Alienware’s 39-inch monster just made 5K2K OLED gaming way less expensive
“5K2K” is a very nerdy kind of term that’s getting a lot of popularity right now. It’s a semi-standard resolution for a monitor, 5120×2160 — essentially the same kind of ultrawide stretch you get for a 27-to-34-inch monitor design, but blown up to 4K. Alienware’s newest OLED gaming monitor pulls this off, with an oversized 39-inch panel. And it’s doing it with a starting price of $1099.
I appreciate that OLED monitor prices are in a lot of flux right now, so let me just state outright: That is a crazy good price. For comparison, the retail price on an LG OLED with the same size and resolution is $1800, though it often goes on sale for considerably less.
But this isn’t just a value play. Dell is packing in a lot of extra features into the new AW3926QW monitor, including dual display modes, with a standard 165Hz refresh rate or a double-speed 330Hz mode for halving the resolution down to 2560×1080. (Again, that’s just 1080p stretched out to a 21:9 aspect ratio.) The monitor also includes USB-C at 90 watts of charging, HDMI eARC, a built-in KVM switch, and G-Sync compatibility.
That’s a ton of capabilty for a monitor that’s shooting well below the price range of other deluxe displays. But we’re not done. That 5K2K display is also offering a four-stack RGB panel, which means sharper text than other OLEDs and a maximum brightness of 1300 nits. My colleague Brad Chacos saw the technology in action at CES in January and it’s a huge improvement over the blurry text of yesteryear’s OLEDs. Dell is offering a 3-year burn-in warranty too.
As an upgrade over 34-inch models, which go for between $650 and $900 depending on the vendor and sale, it’s pretty tempting…assuming your gaming PC has enough horsepower to take advantage of it. Even if you can’t push out 165 frames a second on the latest games, a 4K-plus-a-little-extra monitor is probably tempting for media consumption all on its own. The monitor will be available for sale today on Dell’s online store.
