Gigabyte has made quite a splash with its AORUS line of gaming monitors, but recently has expanded its scope to include the budget market. The G34WQC falls into that category but is also the company’s very first ultrawide, coming in at a wide 34-inches and 1440p resolution. It’s also fast with a 144Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time, brighter than most ultrawides, Freesync Premium and DisplayHDR 400 certified. The best part? It’s only $399 – but is there a catch? Let’s take a closer look and find out.
Specifications
- Current Price:$399.99 (B&H, Newegg)
- Panel Size (diagonal): 34" VA 1500R
- Display Viewing Area (HxV): 797.22 x 333.72 (mm)
- Panel Backlight/ Type: Edge type
- Display Surface(non-glare/ glare): Non-glare type
- Color Saturation: 90% DCI-P3 / 120% sRGB
- True Resolution: 3440 x 1440
- Pixel Pitch: 0.23175*0.23175
- Brightness: 350 cd/m2 (TYP)
- Contrast Ratio: 3000:1
- Dynamic Contrast Ratio: 12M:1
- Viewing Angle: 178°(H)/178°(V)
- Display Colors: 8 bits
- Response Time: 1ms (MPRT)
- Refresh Rate: 144Hz
- HDR: VESA Display HDR400
- Flicker-free: Yes
- Signal Input: HDMI 2.0 x2, Display port 1.4 x2
- Earphone Jack: Yes
- Speaker: 2W x2
- USB port(s): None
- Power Type: Built-in
- Power Consumption: 80W(Max)
- Power Saving Mode: 0.5W
- Power Off Mode: 0.5W
- Voltage: AC 100V - 240V
- Tilt(angle): -5°~+20°
- Swivel(angle): N/A
- Pivot(angle/direction): N/A
- Height Adjustment (mm): 100mm
- VESA Wall Mounting(mm): 100*100mm
- Kensington lock: Yes
- Phys. Dimension with Stand(WxHxD): 808.89x488.79x234.81
- Phys. Dimension w/o stand (WxHxD): 808.89x363.45x114.45
- Net Weight (Esti.): 8.4
- Accessories: Power cable/HDMI cable/DP cable/QSG/Warranty card
It wasn’t long ago that Gigabyte released its first gaming monitor, the AD27QD. I reviewed it for IGN at the time and was impressed at how good it turned out to be. For a first gaming monitor, I expected some hiccups, but the company impressed me. I wasn’t alone. Virtually every major review walked away with the same impressions: on their very first outing, Gigabyte nailed what a gaming monitor should be and then added features on top of it. That same thing has been true, more or less, on every AORUS monitor released since.
One thing that was also true, however, is that those monitors were expensive. The AD27QD launched at $599. AORUS was Gigabyte’s premier gaming line and monitors under that flag were intended to compete with other flagship brands, like ROG and Acer’s Predator. To be frank, that put them out of reach of many gamers.
That’s begun to change, however, as Gigabyte has gaming monitors apart from the AORUS branding. These monitors are no less for gaming, but feature simplified designs to keep costs low and performance high.
That’s absolutely the case with the G34WQC. It’s an ultrawide gaming monitor that’s packed with features and performance to spare, all while coming in at $399. It features a 34-inch 1440p VA panel clocked to 144Hz and a quoted response time of 1ms. While I don’t have a response time tester, I did run the panel through BlurBuster’s TestUFO suite and on the normal overdrive setting saw only the merest of ghosts. While gaming, I wasn’t able to perceive these at all, nor any discernible input lag. Simply put, even though it’s a big and ostensibly slower VA panel, you shouldn’t hesitate to consider it even if your first genre is high-stakes shooters. It competes with TN panel in how responsive it feels and that says a lot about how tightly it has been tuned for its price point.
The monitor also looks stunning. At 34-inches, it feels incredibly spacious: perfect for gaming and video editing. With PBP and PIP modes, you can even treat it like two monitors or embrace two inputs at a time if you’d like. As a VA panel, it offers improved colors and contrast over its TN counterparts, with a 3000:1 contrast ratio which is great for dark scenes. The tradeoff is that the response time is typically slower, but like I mentioned above, that’s not a problem here. The screen space is also maximized with these ultra-thin bezels that give the display a very modern look.
Where things get a little simpler is in the overall design. There are no RGB lights or sci-fi etchings on the back of the display. If you want ambient light, you’ll need to invest in an LED strip. The stand is also very simple, but gets the job done with 100mm of height adjustment, 25-degrees of tilt for seated or standing use, and even some cable passthrough. It won’t allow you to pivot or rotate the display, but it does allow you to get the display low enough to almost touch the desk, which is perfect for placing a small tripod behind it. Honestly, for the savings, I’ll take a simpler design and simple-but-good stand any day of the week.
Returning back to the panel itself, I was impressed by how well calibrated it was out of the box. Using my SpyderX Elite, it required some small changes (mostly to the reds) but was impressively close right out of the box. Running it through SpyderX’s suite of assessment tools, I returned the following results:
It’s important to note that each of these tests were conducted in SDR mode (SpyderX will not assess HDR), but let me be clear: this panel is remarkably good. It covers 92% of the DCI-P3 color space, allowing for more vibrant reds and greens, which is actually above the rated percentage. It also topped the SpyderX out at 100% of the sRGB color space. Color gamut, accuracy, and uniformity were great, but it did lose some points on White Point and Luminance Uniformity. In the very blackest of scenes, you can see slight variations in black levels due to this, but when you’re in motion, as you often are when gaming, I found that I didn’t even notice.
When it comes to gaming, this display has a lot going for it. Apart from the natural smoothness of 1440p/144Hz, it also features FreeSync Premium. Compared to normal FreeSync, Premium also requires Low Framerate Compensation (LFC). If you’re gaming on a GPU that can’t hold the minimum supported refresh rate, it will multiply frames to keep the gaming feeling smooth. I tested it using an AORUS Xtreme RTX 2080 Ti and had no issues whatsoever across nearly a dozen games, so the implementation is great.
The monitor is also DisplayHDR 400 certified and, though the panel is only 8-bit, supports 10-bit through the Nvidia Control Panel. While this isn’t “true HDR,” which would require 1000-nits of peak brightness and full-array local dimming, it offers a noticeable improvement in games like Doom Eternal.
More importantly, this monitor is straight up brighter than many of the similarly specced ultrawides on the market today with a peak brightness of 400 nits and a typical brightness of 350-nits. The AOC CU34G2X I reviewed earlier this year, has many of the same on-paper specs, but has a peak brightness of 300-nits and typically covers somewhere around 250. That’s a noticeable upgrade and allows the picture to be more vibrant and offer greater dynamic range. Frankly, most ultrawides are beginning to feel a little last-gen when it comes to brightness.
Final Thoughts
Before the Gigabyte G34WQC, my go-to ultrawide recommendation was the AOC CU34G2X, as it was for many reviewers. With this monitor, Gigabyte has turned that on its head, offering better, brightness, better HDR, and better adaptive sync, all for $50 less. This very well may be the best ultrawide deal on the market today and is well worth the investment.
