Second Chance LG UltraWide 38WR85QC-W

Ever since LG announced it at CES 2021 (a year and a half between announcement and availability), I've been eagerly waiting for this homeworking/photo editing/video editing beast. As soon as it was available I ordered it.

Mainly bought because of:
* Thunderbolt 4
* 72Hz refresh rate
* 5120x2160 resolution
* the small curve that prevents your eyes from having to refocus continuously
* daisy-chaining capability for the thunderbolt 4 port
* picture by picture options (connect 2 sources at the same time) which is handy for my workflow

So far, my experiences with the screen are positive, only when connecting a Macbook Pro you have to take into account that it switches to an HDR setting by default. However, this means that the contrast and brightness leave something to be desired. Disabling HDR is the only logical option for office work.

The most convenient thing is that, if your laptop supports it, you can connect it with 1 (Thunderbolt) cable and it can both use the built-in USB HUB, charge your laptop and send the video signal all over that same (Thunderbolt) cable.

Another tip, buy a monitor arm immediately, because the supplied foot just takes up too much space on your desk, keep in mind that it is a serious boy, so I also bought one for the monitor arm myself. Can carry 18kg as the monitor itself weighs over 10kg.

Through the Reviewclub I was allowed to test this product for 4 weeks. After a few weeks I got a bit of a mixed opinion about this. The double opinion arises mainly on the practical level of the monitor. Technically speaking, this monitor is very high in quality.

The LG 34WN750 is without a doubt a fantastic monitor, with a very fine resolution. The 3440x1440 resolution gives you so much more options in organizing your screen than 1920x1080/1920x1200 or lower.
The so-called IPS glow is situationally present, as is almost always the case with an IPS panel, but I have not yet been able to find it without explicitly looking for it by, among other things, turning off the light and turning off very dark scenes. to choose. All in all, a solid IPS panel. The HDR options of the screen give you color reproductions that you say to you. Rarely seen so beautiful on a PC monitor.

In terms of ease of use, there is also an intuitive OSD that you can easily operate with the joystick at the bottom center of the screen. Pros for that, I can sometimes get annoyed with poorly designed OSDs. LG has done well in that regard. In all technical areas, this monitor is an absolute must.

However, where the conflict begins with this monitor has to do with how this screen is used practically. In certain situations this is not necessarily fantastic and I have 1 point of criticism of LG and 1 point of criticism of the use of UltraWideScreen.

Point 1. If you work with multiple inputs (think of a work PC and a personal PC or a laptop for work and a PC for pleasure) your monitors will have to switch inputs. Normally not a problem as most monitors can do this automatically. However, this basic functionality is missing on the LG34WN750. Because of this you will manually change my input from HDMI -> Displayport every time. However useful LG's OSD is, it remains an annoying point of criticism.

Point 2. Multitasking on an ultrawidescreen is a step backwards compared to multitasking on multiple monitors. Especially when you consider that the bezel is almost absent on modern monitors, you can multitask a lot easier and more pleasantly with 2 monitors than on a widescreen monitor. A simple double click to a full screen browser is often undesirable on a monitor of more than 80 cm wide. If you have 2 videos that you want to play at the same time, you can't fullscreen either one. (known situation at my house: live football match without sound on 1 screen, film/series/youtube/twitch on another screen). It will be a bit of fiddling if you want to multitask this on a widescreen monitor. Something that you have a lot less trouble with with multiple monitors.

Technically a fantastic monitor and without a doubt one of the better monitors out there. In that regard, highly recommended.
However, if you want this monitor to replace 2 other monitors, it is not recommended because it works a lot less fine than 2 separate monitors. If you also work with 2 different devices on this screen, such as 2 PCs or a PC and a laptop, the fact that there is no automatic switching is an important point of criticism.

This monitor replaces 2 old monitors that I used side-by-side. Although the total number of pixels horizontally is slightly lower than the sum of the two old monitors, this works more pleasantly in practice.
The screen works right out of the box. But LG recommends its own video driver and special management software. Installing it gave me a complete crash of Windows-11: system would not boot anymore. The monitor works fine without that driver and software. So careful with that,