Martin Ivanov

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LG 5k2k 34WK95U-W - the best editing/productivity monitor!? - REVIEW

Martin Ivanov

When it comes to monitors for editing and productivity what you get can make all the difference and of course, the best always can hit you hard on the pocket. The LG 34WK95U is definitely in the high price range when it comes to monitors, but its uniqueness might be exactly what you need.

Specs

PICTURE QUALITY

  • Resolution - 5120 x 2160

  • Panel Type - Nano IPS

  • Aspect Ratio - 21:9

  • Brightness - 450 (Typ), 360 (min) cd/m2

  • Color Gamut - DCI-P3 98% (Typ)

  • Response Time - 5ms

  • Contrast Ratio (DFC) - 1200:1 (Typ)

  • Viewing Angle - 178/178 (CR≥10)

INPUTS/OUTPUTS

  • Headphone Out - Yes

  • Display Port - Yes

  • USB-C - Yes (Supported thru TBT3 port)

  • USB Up-Stream (ver 3.0) - Yes x 1

  • USB Down-Stream (ver 3.0) - Yes x 2

  • ThunderBolt - Thunderbolt 3

  • HDMI - Yes x 2

Design

The design is cool and minimalistic with a pinch of an apple feel. A cool gray stand with an arch bottom (that fits perfectly with a Logitech Craft keyboard) holds this big monitor. I know it is not the biggest on the market but the stuff that is packed in it makes it a bit heavy, so having this cool minimalistic stand being able to handle it is great.

The rest you see is just the screen. The bottom bezel is a bit larger than the side and top ones, but to be honest, it doesn’t make much a difference and they are not noticeable at all when compared to the huge screen real estate available to capture your gaze.

All the ports are neatly tucked behind and when combined with the cable holder you can manage to hide most of your cables behind the stand.

There is a single control button that is hidden below the monitor in the center and it is really easy to reach.

I would have liked to see some customizable lights in the back, but maybe they ran out of space, so there are none. I do have to mention that they managed to hide in some amazing speakers and in my experience the best ones I’ve heard that were built-in in a monitor. Usually, I hate the sound quality from built-in speakers, but I find myself often using them when my BT headphones run out of battery.

Features

This monitor comes packed with a tone of features for maximizing your productivity.

  • Screen split - you can either do it with the HW controls or you can use quickly installed software on your computer provided by LG that enables you to split the screen in up to 6 SW defined mini-monitors - that means when you place a program over the are it will resize and snap to the chosen layout. Even cooler is that you can resize your splits manually by dragging the end of the open windows (check out the youtube video I’ve demonstrated how it actually works)

  • Auto picture control - it is no longer cool to have just auto-brightness, now you can set the picture mode for different applications. For example, you can set sRGB for Photoshop but rec709 for premier, or cinematic for chrome if you are watching Netflix.

  • Multi PC work - one of the features that actually blew my mind away was the multi PC work. I have a laptop and a home PC and I am able to split my monitor in half and have them both running at the same time. With a keyboard and mouse set like the Logitech Craft and MX-5 mouse switching is super easy - with the mouse it is literally just dragging the pointer from one PC to the other when you have the special Logitech software installed.

  • USB upstream - this means you can use your monitor as a USB hub and have to get long usb extender cables. This also means you can update the monitor firmware directly from your PC.

  • Calibration SW - the monitor comes with 2 available presents if you want to create custom calibration profiles, as well as with software for calibrating (you just need to rent out the HW), but to be honest the sRGB and REC709 modes are pretty damn accurate straight out of the box.

Problems and Limitations

When it comes to issues and problems within this price range you don’t expect to have too many and the LG 5k2k does not disappoint. Although in the past due to the resolution there were issues with non supported GPUs, many of them are already fixed either by the GPU manufacturers or with firmware updates of the monitor. Here are the only issues I found so far:

  • Multi PC mode - one is always over HDMI - this is a bit nitpicking, but when using two PCs with the split-screen option one must always by over HDMI, you can’t use two display ports or display port and thunderbolt together. This of course is solved by just having two cables coming from your PC as the PC GPUs unlike laptops usually have a couple of ports that you can use. Just a note here if you are wondering why not use HDMI only even when using just a single PC - the answer is simple you can’t get the full-res over HDMI.

  • Just one USB upstream - even if you have connected the additional USB cable and the thunderbolt you can use only one at a time, there is no auto switch option and it is a bit annoying

  • Not a gaming monitor - personally for me this is not the issue as the main intention is to be a working monitor, I do play occasionally some games, but I am used to, from my PS4 and TV, playing at 60fps. Also, most of the games I play on the PC do not require a higher frame rate.

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Should you buy this monitor?

Finally, let’s talk about who is this monitor for. If you find yourself doing any of the following a lot you will definitely benefit from owning this monitor:

  • Editing videos

  • Editing photos

  • Working with big excel sheets

  • Monitoring stock/crypto markets in multiple windows

You can order yours here:

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