Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This OLED Gaming Monitor Bends! But is it Worth it? – Corsair Xeneon FLEX”.
It’S finally here you guys the Corsair zenyon Flex has arrived at my house in a massive ATA case with casters, which helped me wheel it across my living room through my backyard and into my YouTube Studio, where I unboxed it like. I was a little girl on Christmas morning, I’m so excited to review this on that channel, because if I end up loving it, it’s going to be going straight into my wife’s Ultimate Dream setup. As most of you already know, I recently finished my dream setup and I was gon na work on my wives, but I haven’t started because I was waiting for an actual retail unit to arrive and now that I have an actual unit in my hands. I’M gon na see if it lives up to the hype so unboxing it was fairly straightforward.
It really helped me that the Marana was very light and easy to move around. The only thing you have to install is the base you just insert it from the bottom and you tighten it with the attached screw. So no tools are needed, which is great.
You get the following: cables included in the Box, a display HDMI and two USBC cables. Now, for those who missed the last video I’ll, do a quick recap: this is the Corsair zenion Flex, it’s a 45 inch 3440 by 1440p. Ultra ride OLED monitor with a 240Hz refresh rate and a .03 millisecond response time, despite being larger than a traditional 34 inch.
Ultra ride, you still get a 21×9 aspect ratio instead of a 32×9. Like those ridiculous super ultra wide monitors, I don’t care. What excuse you guys can come up with 32×9 is just not practical in most scenarios, at least to the human eye doesn’t matter if it’s horizontal or vertical, I just don’t see them being that functional, there’s just way too much horizontal scanning the size of a flex. On the other hand, is way more practical, you get more vertical screen real estate, which keeps the focus of your eyes more in the center for a better field of view, instead of constantly having to scan side to side. But of course, the main feature of the monitor is the fact that you can bend it to your preferred curvature whenever you want a feature that used to be exclusive. Only to your wife, you simply push on the tiny button on the hidden handles behind the screen and – and you use your fingers to slide them out afterwards, you grab onto them with your hands and adjust the curvature from completely flat to 800r, or vice versa. To slide the handles back in you just repeat the process backwards, I do want to make it clear that it’s not required to use the handles when you’re bending the screen, you can actually just use the inner Palms of your hands, put them on the side of The screen and bend the monitor if you like, but I strongly recommend it to use the handles that way your hands, don’t touch the display potentially damaging it. You can also Bend each side independently. So, for whatever reason you need one side to be flat and the other curved you can do that.
One thing I’ve experienced while bending the monitor is that it will topple over because of how light the stand is there isn’t anything heavy to Anchor it down? So when you’re, bending the monitor, you have to apply a little bit of downwards Force, basically push down while you’re bending the monitor to prevent it from falling over Corsair, stated that the bending mechanism structure is targeted to last between 10 to 15 000 life cycles. In other words, if you bend a monitor five times a day for seven days a week, it will last you five and a half years as far as why you want to bend a display in the first place. That’S entirely up to you. I mean there are certain tasks that benefit a curve and there are others that benefit a flat display like watching content. For example, according to a poll I made on Twitter, most of you guys prefer watching on a flat monitor, so the image isn’t distorted, especially if you’re watching content next to someone. They won’t necessarily get the same viewing experience as you, since they are not sitting in the center.
Another example is editing, videos or doing graphic design and dealing with symmetry or geometric lines. I can see how a curve can impact your project, but out of those two scenarios, I don’t see a reason why you should go flat. Gaming on a curved monitor is fun and immersive productivity on a curved monitor is more efficient due to a more natural field of view and just general tasks feel better on a curved display.
Personally, I don’t ever see myself using a flat mode on this Monitor and I feel like that’s where this is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people. The ability to bend your monitor is a premium feature so to pay extra for that premium. Feature and not use it is a complete waste of money.
Another deal breaker for a lot of people is going to be the stand. I can’t emphasize how much this is going to impact the sales of the Corsair xanium Flex. It is not basically compatible. I mean you can’t Mount this to a desk or a wall. Personally, I love mounting monitors.
It gives me so much more flexibility. I can mount it at any height or angle to achieve the perfect positioning, which also impacts the Aesthetics of the overall setup. That’S very important to a lot of people, but you can’t do that with the flex, because the stand is baked into the monitor all the ports and buttons are on the actual stand, eliminating the option of mounting it. However, I was told by Corsair about a potential desk clamp for the monitor that they will eventually release next year.
Okay, it’s still something, but I don’t know what it’s going to look like. I don’t know how much it’s going to cost or how much adjustability it’s going to offer, but I feel, like most of us are still after that basis, certification. Now you guys might be wondering at this point. Wait a minute earlier in the video. You said that if you like the monitor you’re going to mount it to your wife’s desk, how are you going to mount it if it’s not basic compatible? Well, I’m actually going to be modding the desk so that we can mount this against a headboard.
It’S very complicated I’d. Rather, you guys just wait and watch the video when it’s out another thing to consider is desk space. The legs of the monitor are massive. They protrude up quite a bit we’re talking almost 12.5 inches from the back of the monitor.
So if you have a fairly shallow desk, it’s going to interfere with your peripherals. The desk, I’m using in this article is the Ikea hallostad and it’s 25 and a half inches in depth. So you can see the stand is sitting fairly close to my keyboard and mouse, and if you’re walking an extended mouse pad, it’s going to easily overlap it. So I would recommend at least a 30 inch deep desk with the flex to make sure you have plenty of clearance all right, so the stand itself only offers tilt and there’s a handle on the bottom to prevent your hands from touching the screen. As you tilt the display and honestly I feel like the height of the monitor, is perfect. It’S not too high or too low. It’S fixed perfectly to where your head will be in the center, regardless of what you’re doing there was a good amount of play. I’Ve noticed, but I think that’s just due to the nature of the monitor being so light and the fact that you can bend it so there are moving Parts. The stand itself, however, is actually built very well.
Lg actually has their very own version of the smarter. However, their stand offers height adjustability, but it’s pricier and smaller, coming in at 42 inches. Instead, so on the front of the stand, you have quick access to the menu power and input buttons which are located on the right side and on the other, you get a headphone jack with two USB 3 pass-throughs.
This is great because you can just plug in a flash drive conveniently from the stand. Instead of reaching your PC’s USB port, you also get two more USB 3 Type, A ports in the back in case you want to hook up your peripherals game controllers, camera or microphone, and another USBC Port capable of charging devices with 30 watt power delivery. So you can juice up your smartphone or tablet, while using the monitor the bottom USBC Port is the pass-through. So in order to activate the USB hub on the stand you’re going to need to plug in the USB C cable that came with the monitor one issue. I came across while switching between inputs on the monitor is that it wouldn’t recognize whatever device I had plugged in through the HDMI port. I had my PS5 connected via HDMI one and when I used the input button to switch between both systems, it would just automatically kick me back to the monitor.
I actually have to do it a few times until the monitor finally recognized the PS5. So I thought that was pretty weird and hopefully it was just a small bug that gets resolved soon. Okay, let’s talk about the display now, so the OLED panel is actually an LG OLED panel they’ve developed a technology and they’ve worked closely with Corsair to implement it. In one of their own monitors, the colors are extremely vibrant, with deep blacks, thanks to every OLED pixel being self-lit.
This means you get true blacks instead of relying on dimming zones. This makes it very enjoyable when watching movies. Basically, OLED is what you always want to aim for when shopping for a TV or a gaming monitor it’s arguably the best screen technology available. It’S got great color reproduction, but, more importantly, it’s better for your eyes. If you don’t know already, all the panels produce light on their own and does not require a light source, meaning they produce a light, that’s more natural and less harsh.
On your eyes, the only downside to OLED is the image retention or burn-in images that remain on the screen for long periods of time can lead to image retention and that’s common on older panels due to the organic materials used. But the xenium flex actually has a built-in feature that will help prevent it like automatically refreshing the screen when powered off after every eight hours of use. This can also be accessed manually through the OSD, underneath the retention refresh option, then there’s orbit if you set this on the image, will shift one pixel per minute in a clockwise circular pattern. Regardless you do get burn in protection and a three year warranty with the flex, which also includes dead pixels, speaking of which I did not find any on the flex. I checked it against white, red, blue and black backgrounds and haven’t found any backlight.
Bleed is also non-existent on OLED panels because, as stated before, the pixels shut off so there’s no source of backlight to begin with, color accuracy is fantastic. On the flex I tested the colors using the spider X, utility and they’re fairly close to what Corsair was reporting. We got 100 of srgb color space 91 of adobe RGB and 97 of the cip3. This was tested with the default settings on the standard preset by the way, this is a very color accurate monitor if you guys are planning on doing any type of content creation on it, then you’re pretty much set sharpness is also very good.
On a flex, lines are clear and defined no brakes or banding was discovered anywhere. The tiniest of font is crystal clear and very sharp as well as expected. Viewing angles are also exceptional. I didn’t experience any color shifting vertically or horizontally.
All it is far more Superior compared to a VA panel or a TN when it comes to viewing angles. The monitor is advertised with a .03 millisecond response time and while I can’t confirm it because I don’t have the prop equipment to test it, I can tell you that it’s fast Stupid, Fast, no ghosting or Crone artifacts were present during the UFO test and during the Response time test as well, I absolutely had a blast gaming on the smarter, but not all games are fun. Let me explain most of us Ultra ride. Users are already aware that you can’t game competitively on an ultra ride, monitor due to the aspect ratio not being in our favor. The extra horizontal screen real estate affects our reaction time, since there is additional head scanning involved.
Unless you don’t care about wins, then it shouldn’t really affect you playing Modern Warfare. 2 on the flex was very fun, but it definitely affected my gameplay. I found myself always looking towards the direction of the mini-map, which would often distract me in gunfights story.
Driven games. Mmos racing games, or anything of that nature, is what this monitor was made for. The extra vertical screen real estate from the flex makes such a difference coming from a 34 inch Ultra ride, while playing cyberpunk.
It felt like the game wrapped around my entire face, covering my peripheral vision vertically and horizontally, which just contributes more to the immersion. However, with that said often times, I found myself scanning the monitor for useful information like constantly looking at the corners of the screen to check my ammo or the map. Sometimes, and it would just interfere with my gaming. But it’s not that big of a deal because it’s not a multiplayer game, nor is it competitive. So it’s more forgiving if you run into a wall or a pole while driving, for example, another example is playing Forza Horizon 5.
Because of how close I am sitting to the screen, I have to constantly look in the corners to see the map and my current speed and again it’s very distracting. As I’m racing, I know I can go into the settings and change the location of the map and the speedometer, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make due to the sheer size of this monitor sitting up. That close will require a lot of head movement. Unfortunately, it’s just another reason why I recommend going with a deep desk the further the monitor is away from your face, the better the field of view and the less head movement will be required.
Gaming on a controller wasn’t as much of an issue since I was able to sit further away so, if you’re, a controller Gamer for the most part, the giant screen will be more of a positive impact to your gaming experience rather than a negative gentian impact. For example, was extremely fun to play on the ultra ride, it’s a very beautiful game and definitely enjoyable if you sit back and play on a controller. So this leads me to the size of the monitor.
As far as gaming displays go, I feel like 45 inches is the perfect spot to be in right between a 35 inch and a 49 inch super ultra wide. I feel like anything bigger than this, then we’re kind of venturing into the TV space, and it’s just not that practical. Now when it came to productivity, this monitor really shines. You can do a lot with that extra screen real estate. You can split up to four Windows side by side if you really wanted to maximize the whole screen. But honestly, I feel like three Windows fit more perfectly.
You can also do one window per Corner if that’s more your style and if you’re editing videos. The 21×9 aspect ratio comes in very handy when you’re working with a long timeline. I actually found it much more efficient editing, a video on the Flex compared to using all four of my monitors from my current setup, believe it or not, just the fact that everything is right there in front of you, your preview window, the video effect media, folder And the timeline all on one screen: this is like the dream: ultrawide monitor for any content creator.
Okay. How much is this monitor gon na cost you and is it worth it? Well, it’s gon na cost, you two thousand dollars and you can pre-order it on December 14th. Remember the premium that you’re paying for is mostly because of the bending feature, and also because there aren’t that many monitors out there quite like this. So if you’re gon na drop two grand on it, you have to use all the features the monitor has to offer and then, and only then will the price be justified, but with all that said, I still think it’s a fantastic monitor.
It certainly has all the features I’m looking for as a content, creator and gamer. The bending feature is pointless to me personally, I’m probably never gon na to use it unless I have guests over and I want to flex to them, but I’m probably going to just keep it in curved position the entire time. I’Ve also decided you guys. This is going to be the main monitor for my wife’s Ultimate Dream setup and I can’t wait to get started on that project.
I invite you guys over to subscribe to the website and make sure to follow along on the progress, because it’s going to be an epic setup, I’ll drop a link to the courser Jenny on Flex down below, if you guys want to check it out. Thank you. So much to Corsair for sending this over and sponsoring this video, and thank you guys for watching I’ll see you guys in the next one. .