Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDN review: my new ultrawide gaming monitor sweet spot

Introduction

Once you’ve stuck your face in front of a curved ultrawide gaming monitor it can be hard to go back: the vision-filling stretched screens are about as immersive as it gets outside of VR headsets. They’ve not always been the quickest option, though. The Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDN is the first of its kind to combine a blistering 360Hz refresh rate with an RGB Stripe Pixel OLED panel, making it a speed demon.

That gives it a big leg up over older ultrawides like the Samsung Odyssey OLED G9, which topped out at 240Hz and were often so big (not to mention expensive) that many gamers lacked the desk space to accommodate one. The 34in Asus is far more manageable, keeps a Quantum Dot layer for super vibrant colours, and uses its RGB sub-pixel arrangement for sharp text edges that can compete with the WOLED panel tech seen in 16:9 rivals such as the LG UltraGear 32GS95UE.

Launching at £1100 (there was no official US pricing at the time of writing) it carries a roughly 20% price premium over screens using older panel tech. Is the difference between 240Hz and 360Hz – and sub-pixel layouts – enough to justify the cost, or do only serious gamers need apply?

Design & build: get your game on

With a three-pronged metal stand looking like a ninja star and no fewer than four separate lighting zones, the ROG Swift PG34WCDN makes no bones about being a gaming monitor. Those legs take up quite a bit of desk space and make a it a little tricky to hide cables, even with the small channel in the stand keeping the assorted wires mostly in one place.

A pixel-grid ROG logo on the rear supplies the mandatory RGB illumination, though it’s not as bright as ones I’ve seen on other gaming monitors; it didn’t light up the part of my office wall directly behind it to a huge degree. There’s also a downlight projector built into the base, with a handful of different plastic inserts to pick from if you’re not a fan of Asus’ eye logo.

Asus has catered to streamers as well as gamers with a tripod thread at the top of the stand, which can securely hold a webcam or microphone. There’s a good amount of tilt, angle and height adjustment on offer, with a sturdy mechanism giving next to no wobble. Setup is entirely tool-free, and you can swap the stand out for your own VESA-compatible wall mount or monitor arm using the included adapter plate.

The screen itself sits within an ultra-skinny bezel, surrounded by metal. Most of the bulk is contained to a small section at the rear, leaving the sides and top looking impressively slim. This feels every bit the high-end display – and the metal construction also helps transfer heat away from the panel.

About the only thing missing is any sort of built-in speaker, meaning you’ll need to add your own external set to use as a multimedia monitor without reaching for headphones first.

Features & connectivity: all the ports

The PG34WCDN really does hit the ultrawide sweet spot. Asus has gone with a fairly typical 1800mm radius curve, letting the 34in panel fill your vision for a real sense of immersion in games without also warping or distorting the image too much at the edges.

It’s so easier to fit on a desk than the extreme alternatives, which start at 45in and only get larger. At 3440×1440 it may have fewer pixels than a Dual UHD or 5K2K ultrawide, but that just means you don’t need the beefiest of graphics cards to play games at the native resolution. You’re also getting the same pixel density here as a 27in screen with a QHD resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio, so are giving up nothing in terms of clarity.

A 360Hz refresh rate is the big draw here, being significantly quicker than the 240Hz older ultrawides could manage. Naturally you get support for Nvidia and AMD’s adaptive sync tech, along with black frame insertion that kicks in below 180Hz to keep low frame rate content looking smooth – though you can’t use both at the same time. Some clever anti-flicker systems behind the scenes ensure there are no distractions when changing refresh rates either.

Combined with the inherently low response times of OLED screens, the PG34WCDN is unbelievably fast. Response times are as low as it gets, besting every OLED display I’ve tested to date. For competitive play, this is the new ultrawide benchmark – although we’re talking a gap in input lag of fewer than 10 milliseconds, which even hardcore gamers might struggle to detect. That said, all the games I played felt glorious in motion, keeping up with even the fastest of flailing mouse movements when I got caught out (yet again) by the enemy team in Counter Strike 2.

Plenty of ports can then be found at the rear. There are two HDMI 2.1 ports and a single DisplayPort 2.1 which, with 80Gbps of bandwidth, can handle an uncompressed 360Hz signal at the monitor’s native resolution. The single USB-C can manage video output and deliver 90W of power, which is ideal for a one-cable hookup to a work laptop. You also get one upstream USB 3.2 port and three downstream ones – or enough for a keyboard, mouse and headset – and a 3.5mm headphone port.

Interface: ready to play

The ROG Swift PG34WCDN’s onscreen interface sticks closely to the usual Asus layout, with all the main settings split into sections that are easy enough to navigate using the directional stick and two buttons at the bottom rear of the monitor. I like that you can move it to any part of the screen, so as not to obscure the middle while gaming. There’s also a DisplayWidget Centre Windows app to control it all from the desktop, saving you from fiddling with the D-pad.

Beyond the typical image adjustment settings, there are also options for picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture inputs – a big win if you work across multiple systems.

It’s packing all the usual Asus GamePlus features, like an onscreen FPS counter, FPS crosshair, aspect ratio control and a stopwatch, along with OLED care tools that refresh the pixels to avoid burn-in. I noticed it was far keener to suggest a refresh than the LG UltraGear OLED I normally use; that needs to be on for at least four or five hours before it’ll prompt, while the Asus was more like two or three.

While it’s not the first Asus monitor with a proximity sensor, I loved its inclusion here as it meant the panel powered off automatically when I stepped away from my desk. That’s a big win for OLED longevity.

Picture quality: speed demon

The ROG Swift PG34WCDN is the first monitor I’ve tried with a Samsung-supplied RGB Stripe OLED panel. It uses thin striped red, green and blue sub-pixels rather than the squareish ones you’ll find on a regular OLED, which helps reduce colour fringing and makes fine details appear that much sharper.

In practice, there’s next to none of the softness around text edges and UI elements I’ve seen on earlier OLED monitors. Windows desktop fonts in particular are just plain clearer here, being practically on par with the WOLED tech used by LG. We’re not talking a revolutionary upgrade, but one you can still appreciate without having to break out the magnifying glass.

The quantum dot layer continues to do great things to colour vibrancy, just like it did for older-generation screens. The Swift covers more than 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut and was fantastically accurate out of the box. Creative types shouldn’t need to think about calibration before working on one of these. Reds are perhaps a little less impactful than rival OLEDs, but you’d struggle to tell without a colorimeter.

Asus’ Black Shield panel covering does a great job of blocking ambient light, reducing light reflections very effectively without introducing any sort of colour cast or tint. It’s still a glossy screen, so I still noticed some glare from a nearby window, but it wasn’t awfully distracting. You don’t need to close the curtains and switch off all the lights to get the best image anymore. Viewing angles are also superb.

The new panel tech also brings a welcome boost to brightness. The PG34WCDN is a fair bit brighter than regular QD-OLED rivals, managing a peak 500 nits SDR and climbing to 1300 nits for HDR content (albeit just for a 1.5% window). Higher peak whites than the competition give videos and games incredible impact. Doom: The Dark Ages on this monitor is a genuine treat for the eyes.

Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDN verdict

Were regular gamers crying out for a 360Hz OLED of the ROG Swift PG34WCDN’s scale? Now that my multiplayer deathmatch days are mostly behind me, such blistering speeds aren’t a significant advantage over the 240Hz panels available previously. That said, competitive players wanting the very best 34in, 21:9 aspect ratio gaming OLED going need look no further.

Asus has brought ultrawide up to speed with the 27in, 16:9 establishment, while also stepping up on sharpness courtesy of the RGB stripe OLED panel. Connectivity and ergonomics are both suitably top-tier, with wonderfully vibrant yet accurate colours and blacks you don’t have to sit in a dark room to appreciate.

Some integrated speakers would’ve made this a true multimedia all-rounder, and obviously you’ll pay a pretty penny to get one on your desk. It’s also not a massive leap forward from what we had before – but enough to make it the new best of the breed.

Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDN technical specifications