u/Sad-Victory-8319

MSI 321up x24 is a new Tandem 4th gen QD-OLED 32" 4K 240Hz monitor which addresses all downsides of QD-OLED technology and actually costs only €700 incl. tax in centra EU, so i decided to get it and share my impressions.

Pre-purchase history:

This is my first OLED monitor, currently I own two awesome widescreen 3440x1440 VA panels Asus VG34VQL1B  and recently released Asus VG34WQML5A. I love the widescreen format and I also love to enable DLDSR and use 5160x2160 resolution for a much crispier and sharper image. It has worked really well, but it would be better to actually being able to display all those pixels. I also wanted at least 240Hz so that i can properly utilize DLSS multiframe generation which is kinda restricted at just 165Hz. So at first I upgraded from 165Hz VG34VQL1B to 250Hz VG34WQML5A, but I was kinda disappointed by the image quality which looked worse on  VG34WQML5A no matter how i calibrated it, so I decided to go all in for a 2160p OLED.

My dream monitor would be a curved 5K2K 5160x2160 240Hz Tandem OLED, but unfortunately these monitors are still a year away and at best i could get 165Hz which i already know is not enough. So 3840x2160 240Hz Tandem OLED is the next best option, so instead of more waiting I decided to get it. I almost bought MSI 321urx just 2 days ago for €600, but I was worried about low 250 nit fullscreen brightness, magenta blacks in bright environment and fragile&difficult to clean QD-OLED coating. After doing some research I found out that the Tandem OLED technology adresses and improves all these issues, and my big surprise was not only that some of them are already on the market, but I found one for a very good price. So 2 days ago I received my first OLED monitor MSI 321up x24, which i bought for €700 incl. tax in central EU.

Description of features and improvements:

So this is one of the new Tandem 4th gen QD-OLED monitors with 3840x2160 resolution and 240Hz. It still has triangle sub-pixel pattern (you would need to get Tandem RGB Stripe OLED monitors for a symmetrical subpixel pattern), but honestly letter readability is completely fine, it is no worse than my current 1440p monitor and i dont notice any pixel/green letter edges. I mean the previous gen MSI 321urx with triangle subpixel pattern got better readability score on rtings than the new MSI 341cqr x36 with rgb stripe pattern (8.5 vs 7.5) so rgb stripe isnt some major must have feature really, especially on 4K monitors.

The main reasons why I immediately jumped for this monitor after cancelling my MSI 321urx order are

Dark Armor coating which is more durable and completely prevents magenta blacks (if i point very bright flashlight at the screen, it gets a bit grey, but it is not much worse than my VA monitors. During bright days black background is almost completely black (very slight grey hint) and once the sun goes down it is completely black if i have no artificial light in front of it. Basically during the day or with ambient light the black color behaves very similarly to my VA monitors with 5000:1 contrast and is very slightly grey, and with low ambient light it is completely black. So magenta blacks are no longer a thing. Durability is also fine, i already tried to clean a smudge with distilled water and fresh microfibre cloth, and i had zero issues with that, it cleaned fine like any other monitor without leaving marks or scratches.

300nit fullscreen brightness - this was honestly my biggest fear, i am completely used to my 450nit VA monitors, and during bright days i would honestly want even more. I knew 250nit is just not gonna cut it which is why I cancelled the 321urx order. I checked reviews of few other tandem oled monitors, and every single one of them (Gigabyte mo32u24, LG 39GX950B-B and MSI 341cqr x36) had dynamic SDR brightness based on content (similarly to how HDR behaves), so while 100% white screen was at 300-350nit, 25% got to 400-450 nit and 10% or less got to 500-550 nit. I was really hoping my MSI 321up x24 also has this feature finally solves poor SDR brightness, but unfortunately it doesnt. I was looking for it everywhere in the OSD menu but couldnt find it, only tons of mostly pointless AI features. This monitor is permanently stuck at 300 nit in SDR, which is really a bummer, Gigabyte mo32u24 most likely has the same exact panel, and it offer 3x dynamic SDR luminosity modes, one stays at 300nit, one goes up to 400nit and the last one up to 500 nit.

This was honestly a big disapointment and I really thought I am gonna have return this monitor, 300nit just isnt enough. In HDR it behaved correctly and brightness rose with shrinking white window, so thios monitor is clearly capable of it, but MSI probably doesnt want to risk burn-in on their monitors with 3 year burn-in warranty, so they disabled this feature in SDR. However, somebody told me they just have HDR permanently on to increase brightness, so I tried that too. At first I struggled a bit with calibrating the colors, enabling HDR makes the color catch greenish/beige tint, and R-G-B color temperature values are locked with HDR enabled, so instead I had to calibrate the colors in nvidia control center. I wasnt as succesful as in the SDR mode where I setup perfect colors, but it was pretty close.

This actually made HDR mode usable even with SDR content, and the monitor is actually much brighter with HDR enabled. It does go down to 300 nit with full white screen just like it is in SDR, but regular scenes during gaming are much brighter, I would actually say the brigtness during gaming is comparable or even slightly higher than my 450nit VA panel. So now I have the monitor set to TrueBlack500 HDR mode and I am very happy about the overall image, colors are great, it is bright, black is black or at worst slightly grey. I would just like to add one thing though, a lot of people say how superior OLED colors are, and i have disagree. In my opinion the "quality of colors" depend on only 2 things, maybe 2. One is how well are the colors calibrated, the other is brightness, and the last less important help is glossy screen that allows the colors to pop better. If you have a good quality calibrated VA/IPS panel with 400+ nits, you are already there, you wont get any "better colors" out of any OLED monitor. The colors on my VA panels are comparable to my new OLED monitor, what makes the OLED better in the end is the glossy screen and surprisingly high brightness in HDR.

3. Low price - I managed to get this monitor for €720 incl. tax in a reputable shop. There were other smaller shops selling it for as low as €675, but I wanted to make sure that i can return or RMA it without issues. This price seems ridiculously low to me considering it is new Tandem oled technology that more or less solves all the major QD-OLED issues. Every other 32" 4K tandem oled monitor that is currently for sale is €1000+.

Other things I noticed about the monitor

- I tested if it can separate black levels https://testufo.com/blacklevels , in HDR I can easily recognize every shade all the way down to 0, in SDR it is already difficult to see 4, and from 3 down it is completely black. Maybe I have setup the monitor incorrectly, but since i wont use SDR mode at all, I dont care.

- The ufo ghosting test https://testufo.com/ghosting shows zero ghosting or smudging or any other artifact (like the annoying overdrive artifacts i get on my VA panels), the instant response time and zero overshoot really is true. Gaming on this monitor is amazing, everything stays sharp even during movement, I never knew the difference is so drastic compared to VA.

- The oled care reminds me to run the "pixel healing cycle" (forgot what the name is) 2-3x per day, not sure exactly, you can cancel it or run it, it takes about 4 minutes. You can also extend the reminder to once every 24 hours. I will try to run it every single day, and I have already made changes to prevent burn-in as much as possible - the window taskbar now autohides, my desktop icons are hidden until i need them, my desktop background is solid black color, and i make sure i dont run any static image or logo in one place for a long time. I am pretty certain that there precautions and regular oled care will make burn-in a nonissue.

- I noticed banding improved quite drastically (banding is uneven transition from one shade to another). My VA panels used to show banding all the time in apps and games, but once i enabled 10-bit colors on the oled monitor, banding almost completely disappeared. This is a really nice benefit in games with open sky or open water.

- DisplayPort 1.4 vs 2.1 - this was one of the major downsides about this monitor, I wish all new monitors had DP2.1, I mean why not. I am probably gonna suprised a lot of people, but I spent a lot of time comparing DSC vs no DSC image (compression vs no compression) and there is a difference. It is extremely noticeable if you use non-native resolution, I am not sure if i have something else set incorrectly, but if i tried 2560x1440 resolution on this 4K monitor with DSC enabled, it was basically unusable, it looked like a highly compressed youtube stream. But as soon as i disabled DSC, suddenly 1440p resolution look surprisingly sharp, to the point i would have no problem using it if i ever needed an fps boost in games. I can run 2560x1440 @ 240Hz without DSC, but i cannot enable 10-bit colors at the same time, only 8-bit, and this is the major issue.

In native 4K resolution the situation is much closer, but there is still difference between DSC and no DSC unfortunately. It is mostly noticeable on windows letters (like desktop icon names) without DSC you can clearly see each pixel in each letter, while with DSC letters become kinda more bold and not as sharp. And it is not cleartype doing it, with disabled cleartype the difference is even more visible. Luckily when I compared DSC vs no DSC in games, I couldnt notice any difference. But I was quite disappointed that everybody claimed that DSC is "visually lossless", but I can very clearly see the difference on letters. Personally I would probably be willing to pay €100 for DP2.1, but not more. If you can, try to get a DP2.1 monitor, the comments that "there is no difference" are lies, no compression is obviously better, especially in non native resolutions.

- True Black 500 vs Peak 1000 nit modes - I dont know why, but True Black 500 is brighter including very tiny bright details. I dont know if the peak1000 mode is bugged or if it requires some specific content or specific settings (i have done Windows HDR calibration) but Peak 1000 is dimmer across the whole range. Even if I leave the whole screen black with one 2x2cm white square, the square is brighter with True Black 500 mode. Not sure if it is a bug in the firmware or i messed up. The EOTF boost curve is also much dimmer than True Black 500, so I keep using True Black 500.

- This is how I set the colors to match my profesionally calibrated VA monitor for office work. As I said I use the True Black 500 HDR mode 24/7, and that doesnt allow to set R-G-B values on the monitor, so instead I went to nvidia control center -> Adjust desktop color settings and I set it like this: red 50% brightness 0.98 gamma, green 42% brightness, blue 52% brightness, and everything else unchanged, this gives me ever so slightly natural warm white that is almost snow white and it gets rid of that green tint that comes with HDR. In games I also like to push digital vibrance from 50 to 55%. Soon I will rent a colorimetric probe and try to set the monitor professionaly like I did on my VA monitor, these settings just try to copy the image color by eye. In SDR I set the monitor as 92 R, 77 G and 100 B to achieve a similar image. Both Game mode and Pro mode are set to User in both SDR and HDR. Every other feature is disabled (except for DSC and Adaptive sync of course).

Final thoughts

Overall I am very happy with the monitor and I am going to keep it. For the first 24 hours I wanted to return it after I found out it has locked max SDR brightness at 300nit and it doesnt increase it based on content like other tandem oled monitors, then color calibration was very challenging and wasnt quite happy with it for a long time, but in the end I figured everything out and achieved very nice colors with high brightness. I was also disappointed than it doesnt have DP2.1 because the image without DSC is better, especially with non-native resolutions, but what can you do, in native 4K resolution the difference is small enough. I dont think there will be a better monitor for €700 this year, maybe black friday christmas sales will bring some better offers, but right now you cant get a better panel for €700, anything under €1000 wont get you a better monitor right now, at least in EU.

I also think the Tandem 4th gen QD-OLED technology pretty much solved all the QD-OLED issues, and now there is no reason not to get this technology other than price. Of course it would be nice to have even higher SDR brightness, or at least dynamic SDR brightness on my MSI 321up x24 like it is on other tandem oleds, but at least it works in HDR which is usable for 24/7 usage even if you dont use HDR content. Magenta blacks are a thing of the past, now the it gets only slightly grey, and cleaning is also easy, the panel is much more durable than previous gen QD-OLEDs. I havent noticed any text fringing and text sharpness is completely fine, most likely because the 4K resolution is fine enough to hide any imperfection of the triangle subpixel layout. This tandem 4th gen qd-oled technology has basically no major flaws right now, and if my monitor had DP2.1 and 400+nit SDR brightness, I would consider it flawless. Regardless I am very happy with it, and I highly recommend it.

I have a Kingston KC3000 2TB gen4 nvme and it has always been slower in CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD benchmarks than what i have seen in reviews, but over time the gap has increased even more. I have good sequential speeds, but random 4K read and writes are atrocious, reviews show at least 50% higher speeds. Every KC3000 drive I have seen does at least 80MB/s and 300MB/s 4K Q1T1 read/writes, Samsung drives can go even higher.

I havent written a lot of data recently to make the SLC cache busy, my windows power plan is set to high performance, i even run manual TRIM before benchmarking which helped a bit but not nearly enough. It is in the main m.2 pcie 5.0 x4 of my Asrock B650M-HDV/M.2 with ryzen 7500F and 64GB RAM.