LG’s slightly smaller ultrawides are still wide

LG has a pair of new 45-inch ultrawide gaming monitors. That sounds very wide to me, though LG says it’s the equivalent of two 24-inch monitors, which sounds almost compact compared to the 49-inchers from Samsung and LG, or the gargantuan Samsung Odyssey Ark we tested last year.

The UltraGear 45GR65DC ($799) and 45GR75DC ($899) are slightly smaller and a few hundred bucks cheaper than the 49-inch 49GR85DC, which we wisely just called the 49-inch UltraGear when we wrote about it earlier in the year. I can’t do that with these since there are two of them, but they’re basically the same except that the 45GR75DC has USB-C with 90W power delivery and the 45GR65DC doesn’t. If you preorder the fancier one before the 19th, LG will throw in a speaker.

Both monitors have 5120 x 1440 1500R curved VA panels that support 95 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut, plus VESA DisplayHDR 600, VESA Adaptive Sync, and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro at up to 200Hz. Each has one DisplayPort 1.4 input, two HDMI 2.1 ports, one USB-B 3.0 upstream port, and two downstream ports. They also have headset jacks.

The 75 adds a USB-C port, which can do video, data, and power delivery up to 90W. If you’re gonna use this thing with a work laptop and a gaming rig, get the USB-C version. If you’re just gonna hook up a gaming PC, then you can probably save a hundred bucks.

If you’ve been considering the 49-inch LG Ultragear or the Samsung G9 but were put off by the enormous proportions or $1,200 price tags, these might sound pretty good. Heck, I’m working from a 32-inch 4K monitor and I’m always running out of room. Maybe I should get an ultrawide. Please tell me in the comments if this is a bad idea or a great idea.