LG 34GP950G-B Monitor Review

The LG 34GP950G-B has a very similar design to the other LG UltraGear monitors we've tested, including the LG 34GP83A-B. There's a ring of RGB bias-lighting on the back of the monitor, but very little in the way of cable management. It has a much gentler curve than the Samsung Odyssey G7 C32G75T. Like most other UltraGear monitors, it comes with a unique mouse clip that you can attach to the bottom of the screen and works as a sort of mouse bungee.

The LG 34GP950G has decent built quality overall. There are vents around the RGB ring for cooling; they're well-hidden, but airflow might be an issue if you mount it close to the wall on a VESA mount instead of the stand. The monitor is entirely plastic but feels pretty solid. The bezels around the display are tight, and we didn't notice any flex or bubbling. The stand supports the monitor well, with very little wobble, and the height and tilt adjustments are smooth.

The LG 34GP950G-B has a decent height adjustment and okay tilt range, so it's somewhat easy to place it in a comfortable viewing position. The ergonomic adjustments work well and are smooth. Unfortunately, the stand doesn't swivel, and since it's an ultrawide monitor, it can't rotate to portrait orientation in either direction, so it's not the best choice for a multi-monitor setup unless it's the main display.

The back of the LG 34GP950G-B is pretty plain overall. There's a ring of RGB bias-lighting, which LG calls Sphere Lighting 2.0. You can sync the backlight effects with audio or the image on-screen. You can also customize it yourself through LG's software or the physical wheel on the bottom of the monitor. There's a hook on the back of the display for cable management. It helps, but it's not very effective overall.

The stand has a wide footprint overall, but the legs are pretty thin and don't take up much space. It supports the LG 34GP950G-B well, and there's very little wobble.

The joystick control under the front bezel of the monitor is used to navigate the OSD. There's also a wheel control that's used to adjust the RGB bias-lighting feature.

• User guide
• Owner's manual CD
• Calibration report
• Power cord
• Power supply
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-B cable
• Mouse holder

The LG 34GP950G has sub-par contrast, so blacks look gray in a dark room. This is expected for an IPS panel. The local dimming feature boosts contrast a bit, but it's not a noticeable difference. Note that contrast can vary between individual units, but these results are consistent with other IPS monitors we've tested.

Unfortunately, although the LG 34GP950G has a local dimming feature, it's bad. There are 56 dimming zones, which is quite a bit better than most monitors with local dimming. There are three different settings available, or you can disable it completely. We took this video with Local Dimming set to 'Aggressive', but we checked all three modes. The 'Aggressive' setting seems to use each zone separately, but the other settings blend zones together, so each lighting zone appears larger. This can help reduce blooming by spreading the light across multiple zones, but this can also be distracting, as dark areas around subtitles can be lit up.

Zone transitions are extremely noticeable and distracting with most content. With the 'Aggressive' mode, transitions are very quick, so it can be very distracting as zones light up and turn off quickly. The other settings aren't quite as bad, but still noticeable. There's no noticeable black crush, and even when displaying something like a star field, there doesn't appear to be any loss of fine detail. Due to the limited zone count, it can't dim the black space around small, bright objects.

The LG 34GP950G has impressive peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to easily overcome glare in most viewing conditions. Unfortunately, there's some noticeable variation in peak brightness with different scenes due to the local dimming feature. Small highlights are much brighter than most regular content, and large bright scenes aren't as bright as small highlights. With local dimming disabled, the peak brightness is far more consistent, ranging between 440-443 cd/m² in all scenes.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Gamer 1' Picture Mode with Brightness set to max, and Local Dimming set to 'Aggressive'.

The LG 34GP950G has very good peak brightness in HDR. It exceeds the minimum brightness needed for the VESA DisplayHDR 600 certification, which is bright enough for games to really stand out, but still not good enough for a cinematic HDR experience when watching movies. Unfortunately, there's some variation in peak brightness with different content due to the local dimming feature, and although it can reach momentary peaks of high brightness, it can't sustain them and brightness decreases significantly after a few seconds.

We measured the HDR peak brightness in the 'Gamer 1' Picture Mode with HDR enabled, Local Dimming set to 'Aggressive', and Brightness set to max.

As expected for an IPS monitor, the LG 34GP950G has decent horizontal viewing angles. Colors remain accurate to a very wide angle, but black levels start to rise at moderate angles, so the image appears slightly washed out. The curved screen helps improve the horizontal viewing angles, but our testing currently doesn't account for that.

Like most IPS monitors, the LG 34GP950G-B has decent vertical viewing angles as well. There's a bit more noticeable washout from above or below than when you're looking at it from the sides, but it's still not a significant issue.

The LG 34GP950G-B has excellent gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect and almost no vignetting, but there's some variation throughout the screen.

The LG 34GP950G we bought has acceptable black uniformity, but this can vary between units, so your experience may vary. There's a bit of cloudiness to the screen with local dimming disabled and some light bleed from the corners, but it's not too bad. Enabling local dimming reduces the overall cloudiness and almost eliminates the backlight bleed from the corners. Unfortunately, due to the relatively large size of the dimming zones and the fact that it's edge-lit, there's considerable blooming around the test cross.

This monitor has great accuracy before calibration. The sRGB mode locks most colors to the sRGB color space well, but the color temperature is very cold, resulting in a blue tint. Gamma follows the target fairly well too. Unfortunately, the white balance is off, especially with brighter shades of gray, meaning colors like pure white are inaccurate. The sRGB mode only locks you out of a few picture settings, like Gamma, but using other modes results in more oversaturated colors.

After calibration, the LG 34GP950G-B has better accuracy. Gamma didn't change much, but white balance and colors are more accurate. The color temperature is almost perfect, so the bluish tint that was there before calibration is gone.

The LG 34GP950G-B has a superb SDR color gamut. It has perfect coverage of the sRGB color space used by most desktop and web content. It also has excellent coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space typically used for content creation, but it can't display the full range of greens. Unfortunately, shades of red, yellow, and magenta are oversaturated in this mode.

The LG 34GP950G has fantastic color volume with SDR content. It can display the entire range of sRGB colors at most brightness levels, but due to the low contrast ratio, it can't display saturated colors at low luminance levels.

The LG 34GP950G-B has a great HDR color gamut. It has fantastic coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by most current HDR content. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space isn't as good, but still decent, but there's relatively little content that uses that color space at the moment.

The LG 34GP950G has great HDR color volume. It can display most of the DCI P3 color volume, but it's limited by the incomplete gamut coverage.

The LG 34GP950G-B has decent reflection handling. Since it has a very high peak brightness, glare shouldn't be an issue, even in bright rooms. If you want something with better reflection handling, check out the Gigabyte M34WQ instead.

The LG 34GP950G-B has good text clarity. We recommend running the Window ClearType wizard if you're on a PC; otherwise, there are some text clarity issues with diagonal lines, as shown in the bottom photo.

The LG 34GP950G-B has incredible gradient handling, with no noticeable banding in any shade. We did this test with the refresh rate set to 144Hz, as the maximum refresh rate of 180Hz doesn't support 10-bit RGB/YCbCr444. At 180Hz, you have to either reduce the color depth to 8-bit or enable chroma subsampling by changing the color format to YCbCr422.

The LG 34GP950G-B natively supports NVIDIA G-SYNC technology, and it also works with FreeSync. Both VRR formats work over DisplayPort, but only G-SYNC works over HDMI.

The LG 34GP950G-B has a fantastic response time at its max refresh rate of 180Hz. Motion looks incredibly smooth as there's minimal blur trail with fast-moving objects. The recommended overdrive setting is 'Normal' because it has less overshoot and a faster total response time than 'Fast' and 'Faster'.

The response time at 120Hz is incredible, meaning motion looks smooth even when gaming from consoles. Like at the max refresh rate, the recommended overdrive setting is 'Normal' because 'Fast' and 'Faster' have more overshoot.

The response time at 60Hz is impressive. While there's more motion blur compared to higher refresh rate signals, it still looks great. The recommended overdrive setting is once again 'Normal', which is great as you won't have to change the setting if the frame rate of your game drops.

The LG 34GP950G-B doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature.

The backlight of the LG 34GP950G-B is completely flicker-free, which is great as it can help reduce eye strain.

The LG 34GP950G has outstanding low input lag, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience.

The LG 34GP950G-B has an amazing amount of screen space to work with. The pixel density is pretty high, and the ultrawide format delivers a more immersive gaming experience.

The LG 34GP950G-B has limited compatibility with the PS5. It can't downscale a 4k signal, and because the console doesn't support ultrawide games, you'll see black bars on the sides. Despite being a 1440p monitor, it still doesn't support 1440p signals, as there's a black screen for a few seconds when you try to display a 1440p image from the PS5.

The compatibility with the Xbox Series X|S is limited. 1440p @ 60Hz doesn't work, and 1440p @ 120Hz only works with the HDMI override, which disables the VRR support. This means that VRR only works with 1080p signals. Like with the PS5, the Xbox doesn't support ultrawide games, so you'll see black bars on the sides.

Unfortunately, the LG 34GP950G doesn't have any HDMI 2.1 ports, and although there are a few USB ports, it doesn't support USB-C, which may disappoint MacBook owners. Unlike some recent G-SYNC monitors, there's only one HDMI and one DisplayPort input, which is a bit disappointing.

The LG 34GP950G-B works well with macOS. There aren't any issues with its VRR or HDR support. If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their original position when waking the laptop up from sleep, too.

The LG 34GP950G comes with a few extra features, including:

• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair, good for cheating on games that don't normally allow for crosshairs. There are four crosshairs to choose from.
• FPS Counter: Shows the current frame rate received from the source.
• Black Stabilizer: Adjusts gamma to make it easier to spot objects/players in dark scenes without adjust bright scenes.
• DAS (Dynamic Action Sync): Helps minimize input lag. This feature is enabled automatically when playing at the monitor's maximum refresh rate and can't be disabled.

The LG 34GP950G has a very similar interface to the other LG monitors we've tested recently. Most of the on-screen display can be navigated using the joystick located under the bottom bezel of the monitor.

There's also a wheel controller that can be used to adjust the backlight setting. Note that some of the backlight settings require the LG Ultra Control Center software on your computer, and the monitor must be connected to your computer with the USB upstream cable (included) for the control software to work.