Hands On: Samsung's Odyssey Ark Is a Curved Monster of a Gaming Monitor

pcmag.com:

At 2022’s CES, Samsung stood tall—especially in portrait mode!—among display makers thanks to the Odyssey Ark, a beast of a monitor that drew more than its share of eyeballs. Positioned as the world’s first 55-inch, 4K curved gaming screen with a 165Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time (Samsung loves its firsts), the $3,499.99-MSRP Ark was a sight to behold, but it dropped out of sight after that. Until today.

Samsung stopped by New York City ahead of its semi-annual Samsung Unpacked event and invited PCMag to get some hands-on time with what promises to be one of the hottest gaming monitors of the year. It'll certainly be the tallest, once you rotate it. (More about that in a moment.)

Curved monitors have grown in popularity in the gaming space. However, many models don't hit the super-fast refresh rates that esports aficionados yearn for. And now that the next generation of home consoles is breaking through the 60-frame-per-second (fps) ceiling, addressing frame rates on gaming displays has never been more critical. The Odyssey Ark sets the bar high, with a peak 165Hz refresh rate, a remarkable target for a screen of this size. (Also, the 4K native resolution is true to the typical 3,840 by 2,160 pixels.)

Instead of an OLED display, Samsung opts for its proprietary Quantum Matrix Technology Mini LED technology, ensuring precise lighting expressions and detailed HDR control for superior picture quality. What Samsung calls a Neural Quantum Processor Ultra acts as the brain of the operation. An in-display image processor, it ostensibly enhances visual detail and helps in the upscaling of content to up to 4K resolution.

As for the connectivity, there's a bunch for multiple device inputs. Four HDMI 2.1 ports are