First Impressions: Samsung Odyssey G8 G80HF 5K LS27HG802EFXZA Review

I've been eyeing this monitor for some time and finally managed to get it from a local dealer for 615 EUR total ($700 w/ tax)

My first impressions are that this monitor looks great and goes beyond my expectations.

Design and ergonomics

It was easy to assemble. The stand provides a lot of adjustment. It has a single platform "foot" on which you can put stuff on. My previous AOC monitor had two legs going to the sides which made it had to put my laptop or keyboard under the monitor. Here this is not an issue because of the single flat platform. The screen can be moved quite high up on the stand - perfect if you use a large laptop below the monitor. The bezels are a bit thick for modern standards.

Coating - glossy

Coming from a "cheap" AOC 4K monitor with a matte coating, the G80HF with its glossy one, similar to the Macbook screens, provides a noticeable sharpness and contrast improvement that's not just from the resolution. Yes there are more reflections but they don't bother me. Since I'm using this with an Macbook Air and Macbook Pro, it goes well with the style of their screens.

Nevermind, I hadn't peeled off the glossy screen shipping protector. I just removed it and it looks worse without it, fml

Resolution - 5120x2880 HiDPI

This was the big selling point for me. Because I work on macOS that does some wonky image scaling, some creative applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom would lag on my 4K screen when running at a HiDPI resolution like 2560x1440. On 1920x1080 or 3840x2160 there were no issues but the UI wasn't sized properly.

I can confirm that this issue is no longer present with this monitor. Because 5K scales down correctly to 1440p, the GPU does less work. Now it's 5K to 1440p directly. Previously it did 4K to 5K to 1440p.

On Windows it also looks great scaled at 200%. 5120x2880 10bit 180Hz works fully on an RTX 5070Ti with the provided HDMI 2.1 cable.

On macOS I can achieve 5120x2880 10bit 120Hz with a DP 1.4 cable or HDMI 2.1 cable.

Ports and connection (some trouble)

I initially connected the monitor to my macbooks using an `8K 60Hz USB-C to DP` cable and it would constantly flicker, connect and disconnect and eventually disconnect permanently. After playing around I switched to another `8K 60Hz USB-C to DP` and with this one it worked fine. Another thing that worked was using an `8K 60Hz USB-C to DP Dongle` with a DP 1.4 cable. I settled on the first, the direct cable connection.

Gaming

I tried the Dual-mode function which switches the resolution to 1440p 330Hz and it's ok. The desktop is a lot less sharp and somewhat blurry. Compared to native 1440p it's also a bit blurrier. In games it's not noticeable compared to native 1440p. However versus 5K it's definitely a noticeable difference.

The impact on fps between 5K and 1440p is huge. In Battlefield 6 LOW
- 5K = 80-90fps. With DLSS Performance it's at 110fps (Internal Resolution = 2560×1440) . Ultra Performance gets 140-150fps (Internal Resolution = 1707×960)

- 1440p Dual Mode = 220fps. DLSS Quality gets 200fps (this one looks better). The game is much more responsive in this mode although it definitely looks blurrier compared to 5K.

I think 5K with DLSS Ultra Performance or Performance provides the best balance.