Samsung CHG70 FreeSync 2 Monitor Review: 32 Curved Inches Of Smooth HDR Gaming

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, July 24, 2018, 10:56 AM EDT

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Samsung CHG70 FreeSync 2 Monitor: Controls And Calibration

Samsung provides a wide array of controls in the CHG70's OSD (On-Screen Display) so users can tune and optimize on-screen images to their liking. There are color temperature, saturation, and gamma controls, in addition to various preset modes designed for particular types of content and games. Users also have the ability to tweak the back bias lighting, pixel response times, black levels, blue lighting, and all of the basic picture adjustments you'd expect on a modern display

Samsung incorporated physical buttons on the bottom, right edge of the display for switching between three of the gaming-mode presents and a joystick around the back for activating and navigating through the OSD. Many monitors have touch-sensitive buttons that don't always register key-presses when touched -- that is not an issue here. The physical buttons on the Samsung CHG70 make navigating the on-screen menus and switching modes quick and painless.

Navigating through the OSD on the Samsung CHG70 is also fairly straightforward thanks to the joystick controls, clear labeling, and well organized menu system, though you'll have to do some tunneling to hit certain features. Many of the main settings are outlined clearly right along the top, however, and all of the options are where you'd expect to find them. The Game menu is obviously where game related features are located, and the same can be said for the Picture, and OSD menus, etc. This seems obvious, but not every manufacturer does such a good job labeling the features in their OSD.

Calibration

Menus and Options

Sample Test Screens

For some of our testing of the Samsung CHG70, we used the Lagom LCD monitor test pages available here. The Lagom LCD monitor test pages provide tests for saturation, banding, sharpness, uniformity, and more.

Our testing showed that contrast on the Samsung CHG70 was very good. The display was also nice and sharp with straight lines (thanks it its relatively high resolution and pixel density) and it offered good black levels too. The white level performance was top-notch as well. We didn't have any issues with banding or pixel walk either and there was virtually no backlight bleed when viewing black screens in the dark. Colored test screens were mostly uniform and clean from corner to corner as well, but when not sitting perfectly centered in front of the curved screen, solid colors didn't always appear uniform. It's not noticeable in complex scenes with many colors and / or action, but static solid colors reveal some slight uniformity issues.

We also did some testing with the patterns / tools available at Techmind, and didn't discover any major issues. Some color shifts and pixel flashing were evident when moving windows with test patterns across the display, but that is very common. With static windows, the Samsung CHG70 performed well. And our calibration report mirrored our real-world experience. The display on the Samsung CHG70 is a notch above conventional monitors in terms of contrast and color reproduction, but it its not quite on the level of a high-end IPS HDR display. We suspect most users would be very pleased with the Samsung CHG70's visuals, however.