Background information
Monitors for Macs: do you need Apple’s pixel density?
by Samuel Buchmann
LG UltraGear GX9 review: widescreen gaming at its best
10/12/2025
Translation: Elicia Payne
Pictures: Samuel Buchmann
The 45-inch LG 45GX950A provides OLED quality on a massive screen with 5K2K resolution. The result? The best gaming monitor I’ve ever tested.
I’ve been waiting to do this monitor test for a long time. Longer than expected, in fact. The LG UltraGear OLED 45GX950A was, and still is, hard to get hold of. A sample wasn’t available either. Now I’ve finally been able to get my hands on one of these huge ultrawide OLEDs with high pixel density – and I’m thrilled.
The 45GX950A is unrivalled. Samsung won’t be producing a QD OLED equivalent. And unlike other WOLED panels, LG hasn’t sold it to the competition yet. No wonder, given the supply difficulties of its own model. The manufacturer specifications at a glance:
- Format: 44.5 inch, 21:9, 800R Curved
- Resolution: 5120 × 2160 pixels, 125 PPI
- Brightness: 270 nits (100 % APL), 1300 nits HDR peak
- Refresh rate: 165 Hz (330 Hz in 1080p mode)
- Response time: 0.03 ms (grey to grey)
- Colour space coverage: 100% sRGB, 99% DCI-P3
- Connectivity: USB-C; HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR10
- Adaptive Sync: G-SYNC compatible, FreeSync Premium Pro
The design is simple and unobtrusive, and the monitor feels solidly made. Because of its size, it wobbles a little if I bump into the table. Overall, the stability’s fine – just like the selection of connections. Mac users will be particularly pleased about the USB-C. LG has probably integrated DisplayPort 2.1 for marketing purposes. It’s only UHBR10 with 40 Gbps – less than HDMI 2.1 (48 Gbps). With Display Stream Compression (DSC), both are sufficient to transmit 5K2K resolution in 165 hertz.
Picture quality: bright, high-contrast, colour accurate
Heads up: what’s next is a deep dive into the subject matter. By carrying out measurements with professional tools from Portrait Display you can objectively classify image quality. If you’re not interested in the details and diagrams, you can read the short version and scroll to the «Gaming» section.
Here’s a summary of the key stats:
- Brightness: LG’s WOLED panel is brighter than previous generations. In particularly bright rooms, you can also activate an option for dynamic brightness.
- Contrast: The contrast is excellent and the black level is perfect, as is typical for OLEDs.
- Reflections: Matt coating reduces reflections well. The black levels on the WOLED panel also remain deep during the day, although not as deep as on WOLEDs with a glossy coating.
- Colours: The 45GX950A covers both SDR and HDR colour spaces very well. The colour accuracy is incredible.
- HDR: When «Peak Brightness» is set to «High», the maximum brightness is extremely high, but bright greyscales are too bright. If you switch this option off, the peak brightness drops, but the contrast curve is almost perfect. The colour rendering is very good.
Brightness and contrast: excellent for OLED
LG’s WOLED panel achieves a maximum full-screen brightness of 310 nits. This is a great value for OLED. Other testers have sometimes reported a measurement of 270 nits – I’m not quite sure why mine’s brighter. And I’m not talking of a press sample, but an end product from our warehouse. LG may have increased the maximum value via a firmware update.
In the standard settings, the peak brightness always remains the same regardless of the Average Picture Level (APL). If I set the «Peak Brightness» to «High», there are even 510 nits at up to 10 per cent APL. This is a great option for dynamic content such as games and movies in bright rooms. When I’m working, it tends to get on my nerves so I switch it off.
The panel on my monitor is evenly illuminated. I measure a maximum DeltaE of 1.5 between the centre and the edges of the picture. When I first switch it on, I notice strange vertical stripes in the picture. One run of the Pixel Cleaner removes them completely and they never appear again.
The HDR brightness also reaches a very good 1463 nits in the 2 per cent window – significantly more than the last WOLED generation, which was used in the Asus PG32UCDP, for example. What’s more, the brightness drops much less quickly as the APL increases. In the 10 per cent window, the 45GX950A still illuminates with almost 900 nits.
As is usual with OLED monitors, the contrast tends towards infinity – black is black. This is especially true for the 45GX950A in daylight. Unlike its QD OLED competitors, its WOLED panel has a polarisation filter that reduces reflections within the panel. With QD OLED monitors, such reflections turn black into a dark purple.
Colours and shades of grey: already accurate ex works
When I tested colours and grey tones, I was looking for the answers to the following three questions:
- Gamma and white balance: How accurately does the monitor display neutral grey tones?
- Colour space coverage: How many colours can the monitor display?
- Colour accuracy: How accurate is the monitor’s colour accuracy?
The grey tones of the 45GX950A are very well calibrated ex works. The monitor is most accurate in Gamma Mode 4. There, the gamma curve runs almost exactly along the target values. The white balance is also correct. And I think this result’s one of the best I’ve ever measured without additional calibration.
The 45GX950A covers the common SDR colour spaces very well:
- **sRGB: 127.1% (relative)/100% (absolute) (good = 100%) – the standard colour space for digital content. Most SDR images and videos are tuned to sRGB.
- **Adobe RGB: 95.1% (good = >90%) – an important colour space for editing images intended for printing.
The coverage of Adobe RGB isn’t quite as good as with QD OLED monitors, which reach 98 per cent. At 95.1 per cent, the 45GX950A isn’t the best option for professional prepress. However, as a gaming monitor, it doesn’t have to be.
LG has clearly designed the screen for the DCI-P3 colour space. There it’s extremely accurate in its native setting (maximum DeltaE of 0.9). As with all WideGamut monitors, sRGB content is too saturated under Windows (maximum DeltaE of 6.7). Manually switching to sRGB mode reduces the maximum DeltaE to 2.3.
HDR: bright or accurate, but not both
OLED monitors are well suited for HDR content. By switching off individual pixels, they can achieve precise demarcations between very bright and very dark content, such as explosions in a night scene. Even dark shades of grey are usually graded cleanly so that details remain visible in the shadows.
With «Peak Brightness» set to «Off», the 45GX950A is also perfectly tuned in HDR mode. The grey tone curve (EOTF) and the luminance curve run as they should. Yet, in this mode, the maximum brightness is only 765 nits – instead of 1463 with high peak brightness, at which even medium grey tones become too bright. So you have to choose between perfect gradations of mid tones and high brightness.
In terms of covering the HDR colour spaces, these are my recordings:
- DCI-P3: 98.6 % (good = >90 %) – the standard colour space for which HDR content is produced today
- BT.2020: 79.9% (good = >90%) – even larger colour space, which is being touted as the future. HDR10 or Dolby Vision use it in theory, but rarely make full use of it.
Coverage of the BT.2020 colour space is in the typical range for WOLED monitors at just under 75 per cent. Although it’s worse than QD OLED, this hardly matters in practice. Most content today is aligned with DCI-P3. This colour space is covered excellently by the 45GX950A at 99 per cent. The monitor also displays colours very accurately in HDR (average DeltaE of 1.7).
Gaming: an incredible experience
Gaming on the 45GX950A is simply awesome. The 21:9 format hits the sweet spot for me. It’s supported by almost all games and I feel more deeply immersed in game worlds than with a normal 16:9 monitor. At the same time, the screen’s not so high that I have to look up.
Unlike previous OLEDs in this format, the pixel density is finally right too: 125 ppi make the picture look crisp from a distance of around one metre. Mind you, you need a top graphics card for the full 5K2K resolution. Especially if you want to get the most out of the maximum possible 165 fps. Even if you don’t, the high refresh rate ensures a short reaction time and therefore low motion blur.
The LG 45GX950A has an additional trick up its sleeve with its «Dual Mode». It can also be operated as a 1080p monitor with 330 hertz – which is both good and bad. The advantage is that your graphics card doesn’t have to work as hard – despite the doubled maximum frame rate. The disadvantage is that lower resolution means a less detailed image. 1080p on 45 inches doesn’t look sharp; the pixel density drops to 61 ppi. Whether the additional clarity is worth it to you is a question of priorities.
I don’t like the aggressive curvature of the 800R so much. You’d have to have a distance of 80 centimetres for the best experience. But, with such a large screen, I prefer to sit further away. Thanks to the good viewing angles of OLED panels, I don’t notice a massive drop in image quality, but I would have preferred a gentle curvature such as 1800R. LG has announced a flexible, bendable version of the monitor, but this is likely to be more expensive.
By that I mean, even more expensive: the 45GX950A has no direct competition and it’s hard to get hold of. That’s why, even months after its release, it still costs a lot. The best alternatives are 32-inch 4K OLEDs, for example the ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG32UCWMG. They offer the same image quality and an even higher pixel density, but significantly less surface area. But they cost less than half as much as LG’s 45-inch model.
Office: good format for multitasking
Hardly anyone will buy this type of screen for the office. But if you work from home during the day and play games in the evening, the 45GX950A is perfect. On the 21:9 format, you can arrange two almost square windows next to each other. They’re a convenient size for websites or word-processing programs.
The pixel density of 125 ppi can’t keep up with smaller screens. At a normal viewing distance, however, the image sharpness is sufficient for me. I don’t even see any OLED colour fringes. With its high colour accuracy, the monitor’s also very suitable for image editing or video editing. The brightness also works. Fortunately, unlike earlier models, LG has done without an Auto Static Brightness Limiter (ASBL).
The 45GX950A works on both Windows and MacOS. With the latter, however, I have to set the user interface to «looks like 3840 × 1620» so that the scaling works. Since MacOS calculates an image in four times the resolution (7680 × 3240) and enlarges it twice, this eats up a little performance. With a modern MacBook, however, this isn’t a major issue.
The only disadvantage for office use is the risk of burn-in. After four weeks, I can’t see any signs of ghosting. But this isn’t a meaningful long-term test. The 45GX950A has active cooling to dissipate the heat. The fans are extremely quiet – I don’t notice them, even though I’m normally sensitive to noise. The monitor performs automatic pixel cleaning every time it’s switched off. Still, it’s probably not the best idea to display static image elements for hours on end.
In a nutshell
The new king of gaming
The LG 45GX950A offers a unique gaming experience. You won’t get OLED picture quality of this size and with this pixel density anywhere else. The brightness is also satisfyingly high and the colour accuracy is practically perfect. The frame rate of 165 hertz is sufficient for most purposes. Especially because your PC first has to calculate so many fps in 5K2K resolution. For AAA titles, you need a premium graphics card.
The 45GX950A is also aesthetically pleasing as an office monitor. It’s particularly suitable for image processing and video editing, but text also looks sharp enough from a distance of one metre. The only thing I find suboptimal is the aggressive 800R curvature. I also can’t comment on the burn-in risk. LG has tried to reduce it with an active and quiet cooling system. In the long term, a permanent display of static image elements such as logos and menu bars will most likely still lead to ghost images.
Overall, I can highly recommend the LG 45GX950A – if your desk’s big enough and you’re not put off by the price. Even months after the launch, the monitor’s still in short supply and expensive. At the same time, 32-inch 4K OLEDs have become relatively affordable and offer better value for money. If you’re not in a hurry, you could also wait for models with Tandem OLED. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2026 will show how soon this new generation of panels will make it into large monitors.
Pro
- Huge 21:9 screen
- Relatively high pixel density
- Very bright for OLED
- Excellent colour accuracy
- Deep black, even in daylight
Contra
- (Too) strong curvature
- Burn-in risk
- Expensive
Samuel Buchmann
Senior Editor
Samuel.Buchmann@digitecgalaxus.chMy fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.
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