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Below, we'll get into everything you need to know about buying a curved display. Look for a breakout of our top tested picks, followed by a buyer's guide and detailed specs on our choices. Let's dig in.
The experience of using a curved display is often described as immersive. It draws you into the scene, lending a feeling of dimensionality that you don't get with a flat panel. Many recent ultrawide monitors, including all the 49-inch gaming and business monitors we've reviewed, are curved, which gives the user a wider field of view with minimal distortion at the edges.
In recent years, curved monitors have gone from being rarities to familiar sights. They tend to be panels for gaming and professional design and content-creation applications, but some general-purpose home and business monitors have adopted a curved design, too. And while they're certainly ultramodern-looking, their appeal goes beyond mere appearance.
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
4.5 Outstanding
The HP E45c G5 DQHD Curved Monitor ($1,099), a 45-inch business-centric ultrawide monitor, makes a good substitute for two individual QHD monitors while retaining some of the benefits of multiple monitors via unique virtual dual-display and KVM features. Its image is bright, with full sRGB color coverage. The E45c has good ergonomics for an ultrawide, too, and a range of connection choices that you'd expect from a separate laptop docking station.
The HP E45c G5 is a great fit for either a traditional office setting or a home office. Its super-ultrawide 32:9 screen renders a very bright, color-accurate image with good contrast. Its stand provides as much ergonomic flexibility as you can expect from such a wide monitor. The E45c's screen isn't quite as wide as the more common 49-inch monitors we have reviewed, but its size is more manageable, particularly for home offices or other tight spaces.
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$1,099.00 HP
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HP E45c G5 DQHD Curved Monitor Review
4.0 Excellent
The LG 49WL95C-W’s vast screen area and good resolution for its size makes it ideal for professionals who need to keep multiple application windows open at once. Its image quality proved good for text, photos, and video. Connectors include two HDMI 2.0 ports, four downstream USB 3.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4 port, and a USB-C port; the latter supports DisplayPort Over USB-C as well as USB Power Delivery, letting you charge a laptop or other device. Thanks to its powerful speaker system, if you want to watch video or crank up the tunes, you can do so without headphones or attached speakers.
A primarily productivity-centered 49-inch monitor with some entertainment chops, the LG 49WL95C-W is a multitasker's dream panel. It’s a good investment if you're working with jumbo spreadsheets, monitoring market feeds, or want to see your email, a main working window, and your social media activity at the same time. The giant LG doesn't come cheap, but you do get a lot—both feature-wise and in terms of sheer screen—for the money.
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$996.99 Amazon
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LG 49WL95C-W Review
4.5 Outstanding
The slim, feature-rich Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 is a feast for the eyes and the 32:9 aspect-ratio curved monitor to beat for immersive PC gaming. Its slim, sleek frame, paired with a gorgeous OLED panel, means that this 49-inch curved monitor is sure to impress even the staunchest of ultrawide naysayers. The OLED G9 has exceptional color accuracy and color-gamut coverage for a gaming monitor, not to mention the magnificent contrast that we’ve come to expect from an OLED screen. It is also a smart monitor, which means it has access to Samsung’s online gaming hub, as well as other media features you might see on Samsung TVs, including plenty of streaming apps. If money’s not an object and you need to go big and broad, the Odyssey OLED G9 is the one.
The Samsung Odyssey OLED G9’s rarified price puts it out of reach of most casual gamers; it’s geared to super ultrawide (32:9 aspect ratio) aficionados who are into as immersive a flight-sim or racing experience as they can get. Add in some OLED frosting, near-perfect color-gamut coverage and color accuracy, and high contrast ratio, and the recipe is perfect. Just be prepared to shell out some big bucks for this 49-inch curved behemoth.
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$1,399.99 Amazon
$1,399.99 Best Buy
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Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 Review
4.0 Excellent
The Dell 34 Curved USB-C Monitor (S3423DWC) delivers high contrast, a panoramic profile, great sRGB color coverage, and sensible port selection, making it a fine choice as a double-duty monitor for home-office multitasking and light gaming. It provides abundant screen space for arranging app windows, displaying wide spreadsheets, or running flight simulations or racing games. You can find better bets if you need a monitor strictly for productivity or strictly for games, but the S3423DWC's bright, colorful image and superior contrast provide a satisfactory experience in both venues.
Dell's 34 Curved USB-C Monitor fits equally well in a family room, home office, or den. If you'd like a curved ultrawide screen for both work and after-hours gaming, it's a winner.
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$574.99 Dell
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Dell 34 Curved USB-C Monitor (S3423DWC) Review
4.5 Outstanding
The MSI MEG 342C QD-OLED has a gorgeous QD-OLED display, 175Hz refresh rate, and HDMI 2.1 ports. It's a perfect fit for console and PC gaming, and the gently curved ultrawide panel's Quantum Dot OLED technology provides magnificent contrast and excellent color coverage and accuracy. And to sweeten the deal, the monitor retails for $999—solid pricing for an OLED of this quality.
The MSI MEG 342C QD-OLED is a good choice for gamers looking to join the OLED generation without going broke. In our tests, the monitor showed excellent picture quality in both HDR and SDR modes, with wonderful color coverage—effectively covering the full sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color spaces—and low input lag. MSI might not be the first name to come to mind when shopping for an ultrawide curved OLED screen, but this monitor is one of the best.
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$999.99 Amazon
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MSI MEG 342C QD-OLED Review
4.0 Excellent
Twenty-four inches is small for a curved monitor, but its compact size keeps the price of Samsung's CF396 Curved LED Monitor down. It's limited to full HD (1080p) resolution and doesn't have a slew of ports, but it's bright for a budget monitor and has excellent sRGB color coverage. Its gently curved screen and mini-joystick controller are uncommon among panels of its price.
The CF396 is a good fit for users looking for a bright, versatile monitor at an affordable price. This Samsung screen would be at home in a home office, a study, a living room, or a game room. It provides some convenience features usually limited to costlier displays and is a good choice for video viewing and light photo editing as well as general office work.
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$129.99 Amazon
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Samsung 24-Inch CF396 Curved LED Monitor Review
4.0 Excellent
The Dell 27 (S2721HGF) is a surprisingly high-quality curved gaming display at a modest price. It offers stellar 1080p gaming performance at a 144Hz refresh rate, supporting both Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync. Its contrast isn't outstanding, but you'd be hard pressed to find any gaming monitor with better contrast in this price range. Its colors are balanced and natural, its motion is smooth, and its input lag is extremely low. It ticks all the boxes for a satisfying and very affordable gaming monitor.
The Dell 27 Curved Gaming Monitor gives wallet-conscious gamers a solid midsize screen plus an immersive curve as a bonus. It's not the fanciest, but it's a fine choice.
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$199.99 Dell
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Dell 27 Curved Gaming Monitor (S2721HGF) Review
4.0 Excellent
NZXT's first foray into the monitor market, the Canvas 32Q Curved, is capable and affordable enough to earn high marks as a budget gaming display. It combines a 1500R curvature with QHD (1440p) resolution, a 165Hz refresh rate, and low input lag. The display supports both AMD's FreeSync Premium and Nvidia's G-Sync, added bonuses for playing at frame rates above 60fps with a compatible graphics card. It provides full sRGB color coverage (though its color accuracy isn't the greatest) and an excellent contrast ratio. Fast-paced games looked great in our testing, without any ghosting to speak of.
Gamers on tight budgets will appreciate the NZXT Canvas 32Q Curved for its appealing design as well as its solid performance, capped by minuscule input lag. It strikes a good balance among performance, visual clarity, and affordability, and it looks good to boot. If you're hunting for a gaming display with a subtle curve and high 1440p refresh rate, it's well worth checking out.
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$339.99 NZXT
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NZXT Canvas 32Q Curved Review
4.0 Excellent
The curved, ultrawide Asus ProArt PA34VC is a top choice among professional monitors for photographers, videographers, and other creative pros. Features such as a 100Hz refresh rate and support for AMD's FreeSync adaptive-sync technology will appeal to game designers and make it suitable for dual duty for artistic workers who enjoy some light gaming after hours. The ProArt is bright with HDR enabled, offers excellent contrast, and covers the full sRGB color space.
Creative professionals and digital content mavens will find the Asus ProArt PA34VC Professional Curved Monitor a cool, sprawling display with a classy 1900R curvature and ultrawide aspect ratio. It combines first-class color accuracy with a brisk 100Hz refresh rate.
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$726.99 Amazon
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Asus ProArt PA34VC Professional Curved Monitor Review
4.0 Excellent
A massive, magnificent gaming display, the 57-inch Samsung Odyssey Neo G9's 7,680-by-2,160-pixel resolution gets you halfway to a true 8K picture. A litany of ports, including a cutting-edge DisplayPort 2.1 jack, makes the monitor a productivity powerhouse, but it's truly meant to maximize your gaming experience. Its vast, immersive curved screen is a sight to behold—it's remarkably bright, with exceptional color coverage out of the box. The only downside to this bleeding-edge monitor is that it requires bleeding-edge tech to go along with it. You must ensure your GPU utilizes the new DisplayPort 2.1 version to experience the full breadth of what this mega-monitor can do.
While multitaskers, flight-sim fanatics, and other big-screen customers might covet the Odyssey Neo G9, its whopping price restricts it to the realm of well-heeled gaming enthusiasts who have the proper gear to take full control of this monitor's power.
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$1,276.62 Amazon
$2,499.99 Samsung
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Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 ReviewBuying Guide: The Best Curved Monitors for 2023
Not all curved monitors have the same amount of curve. General-purpose displays typically have a gentle curvature, while gaming and ultrawide productivity monitors tend to be more tightly curved.
As it turns out, the degree of curvature is a measurable stat. Many curved monitors have what's dubbed 1800R curvature, while more sharply curved ones have curvatures as tight as 800R. An 1800R curvature means that if you were to place enough of these monitors side by side to form a circle, its radius would be 1,800mm (1.8 meters or 5.9 feet). If you were positioned that far from the screen, the center, the right edge, and the left edge all would be equidistant from your eyes.
(Credit: Molly Flores)
Few viewers would normally be that far from the screen, except perhaps when watching movies in a group. When you do move closer, especially with a large ultrawide monitor, the curve makes for a panoramic experience as the screen's edges almost seem to wrap partway around you. This creates a three-dimensional, immersive effect and is often said to reduce eyestrain.
Curved monitors tend to be big. The smallest we've seen is 24 inches (measured diagonally); most are 27 inches or larger, with clusters at 30, 34, 35, and 49 inches.
Often curved monitors are also ultrawide panels, defined by having 21:9 or 32:9 aspect ratios instead of the 16:9 horizontal-to-vertical ratio of most ordinary screens. Curved 21:9 displays tend to offer WQHD (3,440-by-1,440-pixel) native resolution, while 32:9 monitors—which include all the 49-inchers we've reviewed—have native resolutions of either 5,120 by 1,440 pixels or 3,840 by 1,080 pixels. The 32:9 displays, especially the larger ones, are sometimes referred to as "super ultrawide" panels.
As for ergonomics, height and tilt adjustment are common, swivel control less so (it's seldom seen on the really wide monitors), and pivot control—allowing you to rotate the monitor from landscape to portrait orientation and back—is basically nonexistent. For obvious reasons, a curved screen doesn't make sense in a vertical orientation.
The ports or connectors on these displays tend to face downward in back, which is less than ideal considering that most of these monitors are large, heavy, and unwieldy. It's a good idea to connect any cables you might ever want to use during the initial setup process.
(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)
Whether they're gaming, productivity, or professional monitors, curved displays commonly have at least one DisplayPort and at least one HDMI connector; an upstream USB port for connection to your computer (commonly USB-C in newer monitors) and several downstream USB ports for flash drives and other peripherals. Most add an audio-out jack for plugging in a headset or external speakers. Some have their own built-in speakers, but these vary widely in quality.
(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)
For making brightness, contrast, and other adjustments, the controls to navigate the onscreen display (OSD) are either four-way mini-joystick controllers or small buttons. The button control system is most often found on general-purpose curved monitors, while gaming and professional displays usually provide the mini joysticks. The latter are easier to use. (See how we test monitors.)
If you look beyond general-purpose use, you can lump curved monitors into three categories: for multitasking (productivity work with several application windows at once), for professional use, and for gaming.
With a large, curved productivity monitor, you can have several documents (or one gigantic spreadsheet) open at a time, viewing them with a minimum of eyestrain. A few monitor makers provide software to let you easily size, tile, and configure windows. You could even take this multitasking to another level by adding a second identical monitor for a dual-monitor setup.
That said, you'll want to look with care at the size of the bezels and the degree of curvature if you are considering pairing up more than one curved panel. Obviously, you'll need a big, wide desk with adequate depth or front-to-back clearance to allow for the curve to align across two displays. Also, monitors with thick side bezels could put a big black bar in the center of your sightline.
(Credit: Chris Stobing)
As for graphic designers, photographers, and other creative professionals, they could have several illustrations or photos open side-by-side on a curved monitor. This would provide more natural viewing angles than on a flat screen, so the artist could examine, say, three images at once without the outside ones appearing stretched.
(Credit: Chris Stobing)
Gamers get a more three-dimensional, immersive view with a curved monitor than a flat panel provides. Curved gaming displays are particularly good for racing games, flight simulators, and other games (particularly non-shooters) that provide panoramic views. One thing to note, however, is that some older games don't support the ultrawide aspect ratios typical of curved gaming panels.
Curved monitors aren't for everyone. They're a mixed bag for gamers, and they don't provide practical advantages at small to medium sizes. Apart from their aesthetic appeal, what sets curved displays apart from other computer monitors is that the edges of the screen face you, which isn't the case with a flat panel. This provides a more panoramic view with less distortion, which can be a boon to gamers, graphic artists, and multitaskers alike.
Now that you know the basics of curved displays, you're ready to dig into the details of some of our best-reviewed models. You can also find more information in our roundups of the best ultrawide monitors, gaming monitors, and 4K monitors we've tested. And below is a spec breakout of our curved favorites outlined above.
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