The Samsung Odyssey G80HS is the first 6K gaming monitor, which immediately raises an obvious question: who exactly needs a 6K gaming monitor? It's a crazy resolution for gaming and far too demanding to make much sense with today's GPUs at native resolution. But the G80HS has a few tricks designed to make that seemingly excessive spec more practical.
Its 6K mode is primarily aimed at high-DPI productivity. You get a large 32-inch IPS LCD panel with no risk of burn-in and a 165Hz refresh rate that keeps desktop use feeling smooth and responsive. None of the sluggish 60Hz experience that has plagued high-DPI monitors for far too long.
Then, for gaming, Samsung offers a 3K dual mode that drops the resolution to something much more manageable for today's GPUs while doubling the refresh rate to 330Hz. Variable refresh rates are supported, Samsung claims fast response times, and the overall package is meant to deliver a genuine high-end gaming experience.
What's the catch? The Odyssey G80HS costs $1,600, which is very expensive.
That's about double the price of a 32-inch 4K 240Hz OLED monitor. It also has, uh... questionable HDR performance, which we'll get into later. No spoilers just yet.
But while it is expensive for a gaming monitor, it's not crazy for a high-DPI productivity display. Asus, for example, sells the 32-inch 6K ProArt PA32QCV for $1,300, but that model is limited to 60Hz. For me, and probably plenty of others considering a display like this, that's a non-starter.
The 6K Resolution
The Odyssey G80HS's biggest selling point is its 6144 x 3456 resolution. This is an exceptionally sharp monitor capable of producing excellent levels of detail. At a 32-inch panel size, that resolution results in a pixel density of 220 PPI, nearly 60% higher than a standard 4K screen. Up against the 32-inch 4K LCDs and OLEDs that I use daily, I felt the improvement from 6K was immediately noticeable.
This 32-inch 6K panel has a similar pixel density to a 27-inch 5K panel, with both forming part of a new wave of high-DPI, gaming-class displays. These screens make more sense when viewed around a target pixel density rather than a specific resolution. The 32-inch model is larger and provides more screen real estate than a 27-inch display, so pushing the resolution from 5K to 6K maintains that same high-density experience while giving you more pixels to work with.
The biggest benefits of 6K come from desktop productivity. Text quality is outstanding, with noticeably sharper edges than on 4K screens, while high-resolution photos can be displayed with greater detail.
The end result is similar to 27-inch 5K because the pixel density is essentially the same, but the jump from 4K to 6K at 32 inches is more substantial than going from 4K to 5K at 27 inches. That's simply because the increase in pixel density is larger. It's a big win for people that love a large panel but also love a high-DPI experience.
Another productivity advantage is the increased pixel real estate, especially when working with high-resolution assets. If you're editing a 4K image in Photoshop, for example, a 4K monitor can't display that image at 100% scale while also leaving room for the application interface. You typically need to reduce the image to around 66% to fit everything on screen.
On a 6K display, you can view the same 4K image at full resolution and 100% scale while still leaving roughly 60% of the screen available for Photoshop's interface and tools. Viewing the image at 100% is preferable because you're seeing the source without scaling artifacts. For workloads like this, 6K is genuinely a much better experience.
For gaming, the benefits are less significant. We tried a range of games at the full 6K resolution and, don't get me wrong, they looked absolutely brilliant in terms of detail and sharpness. It's clearly an improvement over 4K, but not a transformative one. A 32-inch 4K display already looks very sharp for gaming.
The problem is the extreme performance cost. A 6144 x 3456 image contains 2.5x as many pixels as 4K, so your GPU has dramatically more work to do for what is ultimately nowhere near a 2.5x improvement in visual quality. Getting much above 60 FPS at 6K is difficult even with high-end GPUs.
For example, we hooked the monitor up to a GeForce RTX 5080, and to consistently stay above 60 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at 6K, we had to use the High preset with ray tracing disabled and DLSS set to Performance mode. The same configuration at 4K delivered over 110 FPS, making much better use of a high-refresh-rate display.
The new Lego Batman game provided another good example. It looks gorgeous at 6K thanks to its excellent texture quality, but reaching 60 FPS required dropping the preset to Medium and again using DLSS Performance upscaling.
With current hardware, this simply isn't a monitor where you can expect to combine its maximum resolution with maximum graphics settings in demanding games.
That's specifically true of modern triple-A gaming, though. There are plenty of games where the extra resolution is useful and the performance penalty matters much less. Titles heavy on interfaces and fine details, such as strategy games and city builders, look fantastic at 6K. Lightweight 2D games and many indie titles are also particularly well suited to the resolution.
Dual Mode: 3K at 330Hz
While 6K may not be ideal for gaming overall, the G80HS has a neat trick up its sleeve: Dual Mode functionality. Dual Mode allows the monitor to run at a lower resolution, typically one-quarter of native, while increasing the refresh rate, usually to double the native maximum. Because the panel starts at 6K, the trade-off is much more appealing here than on most other dual-mode displays.
On 4K dual-mode monitors, the lower-resolution configuration is typically 1080p, which is a substantial downgrade in sharpness, especially on a 32-inch panel. I certainly don't want to play most games at 1080p on a display this large.
But on a 6K monitor like the G80HS, Dual Mode drops to 3072 x 1728, or 3K, while the refresh rate increases from 165Hz to 330Hz. A 3K resolution on a 32-inch panel is far more usable and works well across a wide range of games without the major loss in visual quality we saw with 1080p dual modes.
As with other monitors, Dual Mode works seamlessly here. Enable the option in the OSD, and the resolution drops while the refresh rate increases. There are no other meaningful compromises: color performance, contrast, and input lag are preserved just as they are in the 6K mode.
Samsung has also mapped Dual Mode to a right press of the OSD toggle for quick access, although strangely it isn't a simple on/off switch. It also cycles through the 24-inch emulation mode, which is a little annoying when you just want to quickly disable Dual Mode.
The G80HS does not use strict integer scaling in its 3K Dual Mode. A single 3K pixel is typically represented by four primary native pixels, with up to four additional pixels activated at lower brightness. This gets closer to a native-like presentation than most other dual-mode monitors, so I think it looks quite good. It's also worth remembering that a native 6K panel can never look exactly like a native 3K panel because of inherent differences in subpixel layout at the hardware level.
Subpixel Layouts
The 3K mode is obviously not as sharp or detailed as native 6K, and the downgrade can feel substantial if you've been using the 6K mode for a while. Text and desktop apps are blurrier, and you lose the crystal-clear sharpness of the native resolution.
Broadly speaking, though, it looks similar to a 27-inch 1440p panel, perhaps slightly softer, and that's still a very usable level of clarity. It's nowhere near the downgrade we saw on 4K dual-mode monitors running at 1080p, where the image can look very blurry on a 32-inch screen. By comparison, 3K Dual Mode looks quite reasonable.
You wouldn't use the 3K mode in situations where that loss of resolution is especially noticeable. For text-heavy desktop applications, we'd simply leave the monitor at 6K. The real advantage is gaming, where 3K provides what is, at worst, roughly a 1440p-like experience.
I was very satisfied with the level of detail and clarity in this mode. In-game interfaces still look good in most cases, the image doesn't appear overly blurry, and overall it's an excellent resolution for gaming. After about 10 minutes of gameplay, you quickly stop thinking about the fact that you're not getting the full native 6K experience.
Gaming at 3K is also far less demanding than 6K, so you're trading some top-end clarity and sharpness for more than double the frame rate at the same settings. In my opinion, that's a much better balance. The 3K Dual Mode works well across essentially all types of games and is my preferred way to play most titles on this monitor.
That makes the G80HS an unusually versatile display. The native 6K mode delivers excellent text clarity and elite sharpness for desktop applications and productivity, while the 3K 330Hz mode is much better suited to high-performance gaming, avoiding the enormous performance hit of running games at 6K while also doubling the maximum refresh rate.
Neither mode feels overly compromised. You're getting much closer to the best of both worlds, and this is one of the first implementations where Dual Mode genuinely lives up to its promise.
Response Time Performance
The Odyssey G80HS does offer adjustable overdrive settings, but only when adaptive sync is disabled. Most people are going to use this display with G-Sync, FreeSync, or some form of VRR enabled, in which case the overdrive settings are grayed out and Samsung's default tuning is used. So that's what we'll focus on here: response time performance with VRR enabled.
Starting with the 6K configuration at the maximum 165Hz refresh rate, performance is decent, with an average response time of 7.42ms and no noticeable overshoot artifacts. This isn't quite as fast as we'd like to see at 165Hz, but it gets reasonably close, and cumulative deviation is good. Essentially, the gaming experience at 6K 165Hz is solid enough, assuming you can actually run games at that sort of frame rate.
As the refresh rate decreases in the 6K mode, performance hovers around an 8ms response time average, with no overshoot all the way down to 60Hz.
Cumulative deviation remains good, while refresh compliance indicates reasonable support for at least 120Hz, if not a little higher. Ideally, performance would be slightly faster, but given that most games at 6K will probably run toward the lower end of the refresh range, it's good to see response times hold up there. The result is effectively a single overdrive mode experience across the refresh range.
Compared with other displays at their maximum refresh rates, the G80HS isn't especially fast, but it's also not drastically outside the range we typically see from IPS LCDs.
The 5K LG 27GM950B is slightly faster in terms of raw response times, but in cumulative deviation, the 5K and 6K options are essentially neck and neck. It's also good to confirm that the G80HS doesn't suffer from the sort of speed issues we saw with displays like the BenQ EX321UX or LG 27G850A. A cumulative deviation result of around 500 is only about 20% behind the Gigabyte M32UP near the top of the chart, so overall we're seeing fairly typical Fast IPS performance.
Across the refresh rate range, Samsung has optimized the panel to minimize overshoot artifacts, which is why its average response time results sit toward the lower end of the chart. But cumulative deviation, which accounts for the balance between response speed and overshoot, places the G80HS firmly in the middle of the pack for an IPS LCD. It offers an almost identical experience to the 27GM950B and most other high-resolution LCDs.
The major difference comes when comparing it with OLED. OLED panels are an order of magnitude faster in response times and therefore offer much better motion clarity at the same refresh rate. The 240Hz PG32UCDM3 at the top of the chart is roughly twice as clear in fast motion as the G80HS at 165Hz.
The G80HS isn't particularly fast at 120Hz or 60Hz either, but we're not seeing any problematic results such as excessive overshoot.
The 3K Dual Mode configuration uses different response time tuning from the 6K mode, allowing the panel to run a little faster at the same refresh rate. At 165Hz, for example, the average response time improves from 7.4ms at 6K to 5.7ms at 3K.
This more aggressive tuning is largely necessary to push the display toward its 330Hz maximum. Even so, the panel isn't fast enough to deliver a true 330Hz response time experience. At 330Hz, transitions need to complete within roughly 3ms to keep pace with each refresh, and the G80HS falls well short of that target. As a result, we run into refresh compliance issues where some pixel transitions take longer to complete than the refresh cycle itself.
This only resolves at around the 200Hz mark, meaning refresh rates above that are bottlenecked to some degree by the panel's response times. On the positive side, there isn't much overshoot at those higher refresh rates.
Through the middle and lower portions of the refresh range, the 3K mode averages around 6ms, although overshoot becomes increasingly noticeable as the refresh rate drops. At 60Hz, performance improves, but this doesn't appear to be the result of variable overdrive. Instead, at around 62Hz the monitor typically switches to a double-rate configuration. This means a 60Hz VRR input is actually displayed with the panel refreshing at 120Hz, despite the monitor reporting a minimum VRR refresh rate of 48Hz.
Between 120Hz and just above 60Hz, the inverse ghosting rate sits at around 30 to 40%, producing noticeable artifact trails behind moving objects. It isn't a complete deal breaker, but this part of the refresh range could have been better optimized. In practice, the 3K mode works best between roughly 140 and 220Hz, where the panel is fast enough while keeping artifacts to a minimum.
At its maximum 330Hz refresh rate, the G80HS is ultimately unimpressive compared with other high-refresh-rate monitors. Performance is somewhat better in Dual Mode overall, and the 330Hz configuration is certainly usable, but it doesn't match what you'd get from a dedicated 1440p 330Hz gaming monitor using a faster IPS LCD panel.
Input lag is low in both the 6K and 3K modes, with processing delay below 1ms. That's standard for a modern gaming monitor and allows for a responsive experience. For the lowest latency and best overall responsiveness, you'll want to use the display in its 330Hz mode, although the 6K mode still feels smooth and is far more responsive than a typical 60Hz display.
SDR Color Performance
Color Space: Samsung Odyssey G80HS - D65-P3
The Odyssey G80HS is a wide-gamut monitor, though its gamut isn't especially wide by modern standards. We're looking at 94% coverage of DCI-P3, which falls a little short of the full coverage we'd ideally like to see in 2026, while Rec. 2020 coverage reaches 74%. This puts the G80HS within the normal range for IPS LCDs, but behind the latest QD-OLED displays and LG's 5K monitor, which has an exceptionally wide gamut.
Default Color Performance
Factory calibration is okay. Gamma performance is good, particularly if you're after a flat 2.2 response, though my unit had a slight blue tint out of the box, resulting in a color temperature of around 7,000K. There's also some oversaturation by default due to the wide-gamut nature of the display, which expands SDR Rec. 709 colors to fill the monitor's native gamut.
Default ACM Color Performance
There are a couple of ways to improve the SDR experience. One is to use Windows 11's Auto Color Management. This doesn't change grayscale performance, but it does reduce oversaturation and properly maps sRGB colors, resulting in a ColorChecker deltaE average of 6.8. That's still only an average result, but it's an improvement over the default configuration.
sRGB Mode Color Performance
You can also switch the G80HS into its sRGB mode by changing the color space setting. Importantly, this still allows adjustment of the other monitor settings, including white balance. Again, this mode doesn't change much in terms of grayscale performance, and color performance is slightly worse than with Auto Color Management, but it's a useful option for devices or operating systems that don't support color management.
Grayscale performance in the sRGB mode isn't particularly impressive compared with other monitors. We're typically looking for a deltaE average below 5.0, and the G80HS falls short of that target, placing it toward the bottom of the chart. ColorChecker performance isn't great either. We wouldn't describe it as terrible, but comparatively, it's not at the level of many other 32-inch options.
The saving grace is that Samsung provides plenty of color controls, allowing you to make meaningful improvements through the monitor's hardware settings. We were able to reduce the grayscale deltaE to 3.0, correct the white balance, and improve the ColorChecker deltaE to 4.2. Those are strong results that we'd consider well calibrated. Our optimal settings are available to Patreon members.
OSD Tweaked Color Performance
Calibrated Color Performance
Further calibration can clean up the remaining inaccuracies, with a full Calman calibration producing excellent results. So while the G80HS doesn't offer particularly strong calibration out of the box, certainly not at the level we'd expect from a professional-grade monitor, that makes some sense given this is primarily a gaming display. With some adjustment, it can perform very well for SDR work and even some DCI-P3 content creation, provided you're comfortable with the panel not covering the entire P3 gamut.
Brightness, Contrast, Uniformity
Maximum brightness is sufficient at 445 nits, putting the G80HS right within the normal range for modern IPS LCDs. It doesn't do anything particularly special here, and monitors with proper mini-LED backlights can get much brighter, with LG's 5K model reaching around 800 nits. But for standard indoor use, around 450 nits is more than enough in my opinion. Minimum brightness of 63 nits is below average, but isn't anything crazy bad.
The native contrast ratio is pretty good for an IPS LCD. I recorded a result of 1,940:1 after calibration, putting it in the ballpark of LG's IPS Black panels, even though I don't believe the G80HS uses an IPS Black panel.
It's obviously still well short of VA LCDs and OLEDs, and black level performance remains relatively poor overall. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to see better-than-average IPS contrast, which helps mitigate one of the technology's main weaknesses.
Viewing angles are fine, ranging from good to slightly below average compared with other IPS LCDs. The bigger problem for LCDs these days is competition from OLEDs, which offer substantially better viewing angles with less brightness shift when viewed off-axis. For most people, the G80HS should be fine, but its viewing angles aren't at the level of an OLED.
Panel uniformity also falls short of OLED. QD-OLED panels are generally very uniform from edge to edge, so if that's a priority, a 32-inch 4K QD-OLED will be the better choice. I'd describe uniformity on the G80HS as mediocre.
My unit was somewhat patchy, with noticeable brightness falloff along the left and right edges compared with the center. This isn't particularly obvious in many situations, but if you're considering this 6K monitor primarily for productivity, it could become annoying in applications with large, uniform backgrounds.
Design, Features, Ports
The G80HS's built-in features are accessed through the OSD, controlled by a directional toggle in a slightly awkward location on the rear of the monitor. Unfortunately, the toggle itself feels terrible to use. Pressing it inward to select an option sometimes feels like I'm flexing the PCB it's attached to, and the entire mechanism comes across as surprisingly cheap.
The feature set itself is decent. There are plenty of color controls for fine-tuning white balance, gamma, shadow detail, and other aspects of the image. Local dimming can be disabled, which we'd recommend, and Samsung includes several gaming features such as a black equalizer and crosshairs. However, there's no picture-in-picture mode, KVM switch, or black frame insertion. Firmware updates are supported over USB.
Port selection consists of one DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR13.5 connection, two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 48 Gbps ports, and a two-port USB 5 Gbps hub. There's no USB-C input.
Both DisplayPort and HDMI require DSC to run the monitor at 6K 165Hz. That would still be the case even if Samsung had used DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR20, as the bandwidth required exceeds 80 Gbps. Our guess is that Samsung opted for UHBR13.5 to simplify the hardware design, and in practice it has no meaningful impact on the product.
One important limitation is that a DisplayPort 1.4 connection only allows the monitor to run at 6K 60Hz. DisplayPort 2.1 is required for higher refresh rates over DP. This means GPUs limited to DisplayPort 1.4, such as the GeForce RTX 40 series, need to use HDMI 2.1 instead to access the monitor's maximum refresh rate.
The overall design of the G80HS isn't that impressive in my opinion, especially considering its $1,600 price. That's firmly high-end territory, yet the build quality and choice of materials feel more in line with some of the budget monitors I've tested. The stand base, for example, is covered in fairly basic black plastic, while competing high-end displays increasingly use thinner and more premium metal bases.
From the front, the design is dominated by the 32-inch panel, with slim bezels on three sides and a small chin along the bottom edge. It looks fine, and Samsung uses a standard matte coating similar to what we've seen on other IPS LCDs, which I think is appropriate for this type of monitor.
The rear is again dominated by fairly basic black plastic. The monitor itself is relatively thin, which is nice to see for an LCD, but the materials leave something to be desired and I wouldn't describe the overall design as especially sleek. There's also an RGB LED ring surrounding the stand connection, which looks fine enough.
The stand supports height, tilt, and swivel adjustment, with a good range of height adjustment available. Its base is also flat, making it easy to place small items on top, which is a nice practical bonus.
A Great 6K Monitor With One Big Weakness
Overall, the Samsung Odyssey G80HS is a very interesting monitor, and unique in being the first 6K display that's genuinely suitable for gaming. There are really two questions to answer with this one: is the G80HS a good monitor, and is it a good value?
On the first point, we think Samsung has largely succeeded in what it set out to achieve. The 6K resolution looks brilliant, delivering excellent text clarity and tons of pixel real estate, making this a great high-DPI display for productivity work.
The 165Hz refresh rate in the 6K mode is also a massive improvement over previous 6K 60Hz panels, making desktop use much smoother than on many professional monitors. Personally, 60Hz is an absolute deal breaker for me, so getting a high-density screen with a genuinely good refresh rate is a major step forward.
The G80HS has strong gaming chops as well. Native 6K is obviously challenging to run in demanding titles, although lightweight games look fantastic at such a high resolution. But it's really the 3K Dual Mode that makes this a viable gaming monitor.
At 3072 x 1728, it's much less demanding, still looks good in my opinion with similar sharpness to a 27-inch 1440p display, and comes with a 330Hz maximum refresh rate.
This panel actually delivers on the promise of Dual Mode, unlike older 4K models with a crappy, low-resolution 1080p mode that was really only suitable for certain competitive games. On the G80HS, I'd recommend the 3K configuration for most games, and I thought it worked really well.
The combination of these two modes gives the G80HS an unusually broad range of capabilities. You get a super-sharp 6K mode for productivity and a faster 3K mode for gaming, all within the same 32-inch panel. Neither mode feels like a major compromise, and that versatility is probably the monitor's greatest strength.
Response time performance is good enough. This isn't a slow monitor, but it isn't particularly fast either, and the 3K configuration could have been tuned better, especially considering Samsung locks the overdrive controls when VRR is enabled. OLEDs are, of course, much faster than this IPS LCD, and if motion clarity is your top priority, you should probably choose an OLED instead. On the whole, though, the G80HS is fast enough for gaming without problematic blur trails or other major response time issues.
Factory calibration is more disappointing. We suspect plenty of buyers interested in a 6K display will be using it for productivity and potentially some content creation.
While this isn't a professional display, as it's part of Samsung's Odyssey gaming line, we would have liked to see better out-of-the-box calibration for creators. It can be manually calibrated to perform very well, but given that it's priced in the same territory as professional-grade 6K displays, albeit 60Hz models, some extra attention here would have been appreciated.
The biggest omission is proper HDR hardware, which is highly disappointing given the $1,600 price. At this price point in 2026, we think it's reasonable to expect a proper mini-LED local dimming backlight, but the G80HS instead uses a crappy edge-lit local dimming system with what appears to be around eight zones. Peak brightness also tops out at around 440 nits, well short of what we'd want for a compelling HDR experience.
There's really no way around it: this monitor looks bad with HDR content, especially compared with cheaper displays that offer proper HDR hardware, such as 32-inch OLEDs and some 4K mini-LED LCDs. Black levels are frequently raised, brightness is limited, and the panel simply can't produce the contrast required to show HDR content as intended.
Despite the poor HDR experience, we still think the G80HS is a good product for 6K productivity work with SDR gaming on the side. If you're aware of that limitation and primarily want it for the high-DPI experience, it's something we could recommend.
The Price is the Bigger Problem
Whether it's good value is much more complicated. Professional 32-inch 6K 60Hz monitors are available for around $1,300 these days, so Samsung is effectively offering a much higher refresh rate plus a proper gaming mode for about 20% more.
It doesn't provide the professional-grade calibration we'd expect from something like the Asus ProArt alternative, but given the refresh rate and gaming capabilities, we'd say it's at least somewhat competitive within the 6K segment. It's expensive, but not completely outrageous relative to other displays at the same resolution.
As a gaming monitor, however, the value proposition is much harder to justify. The G80HS is extremely expensive compared with the broader gaming monitor market, and the lack of true HDR significantly weakens the package.
You'd have to be absolutely certain you want the 6K resolution to seriously consider this product. Otherwise, it makes very little sense. That makes the G80HS a relatively niche display, and it's hard to imagine mainstream gamers choosing it at this price.
The biggest problem Samsung faces is that 32-inch 4K 240Hz OLEDs are substantially cheaper. Yes, they have a lower resolution, but they're faster, offer proper HDR, deliver much better contrast and uniformity, and 4K already strikes a good balance between image clarity and gaming performance.
Excellent 4K QD-OLEDs can be found for around $800, half the price of the G80HS, which makes the 6K option very difficult to recommend purely for gaming. I'd say the same applies even for productivity. I use a 4K QD-OLED for work every day, and given the enormous price difference, I'd personally buy one of those instead of the G80HS unless I specifically needed the additional pixel density.
The G80HS would become much more competitive at a more reasonable price, perhaps around $1,000 or slightly less. Samsung is known for heavily discounting its monitors, so it's entirely possible we'll see it closer to that level during sales later in its life. But at the launch MSRP, you really need to prioritize the 6K resolution and high-DPI experience over everything else to even consider the G80HS at that price.