Samsung’s $3,500 Odyssey Ark is a raft of a gaming display
Samsung’s Odyssey Ark had a stealthy presence at CES 2022, but the curved 55-inch gaming monitor-meets-TV is nearly ready to launch. It’s coming out in mid-September for $3,499.99, with reservations for preorders starting today. I got to test out a prototype of the Odyssey Ark with a batch of PC games. Surprise: gaming with my face three feet away from a 55-inch 4K display with 165Hz refresh rate is awesome. But I was equally impressed with the bounty of features that the Ark can deliver.
The Ark represents Samsung’s most aggressive play at distinguishing itself as a maker of gaming displays. The 55-inch 1000R curvature is, of course, one way to go about sticking out. It can easily be rotated for use in portrait mode with up to three video sources. The other major way is with some smart TV functionality, namely the Samsung Gaming Hub that allows for cloud streaming via Xbox Game Pass, Google Stadia, and Amazon Luna. Like the Samsung M8 Smart Monitor that I reviewed, it runs on Samsung’s Tizen OS — in case you want to use some streaming apps like YouTube or Apple TV Plus.
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Given its high cost, there’s a good chance that you’ll want to do more than just game on the Ark. This screen is big enough to accommodate multiple use cases at once with ease. Building upon the standard picture-in-picture (PIP) mode offered by many TVs and some monitors, the Ark includes robust screen manipulation settings that let you go from basic (stack four windows, two by two) to more niche (set one input to be 32:9, with one traditional 16:9 input above it). The possibilities, while not endlessly configurable, seem ripe for some interesting use cases if you’re the type who likes to tweak settings. And that’s before you turn the Ark
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