MSI Optix MPG341CQR
Gamers with deep pockets will love this 21:9 screen and its plethora of features
SCORE
PRICE £ 724 (£869 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk
The MSI Optix MPG341CQR is one of the most striking monitors in this Labs. It uses a 34in curved 1440p VA panel with a 110ppi pixel density, and it looks sharp from normal viewing distances. Certainly sharper than the 31.5in Asus ROG
Strix XG32VQR, which offers the MSI its closest competition in this Labs.
Well, kind of. The Samsung LC34J791WTUXXU also uses a 34in curved VA panel, but in terms of appearance they couldn’t be more different: the Samsung is finished in smooth office-white while the MSI is boys’ bedroom grey with a strip of programmable RGB LEDs on the front.
MSI also packs this screen with electronics to enhance the panel’s natural gaming abilities. It promises a 1ms grey-to-grey response time, support for AMD FreeSync 2 and a bunch of options (zero latency, anti motion blur, crosshairs) to give you that gaming edge. The Optix’s big advantage over the ROG Strix is immersiveness: almost all games benefit from a 21:9 aspect ratio, and this screen’s curvature places you in the game in a way that flat 16:9 screens can’t match.
Go to the OSD’s Gaming submenu and you’ll find presets for FPS, Racing, RTS and RPG, and what you lose in colour accuracy you gain in impact: for example, FPS mode returned a peak brightness of 433cd/m2 with a contrast ratio of 2,828:1 and average Delta E of 2.04. There’s also a selection of Professional presets, and after adjusting the User setting we reached 99.6% coverage of the sRGB gamut with a Delta E of 0.43.
The OSD is easy to navigate, with a responsive joystick on the rear, but you can also use MSI’s feature-packed Gaming OSD software if you connect via USB-B. It’s odd that it doesn’t work over USB-C as well, but MSI makes surprisingly little of this excellent connection – perhaps because it only supplies 15W of power. USB-B also brings the webcam into play, but that’s only really useful to activate MSI’s Smart Profile feature. This recognises faces and switches to a profile as appropriate.
You have to wonder if that gimmick is one of the reasons this monitor costs so much, and if so then that’s a shame. Only the price stops the MSI from winning an award: this is a great gaming monitor.