Samsung Odyssey G5 C34G55T Review

Update 02/9/2022: Unfortunately, this monitor flickers in dark scenes when G-SYNC is enabled, and the frame rate drops. You won't notice this if your computer can maintain a high refresh rate, but if the frame rate decreases, it's distracting with some scenes.

The Samsung G5 34 has a high 165Hz refresh rate with native FreeSync support, and it's also G-SYNC compatible. However, we ran into some issues with the refresh rate and VRR. If you set your PC's refresh rate to 60Hz and enable FreeSync in the monitor's OSD, VRR doesn't work properly, and there's screen tearing throughout. However, if you set both the monitor's and PC's settings to 165Hz, there aren't any VRR issues throughout the entire refresh rate range.

Also, if you set the monitor's refresh rate to 120Hz, there aren't any issues with VRR. However, if you set it to 100Hz, VRR only works between 60-100Hz. The max refresh rate over HDMI is 100Hz, and FreeSync doesn't work at all over HDMI; we confirmed with our Xbox Series X, and it showed VRR as incompatible with the monitor.

Another anomaly that we encountered is when turning off FreeSync in the OSD, G-SYNC was still enabled in the NVIDIA Control Panel. Normally, if FreeSync is enabled in the OSD, we don't have access to the response time and refresh rate settings on the monitor, but with G-SYNC enabled in the Control Panel, we had access to those settings on the monitor. We also confirmed that G-SYNC works properly, but once we enabled FreeSync and disabled it again, G-SYNC was also disabled in the Control Panel.

Essentially, if you plan on using VRR, make sure your refresh rate setting on the monitor is 120 or 165Hz; otherwise, it won't work properly. If you have this monitor and experience the same issues, let us know.