Picking out a gaming monitor is often an act of compromise. Massive high-res ultrawide monitors offer the best picture quality and immersion, but they lack the snappy refresh rates of smaller, lower-resolution screens. But a preview from AUO shows that things could change very soon.
AU Optronics, commonly called AUO, is a display panel supplier based in Taiwan. It showed several new panels at the Touch Taiwan 2023 Display International Exhibition, including a curved 49-inch 5K ultrawide unit with a 32:9 aspect ratio. Despite the size and resolution of this beast, it sports a 360Hz refresh rate—crazy!
Other specs include a 5000:1 contrast ratio, 95% DCI P3 color coverage, and a peak brightness of 600 nits. This is a VA panel, though AUO doesn’t specify the response time.
We doubt that this display panel will appear in any products until 2024 or 2025. And such products will be expensive. AUO’s announcement is notable because it shows that ultrawide, high-res, high refresh rate monitors are right around the corner. And when they become fairly common (probably by the end of the decade), prices will drop significantly.
If you can’t wait to buy a ridiculous ultrawide monitor with a high refresh rate, there’s always the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9. It matches most of the specs of this AUO display panel, though its refresh rate caps out at 240Hz. Realistically speaking, most people can’t tell the difference between 360Hz and 240Hz, and you need a pretty beefy GPU to hit 360Hz. So, Samsung’s monitor is a good option.
