Has LG just built the ultimate gaming monitor?

LG's latest UltraGear gaming monitor promises incredible HDR on its super-sized, super-speedy screen

LG UltraGear 49GR85DC-B
(Image credit: LG)

The best gaming monitors and best curved gaming monitors have a new boss to beat. LG's new UltraGear 49GR85DC-B is an extremely large, extremely wide, extremely fast display that appears to tick all the right buttons – provided you can stretch to its $1,299 price tag. 

The new LG has just launched in the US, and while a UK launch is likely we don't have a date or a price just yet. But when it does make it over here it looks extremely tempting. This is a big display with an equally big specification.

The headline features here are the 49-inch panel with 1,000R curvature and a very wide 32:9 aspect ratio. The resolution is Dual QHD (5,120 x 1,440) and there's a 1ms response rate.

Does LG's new ultrawide gaming monitor have specs appeal?

According to LG, the 49GR85DC-B supports VESA DisplayHDR™ 1000 and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, with gaming-specific features including Dynamic Action Sync, Black Stabilizer, FPS Counter, and Crosshair. There's also a DTS Headphone:X jack for 3D audio in compatible headphones. 

The monitor's own software is OnScreen Control3, which offers both Picture in Picture and Picture by Picture as well as a selection of different GUIs such as FPS and RPS.

It's impressive stuff, but one acronym that's conspicuous by its absence from the spec sheet is this one: LCD. This is an LCD VA panel, which is a display tech you'll often find in much more budget offerings. If you're hankering for an OLED gaming monitor and you want an LG, you'll have to step down a size and look at gaming monitors with display sizes in the high thirties rather than, as her, the high forties.

US buyers can pre-order starting today at LG.com, and if you order before April 2 LG will throw in its $199 UltraGear gaming pad, an RGB-illuminated mouse pad, for free.

Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series. When she’s not scribbling, she’s the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR (havrmusic.com).