Samsung’s most impressive gaming monitor finally has a full set of specs, a reservations date, and a price. The 55-inch Samsung Odyssey Ark, in all of its stunning 4K glory, is now available to reserve and will be up for sale in early September.
Looking at the specs and the monitor itself reveals a dream come true for many gamers, but there’s a catch, and that catch is pretty massive: the price. Because really, how many of us are prepared to spend $3,499 on a gaming monitor?
If you ignore the price, the monitor sounds pretty perfect, as long as you’re into curved monitors and like to have a huge gaming screen. The new gaming monitor comes with a full 55 inches of Samsung’s proprietary quantum matrix mini LEDs, promising to deliver a superior visual experience. It has a 1000R curvature and is supposedly the first 1000R gaming monitor of that size.
For such a mighty screen, it offers a lot of flexibility. It can also be used in cockpit mode, which might make your neck hurt if you do it for too long, but for games like Microsoft Flight Simulator and even certain professional use cases, it’s bound to fill a niche that smaller screens simply can’t compete in. Samsung also decked out the Ark with a neural quantum processor that can upscale all content up to 4K.
At that size, you’re probably thinking you could just get a TV for much less — and that’s very true, you could. However, Samsung did think of the gamers here by adding a 1-millisecond response time and a refresh rate of 165Hz. In theory, this monitor should be able to tackle swift MOBAs just as well as it can handle immersive RPGs.
If all of that didn’t sell you on the Samsung Odyssey Ark, we feel obliged to mention that it’s one flexible giant. You can adjust the screen size between 55 inches and 27 inches, pick your aspect ratio (16:9, 21:9, or 32:9), and split the screen to feature one application or several. All of this can be done with the solar-powered Ark Dial, because yeah, for $3,500, your monitor even has its own controller.
Samsung Odyssey Ark is one expensive beast
Before Samsung dropped the news and unveiled the monitor’s pricing, there had been a lot of speculation about how much it might cost. This is a premium monitor, there’s no doubt about that, so most of us were prepared for it to be expensive. Some predictions pinned the price around the $2,500 range, and while that’s high enough, Samsung managed to surpass that by tacking on an additional $1,000.
Spending $3,500 on a monitor is something that not many can stomach, especially when we’re talking about a 55-inch monstrosity. Admittedly, the Samsung Odyssey Ark is a gorgeous monstrosity, but it’s still a massive beast that many gamers won’t even make the most of. Forget using it if you don’t have a spacious desk or enough wall space to utilize the VESA mount.
On the other hand, if you have the space and the extra cash in your wallet, this monitor is likely to deliver a gaming experience unlike any other. It’s also good for multitasking with the various screen options, so if you like to play a game and then also have a livestream and your browser open all at once, you can now ditch your dual-monitor setup. The cockpit mode looks impressive too, and undoubtedly, some games will do well with it. With all that said, it’s still $3,500, and that’s enough money for a whole new gaming PC.
There’s no doubt that it will be one of the best curved monitors for the next few years at the very least, but is this monitor going to live up to its price? That’s up to you — if you think it’s worth it, then, by all means, hop on the reserve list right now. If you commit to a pre-order, you can get an up to $300 discount compared to if you were to wait and shop in September. Note, however, the Samsung is offering that discount as $100 off the Ark and a $200 Samsung gift card — and you can’t use the gift card toward the Ark.
