Odyssey OLED G8 gaming monitor review: An AI-powered super screen that delivers

Gaming monitors have come a long way in recent years with ever clearer, sharper, more defined visuals.

But the next generation are now starting to appear and offer more than just a picture.

The Samsung Odyssey G8 gaming monitor has just hit stores and boasts a superlative OLED screen coupled with never-seen-before AI tech and an all-round flexibility that’s hugely appealing.

While this is a gaming monitor it can easily be switched to more TV-driven streaming services.

It works as a great entertainment hub thanks to built-in access to apps like Netflix, YouTube and Prime Video, as well as a dedicated AI-powered gaming hub that lets you access game streaming services like Xbox Game Pass.

Out of the box, the G8 is simple to set up with a sturdy pentagonal-designed click-in base that raises and lowers to the right eye height and allows swift left-right twist movements of the monitor on-the-fly.

Silver on the back and a screen-to-edge flat frontage, it’s 32 inches of excellent gaming tech, boasting a 4K UHD visual with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

For the layman, that means it’s bloody detailed and you can see every pixel, highly defined that game makers are putting on screen.

Football player shirts easily display their numbers on the back on games like FC24 and the pinpoint accuracy required in online games like Call of Duty are aided by the clear-cut visuals and super speedy 0.03ms refresh rate of the monitor.

Darker games like Elden Ring pop off the screen thanks to defined blacks and dark colours utilising Samsung’s high-quality lack of light bleed.

And when you want to delve into the colour, imagery shines with 250 nits of brightness while in-built artificial intelligence upscales lesser quality imagery, with lower resolutions going to nearly 4K, a boon for both gaming and any video streaming you may want to do.

Glare Free technology has also been introduced to significantly reduce glare from external light sources.

So the OLED screen's perfect black and colour experience are presented without sunlight or indoor lamps bouncing off, making them harder to see.

With a screen 54% less glossy than conventional Anti-Reflection film, you can see your full game environments and get the drop on enemies.

The NQ8 AI Gen3 processor, the same processor Samsung uses in its 2024 8K TVs, leverages AI to sharpen and smooth out the motion of objects and text.

That means fast-moving content, flying balls or bullets continue to stay in focus and don’t blur badly.

And built in speakers again use artificial intelligence to analyse your background noise and enhance voices with advanced audio processing.

It's easier to hear dialogue in your favourite content, like movies and live sports.

It’s also worth shouting out about the Safeguard+ proprietary burn-in protection technology.

That’s the first in the world to prevent burn-in by applying a pulsating heat pipe to the monitor. You won’t have any PC images permanently burned into the display, even if you keep them stuck on screen for hours at a time, a problem many a monitor in the past has suffered from.

It’s quite a heavy device to carry, but once set up on your desk it looks beautifully efficient and elegant.

There’s a ton of connectivity ports on the back for the widest range of PCs, consoles and plug-in boxes.

And it even had a subtle lighting ring at the back to gently enhance the ambient light in the room to synchronise with what’s happening on-screen. A cool little bonus.

The Odyssey OLED G8 gaming monitor certainly isn’t cheap, clocking in at just over £1,000.

But quality always comes at a price and in this monitor you get the best of both worlds – a true high-end gaming screen that’s also versatile for all of life’s other entertainment options.

It can easily sit alongside the best 32in OLED TVs out there and has a host of apps on its user-friendly interface to allow you plenty of streaming time too.

Fantastic.

VERDICT 5/5