Gigabyte M34WQ Monitor Review

The Gigabyte M34WQ looks very similar to the Gigabyte M32Q, with a simple, understated design that looks great in any environment. The stand is wide, but it supports the monitor well, and it's thin enough that you can still place things in front of it.

Overall, the Gigabyte M34WQ has good build quality. It's entirely plastic but still feels solid overall. The stand is well-made, and the ergonomic adjustments feel smooth and sturdy. It wobbles a bit due to the size and weight of the display, but it's not very noticeable overall.

The stand has good ergonomics. It has the same swivel and tilt range as the Gigabyte M32Q, and a great height adjustment range, so it's easy to place in an ideal viewing position. Unfortunately, it can't rotate to portrait orientation, but most ultrawide monitors can't.

The back of the monitor is fairly plain, with no RGB bias lighting. Like most of the M Series monitors, there's a band of glossy black plastic near the top of the display on the back. It looks good but also tends to show fingerprints easily. There's a hole in the stand for basic cable management.

The stand is quite wide but thin enough that you can still place small objects in front of it. It supports the monitor well, but there's still a bit of wobble due to the size of the display.

There's a dedicated button at the back that controls the KVM switch and a five-way joystick that you can use to navigate the OSD and adjust settings.

• 3 different power cables (Type B, I, and J)
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-B upstream cable
• User manuals

As expected for an IPS panel, the Gigabyte M34WQ has mediocre contrast, so blacks look gray in a dark room. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve contrast.

Unfortunately, the Gigabyte M34WQ doesn't have a local dimming feature to improve contrast. We still film this video on the monitor, so you can compare the backlight performance with a monitor that does have local dimming.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has great peak brightness in SDR, and it's more than bright enough to overcome glare in most viewing environments. There's very little variation in brightness with different content, which is great. Its minimum peak brightness is a bit high, so it's not the best choice if you work in a dark room and you're sensitive to bright lights.

These measurements were taken after calibration, in the 'Custom 1' Picture Mode, with the backlight at max. The peak brightness can change depending on which mode you're using.

Unfortunately, the Gigabyte M34WQ has just alright peak brightness in HDR. It's bright enough that HDR looks a bit better in games, but it's not bright enough to deliver an impactful cinematic experience in HDR. The EOTF follows the target curve very well for the most part, so it displays most scenes at their correct brightness, but really dark scenes are too bright. Also, there's a sharp roll-off at the peak brightness, causing a loss of fine details in really bright highlights. If you care about the HDR performance and want an ultrawide monitor that gets brighter, check out the Dell Alienware AW3423DW.

These measurements were taken before calibration, with HDR enabled.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has a good horizontal viewing angle. The image remains accurate even at a wide angle. It's great for sharing the screen with someone else, and the sides of the screen remain accurate if you like to sit close to it.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has a decent vertical viewing angle. The image fades and appears washed out at moderate angles above or below the monitor. Most people won't notice this with regular use, but it's not ideal if you often share your screen with someone standing beside you, for example.

Like most monitors, the Gigabyte M34WQ has good gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are quite a bit darker than the center, but there's not much dirty screen effect in the center.

Sadly, the Gigabyte M34WQ has mediocre black uniformity. The screen is cloudy throughout, and it has a bit of a blueish tint due to the low contrast. There are also a few patches of backlight bleed, especially along the bottom edge.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has great out-of-the-box accuracy. It has an sRGB mode that effectively clamps the colors to the sRGB space, and even if some primary colors are slightly over-saturated, the image looks good. The gamma follows the target sRGB curve well, except some dark and bright scenes are over-brightened. Sadly, the white balance is off, so shades of white don't appear as they should, which isn't ideal if you're a content creator.

The sRGB mode locks most picture settings, which is disappointing if you want to fine tune the image. The 'Standard' Picture Mode has better color and white balance accuracy, but colors are over-saturated, as you can see here. The 'Custom' mode at its default settings is less accurate, so it's not ideal to use.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has superb accuracy after calibration. The white balance and color accuracy are nearly perfect after calibration, with no noticeable issues. Colors are accurate, and the color temperature is nearly perfect. Gamma is very close to the sRGB target curve, but very dark and very bright scenes are still over brightened a bit.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has a superb SDR color gamut. It can display all of the sRGB color space used by the vast majority of desktop and web content. Coverage of the Adobe RGB color space is limited, though, and likely too low for most professional content creators.

Thanks to the wide SDR color gamut, the Gigabyte M34WQ has outstanding color volume in SDR. It's really only limited by the low contrast ratio, as it can't display dark saturated colors very well.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has a good HDR color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by most current HDR content. It has okay coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space, and it can display a wide color gamut, but just barely.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has great color volume in HDR. It's limited by the incomplete coverage of both color spaces, and it can't display dark saturated colors well due to the low contrast ratio.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has impressive reflection handling. The matte anti-glare finish absorbs reflections, reducing their intensity but also spreading them out across the screen slightly. Combined with this monitor's high peak brightness in SDR, glare isn't an issue.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has good text clarity, but the matte coating adds a slightly hazy look. Running the Windows ClearType wizard helps improve text clarity (top photo), especially on diagonal or curved lines, which aren't as clear or easy to read without ClearType.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has incredible gradient handling, with very little banding in areas of similar colors. Although advertised as an 8-bit panel, this model accepts a 10-bit signal and displays it well, so it's most likely using dithering to approximate a 10-bit panel. It's also known as 8-bit + FRC.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has a high maximum refresh rate, and you can take full advantage of it with a DisplayPort connection. Due to bandwidth limitations of HDMI, it has a lower max refresh rate over HDMI, and it's even lower with 10-bit signals.

This monitor supports FreeSync variable refresh rate (VRR) technology, which helps reduce tearing. Although not officially certified by NVIDIA, it also works with their G-SYNC Compatible mode, but only over DisplayPort. FreeSync works over both HDMI and DisplayPort, but over HDMI, it's limited to a max refresh rate of 100Hz.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has an excellent response time at the max refresh rate, resulting in very little blur behind fast-moving objects. Like most monitors, you can adjust the level of pixel overdrive, but the 'Picture Quality' Overdrive setting delivers the best results overall. The 'Balance' setting is very similar, with a slightly faster rise/fall time but more noticeable overshoot. If you prefer a bit of inverse ghosting over a blur trail, it's a good alternative. The 'Speed' setting is slightly faster than 'Balance' but also introduces significant overshoot in most transitions, so it's not a good choice.

There's a 'Smart OD' mode that's supposed to automatically adjust the overdrive depending on the refresh rate. This saves you from adjusting the Overdrive setting if you switch to a lower refresh rate or your frame rate drops. At both 144Hz and 60Hz, it appears to be in the 'Balance' mode, so it's better to set it to 'Picture Quality' for the best results.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has an excellent response time at 120Hz, which is important if you play games from the PS5 and Xbox Series X at 120 fps. Its performance is extremely similar as its max refresh rate, so once again the recommended Overdrive setting is 'Picture Quality' as it has the least amount of overshoot compared to the other settings. Unlike at its max refresh rate, 'Smart OD' performs like 'Speed' and not 'Balance'.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has an okay response time at 60Hz, but it's noticeably slower than at the max refresh rate or at 120Hz. The Overdrive settings behave a bit differently at 60Hz, and so it's better to leave it off. The 'Picture Quality' setting has more overshoot, but it's the best choice if you're looking for a "set and forget" mode.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion or BFI. Unlike most monitors, you can enable it simultaneously with the variable refresh rate (VRR) feature. With VRR disabled, BFI is only available with the refresh rate set to 120Hz or 144Hz. With VRR enabled, the backlight stops flickering if the frame rate drops below 85Hz. It can be distracting if your computer can't maintain at least 85 fps consistently, as the backlight flicker switches on and off as your frame rate goes above or below 85.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has a completely flicker-free backlight at all brightness levels, which is great, as it can help reduce eye strain.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has fantastic low input lag, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience. Enabling the VRR feature doesn't change the input lag noticeably, which is great. Since 3440x1440 @ 120Hz isn't a native resolution in the EDID, we had to create a custom resolution to measure the input lag at 120Hz, so creating a custom resolution didn't negatively impact the input lag.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has an excellent amount of screen space to work with. The wide-format screen is fantastic for multitasking, and the pixel density is high enough for good text clarity.

The Gigabyte M34WQ supports most common signals from the PS5, except for 4k @ 120Hz due to the HDMI bandwidth limitations. Even if it's a 1440p monitor, it still accepts 4k signals and downscales it, which results in a sharper image than a native 1440p signal. Because the PS5 doesn't support an ultrawide format, you need to disable the monitor's FreeSync setting to access the Display Mode setting, which you need to set to 'Aspect'. This matches the aspect ratio of the source, so you'll get black bars at the sides, but you can at least play games from the PS5.

This monitor supports most common signals from the Xbox Series X, except for 4k @ 120Hz due to the HDMI bandwidth limitations. Even if it's a 1440p monitor, it still accepts 4k signals and downscales it, which results in a sharper image than a native 1440p signal. Because the Xbox doesn't support an ultrawide format, you'll need to disable the monitor's FreeSync support to access the Display Mode menu, and from there you can set it to 'Aspect'. This matches the aspect ratio of the source, so you'll get black bars at the sides. Afterward, you can still enable FreeSync, so you can play games with VRR enabled.

Also, 1440p @ 60Hz signals aren't easy to enable. You need to use the Bypass setting in the Video Fidelity and Overscan menu, and once you enable that you can play 1440p @ 60Hz games without issue. There isn't this problem with 1440p @ 120Hz.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has one USB-C port. It supports DisplayPort Alt Mode, so you can display an image from a compatible source and charge it at the same time. However, with 15W of power delivery, it's only enough to extend the battery life while working. If you want an ultrawide monitor with a bigger USB hub and higher power delivery, then look into the Dell U3425WE.

The Gigabyte M34WQ works well with recent Macs, and there aren't any issues waking from sleep. However, there are a few issues with the VRR and HDR support together. In games, there aren't any issues as they work well together, but when you're on the desktop, you can either enable HDR or VRR, but not both. With HDR enabled, you get a fixed refresh rate of 144Hz, and with VRR enabled and HDR disabled, there's a distracting flicker at lower refresh rates, so it's better to use it with VRR disabled while on the desktop.

The Gigabyte M34WQ has a few additional features available. Some of them include:

• Virtual Crosshair: There are four virtual crosshairs to choose from. Unlike software virtual crosshairs, these can't be detected by your games.
• FPS Counter: Displays the current number of frames per second received from the source.
• Black Equalizer: Adjusts gamma to make it easier to spot other players/enemies in shadows.
• Eagle Eye: Zooms a section of the screen to make it easier to see where you're aiming.
• KVM: The main feature of Gigabyte's 'M' series monitors, the KVM button at the back of the monitor allows you to quickly switch from controlling one device to another, with just one keyboard and mouse.