Samsung LC34J791
Ditch your KVM switch with this new curvy ultrawide.
Pitched as the world’s first ’ Thunderbolt 3’ display, this 34-inch quantum-dot LED (QLED) monitor begs one immediate question: what the hell is a Thunderbolt 3 display, and why would you want one? Well, as part of its spec, Thunderbolt 3 includes a DisplayPort 1.2 connection, which lets you utilise basically any video standard you like — be that HDMI, DVI, VGA or DisplayPort itself. Thunderbolt 3 also has plenty of leftover bandwidth in its 40Gbps of total bandwidth to allow for lots of other devices to connect alongside that video stream, so you can get your USB peripherals, storage devices, audio and so on all through the one cable.
What this means is that it’s very quick and easy to plug any kind of device into the LC34J791 and have it work with all your attached accessories. Moreover, it also means you can use it as a pseudo KVM switch — plug your keyboard and mouse directly into the back of the display and they’ll work with whatever display device is currently using the screen, whether that’s the gaming PC snuggling under your desk, or your Thunderbolt 3-equipped ultrabook that you’ve just brought home from work. The display can even provide power to, and recharge, laptops up to a beefy 85W while they’re plugged in and in use.
The LC34J791 doesn’t just have Thunderbolt for video input — there’s also standard HDMI and DisplayPort sockets hidden under a rear cover.
While this isn’t specifically a designer’s monitor – there are no presets for Adobe RGB or other design-standard colour profiles, for example – out of the box, its colour settings are tuned almost bang-on the 6500K ideal, meaning it’ll do a fine job for anyone who wants to do a bit of video or photo editing for web or other digital use, and its 3,440 x 1,440-pixel resolution means there’s masses of virtual real estate upon which to spread out your digital canvases and toolboxes.
The display also delivers fantastically smooth and consistent images thanks to very even backlighting, and that underlying metallic quantum dot means colours are very natural on the Standard colour profile – and there’re a handful of additional preset modes for tasks like gaming.
Speaking of gaming, Samsung’s also thrown in AMD FreeSync support to work alongside the display’s native 100Hz refresh rate, meaning it’s a reasonablycapable gaming screen too. The response time can also be adjusted slightly, with menu options to select from Normal, Fast or Fastest modes – which we found essential to change when playing pacy first-person online titles.
The LC34J791 does have some drawbacks, however. You’ll pay a premium, for one, with the combination of QLED and Thunderbolt 3 costing $600 more than Samsung’s similar LED-based 34-inch ultrawide. This picture quality can have some shortfalls too. For example, at higher brightness settings, certain colours – like bright blues – have a tendency to expose the display’s QLED structure, producing very faint dark horizontal lines every centimetre or so down the screen’s entire height. Additionally, finding settings that gave us an adequate amount of detail in blacks to play darkly-lit games (while also remaining reasonably vibrant) also took some tweaking – although it can certainly be done. Still, this definitely wouldn’t be our first choice if you’re looking for a display for gaming...