Alienware 39 5K Assessment: The Ultrawide Gaming Monitor Candy Spot

I’ve begun to really feel a bit like Goldilocks with regards to gaming displays. I like the Alienware 32, a regular 16:9 widescreen, however I want it had been a bit wider. The Alienware 34 ultrawide impressed me, however I want it had been as tall because the 32’s 4K display screen. And whereas bigger ultrawide screens just like the LG UltraGear 49 seemed completely insane on my desk, they had been usually unwieldy. I could not comfortably see the edges of these screens, they usually additionally felt a bit too brief. The Alienware 39 5K will get every thing good.

I knew I used to be going to like this monitor the minute I positioned it on my desk and I noticed it completely eclipsed the Alienware 32 OLED that was sitting proper behind it. The inside portion of the Alienware 39 5K was an actual match for the 32’s total show, whereas the ultrawide sides crammed out my peripheral imaginative and prescient. Finally, it is a monitor I can immerse myself in fully with out rearranging my desk, or fretting about not having sufficient vertical display screen area.

While the Alienware 39 5K is not a QD-OLED display screen just like the 34-inch ultrawide I simply reviewed (which makes use of a Samsung panel), it nonetheless felt like a next-generation OLED, with not one of the dimness I’ve encountered on older screens. Its 300 nits of SDR brightness was greater than sufficient for looking the net and basic pc work, whereas its 500 nits of HDR efficiency made video games like Control, 007: First Light and Overwatch 2 virtually leap off the display screen. And in these peak moments of 1,300-nit HDR brightness, like daylight bouncing off the windshield of an impeccably polished British Racing Green Jaguar, my eyes nearly at all times teared up. PC gaming has by no means seemed this good.

Control felt like a wholly new recreation after I replayed it on the Alienware 39 5K. I initially skilled it on an older 32-inch Dell ultrawide display screen with out HDR, however that was nothing like taking part in it on an ultrawide show that coated my total desk. Outside of taking part in Control on a digital actuality headset, the place I might scale up a digital show to the dimensions of a theater, I’ve by no means been so immersed within the recreation. Having the additional horizontal show space made it simpler to maintain monitor of enemies making an attempt to flank me, and the Alienware 39 5K’s glorious HDR efficiency made the gleaming flooring and workplace muddle of the FBC appear much more reasonable.

I additionally spent a number of hours taking part in Overwatch within the display screen’s native 5K2K decision and 165Hz refresh charge, in addition to its 2,560 by 1,080 and 330Hz mode. They’re each spectacular for various causes. Overwatch 2 seemed ludicrously sharp and detailed within the increased decision, naturally. It’s such a low-impact recreation that many fashionable video playing cards should not have any hassle reaching 120 fps at that decision. (I used to be taking part in on an RTX 5090, and as you’d think about, it was simply nice.)

Not surprisingly, Overwatch was far much less detailed within the decrease decision — with a 39-inch display screen, it is laborious to disregard blurry textures and textual content. But it was noticeably smoother as I hopped across the map, hoping to attain a headshot with Hanzo and studying find out how to deal with D.Mon’s sick mech-suit. There wasn’t any noticeable tearing as I rushed across the map and frantically tried to show my price, because of the monitor’s G-SYNC and Freesync help.

The one draw back of the Alienware 39 5K’s excessive decision is that you will want a good quantity of energy to see the display screen’s full potential. I used to be testing it on a desktop powered by a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and an NVIDIA RTX 5090, which is much past what common players have entry to. You’ll want a video card that provides respectable 4K efficiency, on the very least, and you will doubtless must lean on body era and upscaling to play video games in 5K. Lower-resolution ultrawide screens, in the meantime, are much more forgiving with regards to GPU energy.

When I used to be capable of peel myself away from video games, I additionally liked utilizing the Alienware 39 5K to browse the net, take notes and write a big chunk of this assessment. Text seems completely crisp, although I’ll admit I used to be by no means actually bothered by the purple textual content fringing on older OLEDs. The display screen’s ultrawide decision additionally makes it good for watching anamorphic widescreen motion pictures and movies, which fill everything of the show. Just remember that commonplace 16:9 widescreen content material can have black bars alongside the edges of the display screen (at which level, that is successfully only a 32-inch 4K monitor).

The Alienware 39 5K options the identical fundamental on-screen controls as Alienware’s different displays, besides now its management joystick is alongside the underside rear of the monitor, as an alternative of proper on the underside edge. I discovered it straightforward to navigate, although it is actually a bit extra archaic than the good show controls I’ve seen on Samsung’s displays. You’ll additionally have to take care of its menus each time you wish to swap show modes.