LG 34UC98 34-inch Curved FreeSync Monitor Review

Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Response And Lag

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, please click here.

Viewing angles are a little harder to judge on curved screens, especially examples with a small radius like the 34UC98's 1900R. In our photos you can see a green shift along with a 50-percent drop in output to the sides. The top view shows a similar drop in brightness but a less severe tint. We think this monitor makes a good choice for multi-screen setups because its tighter curve means a better wrap-around effect for the user.

Screen Uniformity: Luminance

The advantage to slightly elevated black levels is better uniformity at low brightness. Our sample had no light-bleed or glow at its darkest.

Here's the white field measurement.

White field uniformity is equally fine at a low 6.46 percent. We saw no variations in brightness nor did we see a center hotspot.

Screen Uniformity: Color

The color uniformity test showed slight variations on the right side of the screen where we could see a slight red shift. Down the left edge we could also see just a hint of green. None of this was visible in actual content.

Pixel Response And Input Lag

Please click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

75Hz means you'll get faster panel response than most 60Hz screens but you won't quite get the snap of a 144Hz display. Of course the video card's actual frame-rates determine the final result but the 34UC98 delivered the expected numbers in this test. We were able to use the highest overdrive setting without any visible ghosting in our gaming titles.

Here are the lag results.

Obvious there's a bit of extra processing overhead compared to the other displays because the 34UC98 has roughly the same lag as the 60Hz Dell U3415W. For most gamers this won't be an issue but hardcore players will want the lower input lag of the top three displays. It wasn't a problem for us though.

Gaming Impressions

We were concerned about the 34UC98's limited FreeSync range but as it turns out, the game you're playing makes a distinct difference in the visual quality of motion processing. We started with Tomb Raider. It's easy to control framerates in this title by simply changing the detail level. As always we're playing on an R9-285 system. On High, the fps count never dropped below 55 so we enjoyed the smoothness of FreeSync and a fast rate that occasionally hit the max of 75fps. Changing to Ultimate detail brought the machine to its knees but it didn't look as bad as one might think.

Playing below 55fps means you'll either have to accept the high input lag of V-Sync or deal with tearing. In both cases, there is plenty of judder especially below 40fps. However, due to the heavy use of organic textures in this particular game, tearing did not distract too badly. It's helped in part by one of the best overdrive implementations we've seen lately. Many monitors will ghost in areas of high contrast when you set OD to maximum but not the 34UC98. Motion blur is minimized almost to the point where you'd think backlight strobing is in play, which of course is not the case. We would happily play this game all day without the extra lag of V-Sync even if we had to accept framerates below 55.

Our experience was a little different in Battlefield 4. Here there are far more vertical lines to highlight tearing and the artifact was inescapable. But again, we had to max out the detail to get the framerate down for our tests. The game looks awesome at a lower setting when play can be maintained at 60-75fps.

So our recommendation is to take stock of what kind of games you plan to play on the 34UC98 before deciding that its small FreeSync range presents a limitation. In our experience, it isn't always a problem. And the fantastic overdrive option really cleans up fast motion to the point where the image looks almost as clean as one aided by backlight strobing. LG has put some thought into the gameplay experience and it shows.