AmazonReviewer
I picked up Dell's S3422DWG back in March, and have been putting it through its paces ever since. It's my primary media device for games, movies, and photo editing, and I'm here to share my impressions of the monitor after the better part of a year.
I picked up the S3422DWG for $380 to replace my aging Acer X34, as my latest build used an AMD GPU instead of the previous Nvidia, requiring a FreeSync device. I was immediately struck by how good the blacks looked compared to my old IPS: deep without all the old panel's backlight bleed. This higher contrast really enhances all of the media I throw at this monitor. I'm incredibly sensitive to motion blur, and I really can see the difference in responsiveness between an older 100Hz panel and a newer 1434Hz one. While VAs supposedly have worse viewing angles, I don't ever hit a real-world use case where I've noticed this. The curve is a bit more severe than I'm used to, but after a week my brain adjusted to it.
The OSD is much nicer than my Acer with a few flaws. You get a joystick that can be depressed to open the OSD, with four buttons that can be mapped to menu items. Sadly the response time menu is not an option, so turning on strobing requires a menu dive each time. But overall quite functional and intuitive.
So what about the dreaded black smearing? Early VA panels were panned for gaming due to dark content having a much worse response time than IPS displays, creating black smears during game movement. I'm happy to report that this monitor does not strongly exhibit this behavior on "Super Fast" response time. I do see a bit of dark content smearing with strobing turned on in games, where the ultra-responsiveness exposes anything but the fastest response times. But this is generally minimal, unless you have something like black text on a white sign.
Let's talk to strobing. Compared to previous strobing monitors I've tried, I'm happy to report that the S3422DWG maintains very strong brightness with strobing (which it calls MPRT) turned on. Cross-talk varies depending on where you look on the screen. The center has very good coherency, the bottom is good in this regard, and the top of the screen exhibits noticeable strobe cross-talk. This means that strobing is viable in games where you're not fixing your gaze on the top third of the screen (such as Witcher 3) and not very good in games where you're looking all over the screen at any time (e.g., Diablo 4). Overall it's a nice perk, but not a universally reliable one.
The last caveat for this screen is that reviewers have panned it for flickering with GSync under 60Hz, which could be a deal-breaker for NVidia users.
Overall, this monitor is incredibly strong for its price point ($350 at the time of this review) for users who want to watch media, edit, or play games with an ultra-wide aspect ratio for AMD users. I recommend it as a gorgeous bargain panel.
| Standing screen display size | 34 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 3440x1440 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 3440 x 1440 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 4 |