Time= Normal



*Note we applied these settings to another unit and found that the red channel required lowering (to around 42) to overcome a slight red bias on the second unit. Be aware of this inter-unit variation and indeed the possibility of variation with other colour channels as well.



Contrast and brightness Contrast ratios We used a Konica Minolta CS-200 light meter to measure the luminance of black and white on the monitor and calculate static contrast ratios based on that. The following table shows this data, with the monitor set to a number of settings including those detailed in the ‘Calibration’ section. If a setting isn’t explicitly mentioned in the table, assume it was left at default. The exception to this is our ‘Test Settings’ where specific adjustments, detailed previously, were made. Blue highlights on the table indicate the results using these settings whereas black highlights indicate the peak white luminance, lowest black luminance and highest contrast ratio recorded. Monitor Settings White luminance (cd/m²) Black luminance (cd/m²) Contrast ratio (x:1) 100% brightness (Factory Default) 326 0.13 2508 80% brightness 314 0.13 2415 60% brightness 244 0.10 2440 40% brightness 298 0.12 2483 20% brightness 129 0.05 2580 0% brightness 58 0.02 2900 Gamma = Mode2 324 0.13 2492 Gamma = Mode3 322 0.13 2477 Color Tone = Warm1 283 0.13 2177 Color Tone = Warm2 267 0.13 2054 Game Mode 330 0.14 2357 Test Settings 179 0.08 2238

With only brightness adjusted, we recorded an average contrast ratio of 2571:1 on the S34E790C. This falls a bit below the specified 3000:1, but is still very good and firmly beyond what non-VA LCD panels could achieve. This sort of contrast ratio gives black text and deep shades a fairly ‘inky’ look and helps bright elements stand out very well as we explore later. Following the adjustments made to our ‘Test Settings’, contrast fell a little to a still respectable 2238:1. More significant changes were made to the colour channels for the ‘Warm1’ and ‘Warm2’ presets, knocking down the contrast further to 2177:1 and 2054:1, respectively. We recorded a good bright 330 cd/m² peak luminance, which is nice and bright. The minimum white luminance recorded in the table was 58 cd/m² which is fairly dim. This gave a 272 cd/m² luminance adjustment range which is good. It should be noted that users who are particularly sensitive to light may prefer the ‘Warm2’ preset. Although not noted in the table we recorded a white luminance of 47 cd/m² using ‘Warm2’ at 0 brightness, which is nice and dim really.

There is a ‘Dynamic Contrast’ MagicBright mode on the monitor which allows the backlight to adjust its intensity based on the overall balance of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ being displayed on the screen. This setting reacted rapidly to changes in brightness of content being displayed on the screen, but tended to provide uncomfortably high brightness during mixed images. It dimmed very effectively during predominantly dark content. Because the backlight is all controlled as an individual unit, this setting can’t keep some areas of the screen nice and bright whilst keeping others supremely dim. It is the same for all current LCD monitors and is one of the reasons we don’t feel this setting is of much benefit really. We would advise taking advantage of the strong static contrast performance of this monitor and using a brightness setting that you find comfortable instead.





PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)

The S34E790C does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) at any brightness setting to moderate the backlight intensity. It uses DC (Direct Current) modulation instead, meaning that the backlight is ‘flicker-free’ as advertised by Samsung. This will be welcomed to those who suffer from visual fatigue or discomfort as a result of flickering or who are sensitive to PWM artifacts during motion.





Luminance uniformity

Observing a completely black screen in a dark room revealed just how good the black uniformity of the screen is, as there was no noticeable backlight bleeding or clouding. It’s worth noting that our test unit was a random retail unit rather than some specially selected ‘golden sample’. However; individual units can still vary in this regard. From a normal viewing position there was a mild warm (yellowish) glow which was most noticeable towards the bottom corners of the screen but also visible near the very edges. This was really quite subtle and is a characteristic of the panel type, which we will dub ‘VA glow’. It is nowhere near as obtrusive as ‘IPS glow’ and can only really be observed when viewing dark content in a dim room – not bothersome at all to us. If you move a little further back and remain central you will see this ‘glow’ disappear. If you view the screen from an angle the ‘VA glow’ becomes a bit more pronounced, as demonstrated in the viewing angles video further on in the review. The image below shows how the monitor looked from a few metres back (central viewing position) in a dark room, to demonstrate the strong black uniformity and eliminate the aforementioned ‘VA glow’.





