msi Optix MAG342CQR 34" Curved Gaming Monitor - 3440 x 1440 (UWQHD), 1500R Curvature, 144Hz Refresh Rate, 1ms Response Time, AMD Freesync, Tilt/Swivel/Height/Pivot Adjustment - Black

This monitor delivers excellent value for the price. It arrived securely packaged: an Amazon box enclosing the original MSI box. The build quality is solid and surprisingly heavy (in a good way), with a sturdy metal and plastic stand that feels premium. Setup was a breeze. It’s mostly plug-and-play, but I recommend downloading the correct drivers from MSI’s website to unlock the best color accuracy. One pleasant surprise was the RGB ring on the back; it adds a nice touch to the overall aesthetic. Just be aware that the base is quite large, so make sure you have enough desk space. The screen is bright enough to remain clear even next to a window with natural light pouring in. Once you bump the refresh rate up in Windows Display Settings (it defaults to 60Hz), everything feels incredibly smooth. And the HDR makes content that supports HDR look vibrant and immersive, with deep contrast and rich colors that really pop. Overall, this monitor is easy to set up, looks great, and performs even better. Whether you're gaming, working, or watching movies, it’s a fantastic choice.

This cam well packaged and no dead pixels. It was fairly easy to put together. I like the stand...it's sturdy but small and doesn't take up a lot of desk space. The picture is clear and color reproduction is good as well. It does have an RGB light on the back, but, sadly, it's not synced to the colors onscreen, it just slowly rotates through the rainbow of colors. Pretty easy to adjust or tilt the screen to your liking. I'm very happy with the quality and I think it was a good value as well.

Monitor looks great especially for the price, considering it's panel type the viewing angles are not horrible. It's super bright for me and it was super easy to set up. Everything feels high quality. Only "issue" is that anti motion blur does not come pre enabled. Was super worried at first as blacks would smear really bad but after going into the monitors setting I turned on anti motion blur and it got rid of all smearing.

I was very hesitant to buy this monitor at first because of it not having a lot of reviews. I'm glad I did though this monitor is worth it. I was upgrading from a dual asus 24 inch monitor setup that i was very disappointed with. This is the type of quality 34 inch 3440x1440 i was hoping to get. The price is excellent for what you are getting compared to some others. The picture quality is superb. There is zero back light bleed. No dead pixels or any defects in the time that I have had it. The box it was shipped in was good and the monitor was well protected inside. It has the capability of doing picture in picture, and picture by picture. With the display port cable hooked up it gives you 144hz as advertised. It's easy to set up and change picture settings to make it right for you. I have mine set up on a Vesa arm desk mount,it comes with the hardware in the box to work with the Vesa mount which I saw in another review on here. The stand is pretty big so you'll want to make sure your desk has enough space for it to sit on. The stand is feels nice and solid if you go with that option. The curved screen took a week or so to get use to but the viewing from all angles is very good. Overall I could not be happier with this purchase. I hope that if you are struggling to make a decision to buy a monitor like I was that this helps.

I have only had the monitor for one day so this review will reflect that. I plan on updating this review in a month or so after some decent time has been put on it. Firstly, this is my first monitor upgrade in nearly ten years since I purchased dual Dell 22" P2211ht monitors-- and it's astounding to see first hand, not just on YouTube reviews, just how far diplays have come in that time even on the low end of spectrum. The wow factor here is 10/10. 34" of screen space is much more impressive when it is on your desk. I have a sizeable desk, and I'm now looking at side tables to put my full tower PC on. At the same time though, not having to swing my 22" forward on the vesa arm it was mounted on is saving valuable real estate and now it's not as cramped feeling when I have my hotas or wheel out for sim racing/flight sims. I was concerned about the curvature coming from a flat panel but it's actually very nice, feels natural and took less than an hour for it to feel like the new normal. Zero dead pixels on the display from what I can tell, no manufacturing defects-- a big relief after seeing some other reviews complain of those things. Ghosting/smearing is not really noticeable in my use case (sim racing) but is present. I got used to it pretty quickly and it doesn't bother me. Once I'm in game I don't notice it. I don't notice any blacklight bleed but I don't play in pitch darkness, either. Other games can produce more noticeable effects. The color needed some adjusting. The OSD is functional and I had no issues adjusting contrast and brightness to tone down the oversaturation that was present out of the box. It does seem a bit washed out but still looks nice. I don't have a real need for HDR so I can't comment on that yet. The display is plenty bright, brighter than my old monitors. USB ports would be nice but this isn't a dealbreaker, my PC has plenty for my needs. Wish the RGB worked with mystic light or was at least adjustable since I don't really care for rainbow RGB. As far as build quality, it doesn't seem terrible but isn't premium. The stand is sturdy and while the plastic gives off flimsy vibes I was adjusting tilt and height just fine without anything other than plastic-y creaks and pops that seem slightly more pronounced than my previous Dells. I have a GTX 1070 (thanks, cryptominers!) so not too many games I play can make full use of the refresh rate but the ones that I could push there felt great. Very fluid and smooth. All in all, first impressions are very positive. A pretty big leap in technology for myself and I feel the price is fair. I can easily recommend it at the sub $500 price point and have zero regrets so far.

I originally purchased this monitor in November of 2022. Initially, it met all my expectations, delivering excellent performance that justified its price. Unfortunately, it unexpectedly failed in June of 2023, refusing to power on without any preceding issues. To this day, I'm not sure what happened. MSI honored the warranty, but it costs a little over $100 on my end to ship it back for a replacement, which, to my disappointment, was a refurbished unit rather than a new one. While I understand this may be standard operating procedure for warranty claims, receiving a refurbished monitor within a year of purchasing is a little discouraging. Well, here it is late April of 2024, and the replacement has also failed to function, albeit more gradually than its predecessor. It began with flickering horizontal lines, which initially disappeared with a reboot, but eventually persisted. Not too long afterwards, it began to black out momentarily every few minutes, making it difficult to use for gaming. I've tried changing cables, ports on the video card, and even power supplies. but nothing I've tried has resolved the issue. I've decided it's no longer worth the investment, and I'm not going to spend $100 more to send it back to MSI for another refurbished monitor to show up at my door and history repeat itself. I've typically had positive experiences with MSI products, which makes this situation particularly disappointing. The failure of both monitors within such a short time has left me hesitant about the durability and reliability of MSI's products, and a recent issue with I experienced with an MSI motherboard has only added to my concerns. In the future, I will be very reluctant to purchase their products again, and will likely explore other brands that might offer greater reliability.

Purchased with an M4 mac mini during prime day. GOOD: Fills my entire view at normal distance. 21:9 movies fit perfect. Or fit multiple windows in view. Color and blacks look good and resolution is good. The stand works well for me. BAD: There's some black smearing with deep blacks and fast movement. This monitor has known issues with waking with an attached computer, needing a power off and on to connect. I made some recommended changes to the settings with no effect, then moved the computer to hdmi 2 and it started waking up just fine. (?) I don't like computer voodoo, it needs to work without me throwing chicken bones. The buttons are pretty cheap feeling. OVERALL: Well worth the sale price.

Great monitor for general productivity use. Colors are sharp. Text is clear. The vast amount of display area is amazing. The curve seems just right: the whole screen stays clear at normal working distance. Many 3440x1440 (UWQHD) monitors are available. I chose this one in part because it is a good value, but also for the adjustable stand. The stand is a triangle with widely spread legs: it is very sturdy. I've used large monitors with tiny stands and they tend to bounce around. The stand is fully adjustable: I was able to get the height and tilt exactly right -- without using packs of printer paper as for other monitors. The 3440x1440 resolution and 34" size is the sweet spot for everyday, boring text-based apps such as text editors, IDEs, the command line and so on. I use Linux Mint which is a great Linux distro. However, support for high resolution monitors is limited. I tried using a 27" 4K monitor. While that monitor worked great with a Mac, Linux Mint just can't use it correctly. Scaling is either normal (text far too small) or 2x, which makes text blocky and provides no more space than the 1080p monitor. So, a better solution is this monitor. The larger size, coupled with greater resolution, gives about the same dot pitch as the 1080p monitor, so no need to mess with scaling. Text is clear at normal scaling, if just a bit smaller than with the old monitor. To see how this will work for you, measure your old monitor's height and divide by 1080. Compare that to the specs of your new choice. Confusingly, some specs list dpi (dots-per-inch), some list "ipd" (inches per dot). One is just the inverse of the other. I've not used newer OLED monitors, so I can't compare colors with one of those. On the other hand, unless you are watching movies or playing games, it hardly matters. On this monitor, web pages are amazingly crisp. There is more space for my development tools. PDFs now display full page large enough to read without having to zoom in and scroll each page. There is plenty of space to display two apps side-by-side to minimize Alt-Tab window switching. Display technology has come a long way: this monitor is amazing when compared with the five-yer-old one it replaces. The monitor is rated at 144Hz refresh. My poor old hardware delivers only 50Hz at this resolution. Perhaps it would be higher if I used display port rather than HDMI. This seems to not be a problem for development work: I can't type that fast anyway. Videos seem fine. Perhaps the higher refresh rates are most important for gamers. In short, this is a cost-effective upgrade for work use when coming from an old-school 1080p monitor. I'm very pleased so far. Just make sure your graphics can handle the resolution.