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After making an appearance at CES in January, Samsung’s latest and greatest gaming monitor is available for pre-order today, but it’s far from an impulse purchase. The Samsung Odyssey Ark is a 55-inch gaming monitor with every feature you’d expect and several you would not, and it breaks the bank at $3,500. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a monitor that takes gaming more seriously.
The Odyssey Ark sports a 1000R curved screen, which by itself is not new. However, at 55 inches, the curve does reportedly fill your peripheral vision. It supports HDR 10+ with up to 1,500 nits of brightness, which is extremely high for such a large screen. With a refresh rate of 165Hz, your games should look silky smooth, assuming you have enough GPU power.
The curve can help to increase immersion if you devote the entire display to your content. You certainly don’t have to do that, though. The Odyssey Ark includes various modes, allowing you to split the space into two, three, or four parts. With 3,840 x 2,160 pixels at your disposal, you can easily play a game on one section while keeping non-game content visible on the others.
Many of Samsung’s promotional images show the display in “Cockpit Mode,” with the panel rotated vertically (see above). In this orientation, the display can be split into three sections stacked vertically. Doing so will also rotate the source image, and this monitor can accommodate a lot of sources. There are four HDMI 2.1 ports (though, oddly, no DisplayPort), in addition to a pair of USB ports, ethernet, optical audio, and a One Connect port for Samsung’s TV tuner box. This product really straddles the line between monitor and TV.
Anyone willing to spend this much on the Odyssey Ark probably has a sufficiently powerful video card to push 4K gaming, but you don’t actually need one. This Tizen-based monitor is one of the few that supports Samsung’s updated Gaming Hub, which is also available on the company’s Smart TVs. This feature makes it easy to control inputs and access various apps. It also has support for multiple cloud gaming services, including GeForce Now, Stadia, Xbox Game Pass, and Amazon Luna.
Samsung is taking Odyssey Ark reservations today, and it’s offering $100 off the monitor to anyone who signs up. When you put in your pre-order, you get another $200 off for a total of $300. Every little bit helps when you’re talking about a $3,500 purchase.
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