The Alienware AW3423DW is the ultrawide part of my perfect monitor setup. This display delivers stunning image quality, gorgeous colors, and excellent HDR. It’s highly responsive for gaming, and that subtle curve adds to the immersion. This QD-OLED screen was cutting-edge and pricey when I got it three years ago, but Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days event sees the almost identical variant (the AW3423DWF) fall to a new low (around a third of the original price).
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Photograph: Dell
Easily still one of the best gaming monitors around, I stare at my Alienware AW3423DW for countless hours every week, and I haven’t tired of it. There’s a 3440 x 1440-pixel resolution, a Samsung QD-OLED panel, and a 175-Hz refresh rate if you use the DisplayPort. The gentle 1800-R curve is just enough, and the 0.1-millisecond response time is snappy. The on-sale AW3423DWF drops to a 165-Hz refresh rate and supports FreeSync instead of Nvidia’s G-Sync Ultimate, but is otherwise identical.
The build quality is excellent, and folks who don’t appreciate the sci-fi feel of the molded white plastic and glowing blue light on the back (it looks a bit like a spaceship’s exhaust) can turn them off in the monitor menu. There’s a joystick to navigate below the middle of the screen. The monitor also has two HDMI 2.0 ports and a USB-A 3.2 port.
There are a few caveats if you want to use it for work as well as play. This display is best in a dark room when there’s a lot of white on the screen, as there typically is when you’re working on a document or web browsing—auto-dimming kicks in and the fan comes on (it’s pretty quiet). I use dark mode. I also found the text a bit blurry until I used Better ClearType Tuner to set Font Antialiasing to “RGB” and Contrast to 1900 (thanks to RTINGS for the recommendation).
This was an early adopter purchase and felt kind of risky at the original $1,300 price, but the issues are easy to smooth out, so now that the price has dropped so low, it’s easy to recommend. You can find alternatives, some of which are on sale too, in our best monitors guide.
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