Short impressions of the Lenovo G34W-10

Soldato
Joined
10 Oct 2012
Posts
4,415
Location
Denmark
Just my own 2 cents on this monitor as I picked it up a few days ago.

  1. Build quality was okay, with some minor grievances like lower front panel not being 100% in place.

  2. Minimal Freesync brightness flicker, only just noticeable during some loads screen and only very faint. The monitor was in DP 1.4 state using a high quality 1.4 DP cable from DeLock.

  3. Pixel response was a mixed bag. Brighter colors were fast but if you had a mix of dark and purple(Path of exile's prison layout for example, but also stuff like green dark trees on a bright background like in Warzone) everything fell down the drain, and vaseline was covering your screen all of a sudden :(. This was tested with overdrive off, normal and extreme.

  4. Colors were not that impressive. The panel initially registered as only a 6-bit panel unless I installed the Lenovo ICC profile. Installing the driver itself is PITA as it has no driver signature causing windows to freak. After ICC and driver were installed, 10-bit was available but it didn't look 10-bit. Actually I didn't notice much improvement if any at all using over the pre-driver 6-bit mode. Compared to the Dell S3220DGF this panel is absolute trash. Didn't look any different either in 8-bit mode so something wonky is going on with this monitor and my Vega 64.

  5. The overall viewing pleasure wasn't there. I don't know if it's the backlight or what it was but my eyes would tire super quick even at lowest brightness when looking at this screen, unlike the last VA the Dell S3220DGF which I could look at for hours with no issues. It felt like the current TN I'm looking at right now.

  6. Input lag felt rather tight on the panel and wasn't an issue.

  7. My sample had a dark marking like a brush in the lower right corner, a sort of panel defect I haven't seen before. You could see content through it but it was annoying.

  8. OSD is cumbersome, annoying, and slow to navigate. Which is not the worst offender if the rest didn't **** so bad either.
Overall I'm NOT impressed, to say the least with this monitor. So I've already dropped it off the day after I got it at the retail store for a refund. It is that bad. Normally I keep a screen at least a week to run it through its paces. I've been through a ton of VA monitors lately and they been dreadful so I'm done with them now. There is no chance I'm gonna find what I'm looking for with a VA panel. Which is a sad cause some of them like the Dell S3220DGF are absolutely stunning looking displays while doing alright in the motion handling department considering they are VA panels!
 
Associate
Joined
6 Sep 2020
Posts
92
Thank ypu for this review.
Are thete other users sharing the same about this monitor priced betwwen iiyama, aoc, gigabyte and msi, lg ?
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
6,669
I've just bought this and pretty happy with it, although I agree it's not perfect, but I guess at the price point, I wasn't expecting perfection.

DISCLAIMER - I also got £100 paid for by my employer for COVID working from home allowance, so that also affects my review as the monitor was effectively cheaper!

Previous monitor was a LG 29UC88 29 2560 x 1080 60 Hz (IPS).

I bought this one because I wanted physically larger and higher refresh rate.

I actually wanted to stay with 2560 x 1080 (due to driving it from a laptop, albeit with an RTX-2060) but I like high frame rates, so I'll probably have to drop the details down in some games. However, finding a monitor that's in stock, large, 100 Hz+ and only 1080p is a challenge.

I ran through both Windows Calibrate Display (to set the gamma) and the Lagom LCD calibration online.

1) Set gamma through Windows to achieve ~2.2 on the Lagom gamma screen.
2) Set monitor brightness & contrast to achieve the best settings on both the Windows and Lagom LCD black level and white saturation tests.

This gave me the following:

  • Brightness = 100
  • Contrast = 80
  • DCR = Off
  • Game Mode = Off
  • Overdrive = Extreme
  • Freesync = On
  • MPRT = Off
  • Saturation = 60 (this screws up the Lagom gamma test, so I did this last)
  • Dark Boost = Off
  • Preset Mode = sRGB
The Good

It's big and bright and quite a good-looking monitor (in my eyes).
After calibration, I can see every black and white level on Lagom. (Setting the gamma in Windows really helped with this).

The Not-so-good

The screen is slightly more reflective than I would like (it's more matte than gloss, but still a little glossy).
The OSD / menu system isn't great, but then I only use it for setting things up.
Only 1 x HDMI and 1 x DP input
There is some "colour-banding" clearly visible on large areas of a single light colour, presumably due to the fact it's a VA, not an IPS. I can definitely tell the difference between this and my old monitor.

The Bad

Nothing as far as I'm concerned, but others might rate some of the points above as bad.

I can only run it @ 100 Hz so far because my laptop only wants to provide HDMI - I can't get the USB-C working (I'm not 100% certain my laptop can do DP over USB-C, or if it can, it may only be 1.2 anyway and therefore not have the bandwidth for 3440x1440 @ 144 Hz).

But generally speaking, I'm happy with it and games @ 100 Hz are beautiful, as is general Windows stuff like moving the mouse cursor and scrolling documents / websites etc.
 
Associate
Joined
7 Sep 2012
Posts
956
Location
Lancashire, England
I've just bought this and pretty happy with it, although I agree it's not perfect, but I guess at the price point, I wasn't expecting perfection.

DISCLAIMER - I also got £100 paid for by my employer for COVID working from home allowance, so that also affects my review as the monitor was effectively cheaper!

Previous monitor was a LG 29UC88 29 2560 x 1080 60 Hz (IPS).

I bought this one because I wanted physically larger and higher refresh rate.

I actually wanted to stay with 2560 x 1080 (due to driving it from a laptop, albeit with an RTX-2060) but I like high frame rates, so I'll probably have to drop the details down in some games. However, finding a monitor that's in stock, large, 100 Hz+ and only 1080p is a challenge.

I ran through both Windows Calibrate Display (to set the gamma) and the Lagom LCD calibration online.

1) Set gamma through Windows to achieve ~2.2 on the Lagom gamma screen.
2) Set monitor brightness & contrast to achieve the best settings on both the Windows and Lagom LCD black level and white saturation tests.

This gave me the following:

  • Brightness = 100
  • Contrast = 80
  • DCR = Off
  • Game Mode = Off
  • Overdrive = Extreme
  • Freesync = On
  • MPRT = Off
  • Saturation = 60 (this screws up the Lagom gamma test, so I did this last)
  • Dark Boost = Off
  • Preset Mode = sRGB
The Good

It's big and bright and quite a good-looking monitor (in my eyes).
After calibration, I can see every black and white level on Lagom. (Setting the gamma in Windows really helped with this).

The Not-so-good

The screen is slightly more reflective than I would like (it's more matte than gloss, but still a little glossy).
The OSD / menu system isn't great, but then I only use it for setting things up.
Only 1 x HDMI and 1 x DP input
There is some "colour-banding" clearly visible on large areas of a single light colour, presumably due to the fact it's a VA, not an IPS. I can definitely tell the difference between this and my old monitor.

The Bad

Nothing as far as I'm concerned, but others might rate some of the points above as bad.

I can only run it @ 100 Hz so far because my laptop only wants to provide HDMI - I can't get the USB-C working (I'm not 100% certain my laptop can do DP over USB-C, or if it can, it may only be 1.2 anyway and therefore not have the bandwidth for 3440x1440 @ 144 Hz).

But generally speaking, I'm happy with it and games @ 100 Hz are beautiful, as is general Windows stuff like moving the mouse cursor and scrolling documents / websites etc.

Have you tried gaming with it at those settings? My eyes would melt if I had the brightness at 100 in my LG screen! I've not come across any monitor yet that looks good with the overdrive on max setting with fast paced games.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
6,669
Have you tried gaming with it at those settings? My eyes would melt if I had the brightness at 100 in my LG screen! I've not come across any monitor yet that looks good with the overdrive on max setting with fast paced games.

I went with max overdrive because 1) that was what another user reported online and 2) my tests on https://www.testufo.com/ghosting confirmed their opinion - i.e. that min/max wasn't much difference, but max got rid of some of the ghosting.

I fired up Doom Eternal and it looks wonderful to my eyes.

It's really only big areas of light colours that I can tell the difference between this and my previous IPS panel.

In games, the rapidity of movement and variation in contrast mean that the refresh rate is far more important.
 
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