Hands-on with Alienware’s new, curved QD-OLED gaming monitor

theverge.com:

QD-OLED screen technology was one of the big, new innovations that debuted at CES 2022, marking Samsung Display’s long-awaited foray into making big-screen OLEDs. LG Display finally has some competition, and so far, we know that Sony plans to release its first QD-OLED TV models soon. But the first product to actually ship with one of these QD-OLED screens isn’t a TV. It’s a gaming monitor from Alienware.

Alienware’s 34-inch QD-OLED AW3423DW curved gaming monitor is the showcase for the tech, for now, and it’s available starting today for $1,299.99. I had a few hours alone with it, testing it out with some games and apps.

I don’t have a verdict for you today. Instead, I have some first impressions that I’ll expand upon later in a full review, as well as some answers to day-one questions you may have about this exciting monitor.

The first thing I did with the AW3423DW plugged in was admire its punchy, rich colors, and inky blacks. This Alienware monitor possesses the hallmark traits of an OLED, as I hoped and expected. But of course, QD-OLED tech works a little differently. While OLEDs have precise control over what parts of the panel are illuminated, and blacks are truly black, Samsung’s new tech aims to do all of that, while boosting brightness and color reproduction by pushing blue light through a quantum dot layer.

I haven’t yet compared the AW3423DW side-by-side to other monitors in our office, but I’m curious if it can get brighter than LED panels. That could be telling, since LED screens are still known for being able to go brighter than OLEDs, and for retaining that bright picture in HDR modes. QD-OLED aims to close that brightness gap.

Alienware’s AW3423DW supports up to 1,000 nits at peak brightness, and it’s