View Sonic Elite XG350R-C
The perfect home office gaming monitor?
IN THIS WONDERFUL world of working from home, finding the right monitor to maximize your productivity is pivotal. You can have the best system on the planet, but if you’re still staring at a 22-inch screen from 2009, it might be about time you ditched the aging tech, and boosted your monitor real-estate to something a little more modern, and with quite a lot more breadth.
We’re big supporters of ultra-wide and multi-screen setups here at Maximum PC, and have had a lot of hands-on time with the 21:9 form factor as a result. We’ve tested everything from the very budget-oriented panels from the likes of Acer, AOC, and MSI, to the absolute high-end Asus ProArt screens and LG’s fantastic 38-inch panels.
So why do we recommend it? Well simply put it allows you to do so much more than what you can on a traditional 24-inch or 27-inch 16:9 monitor. For many the idea of two screens makes a lot of sense—twin 27-inch monitors can easily help you separate multiple documents, programs and tasks, and allows you to game on a single screen if you so desire. It’s affordable because you can take an older screen and pair it with a newer one. The only problems lie with the fact that they take up a lot of desk space, and there’s that thick bezel in between the two panels, no matter what you do.
You can get 54-inch screens these days, effectively merging those two 27-inchers, but the reality is that’s still a massive display to have on your desk. 34 inches on the other hand seems to be the middle-child of the productivity monitors right now, and the sweet spot, if you’re looking for something both to game on and spend your working hours with.
IN THE SWEET SPOT
Take this ViewSonic Elite XG350R-C as an example. It’s slightly larger than your standard superwide, coming in at a 35inch diagonal. But it also comes with a high-contrast 2500:1 curved (1800R) MVA panel that’s perfect for vibrant color work; a 100Hz refresh rate for buttery smooth desktop and gaming usage; a crisp 1440p resolution, giving you the same pixel density as the best 1440p 27.5-inch monitor; and FreeSync (and therefore G-Sync) as standard—all for an incredibly impressive $660. That’s a lot of screen for not a huge amount of outlay. So what’s the catch?
Well honestly not a lot. Colors are crisp and accurate, and the contrast is fantastic as a whole. It does theoretically support an HDR mode, but we found it quite dull, and there doesn’t seem to be an expanded color gamut, which makes you question why that HDR10 spec was included at all. Although you won’t be missing out on much, as HDR on PC is still somewhat underdeveloped. On the whole the stand and ergonomics are fairly clean. The Elite branding isn’t too obtuse, and what little RGB lighting there is you typically forget exists after about 5-10 minutes of use. The only thing we would say is the bezel is rather thick. You’ve got a big half-inch plastic border running around the entirety of the panel itself, which detracts from the aesthetic appeal.
We’re starting to see a lot of these prices drop for this form factor too. In fact, you can pick up a fairly similar screen from the likes of Asus for about $80 less, although the color accuracy doesn’t quite match what you’ll find here. ViewSonic has a nack for producing precision-perfect panels, and the XG350R is no exception to that. Despite the fact it’s branded as a gaming monitor by design, when it’s side by side with a $1,000 Asus ProArt 34-inch screen the difference is very difficult to perceive.