Over the last few months, I’d been hunting for a new monitor for my desk setup. I went back and forth between specs, watched way too many reviews, and in the end I played it safe and bought an ultrawide VA panel instead of stretching the budget for an IPS. At the time, it felt like the sensible choice: good contrast (excellent for gaming and media consumption), no IPS glow, and a price that didn’t make my wallet cry. Sure, there’s a bit of dark-level VA smearing here and there (something I truthfully only really notice when running the UFO test), and that’s where OLED starts to make a lot of sense – eliminating those drawbacks entirely while promising the kind of contrast and motion clarity VA can’t quite reach.
Even then, OLED never really left the conversation either. It was always sitting in the back of my mind as the “maybe one day” option. On phones, it’s a no-brainer but on a desk, the upgrade felt harder to justify. As the ideal middle ground between VA and IPS, the idea of perfect blacks and instant response times was tempting, but not enough to overlook the rather significant price jump – especially when my current setup was technically already doing what I needed. Factor in the usual worries about brightness, reflections, and long-term wear, and it was enough to make me hesitate.
Fortunately, Chris and I have now got the Samsung 27″ Odyssey OLED G6 G60SF on our desk for a little while, and suffice to say, our initial impressions have been surprisingly positive.
Getting it out of the box and going through the setup was pretty straightforward. The stand is solid metal, the monitor itself feels very well-built, and the menus are intuitive. The silver metal finish on the G6 is also a nice change-up from the usual black plastic you see on most gaming monitors, even if it does make the bezels stand out a little more than usual.
Powering it on, the first thing we noticed was the desktop wallpaper – colours looked richer and more vibrant, almost to the point of feeling oversaturated. It was an unmistakeably not-so-subtle difference from a standard LCD panel. We’ve tested a few games already, and the first thing that stood out was just how deep the blacks look, especially in darker scenes. Bethesda’s Starfield is a good example of this, especially with HDR enabled, where space no longer looks like a dark grey backdrop.
We also wanted to double-check that the monitor was actually running at 500Hz, because honestly, it was hard to notice any difference right away compared to the already very high 170Hz we were used to. It’s one of those specs that looks wild on paper, but in practical terms, it takes a trained eye (and a very capable PC) to really appreciate even a fraction of the refresh rate upgrade.
Truth be told, we want to make the most of our review time, so we’re holding off on a full verdict until the full video review next month. For now, though, it’s fair to say the G6 has left a stronger first impression than we expected.
