Alienware QD-OLED monitor picks open standards over G-Sync, is $200 cheaper

Enlarge / Alienware’s latest QD-OLED monitor, the AW3423DWF. (credit: Alienware)

Alienware announced today a new QD-OLED monitor SKU that looks awfully similar to the Alienware AW3423DW released for $1,300 this spring. The AW3423DWF has many of the same specs but skips Nvidia G-Sync certification and hardware in favor of AMD’s and VESA’s open standards for fighting screen tears, while costing $200 less than its predecessor.

Like the AW3423DW, the AW3423DWF uses QD-OLED technology from Samsung. This is a form of OLED that uses a blue self-emitting layer as its light source, which goes through a layer of quantum dots. The primary goal is better color coverage, including more consistent colors across brightness levels, combined with the deep blacks and incredible contrast for which OLED displays are known.

The 34.18-inch AW3423DWF and AW3423DW’s specs sheets match closely, including 3440×440 resolution, an 1800R curve, 99.3 percent DCI-P3 and 149 percent sRGB color coverage, up to a 165 Hz refresh rate via DisplayPort and 100 Hz via HDMI 2.0, and 0.1ms gray-to-gray (GtG) response time.