Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
I haven’t been disappointed by an OLED monitor yet. There are so many good ones that it literally comes down to a few dollars in price or a few points in a benchmark test. In every way, they are consistently high performing and stunning to look at. While they remain relatively expensive, it is now possible to get a top-shelf 34-inch ultra-wide 240 Hz gaming screen with professional-grade color accuracy and solid build quality for $800 from Alienware.
The AW3425DW has everything needed for top-flight gaming. It delivers perfect motion processing, carries G-Sync and FreeSync Premium Pro certifications, sports the lowest input lag I’ve measured in the category, and looks good doing it. With spot-on color and a wide Quantum Dot-fueled gamut, it’s ready to play right out of the box, no tweaking required. But if you need some options, sRGB and two-point grayscale sliders are there. My only wish would be for gamma presets in Custom Color mode and color temp presets in Creator mode. And though it works fine for SDR without variable brightness, that’s a choice I’d like to have as well. I also missed a headphone jack and internal speakers.
The Alienware AW3425DW is a superb gaming monitor and a great all-around display. It isn’t perfect but it comes incredibly close, and it aced all my color tests. Gaming is addictive, and it’s also great for work. If you have $800 to budget for an ultra-wide display, you’ll be hard pressed to find better.
