LG 34WK650-W Review

With a ton of options in the market, finding a gaming monitor that suits your need might be a difficult task. If your budget is below $400, then you need to find the very best bang for your buck. In this LG 34WK650-W review, we are going to take a look at a gaming monitor that poses as a solid gaming monitor with a price tag of under $400.

The LG 34WK650-W is a 34″ widescreen IPS display with a resolution of 2560 x 1080 pixels. While this resolution is not QHD, it does improve on the full HD resolution. The widescreen aspect of this display is a nice addition to those who would like to use multiple windows stacked side by side. How good is this display in real life you ask? Let’s find out.

Design

The LG 34WK650-W is a gorgeous display that screams premium. When you first take a look at this monitor you can ignore the impeccable look of this display. Being a widescreen display, it is much wider than your regular monitors and comes with a native aspect ratio of 21:9.

The monitor has a matte black finish in the front and comes with white color on the back. One of the striking features of the monitors is the small bezels around the screen. When you have bezel this thin, the user has a much better viewing experience without any interruptions. Once you use this display, it will be hard to switch to a display with bigger bezels.

We have an arc stand that is made of aluminum. The stands in most monitors are sturdy but they lack features like height adjustment and pivoting. Here, the stand gives us pretty much any feature we’d expect in one. You can tilt the display front and back, swivel the display left and right, adjust the height of the display, and also pivot the monitor into a vertical one.

With a weight of 16.8 pounds, you can move the LG 34WK650-W freely without any issues. Though the monitor is wide, the arc stand takes a lot less space and as a result, you can fit this display on pretty much any computer table. Thanks to the stealthy black front, the monitor will adapt to your room without standing out.

The monitor comes with a pair of 5W speakers that are integrated into the monitor. The quality of the speakers is decent but nothing spectacular. It is fine for casual media consumption. The sound output is okay but you do get distortions at higher volumes. If you need a good sound experience, then you should get some dedicated speakers.

Specs and Features

The LG 34WK650-W comes with a 34″ display (IPS panel) with a full HD+ resolution of 2560 x 1080 pixels. This resolution is better than your usual full HD but falls short of QHD resolution. The monitor comes with a response time of 5ms and a refresh rate of 75Hz which is neat for gaming.

The monitor can get really bright at 300 nits. For a monitor that is under $300, we think that this is impressive. Even if you’re in a well-lit room, the monitor can get bright enough to give you good viewing experience. The LG 34WK650-W has a static contrast ratio of 1000:1. The contrast on the display is more than impressive and offers good colors with better vibrancy in more displays.

Having said those positives, there is a blatant negative peeking out from the display. The resolution of the display is not that great for the size, resulting in a pixel density that is not that great. With a 34″ display, an apt resolution would be 3440 x 1440 pixels. Or even a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels would have been better for this widescreen display. But this is not to say that this is a bad display. You can definitely enjoy media consumption and working on this monitor without any problems.

The gamma value for the display is around 2.2. This is not too shabby but you do lose some details in some situations. As you increase the brightness, the contrast ratio does go down. This is to be expected, but the value worsens when the HDR mode is enabled. There is a bluish hue on the display which brings an unnatural tint to the picture.

One of the best things about the LG 34WK650-W is that the monitor is well calibrated at the factory. You need to make very few changes to make this monitor truly yours. The AH-IPS panel supports 99% of sRGB color gamut and has a Delta E value of 2.0 which is more than just decent. The monitor covers only 75% of the DCI-P3 color gamut which acceptable at this price point.

A minor gripe with the LG 34WK650-W monitor is that you can’t meddle with the OSD when you turn into the HDR10 mode. The cool bluish tint is present and it does mess with the picture quality a bit. Some users might prefer this over a saturated, vibrant picture but it is not for all.

The panel uniformity of the display is also impressive. It is hard to find something like this in a monitor under $400. From the center, you don’t find deviances more than 7% to the sides. So there is no uneven distribution of color anywhere on the display.

The display also supports FreeSync which is excellent for gaming. The FreeSync range is about 75Hz which is very impressive. FreeSync improves the overall gaming experience by reducing motion blur and ghosting. Also, the average input lag is around 9ms which is way better than 11ms you find in most monitors in the same category.

Bottomline

The LG 34WK650-W is a well-made display from LG that ticks every checkbox a prospective monitor buyer would have. It comes with excellent specs that justify the pricing of the display. The widescreen is perfect for both work and play giving you more options. If you’re looking for an incredible display under $400, then the LG 34WK650-W surely fits the bill.