If you’re looking for a 32-inch gaming monitor with a 1440p resolution and a high refresh rate, you might be interested in the Samsung Odyssey G5/G55A S32AG55. This monitor is part of Samsung’s 2021 Odyssey gaming lineup and it features a curved VA panel with a high contrast ratio, FreeSync Premium support and HDR10 compatibility. But is it worth buying? Let’s find out in this review.
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Design and Ergonomics
The Samsung Odyssey G55A has a simple and sleek design with thin bezels and a matte black finish. The stand has a Y-shaped base that provides good stability, but it also takes up a lot of desk space. The stand supports tilt and height adjustment, but not swivel or pivot. You can also mount the monitor on a 100x100mm VESA compatible arm or wall bracket.
The monitor has a 1000R curvature, which means that it matches the curvature of your eyes for a more immersive viewing experience. However, some people might find it too curved for their liking, especially if they use the monitor for productivity or other tasks besides gaming.
The back of the monitor has a circular cutout that reveals the RGB lighting ring. You can customize the lighting effects and colors using the Samsung Odyssey app or the on-screen display (OSD) menu. The OSD menu is easy to navigate using the joystick at the bottom of the monitor.
The monitor has two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.2 port, a headphone jack and a power input. It doesn’t have any USB ports or speakers, which is disappointing for a monitor at this price range.
Image Quality
The Samsung Odyssey G55A has a 32-inch VA panel with a 2560×1440 resolution, resulting in a pixel density of 92 PPI. This means that you get plenty of screen real estate and fairly sharp text and details, but not as sharp as on 27-inch 1440p monitors (108 PPI).
The VA panel also delivers a high contrast ratio of 2500:1, which makes blacks look deep and dark, especially in dimly lit rooms. This enhances the picture quality and immersion when playing games or watching movies with dark scenes.
The monitor has a peak brightness of 300 nits, which is enough for most indoor lighting conditions, but not for very bright rooms or HDR content. The monitor supports HDR10, but it can only accept and display the signal without improving the image quality significantly. It lacks local dimming, wide color gamut and high brightness that are required for true HDR performance.
The monitor covers ~99% of the sRGB color space, which means that it can display accurate and natural colors without over-saturation. However, it doesn’t support wider color spaces like Adobe RGB or DCI-P3, which are used for professional photo or video editing.
The monitor has decent viewing angles for a VA panel, but they are still inferior to IPS panels. You might notice some color shift or contrast loss when viewing the screen from off-center angles, which can be an issue if you share the screen with others or use it for multi-monitor setups.
Performance
The Samsung Odyssey G55A is designed for gaming and it delivers a smooth and responsive gaming experience thanks to its high refresh rate, low input lag and variable refresh rate (VRR) support.
The monitor has a native refresh rate of 165Hz, which means that it can display up to 165 frames per second (FPS) without stuttering or tearing. This makes fast-paced games look more fluid and clear, especially if your PC can handle such high frame rates.
The monitor also supports AMD FreeSync Premium and unofficially works with NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatible mode over DisplayPort. This means that it can synchronize its refresh rate with your GPU’s frame rate to eliminate screen tearing and stuttering within the VRR range of 48-165Hz.
The input lag of the monitor is very low at around 4ms, which means that there is minimal delay between your actions and the result on the screen. This is important for competitive gaming where every millisecond counts.
However, the main drawback of this monitor is its poor response time performance. The response time is the time it takes for a pixel to change from one color to another, and if it’s too slow, it can cause motion blur or ghosting behind moving objects.
The Samsung Odyssey G55A has an average response time of around 10ms, which is too slow for a 165Hz monitor. This means that you will see a lot of blur and smearing in fast-moving scenes, especially in dark areas where the response time is even slower.
You can use the overdrive setting in the OSD menu to speed up the response time, but this can also introduce inverse ghosting or overshoot, which is when pixels change too quickly and create artifacts around moving objects.
The monitor also has a black frame insertion (BFI) feature called Motion Blur Reduction, which can reduce motion blur by inserting black frames between regular frames. However, this also reduces the brightness and causes flickering, which can be bothersome for some people.
Conclusion
The Samsung Odyssey G55A is a decent gaming monitor with a high contrast ratio, a high refresh rate and FreeSync Premium support. However, it also has a lot of flaws, such as poor response time, low peak brightness, limited ergonomics and no USB ports or speakers.
For the same price or less, you can find better alternatives with faster IPS or TN panels, higher brightness, wider color gamut, better ergonomics and more features. Some examples are the LG 32GP850, the Dell S3220DGF and the MSI Optix MAG322CQR.
Therefore, we don’t recommend the Samsung Odyssey G55A unless you really want a 32-inch curved VA monitor with a high contrast ratio and you don’t mind its drawbacks. Otherwise, you should look elsewhere for a better gaming monitor.
