Alienware - 34 Curved Gaming Monitor – AW3425DWM

Yea I just ordered this one as well to replace a similarly priced Asus tuf monitor. The Asus tuf has terrible blacks and it looks worse than my Asus tuf ips 27in. So I’m hoping this works better. Otherwise I’m going to have to get one for twice the price.

The monitor is really good for the price. The colors are good and the blacks are deep as a good ips. Much better than asus tuf. The stand is really nice imo it allows full rotate and swivel etc.. just heads up the stand is actually a more purple blue tint to it not black, I didn't realize it in the photos but it looks good. The osd is amazing and has so many settings to tweak. The biggest downside for me personally was that it's VA and the smearing, while not noticeable to me in gaming was still noticeable during web browsing in dark mode with white text. I ended up returning it only because I found an older Asus ips 34in XG349C. And it doesn't exhibit the smearing issues. I got it for about $50 cheaper and it works for me. But If the ips was not an option, no doubt I would buy the AW again.

I tried the Asus and it had laughably bad blacks. Sitting next to my 27in Asus tuf IPS, it looked awful. I would go with the Samsung, haven’t tried it but it has to better than the Asus. I ended up trying the new Alienware 34in VA and it matches my ips with color and blacks which I’m most concerned about.

Ghosting and smearing is pretty non-existent as long as the response rate is set to Super Fast or the middle setting. I was genuinely impressed by how well this monitor performs. If you're not expecting OLED-level quality, you'll be more than satisfied. While playing games like *Resident Evil 4*, which features plenty of dark scenes, I didn’t notice any smearing, and the contrast looked significantly better compared to my IPS screen, which struggled with IPS glow in darker moments. I was expecting to return this monitor after trying it, but that's not the case. I am using the HDMI 2.1 Port and have my settings for picture set to Console Mode.

Playing RE4 has a lot of dark scenes, I noticed no smearing on the Very Fast response time. Extreme Response is a stupid setting for IPS and VA monitors as they always ghost or smear at that setting.

Yes, enabling Extreme response time leads to overshoot on nearly all non-OLED monitors. On my IPS panel, I’ve observed ghosting when using the Extreme response setting. Just don't use this setting.

If you're worried about black smearing, this monitor doesn't suffer it like the earlier VA panels. Playing RE4 which has a lot of dark scenes, I didn't notice any.

I ordered the AW3425DWM, it's pretty new and seems good for a 180hz monitor

For anyone wondering about this monitor, it's really great. The pictures of the AOC with the same panel don't do it justice. It's really great in person and I'd say the colors are more than 'decent' that the other poster stated, once setup properly. HDR is actually usable too. I initially couldn't cancel the order for this monitor and ordered the LG 38" IPS. I was initially struck by the huge size of the LG and was going to return the AW. However, I tried the AW one more time before returning it, and the contrast ratio is just so much better than the LG 38" IPS. The LG held its own at times, surprisingly, but the AW was just obviously better in some games/scenes. I also grew to like the size better, 34” is better for competitive FPS as 38" can be a bit too big to see everything at once. But the best thing about this is the VA panel. I previously had a 32" 1440p Dell VA which I thought was great, but this one is a lot better. Backlight bleed is almost non-existent, there is actually only a little in the top left corner which is annoying as the display would literally be perfect without it (no dead pixels, or other light bleed). \*\*Also the smoothness/responsiveness/lack of black-smearing is a HUGE upgrade over the Dell. I've adjusted to the higher PPI vs the 32" @ 1440p, and honestly this is a great size. I thought I couldn't go back down to the smaller size (since 34" is basically 27" but ultrawide), so was considering LG 38" IPS or 39" OLED, but as the former is IPS (low contrast) and has potential for other issues, and the OLED can burn in, this is by far the best option. I will admit I haven't tried more expensive VA monitors but I do have a Sony X90L TV with an excellent VA with local dimming, and this is almost as good if not better in color saturation. Update: Found some pretty serious image retention with this monitor while using HDMI from my work laptop, was pretty confused and wondered what was the point of going VA if this is goin to happen. Returned the monitor and went with the Alienware 32" 4K OLED.

Is the Alienware AW3425DWM available in your country? It has very little VA smearing, it's great.

Um, save up another $150 and get an AW3423DWF? If that's truly not an option, I highly recommend the Alienware AW3425DWM. You can find it on sale for under $400. I keep recommending it on all the monitor subs to the point that I got accused of shilling 😄. But for real, it's a great VA monitor with very little smearing. I'm confident once rtings finishes their review you're gonna hear a lot more about it.

Thanks! Think I'll pull the trigger on this one, like you I'm not ready for OLED just yet.

Hey, I also bought this monitor and while very vibrant, I keep messing with the settings as I felt it had a bit too much "cyan" in its saturation, if that makes sense, did you notice anything that you changed? Im unfortunately quite fussy about stuff like this. Got any settings you did on yours that you'd recommend

I bought mine a month, very happy with it.

Im using the new AW3425DWM with macbook for work during the day and with my Pc for gaming during the night. I’m not really an expert but absolutely love my setup.

Thanks for your detailed review man, I just narrowed it down to AW3425DWM and Dell S3425DW but I think I've decided to go for the alienware specifically for the following (my use case is mac mini & ps5, productivity, entertainment, video/photo/3d/music editing) * 180Hz > 120Hz * Curvature 1500 > 1800 * 10bits > 10 bits (8 bits + FRC) * 95% DCI P3 > sRGB 99% * HDR 10 + DisplayHDR 400 > HDR10 Both share most specs but these listed above are not necessarily deal breakers, they simply help make an easier comparison at the end of the day.

AW3425DWM is technically better but really only marginal in practice. For your specific use case, it won't make a meaningful difference so I would say the Dell S3425DW is the smarter choice for you. I'm not an expert by any means btw lol so here's the [comparison](https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/comparison/f890307aaa)

I bought this a week ago and I'm delighted with it. I work on it during the day and play CS2 competitively. It ticks all my boxes: \- No noticeable smear at a high refresh rate. Visibly faster overall response time than 144hz IPS. \- Decent colours and no grey blacks like IPS. \- The HDR is unexpectedly good (and noticeably better than SDR) hitting 430 nits Yes, you could get an OLED for over twice the cost. You'd get better "blacks", but text fringing, VRR flicker and burn-in anxiety. For some, you also have to put up with a steeper curve. The 1500r on this is only just doable, I absolutely wouldn't want it any more curved. This is the same panel as the aoc cu34g2xp. Look that up for reviews and they'll back up what I'm saying. I slapped a 16 inch portable monitor next to it in portrait for even more versatility, for again, a fraction of the cost of a super ultrawide.

This looks the same in terms of text clarity as an IPS with the same PPI (110). I wouldn't say the colours are quite as good for productivity if that bothers you, but after a bit of tweaking it's not far off. The curve would be the main thing to consider imo.

Yeah still no complaints and no desire to go back to IPS. Worth it for the better blacks and refresh rate I'd say. No KVM though. If you're working bear in mind the curve takes some getting used to..

Hi guys! Been a good experience using the monitor!!! For me the default color settings and calibration is great! Blacks are blacks! Good contrast! Images are Crisp and clear! Its a great monitor for the price! im coming from an Lg C4 oled tv/monitor:)

I just had this for a week and unfortunately decided to return it. The black smearing is too much for me. I play a lot of Path of Exile 1/2 which requires tracking text while the character is moving at a fairly constant speed. That seems to be the worst case scenario for black smearing as the text becomes hard to read and the background blurry enough to feel like most of the detail is gone. Also any game that has decently sharp visuals will seem to darken slightly when switching from being still to moving. In faster games it didn't seem as bad as in those the movement was fast enough to be a bit blurry regardless of panel tech. E.g. Atomfall looked generally good. I found that using Custom Color settings and offsetting each RGB component up a little (\~55, up from 50) helped with the smearing but made blacks a bit grey which does somewhat ruin the point of a VA monitor. Otherwise using it in sRGB mode seems to lead to the least amount of smearing but the colours are disappointingly washed out (sRGB on my old LG IPS looks a lot better). Unfortunately as far as I've seen there aren't really many alternatives for curved ultrawide with decent motion handling as nobody seems to produce IPSs in this form factor anymore and even if you can find one, it's double the price of this. Might give the HP Omen 34c a try as on the Rtings review it seems to have surprisingly good motion handling for a VA, though it does come at the cost of no USB ports whatsoever.

I've been using this for the past week with VRR and didn't personally notice any flicker. I did however notice too much black smearing and unfortunately made the hard decision to return it.

I have just set my AW up last night. Coming from an old LG ultrawide IPS display to this is world's apart. This is  my first really good monitor that I've bought. The blacks are actually black and it is incredibly vibrant. I could not be more happy with my purchase. HDR400 is really good too. It is well worth your money. The VA panel, yes viewing angles aren't perfect which is expected but, it really is not bad at all. Gone are the days where VA panels were horse shit. Current tech have these panels blasting you with all the colour's and clarity your eyeballs want even if you're not at the optimal viewing angle. We're all gamers for the most part... you're sitting dead on for sure so don't let the VA panel sway your decision. If you've been considering this monitor around this price bracket, stop thinking and comparing. You will be stoked with your purchase.

That's a bummer! the Extreme setting for response time is so bad but on Fast and Super Fast, I don't notice any smearing on my panel.

Yeah I just bit the bullet. Most reviewers or tech forums are focusing on the OLED monitor by AW. This one has ZERO bigger or well known tech tubers reviewing it. It is very new suppose.

Also, black smearing is not really an issue until you ramp it up to Very Fast or Extreme so stay away from that.. otherwise you don't notice it. All round, it is a fantastic monitor.

Thanks, I looked into this one. Ended up going with the new Alienware 34" (AW3425DWM). Seems like it checks all the boxes. Doesn't have native G-Sync but has Vesa Adaptive Sync.

Just received mine today. Can confirm, very good. You get all the benefits of a VA panel with deep blacks and vivid colors, without the ghosting or black smearing. Also no light bleed on my unit. When setting the response time to very fast or extreme, you do get ghosting, but no ghosting on fast. I think a very underrated feature that I love is the ability to create 4 shortcuts with the mini joystick underneath the screen. I have one of them set to HDR. So with the flick of the joystick, I can toggle HDR. I am coming from an AW3418DW (IPS) ultrawide and this is significantly better. I do miss the two additional USB ports on my old monitor. The only two USB ports on this monitor are directly on the bottom of the monitor, which can get pretty ugly if you use them, especially if you have it mounted and like that floating clean look. If you were on the fence, have confidence pulling the trigger. I believe the monitor is on a slight sale. Also Rakuten currently has 12% cash back at Dell. And if you have American Express, there are bonuses on some of those cards as well when shopping at Dell.

Still holding up very nice. Definitely pleased with it. Great monitor to hold me over for a few years until I'm ready to pull a trigger on OLED once they hopefully iron some things out. This would be an incredible upgrade over your existing monitor.

No issues at all. For me, the sharpness is pretty much identical to my 3440x1440 IPS. As far as I'm aware, it's the same standard pixel layout. Unlike the weird pixel layout of ultra wide OLEDs. I find the colors to be much more vibrant than my 2018 Alienware Ultrawide IPS. But that could vary based on how good the colors are on your current IPS. Playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on my old IPS looked pretty washed out, which was probably the catalyst for me to get a new monitor. I tried fidgeting with the Nvidia filter settings to no avail. Colors on Red Dead redemption 2 with this VA panel are super vibrant, and no need for me to mess with any of the NVIDIA filters. I never had an older VA panel, but from what I read online most people steered away from VA due to ghosting or smearing. I can tell you that as long as you are on the fast response time, NOT very fast or extreme, there is no ghosting on this monitor. And 4ms response time is more than good enough for me. Even when I play competitive shooters. Of note, even my 2018 IPS Alienware ultrawide had terrible ghosting when upping the response time to very fast or extreme. With all that being said, I do think that this newer VA panel gives you all the benefits of VA, without the negative of ghosting or smearing. Even while scrolling text. I also know that most people have issues with the viewing angle of VA, but as a computer monitor, I am sitting directly center of my monitor as I think most people are, so no issues there. The curvature of the monitor helps as well. Also of note for anybody interested, as long as you keep the brightness around 50%, you do get really deep blacks that start approaching OLED in my opinion. Anything above 50%, you are sacrificing deep blacks for a brighter screen. I personally play at 75% brightness which I feel gives me a nice middle ground between decently dark blacks and a brighter screen. This monitor can get very, very bright.

I bought one and it came with a death pixel on the top right corner, my other concern is if I should be worried about backlight bleeding or other defects, is a death pixel indicative of a bad panel? https://preview.redd.it/4h0cmvtc333f1.jpeg?width=4608&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24721dbd65b23541bf7370c485d39e5b62ca9259

I have this monitor, and I can set the sRGB gamut in the OSD(Brightness can be adjusted).I don't have any professional equipment, so I can't test the color accuracy.

I didn't notice any smearing(Default Settings)

Anyone else getting a feint vertical line in the centre of the screen, mostly visible on grey backgrounds? Please note, it could be very feint, so might need to look extra hard to spot it. 1st monitor I had, it seemed to become more obvious over time, new one is still too early to tell if its gonna get worse or not. I have had 2 brand new aw3425dw, both had this same defect. I decided to just keep it anyway, too much effort to rma again.

I had this monitor for approximately 1 week, excellent colors and no annoying messages to turn it off like MSI's OLEDs. No noisy fan issues also. Now i do must say that i use my monitor mainly at night or in not so bright environment and about 2 days ago I was free from work and turned it on during the day and I noticed a small defect in the gloss coating and now i can't seem to not notice it anymore. Requested an exchange via Amazon, which was approved, and now I'm waiting for it. Other than that I'm in love with this panel, shame mine came with that minimal defect.

I have the same monitor, what color settings did you change?

I believe so, I haven’t had a single complaint since installing it. I remember constantly looking for an upgrade when I had the 34” Alienware ultrawide. That went away with this LG monitor. I mean, triples would be the ultimate but I don’t have the space for that

I have both - Alienware 34 and LG 39 GS. For simracing LG with 800r curve is defintely the best. 39inch gives a bit wider fov too.

I currently have a LG 45gr95qe-b. Before this I was using Alienware 34" 1440p. I used to think 45" was too big for desktop but after using LG 45gr95qe-b. I realized 45 is infact the perfect spot for me. But 1440p resolution is too small. 800r also I thought it was too much curve but after using this one, It is infact the perfect curve. Unfortunately, you guys are not selling the new GX 5k2k in my country. So yeah, the sweetspot is infact, 45" 5k2k with 800r curve.

Also part of the Alienware 34” gang. Absolute great monitor, over a year of moderate use for games with stationary huds/maps and no burn in, plus as everyone else mentioned, comes with 3 year burn in protection from dell. I also always use the built in “cleaning/pixel refresh” at least once a day, whether it helps in the long run or not, we’ll find out I guess.

Agreed. Go with be qoled 34 inch Alienware UW

The G9 is the other monitor I was considering for a while, to be honest, alongside the AW34. I was close to caving in and getting the G9 over the LG5K2K, but that extra verticality you get is just perfect. I went from LG C3 42", and an AOC AGON PRO 45" to my current LG 52K2... The color definitely isn't as good, but I have managed to calibrate everything on my LG 5K2K to where I am perfectly happy with it.

You’re fine, I’ve had the 1440 LG 45 Ultragear and Alienware 1440 34. They both looked phenomenal, I really had no issue even w the 45, granted the text could have been better it didn’t bother me. Now on the LG 45 4K, it’s beautiful.

I almost feel like this is me. I had the aw34 and tried the 32 inch 4ks and they made me want the 5k2k. I have the 45 inch 5k2k as well and I love it but for me I really need this to be a 39 inch as it's the size that nothers me. I do love glossy as well.

I’ve got a 3070, personally using a AW34 and it’s perfect for it. If you don’t mind black bars when watching content i’d say go for that or Samsung G8

Thanks for this post I’m on the Alienware right now and was thinking about upgrading but I don’t think I care as much about screen size. 34” is plenty, so I’d rather have the fidelity increase with 4k and OLED as well. I’ll wait for a better monitor. I think a better middle ground would be like 38” 4k OLED maybe.

As someone who also has the AW34 and was seriously considering the 5k2k. This makes me rethink it. I love the glossy panel on the Alienware, and the colors are super vibrant. I hope Alienware releases an update to this monitor and bumps up the size/resolution. I’ve used mine since launch for 8hours a day and it still blows me away

You'll be good! I just did the same build a few weeks ago and have been loving it on a 34" Alienware 1440 ultrawide.

Lookup va black level smearing before you go with a VA panel. I'd recommend checking out a video of say the Dell 34 inch VA panel as that's basically what you will end up with. Specifically look up black level smearing on any VA panel you are browsing. If you go cheap it could be worse than that. If you can't stand the black level smearing an IPS should be midrange for the price. There are plenty of options at 144 Hz. If you can get one I'd say go for the LG 38 inch 1600 p monitor as that is my daily driver for 3 years. I actually own the Alienware one but it's the same panel just 144 Hz and I'm not sure how common Alienware is as a brand in Europe. Otherwise you can go with an OLED 34 inch but they are expensive. I'd guess easily $1000 Euros. Imo increase your budget a bit for your monitor of choice. It's gonna usually last you 5 years. So an extra $200 can go a long way for peace of mind.

It’s probably the difference between glossy and matte and the way the QD oled operates. I have the Dell/alienware too, it’s an incredible monitor especially when you correctly put the HDR in sRGB mode, surprisingly bright. Would love for them to make the exact same monitor in 5k2k