For the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to test a real bestseller in the ultra-wide 21:9 monitor segment – the Iiyama G-master GB3461WQSU Red Eagle monitor. This equipment is dedicated primarily to gamers. Is it worth buying? I invite you to the material.
I have had a top shelf 4K IPS monitor for many years. However, 27 inches with current multitasking just became too little. I finally admitted that I needed a second monitor. Looking for another choice for myself – I test devices from different manufacturers. Once you work on a good IPS matrix with high brightness and color depth – you don’t want to look at TN or resolution lower than 4K anymore. That was until I bought a laptop with an IPS matrix with a refresh rate of 144 Hz. Until now, I thought it was just another unnecessary invention. However, a fast matrix is better in everything. It works not only in games, but also makes work or browsing the web much more pleasant. However, the combination of these 3 parameters – IPS + 4K + 144 Hz makes the price of such a monitor higher than many gaming computers.
G-Master from Iiyama is another ultra-wide device dedicated to gamers. The manufacturer used an IPS matrix with a resolution of 3440×1440 px with a response time of 1 ms and a refresh rate of 144 Hz.
First impressions
The monitor is 34 inches and takes up quite a lot of desk space. Seems pretty powerful. In the set we get all the necessary cables, including hdmi and DP. The base is slid onto the latch and fixed with one fixing screw. I had a real problem with it, because it kept screwing in at a slight angle, so I couldn’t lock the stand perfectly. With such a large width of the monitor, it is necessary for it to stand stably and not wobble sideways. It is worth mentioning that you can adjust the height of the monitor, turn it in the stand, and tilt it. Interestingly, but also a bit strange – the stand allows you to rotate the screen to a vertical position, but on the casing we will find a warning that this particular model does not support this function. It’s just too wide.
Controlling the screen settings also turned out to be problematic. There is no joystick here. The manufacturer hid 5 buttons on the back of the housing, which, simply put, do not allow intuitive navigation through the settings. And there is something to set.
We can adjust the gamma, brightness (max 350 ccd), color temperature, black depth, set dynamic contrast, X-Res function (improving the quality of images in poor resolution), or MBR (strobe backlight mode that increases the speed of the backlight). We also have LFC (Low Framerate Compensation) mode, which causes the monitor to display double frames if our graphics card is not working and is not able to display the minimum amount of it in the game for smooth gameplay.
Iiyama GB3461WQSU for work
G-master is dedicated primarily to gamers. However, its large size means that it is bought with the thought of being the only one on the desk. In that case, is this monitor so versatile that we can easily work on it for long hours, watch movies or browse the internet?
It is certainly worth switching the screen settings to 25 percent magnification. Without it, the font is quite blurry, and reading and writing text is not the most pleasant. After a slight enlargement, the reception becomes more comfortable, although it is a bit short of ideal.
The large screen and 21:9 format allows for a great arrangement of the workspace. We can easily split the screen and work in a program with an e-mail or a list of tasks visible next to it. It makes work much easier and is the main reason why I even considered buying a second monitor. It quickly turned out that when editing movies in Premier Pro, I can see not only all the most important tabs, but also a full timeline with all layers. No need to move and rewind significantly speeds up the entire assembly process. This is a big plus.
The downside is the color rendering. The monitor displays pale white. Compared to my second monitor, it is quite average. Despite testing various settings of white balance, gamma, backlight, contrast, etc., a delicate blue and green tint shines through the white. This means that despite the promises of 100% perfect reproduction of the sRGB palette, the red had a completely different shade on both monitors despite the same settings. For professional graphic designers, animators or editors, this will be a big problem.
Iiyama GB3461WQSU for gaming
Here the monitor shows a real claw. I’m lucky enough to have a fairly powerful computer, so I tested various games at the maximum possible graphics settings at the full possible resolution displayed by Iiyama. The whole thing looks great, although some games could get lost on cutscenes (they were in 16:9 format, and black bars appeared on the sides, e.g. in AOE3de, RDR2, GTAV). However, the smoothness of the gameplay is sensational, and the picture is quite detailed. You can see the difference with the naked eye. On a 144hz monitor, the roller coaster in Planet Coaster ran very smoothly, as did moving around the city in Anno 1800. Despite the powerful computer, on a 60hz screen, the image is slightly cropped. Fast Iiyama changed that completely.
