The Xiaomi G34WQi Ultrawide Curved Gaming Monitor is for budget-conscious consumers. It features HDR 10 support, AMD FreeSync Premium, and up to a 180Hz refresh rate all in a 34” WQHD 3440x1440 VA panel. It comes as an upgrade from Xiaomi’s previous iteration, which last saw an updated model released in 2022.
Xiaomi is a relatively new kid on the block for gaming monitors, but they are one of the largest manufacturers of smartphones in the world. So it’s no surprise that it has been diversifying its lineup for the overseas markets. But can this new budget-focused ultrawide compete against a similar lineup from MSI, ViewSonic, and others? Here’s our review of the Xiaomi G34WQi Ultrawide Curved Gaming Monitor:
Specifications
Basic Information
- Price: $299.99
- Panel Size: 34 inch
- Resolution: 3440*144
- Aspect ratio: 21:9
- Panel: VA
- Viewing Angle: 178°
Display
- Refresh rate: 180Hz
- Response time: 1ms (MPRT), 4ms (GTG)
- Brightness: 350 nits
- Color Gamut: 100% sRGB, 95% DCI-P3
- Color Accuracy: Delta E < 2
- HDR 10 supported
- TÜV Low Blue Light Certification
- Free Sync Premium
Design & Dimensions
- Color: Black
- Back cover RGB light Design
- Tilt: -5° ~ 21°(±2°)
- Swivel: -35°~35°
- Height adjustment supported
- Wall Mount: VESA 75*75
- Weight including base: 6.9kg
- Dimensions with base: 811.3*210*510.1mm
Ports
- DP 1.4 x 2
- HDMI 2.0 x 2
- Audio x 1
- DC jack x 1
Package includes
- Display x 1, Stand x 1, Base x 1, Power Adapter x 1, DP Cable x 1, User manual x 1, Screw Toolkit x 1, Color Calibration Report x 1
Right out of the box, I was impressed with how lightweight the Xiaomi G34WQi was in comparison to my ASUS ROG Swift PG348Q. It was a snap to put together as well, with just four screws holding the base plate to the monitor arm. After which, you just click the arm into the back of the monitor and it’s ready to plug in!
A fun note about the unboxing is that included with the packaging is a color calibration factory report that shows your specific monitor’s calibrated results, including which kind of measuring device was used. This report details the Delta E results for both the DCI-P3 and sRGB from their calibration measurements, which can be useful in determining color accuracy between the two different color spaces.
Overall Design and Build Quality
The Xiaomi has a very simplistic aesthetic, with an all-black plastic casing and a squared matte metal base. The stand holding the monitor to the base is a plastic silver casing that has an oval hole cut through it for cable management. The slitted vents on the sides circle the entire perimeter of the case to give it a universal design from any angle, although any actual heat exhaust it provides is concentrated out of the bottom. Because of this, the bottom part of the screen itself can get pretty warm to the touch.
One of the key differences between the previous model of the Xiaomi Ultrawide is a new circular RGB back strip lighting that looks just like a Ring Light. This lighting can be turned off completely or customized through the options in the menu’s on-screen display (OSD), such as a color-matching mode. Unfortunately, you can’t adjust the brightness levels and I found that even in a dark room it barely provided enough ambient lighting to warrant leaving it on.
Overall, I appreciate the lack of weird, jutting angles or designer textures such as what I’ve grown accustomed to in gaming monitors, like on my ASUS ROG. The monitor stand’s flat, metal baseplate is also a welcome change to the sprawling legs that other gaming monitors use, and I enjoy that I can decorate my desktop easily as well. There also isn’t any extraneous RGB lighting that would prevent the Xiaomi from being used in a business or office environment.
Panel and Display Quality
In terms of the Xiaomi’s actual display panel, I found it mostly serviceable for a lot of the games I played, like Final Fantasy XIV and Last Epoch. While the curved screen is nowhere near as intense as something like the Samsung Odyssey G5’s 1000R, the Xiaomi’s 1500R curve still felt more extreme to me than I was used to on my ASUS (which only has a slight 3800R curve). This made playing games feel even more immersive however, so it was an easy adjustment to acclimate to.
The screen has a matte finish which I found helps reduce both the amount of glare and the harshness of glare from light sources. The Xiaomi’s peak brightness is only 350 nits, so it’s not a display that I would keep near a window. Indirect lighting doesn’t affect visibility too badly while playing games, so it still performs well even in bright rooms.
Before I could even get to playing though, as soon as I turned it on for the first time I had to mess with the display’s settings and navigate through its OSD to adjust the brightness. The controls are positioned towards the bottom-right on the back of the panel and has a basic joystick for navigation. The brightness was set to a measly 32 as its Standard factory setting under Picture mode, which seemed odd to me because the Energy Saver mode has a default brightness of 40. The ‘Game Mode’, which is its own separate menu tab, bumps the brightness all the way to 100 but locks out the Picture mode options.
Similarly, turning on HDR locks out both Picture mode and Game mode, as well as the MPRT (Moving Picture Response Time) mode which features the marketed 1ms response time but locks the Brightness to a much lower setting. In general, I found that the best-looking display was having the settings for Game Mode turned on and the MPRT and HDR modes off, with FreeSync Premium on, and the color space set to either sRGB or DCI-P3 instead of the default Native setting.
Performance Testing
This is because the Xiaomi’s display uses a VA panel (vertical alignment) which, while it features a richer 3000:1 contrast ratio for colors compared to other displays, has a notably slower response time than either the IPS or TN panels. The given GtG (gray-to-gray) for the Xiaomi Ultrawide is 4ms, as opposed to the 1ms response time marketed for the MPRT mode. What this means is that while playing very fast-paced or particle-heavy games, I experienced severe ghosting and blurring which made my eyes hurt.
This ghosting effect was even more intense when I set the refresh rate to a higher 180 Hz or 165 Hz, even after changing the response time in the menu settings to Fastest in Game mode instead of Fast or Standard, which are the defaults for the different Picture modes. Setting the refresh rate to 60 Hz reduced the ghosting, but caused a blurred discoloration trailing effect instead. Through my testing, either the 100 Hz and 120 Hz refresh rates paired with the Fastest response time gave a minimal amount of ghosting while playing games.
Sadly, this also makes HDR mode unplayable for me since it locks the response time to the slowest Standard setting. For the games that I’ve played over the last week with the Xiaomi – mainly Destiny 2, Diablo IV, and Helldivers 2 – this was a dealbreaker for enabling HDR, much to my disappointment. Similarly, the TÜV Certified Low Blue Light mode is only available in Picture mode and not Game mode, but it is compatible with either FreeSync Premium or the MPRT mode.
Connection Ports and Additional Features
The Xiaomi has two Display Ports 1.4, two HDMI 2.0, and an audio jack in the middle of the back panel. It’s also worth noting that the Xiaomi does not have any internal speakers, which I thought it did because there are volume controls in the OSD options. So you will require either a desktop speaker setup that you can plug into the audio jack or a pair of headphones.
The HDMI 2.0 ports work great for plugging in consoles, and the included Display Port cable is nice to have in case you don’t already have one. I didn’t have any issues with any of the ports during my testing period either as I swapped from PlayStation to Xbox to Switch and back again.
One feature of the Xiaomi monitor that surprised me was having both Picture-in-Picture (PiP) and Split Screen (sometimes called Picture-by-Picture, or PbP) window settings. This meant that I could do things like let my son play on my PS5 in Split Screen mode while I was writing this review. While the PiP mode did let me adjust the size of the smaller window between small, medium, and large; the PbP did not. The Split Screen mode does not have an option in the OSD to adjust where the screen is split; on PC the resolution is set to 1720x1440 to fill the screen, but the other input – such as a console – will be stuck with black bars along the top and bottom of the screen.
Final Thoughts
You’ve got to hand it to Xiaomi for compiling so many features into a budget-oriented gaming monitor: a 180Hz refresh rate panel, HDR support, FreeSync Premium, PiP and PbP modes, and TÜV Low Blue Light Certification. That said, the VA panel and 4ms GtG response time create a ghosting issue that’s hard to ignore while gaming. Watching movies, web browsing, and most other day-to-day applications are fine, but playing any kind of fast-paced game can be challenging.
It’s a trade-off to be able to have these features and suffer the ghosting, or sacrifice aspects like refresh rate and HDR in order to minimize this issue. If these features are what you’re shopping for in an ultrawide gaming monitor, it’s hard to beat the Xiaomi’s $299.99 price point. Just be careful that if you’re hoping for the full package, you might get disappointed when it seems more a la carte.
The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.
