Editor’s Pick: Corsair Xeneon Flex 45WQHD240
An OLED panel that lacks the Wow! factor
OLED PANELS ARE seen as the shizzle when it comes to premium screen technology. But like any new tech, OLED panels come with their own issues. For proof, look no further than the spectacular new Corsair Xeneon Flex 45WQHD240.
It’s a 45-inch monster of a monitor with a 21:9 aspect OLED panel and loads of connectivity. It’s flexible too, with a range of manually-adjustable curves available from completely flat through to 800R. Given the ultra-curved Samsung Neo G9 is only 1000R, at full bend, the new Corsair is certainly something.
As an OLED panel, it has all the usual advantages of that display tech. There’s per-pixel lighting with perfect black levels and response times that make LCD monitors look like they’ve been caught napping. Yet OLED panels aren’t perfect, not even close. If you’re new to OLED tech, there’s a learning curve to surmount.
OLED displays generally have no problems winding up the brightness over a limited proportion of the overall panel for small objects or windows. But you run into problems with larger objects or fullscreen brightness. In those scenarios, the power consumption and heat output have to be controlled, which effectively leads to brightness being heavily throttled.
The upshot is that Corsair rates the Xeneon Flex at 1000 nits peak brightness but just 150 nits full screen. It also quotes 450 nits in a 25 percent window and 800 nits in a 10 percent window. It makes it difficult to know what to expect in terms of real-world brightness. I mean, how bright is this thing showing an outdoor scene in a typical game? That’s what you want to know and the stats aren’t hugely helpful.
The answer is not very bright. Definitely less bright than, say, a conventional LCD monitor rated at 400 nits. I’d guestimate equivalent to an LCD monitor roughly in the 250 nit range. It just isn’t terribly punchy and that’s disappointing for a monitor with a $2,000 sticker price.
In darker scenes with a relatively small proportion of bright objects or light sources, the Xeneon Flex looks great. The black levels are fantastic and the contrast with bright objects is more precise than you get with even the best mini-LED LCD monitors. But the wow factor isn’t there.
Now, it doesn’t have to be this way with OLED tech, at least not to this extent. The Alienware 34 AW3423DW, the only other true gaming monitor with an OLED panel we’ve seen, can hit 250 nits of full-screen measured brightness and performs like a 400 to 500 nit LCD monitor in terms of bright-scene performance.
The Alienware is much smaller, which may help. But LG’s latest OLED TVs tend to perform better when it comes to panel brightness, so the problem can’t simply be down to size. They are mostly a lot bigger than the Xeneon Flex, which uses an LG-sourced OLED panel. Part of the explanation may be that the Flex doesn’t have a heatsink for the panel. A heatsink can allow an OLED display to run brighter.
If you look at how this screen’s flexible panel is implemented, it’s hard to imagine how a heatsink could be implemented while retaining the flex. If that’s correct, I’d much rather see a fixed panel, flat or curved, and added brightness. As it is, the Corsair Xeneon Flex 45WQHD240 is an awful lot of money for an underwhelming experience. And that’s before you consider the fact that it runs at just 3,440 by 1,440 pixels on a 45-inch diagonal. Yuck! –JL
$2,000, www.corsair.com