Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDN Review: An Ultrawide Powerhouse for Work and Play

The PG34WCDN’s claim to fame is that it is the first QD-OLED gaming monitor with RGB stripe technology. As Asus explains, "RGB stripe" refers to the subpixel layout of the display, which features red, green, and blue elements arranged side by side in a striped pattern rather than the classic triangular pattern. The vertical layout, called V-stripe, aims to reduce text fringing and artifacts by laying out the RGB layers vertically.

Both LG Display and Samsung use RGB stripe in some of their recent QD-OLED panels. The Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDN, as well as the wide-screen ROG Strix OLED XG34WCDMS, use Samsung panels with the V-stripe layout. LG panels achieve similar results by removing the white subpixel in their RGB layout, making the RGB-stripe subpixel arrangement red/blue/green/blue rather than the red/green/white/blue of previous-generation OLEDs. The LG panel variety is used in some other premium monitors, including Asus' sibling ROG Swift OLED PG32UCWM.

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If you've been keeping an eye on the fine points of PC monitor innovation, you might recall that Alienware debuted a similar technology in the AW3426DW: QD-OLED Penta Tandem. That's Samsung's latest generation of QD-OLED, built around a five-layer structure of light-emitting organic material. In addition to its RGB Stripe innovation, the PG34WCDN is a Tandem RGB QD-OLED display that also uses multiple light-emitting layers.

The benefits of a stacked display come through in a variety of different ways. One is reduced color fringing in text. (You might know it as the strange discoloration that can bleed through at the edges of text on older OLEDs.) Another is a boost in brightness, particularly HDR brightness. The PG34WCDN features DisplayHDR TrueBlack 500 certification and a rated peak HDR brightness of 1,300 nits.

The PG34WCDN measures 22.1 by 32 by 10.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 18.3 pounds with the stand included. Asus opts for an ergonomic, tripod-like stand over a flat, square one, something I personally don’t like but many gamers seem to. The monitor's overall design is identical to that of the Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM, with the PG34WCDN offering much more screen real estate.

One defining trait of Asus ROG products is that they are unashamed of their gaming roots—ROG does stand for "Republic of Gamers," after all. To that end, the monitor has RGB lighting all over, from the stand's spine to the ROG logo. I'm guessing that a lot of content creators and streamers will love the shimmering bling. I'm a fan of the monitor's special light that beams from the bottom of the stand onto your desk. It evokes an alien-abduction motif, adding an otherworldly quality to the monitor.

Turning to the back of the monitor, you’ll find two HDMI 2.1 and one DisplayPort 2.1 inputs, a USB Type-C port (supporting DisplayPort Alt mode), and an always-welcome headphone jack on one side, as well as three USB Type-A ports and a USB Type-B upstream port. The addition of DisplayPort 2.1 means a lot here, as it offers double the bandwidth of DisplayPort 1.4 (80Gbps versus 32.4Gbps). That lets you maintain higher resolutions and refresh rates without the compression that comes with DisplayPort 1.4, ultimately improving picture quality at the extremes.

Aside from that, the port hub offers a few other advantages over the Alienware AW3426DW. For example, the headphone jack (which the Alienware lacks) supports a wide variety of speakers and gaming headsets, and the USB-C port delivers 90 watts of power, a fair bit more than the Alienware AW3426DW’s 15 watts. 

The addition of DisplayPort 2.1, improved USB-C power delivery, and a headphone jack, without sacrificing any USB-A ports, makes the PG34WCDN particularly attractive to hard-core gamers with cutting-edge GPUs and lots of peripherals. The monitor also offers an integrated KVM, which allows you to connect two input sources and seamlessly control two devices with just one set of peripherals. You can switch between the two devices on-screen, or split the screen down the middle and display input from the two screens side by side (picture by picture), or in picture-in-picture mode.

Turning back to the screen, the ultrawide panel bends slightly, with a 1800R curvature. That number refers to 1,800mm, which is the radius of a circle formed by a hypothetical ring of these monitors placed edge to edge. It's curved but not too curved.

One thing I noticed while spending time with this monitor is the new BlackShield film, which Asus says helps boost perceived black levels by up to 40% in well-lit environments compared with previous-gen QD-OLED panels. Much of my playtime is spent in PC Labs, where I can test our monitors in different environs, including near glare-prone windows, so additions like this help keep serious glare from interfering with my playtime.

Another thing I like about the monitor is that it’s packed with functionality hard-core gamers are sure to appreciate. One such feature is aspect-ratio control. Gamers used to smaller screen sizes can adjust the monitor’s aspect ratio to 16:9 or 4:3. The monitor replicates 24.5-inch and 27-inch gaming monitors, letterboxing the sides of the on-screen image to help gamers focus on the center of the screen and reduce the periphery. (When dropping the viewable area to 24.5 inches, you can still enjoy a native 240Hz refresh rate.) It's also possible to stretch the image; that can make aiming easier because it expands the player models horizontally, helping players spot targets faster.

If privacy is a key concern for you, you'll appreciate the display's built-in proximity sensor. Located at the center of the monitor, the sensor detects your presence and automatically turns off the screen when you step away. This ensures privacy when you leave your computer and also helps prevent panel burn-in, as well as being a potent power-saving feature. You can tailor the sensor's activation distance to better suit your personal preference.

To take full advantage of the monitor's features, I recommend checking out the Asus Display Center, Asus's free proprietary software. It does a lot more than just letting you adjust monitor settings with your mouse, rather than flicking through the OSD menu with the monitor's joystick, which can sometimes be cumbersome.

The Display Center is required to enable the monitor's AI Visual mode. The monitor uses on-device hardware and software to analyze on-screen scenes and automatically apply the appropriate visual settings. In testing, it worked as intended: When I launched Total War: Three Kingdoms, the monitor switched to RTS visual mode. Then, when I jumped over to Counter-Strike 2, it automatically switched to the FPS visual mode.

One of Display Center's most (potentially!) intriguing features is Smart Voice Control, an AI language model you can ask to change monitor settings in real time without interrupting your current activity. It's currently in beta, though, and during my time with the monitor, I just couldn’t get it to work, even with some troubleshooting help from Asus. The company says it plans to add more supporting documentation for the feature soon, along with a new Display Center update.

I put the PG34WCDN through our standard benchmark tests using Portrait Displays' Calman calibration software and a Klein K-10A colorimeter. I also ran it through a gauntlet of games to measure input lag and judge real-world performance. I took these readings with out-of-the-box settings, unless otherwise noted.

In the first test, I benchmarked brightness using the PG34WCDN’s default profile (called Scenery mode). Under these conditions, I measured a maximum brightness of 467 nits with a 10% window size. In comparison, the Alienware AW3426DW reached only 260 nits of SDR brightness in our testing.

Moving on to HDR, the monitor promises a peak HDR brightness of 1,300 nits, and my testing registered 1,323 nits at a 2% window size with Cinema Mode enabled. I also checked the Gaming HDR and Console HDR modes and recorded brightness levels of 1,334 and 1,329 nits, respectively. Switching to the VESA HDR True Black 500 display setting yielded 515 nits at a 2% window size, which aligns well with the rating.

Like the AW3426DW, the PG34WCDN is rated for a dynamic contrast ratio of 1,500,000:1. This sky-high figure indicates the display's ability to produce deep blacks alongside bright whites, resulting in stellar image quality in both light and dark scenes. Most non-OLED monitors have rated contrast ratios of 2,000:1 or less. Compared with them, OLEDs offer essentially infinite contrast ratios. This is true of both premium and entry-level OLED gaming monitors.

Finally, I tested the color-gamut coverage. The PG34WCDN covers 98.8% of the Adobe RGB color space, 143% of the sRGB gamut, and 99.1% of the DCI-P3 gamut. The charts below show the Adobe RGB and sRGB graphs, in turn. The squares represent target color reference points, and the circles represent the actual measured color.

That’s near-perfect color coverage across the board. It’s not uncommon for sRGB to exceed 100% in OLED monitors. While it can occasionally result in an overblown image, it's not too bad in practice. Images and videos tested on the monitor still looked resplendent.

Moving on to game testing, I used our Leo Bodnar 4K Input Lag Tester to measure the PG34WCDN’s lag times across various combinations of refresh rate and resolution. Low input lag is critical for hard-core gaming and esports, but you can benefit from it even if you're a casual gamer.

I started my input-lag tests at full HD (1080p). At 1080p/60Hz, I recorded 9.5ms of input lag; then, at 1080p/120Hz, I measured 4.8ms. At 1080p/240Hz, the measurement was an excellent 2.5ms.

At 1440p resolution, the monitor recorded 6.3ms of input lag at 60Hz and 8.6ms at 120Hz, both fine showings. The Bodnar device can't measure above 120Hz at 1440p, or above 240Hz at 1080p.

The monitor compares favorably to the Alienware 27 280Hz (AW2725D), which has 13.8ms of lag at 1080p/60Hz and 7.5ms at 1440p/60Hz, as well as to the Alienware 34 280Hz QD-OLED (AW3426DW)'s 15.5ms (60Hz), 7.2 (120Hz), and 3.1ms (240Hz), all at 1080p. It also outperformed the Alienware 39 5K OLED (AW3926QW) in just about every resolution and refresh rate combination. Finally, the PG34WCDN matches the 2.5ms at 1080p/240Hz reading we got from the MSI MPG 271QR QD-OLED X50.

Thanks to its 360Hz refresh rate, the monitor is perfectly tailored for fast-paced shooters. I fired up Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom: The Dark Ages for a few rounds, and I also played a few matches of Marvel Rivals. Each game looked fantastic on the screen. The monitor supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and is both Nvidia G-Sync Compatible and VESA Adaptive Sync-compliant, which should eliminate screen tearing no matter which GPU you’re using.