- Samsung reveals a trio of Odyssey high-end gaming monitors for CES 2025
- The Odyssey G8 and G6 have 27-inch panels, one with a 4K resolution, the other with a 500Hz refresh rate
- The new Odyssey G7 is an ‘industry first’ 5K 40-inch OLED monitor
Samsung has taken the covers off a trio of Odyssey gaming monitors for CES 2025, which all have ‘industry first’ specs; they’ve caught my eye but feel gloriously over the top.
Leading the charge is the 2025 Odyssey OLED G8, which is the first 27-inch OLED monitor to have a 4K resolution (3,840 x 2,160); that translates to a healthy 165 pixels per inch. The screen refreshes fast too, at a rate of 240Hz.
But if that’s too slow for you, then the new Odyssey OLED G6 has a frankly baffling 500Hz refresh rate. There’s a minor compromise here in that the OLED panel is only QHD resolution (2,560 x 1,440) rather than 4K, but on a 27-inch monitor I think 1440p is absolutely fine and arguably the sweet spot in order to get games running at high enough frame rates to tap into that refresh rate.
And that actually has me scratching my head. I love big specs when it comes to gaming hardware, but these displays feel like overkill. My current PC gaming setup involves a monstrously powerful Starforge Systems machine with a mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 paired with an Alienware AW3423DWF QD-OLED monitor; that’s a 34-inch QHD OLED display with a 165Hz.
Now even with a current top-of-the-line graphics card, getting a high enough frame rate to take advantage of high refresh rate panels when playing demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p, is a challenge. Often I need to rely on Nvidia’s smart DLSS technology or make do with frame rates that can drop below 60 frames per second.
Cue a tiny violin playing for me as I dive into Night City with ray tracing maxed out and a frame rate below 120 fps. But this does get me wondering why Samsung has made such high-spec Odyssey displays.
4K at 27 inches in the G8 seems perhaps a bit too high, much like putting 4K panels in laptop displays, where one arguably doesn’t need such density of pixels in a compact screen space. And as games get more demanding, hitting a native 4K on current hardware at high frame rates isn’t super-easy; see our PS5 Pro review as an example of that.
Equally, the G6 seemingly solves that by going for a QHD resolution. But I remain unconvinced by extremely high refresh rates on monitors. To tap into the true potential of a 500Hz refresh rate you’d want a game running at 500 fps, but plenty of games can’t do this even on powerful hardware and at low settings; some games have built-in fps limitations.
Sure, a 500Hz monitor will be one of the smoothest around, but it does feel more like a boast for Samsung rather than a display that’ll offer a huge upgrade over, say a 240Hz gaming monitor.
But I’ve not seen these displays with my one eyes, so I may have to defer to the opinion of my colleagues over at CES, who might get a chance to see these two Odyssey screens in action; for what it’s worth, the Odyssey displays I’ve seen in the past have often impressed me.
Big screen, big resolution
Where a high resolution does make a lot of sense is in the new Samsung Odyssey G7. Revealed after the other two Odyssey monitors, the G7 is another ‘industry first’ in that it sports a 40-inch panel with a 5K resolution (5120 x 2160).
Now that’s something I can get behind, as at larger screen sizes, hefty resolutions make sense as there’s a need for more pixels per inch to keep images sharp. Granted, the best 4K OLED TVs look pretty good at one ‘K’ resolution less than the G7.
But a 5K resolution in a 40-inch monitor sort of makes sense for people looking for a large desktop display that they’d sit closer to than a TV, where having a denser cluster of pixels helps keep images looking sharp at close range.
To push games at a solid frame rate to a 5K monitor, one will need some powerful hardware. But the solution to that could come in the form of the leaked GeForce RTX 5090. So I could see the Odyssey G7 appealing to those who have a next-generation high-end PC and want to game at super-sharp resolutions.
At the time of writing, Samsung hasn’t revealed release dates or pricing for these new Odyssey displays, but don’t expect them to be cheap. If you want a great gaming display right now, do check out our guide on the best gaming monitors.
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