Samsung G5 (LC32G55T) monitor review – Nov 2022

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Samsung’s ‘new look’ Odyssey monitors came onto the scene with a huge bang, offering up a never-before-seen combination of size and performance that left budget-restricted users both annoyed and envious.

The Odyssey G9 was the star of the new lineup, bringing to the table a 49-inch display that not only offered stunning immersion with a 1000R curvature but also esports levels of response and speed. Unfortunately, the flagship monitor retailed for well over $1,000 – making the G9 nothing more than a pipe dream for many users.

Since then, Samsung has released a slew of smaller variants that aren’t so aggressive on the wallet – one of which is the Samsung G5.

The G5 is the least expensive of the bunch, focusing more on value rather than raw performance. Having said that, the G5 still provides a stellar gaming experience thanks to a large 32-inch VA panel, 144Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and 1000R curvature. Furthermore, at its current pricing, it becomes one of the cheapest 1440p 144Hz monitors the market has to offer.

In the following guide, we’ll be putting the Samsung G5 (C32G55T) to the test in a number of different scenarios to see how it stacks up against similarly priced alternatives.

So, with plenty to get through, let’s waste no further time and dive straight into it!

Specifications

What's In The Box

The Samsung G5 comes in a relatively basic box with limited marketing material on the exterior. There is no information regarding the specifications of the monitor on the box, only a small Odyssey G5 stamp on the top and some features on the side.

The box is relatively small and the monitor comes unassembled from the stand. The G5 offers a tool-less design that requires little effort to construct and is very self-intuitive.

Below is the full list of accessories that come with the Samsung Odyssey G5:

• Samsung G5 Monitor
• HDMI 2.0
• 1.5m Power Cable
• Quick Start Guide
• Warranty

Design And Features

With specifications out the way, let’s take a closer look at the build quality, design, and mechanical features this monitor comes equipped with.

Design

Briefly looking at the G5 from a design standpoint, you’d have to say the team at Samsung did a pretty good job here. The G5 comes with a sleek design that is characterized by its massive 1000R curve. The monitor comes with a dual-stage bezel that is fairly chunky when compared to today’s alternatives – regardless of Samsung’s ‘border free’ marketing. The bottom bezel is the largest of the bunch and showcases the Samsung logo in the center – under which the OSD control joystick can be found. Samsung has also added some wing-esq additions to the bottom bezel of this monitor, creating a nice gaming aesthetic.

The stand comes with a wide ‘V’ shape that offers good stability – but isn’t the most robust I’ve ever seen (more on that later though).  The stand offers a small hook for cable management routing but no additional features other than this. For all intents and purposes, it is one of the most basic stands I’ve ever come across.

Moving to the rear of the panel, there really isn’t a great deal to report on. The back offers a vortex look with some nice etchings that cover the entirety of the rear. Unlike the other monitors within the Odyssey lineup, the G5 doesn’t have an input cover either – instead, opting for a large circular cutout which, despite not looking the best, does offer easy access to inputs.

Build Quality

Historically, build quality is an area where Samsung has been a little hit and miss. For the Samsung G5, the story isn’t great.

Let’s start off with some positives. The panel itself, even with the 1000R curve, still feels pretty solid – providing little creaking during our tests. Most of the fittings feel very well-made and there aren’t nearly as many gaps as you might expect. Furthermore, the inputs feel sturdy, as does the panel coating too.

Unfortunately, that’s where the positives end. One of the most important factors in a monitor’s build quality is the stand – and the one Samsung has equipped to this monitor is utterly terrible. After unboxing this monitor and seeing the stand, I genuinely thought it was a joke. It reminded me more of a coathanger than a $300+ monitor stand. But anyway.

The monitor doesn’t offer any metal infrastructure and the stand itself doesn’t provide any movement – whatsoever.

Overall, I was a little disappointed with the build quality of this monitor. Whilst it is a budget variant, it still fell short of many similarly priced alternatives – in this category.

Panel Coating

Like most modern panels, the Samsung G5 comes with an anti-glare panel coating with a matte (3H) finish. The coating does an excellent job of mitigating both natural and man-made light sources but can pick up plenty of fingerprints during usage.

Also, due to the curvature of the monitor, fingerprint marks can become problematic – especially if sunlight (or the likes) is shining on it.

Bezels

The Samsung G5 comes with dual-stage bezels that, as we mentioned earlier, have been coined (borderless) by Samsung. Despite this being the case, the G5 is very much a bordered monitor, showcasing a 12mm bezel on the sides alongside a 23mm bezel on the base.

Stand

As we said earlier, the stand on this monitor is probably one of the worst I’ve ever used. To call it a stand is an insult to other stands – no joke. Granted, the stand on the G5 does offer some stability – but that’s about all it does.

From a versatility and adjustment standpoint, the stand offers nothing. No height, tilt, swivel, or pivot functionality can be found on this panel.

The G5 does come with a VESA 75 x 75mm mount on the rear, so that might be your best bet if you need extra functionality.

Inputs

Like the rest of this monitor, the inputs are extremely basic. Inputs can be found at the rear of the monitor and need to be inserted in a vertical fashion – as you’d expect.

It only offers two device inputs, meaning any user that requires a third will not find this monitor suitable or efficient. It only has a singular USB input and audio out options.

OSD

The OSD (on-screen display) for the Samsung G5 is one of the better features it comes equipped with. Not only is the OSD versatile, but it also comes with an attractive design that is a joy to use. The joystick under the Samsung logo (on the bottom bezel) is extremely efficient when it comes to navigating the various menus the OSD has to offer.

As far as OSD options are concerned, users will be able to alter all the usual suspects, including; picture, color, and response settings.

A dedicated game menu can be found in the OSD, providing plenty of options to tweak your visual experience to your exact requirements. Whether you’re looking to adjust the overdrive settings, add a crosshair, or set the refresh rate, the OSD offers it all.

Color Accuracy & Picture Quality

Great colors and excellent picture quality are two of the main factors that help create immersion while your gaming. Whilst this is the case, gaming monitors don’t always calibrate the color to what is deemed accurate within certain color spectrums – sRGB/Rec.709 for example.

We like to test each monitor for color reproduction to see how they would perform in color-accurate 0scenarios.

Here are the results for the Samsung Odyssey G5.

Like always, we started off by testing the monitor in its native ‘out the box’ settings. For this monitor they were as follows; Picture mode set to custom, brightness 236 candelas, and color tone set to ‘normal’.

As you can see from the results above, the Samsung G5 actually performed quite well in the color accuracy department. Whilst white point was a little low (6164K), both black depth and contrast ratio were solid. More impressively, however, was the color accuracy – coming in at a very reasonable 1.69 on average. Gamma was set to 2.21.

The G5 offers a number of different color presets, however, few were worth testing for color accuracy. That said, we still ran the Dynamic contrast and the FPS presets, just to see what they could offer from an accuracy standpoint.

The Dynamic Contrast preset was the best of the two, offering a 6167K white point, low 0.12 black depth, and acceptable 2258:1 contrast ratio. Average DeltaE wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen, clocking in at 2.26 on average.

We tested the FPs preset next and, straight away, you could see the results weren’t going to be on the side of accurate. The preset had a blueish hue that was unmistakable. That said, white point was very good (6648K), as was black depth (0.12). A 2128:1 contrast ratio was the lowest we measured and 3.2 average deltaE was the worst. Gamma was 2.17.

We wasted no time and started the calibration process on this monitor, mainly to see how accurate it could become after a colorimeter was used.

We used the ‘custom’ picture mode, alongside ‘custom’ color tone – adjusting the RGB to 47/44/50. 

Below are the results after the calibration process was complete:

The calibrated results were a huge improvement over the factory defaults. As you can see from the chart above, after calibration, white point was near perfect at 6484K, as was black depth at an all-time low of 0.06. Contrast ratio did take a bit of a hit, but average deltaE benefitted hugely – boasting an impressive 0.24 average and 1.28 maximum.

After calibration, I would happily recommend this monitor for light editing of both photo and video. Pre-calibrated, the monitor doesn’t offer the levels of accuracy required for professional editing.

Panel Uniformity

Panel uniformity is a test we run to check how uniform the luminance and color is across the entirety of the screen. During this test, the center square is used as the reference space. Every other square is then tested to see how far it differentiates from the reference.

In an ideal world, we want every square to be green, meaning it hasn’t broken the differential threshold – something we can set at the start of the test.

Note: results will differ from panel to panel.

The Samsung G5 scored incredibly high in the panel uniformity tests, getting a near-perfect score (bar one quadrant). As you can see from the graph above, almost every quadrant has scored green – excellent in terms of luminance and color uniformity.

This is great for individuals that like to play games or watch content that has large blocks of solid color – football games for example.

Viewing Angles

The viewing angles of this panel aren’t the best I’ve ever seen – mainly thanks to the VA panel that sits at the heart of this monitor. When viewing from around 35 degrees, brightness starts to darken and some colors begin to shift – altering the visual experience quite dramatically.

Having said this, the viewing angles are still better than TN alternatives – so it comes down to what you prioritize.

Color Gamut

As part of the calibration process, the DisplayCal will give an accurate measurement of the color gamut the monitor can provide. Below are the results of the color gamut test:

The Samsung G5 didn’t offer up a huge color gamut – especially when it came to the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 spectrums. Furthermore, the G5 fell short of the advertised 99% sRGB but 5% – only offering 94.5%.

Looking at the physical color gamut graph, you can see where the G5 fell short of the sRGB spectrum. With poor blue/pink coverage, it would be hard to recommend this monitor for professional editors.

Maximum And Minimum Brightness

We ended the color accuracy and picture quality testing by checking the maximum brightness, minimum brightness, and 120 candelas points on this panel. The results are below:

Brightness	Candelas
100% Brightness	255cd/m²
0% Brightness	36cd/m²
36 Brightness	120 cd/m²

Calibrated Profile

For those who want to use our calibrated color profile, you will find a link below where you can download the zip file.

Samsung G5: Gaming Performance

With color accuracy out of the way, it’s time to put the Samsung G5 through a number of different gaming scenarios to see how it stacks up in pixel response, input lag, and HDR content. Whilst this is a budget-tailored monitor, I still expect a decent gaming experience from the Odyssey – especially with the performance the other ‘G’ models offered.

Before we started, we ensured the monitor was setup to what I considered the optimal settings. For me, that was maximum refresh rate (144Hz), pixel response time set to ‘Faster’ and FreeSync on. Setting the response time to the maximum would not only reduce brightness considerably but would also result in some overshoot occurring.

We started by playing some fast-paced FPS shooters to see how the G5 would stack up as a competitive gaming monitor. I played CS:GO, Call Of Duty, and PUBG – all fast-paced games with differing levels of demand. My first impressions of the monitor were decent, providing a fluid experience that was void of many screen artifacts that would often plague lesser alternatives. The refresh rate helped provide a crisp visual experience, even when in the more intense game scenarios (entire team rushing a bombsite). I did notice that when moving the mouse quite aggressively, some of the clarity would reduce from the image. Whilst this isn’t uncommon, it was still annoying and definitely left me at a disadvantage against players with faster response times. If you try to counter-balance this with the faster response time settings, you would experience other screen artifacts like overshoot and inverse ghosting – something that was equally as detrimental to the gaming experience.

I decided to try a few non-competitive titles next, and to my surprise, the gameplay felt fantastic. The 32-inch model allowed you to become fully immersed in your virtual surroundings – not to mention that impressive 1000R curve. Despite the colors being a little flat, the picture quality provided by the 1440p resolution made up for that nicely. The adaptive sync support of the monitor (FreeSync) ran from 48-144Hz, giving me a super-smooth gaming experience right down to 48 frames per second.

Overall, the gaming experience of this monitor wasn’t bad – however, it was definitely geared more towards the casual player.

Final Thoughts

So, there you have it, our comprehensive review of the Samsung Odyssey G5 – one of the cheapest 1440p 144hz monitors on the market. As I conclude the review, I’m left feeling a little split on whether or not I’d actually recommend this monitor.

At its center, the Samsung G5 is a budget-tailored 32-inch monitor that offers great picture clarity and decent gaming performance. With a 144Hz refresh rate and low 1ms MPRT, playing fast-paced shooters is perfectly acceptable, albeit not as good as faster alternatives. The 1000R curvature, alongside the above specs, does make for an excellent immersive experience, with single-player titles benefitting greatly.

Despite color accuracy not being fantastic and a stand that is nothing short of utterly pointless, I feel the Samsung still shows good value for money. For around $350, it’s hard to argue with its pricing – especially when you factor in the core specifications.

That being said, if you’re willing to spend a small amount extra, you’ll be able to up your gaming experience in both competitive and casual scenarios.