LG UltraGear 45GX950 review: the Rolls-Royce of gaming monitors

A couple of months ago, I spent a fortnight with the 39-inch LG GX9 monitor, and was suitably blown away by what a curved OLED panel on that scale can do.

So when LG came back to offer the flagship 45-inch version, which has some fancy smarts that smaller options don't match, I had to try it out.

This is the extreme end of luxury where gaming monitors are concerned, although the way I work from home means I did plenty of productivity on the 45GX950A, too.

Just how did this 45-inch behemoth hold up compared to its slightly smaller sibling? After two weeks of use for this review, I've been left me super impressed – although with many of the same reservations.

Price & Availability

When you're talking about a PC gaming device like the 45GX950A, there's point delaying the blow – its price isn't something to be overlooked. It retails at £1,899.99 here in the UK, or $1,999.99 in the US, and €1999 in the EU – which makes it pretty obviously a very luxury option.

It's available in all regions right now, and I have already seen some decent discounts knocking around (like £200 off from LG at the time of writing). Of course, even big price cuts still leave it as a hugely expensive choice compared to even one of the fanciest standard flat-screen monitors around.

Features & Design

LG's curved monitors have stood out from much of the competition for quite some time, because they're not as thin as many of the others (like Samsung's Odyssey ultrawides, for instance). LG uses the 21:9 aspect ratio to get a whole heap of height into the bargain, and the more I've become used to it, the more I'm persuaded by the choice.

You really do get a big chunk of screen real-estate back by adding that extra height, and so long as games give it the support it needs, it makes for a more immersive panel overall (the quality of which I'll discuss further down). In the case of the 45GX950A, this is paired with a massive native resolution of 5120x2160, hence the '5K2K' resolution badge.

That's a huge rarity, and can make for ultra-sharp display performance if you're hooking it up to a machine that can match it natively. Of course, I'm not sure what you'd be doing if not, since this is so obviously intended to be paired with a top-end gaming rig.

The monitor sits on a hexagonal base and has decent cable management potential thanks to some removable panels you can pin things behind – in fact, if you were committed to a minimalist desk (albeit with a gargantuan monitor), it'd be very doable with this.

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In terms of actual curvature, this sits at 800R, which defines its radius, meaning when you're 800mm away from it the perception is of a perfect circle.

It also means you'll need a decently deep desk to accommodate it. Frankly, the sheer size of the monitor means you're well into the territory of turning your head to look at its furthest corners on a regular desk setup like mine. Smaller desks, meanwhile, will look dwarfed by it.

The display's specs are worth listing, too; you get response times of 0.03ms, and the OLED panel boasts DisplayHDR True Black minimum brightness of 400nits and peak brightness of 1300 nits, meaning it can get really dark and inky but also very vibrant in brighter scenes.

Meanwhile, it should work with basically any system, boasting all of Nvidia G-Sync, VESA AdaptiveSync and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro.

The big ace up its sleeve, though, is something LG calls Dual-Mode. This lets you freely swap between two display modes.

The first has the monitor use its full resolution of 5120x2160 and offers a refresh rate of 165Hz, which is ideal for any immersive or single-player game. You can drop the resolution down to 2560x1080 at the same aspect ratio and get refresh rates up to 330Hz – perfect for competitive gaming and high-octane action.

This is a frankly brilliant option to have, giving you flexibility to swap as you like, and going from one to the other is easy using the included remote or a control nub on the back of the screen to go through its menus.

In terms of connectivity, you get two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort 2.1 and a USB-C with display and power delivery up to 90W. I'll be honest, I can't speak for everyone, but I'd really like at least one more HDMI port here; ideally two more for four in total.

This is obviously a PC-centric machine, and gaming on consoles means cropping the screen with black bars on either side, but it still looks great for that purpose and should be able to connect more than a couple at once at this price.

Performance & Display

Turning the 45GX950A on, it doesn't take as long as you'd think to adjust to having a huge 45-inch curved OLED a couple of feet from your face. Don't get me wrong, the first couple of days it might feel a little overwhelming, but once you start to use it for gaming, you'll soon see the light.

I played the whole of Silent Hill f on the display, and loved every minute of how the game looked – primarily because it's launched with native support for the right resolution. I'm lucky to have a PC with an Nvidia RTX GeForce 5070 Ti to call on, and at native resolution, I wasn't pushing close to the 165Hz cap, but the knowledge that I could swap modes to double that cap at any time was handy.

I also connected my PS5 Pro out of curiosity, and played some Marvel Rivals and Ready or Not with friends. As I've mentioned, this does involve accepting some black bars to crop the screen in, since no PS5 model supports ultrawide output, but once you get the right settings selected, this really isn't much of a downgrade. You can still use the console's 120fps mode for really smooth response, and the OLED looks great.

That OLED performance is rock-solid throughout, frankly, with all the vibrancy and deep colours that you'd expect. I don't really have a critical note to give it, although it's always worth mentioning that its energy efficiency is pretty terrible, which is no surprise given the size of the display in question.

The built-in speakers are impressively loud when cranked up, and the fact that you have easy volume control on an included remote makes them a useful crutch for when you don't fancy the full immersion of one of the best gaming headsets. That said, even on a monitor at this price, they're still not really as good as a standalone system – so I can see why Sony is making desktop speakers for the PS5.

LG UltraGear 45GX950A review: Verdict

I was suitably impressed when I tried the 39-inch version of the GX9 back in July, but it's safe to say that the 45-inch top-end monitor is basically the bees' knees.

Here you get not only the first '5K2K' resolution OLED on the market, but that all-important Dual Mode system – ensuring you can have it outputting as you like, when you like.

There's no way it can be considered an option for the masses, given its astronomical price tag, but I've never used a better curved OLED monitor, and don't expect to any time soon.

If you've got the budget for it, the LG 45GX950A is unbelievable – in the best of ways. There's no other curved monitor that can touch this.

Also consider

All of this shouldn't erase the fact that the 39-inch version of LG's UltraGear monitor is also really superb, and while it doesn't have all of the bleeding-edge features, it's a good chunk cheaper without compromising much on image quality. It's a great option at a step down.

Alternatively, the Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 is a high-end alternative from Samsung with its thinner, less tall aspect ratio, and has some superb features of its own to compare to LG's.