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The Alienware 32 QD-OLED is a well-designed curved gaming monitor that is easy to assemble and set up.
This 32-inch 4K monitor** is expensive, but if you can afford it, I think it's one of the best curved monitors on the market for people looking for a high-speed gaming monitor.
The clean, simple design looks beautiful on a table and is easy to put together.
The recessed rear panel makes it difficult to mount with VESA.
Our Alienware 32 QD-OLED review device looks nice and clean on a table, with a simple design that puts the 31The 6-inch curved display is mounted on a post with cable routing cutouts and a simple V-shaped base. On the back, you'll find some simple customizable RBG lighting panels, one in the shape of the Alienware logo and the other in a stylized 32.
The monitor itself is easy to install because it consists of two parts (the stand and the monitor) and you can basically snap them together without assembly or screws. Once it's mounted on the stand, you don't have any room to adjust the display up or down, which is a bit frustrating. However, you can tilt the screen up or down (-5 +21 degrees) and left and right (20 degrees in either direction).
While the Alienware 32 QD-OLED is designed to easily snap the monitor into the stand without any screws, it is difficult to screw the monitor into a VESA mount. The monitor has screw holes designed to accommodate a 100mm x 100mm VESA mount, but the mount itself is located in a recessed area at the rear of the monitor that the bracket can snap into.
This recessed area makes it difficult to slide the monitor in or out of the monitor arm attached to my desk because there isn't enough space in the recessed area to slide the monitor off before the recessed edge gets stuck on the VESA mount.
So while I've been able to install, remove, and reinstall our Alienware 32 QD-OLED review device onto my desktop mount monitor arm, it took me some time, and I almost dropped it because I was surprised to find that I couldn't install it easily. When you remove it, the VESA mount doesn't get stuck on the edge of the monitor. On the contrary, I found the whole process cumbersome.
Mounting this monitor to the monitor arm is a frustrating experience because you have to swing it until it's in the correct position where the monitor arm slides into the recessed area and gets stuck with the VESA mount. It's even worse to take it off the arm because it's a big, heavy and expensive piece of technology, and to get it off the monitor arm, I basically have to pull, swing and pray that I don't drop this $12000 monitor.
If you don't plan to use this monitor on a VESA mount, or if you have a tall, strong friend to help with this monitor, then it won't put too much pressure on you. However, if you do, you need to know that this design choice will affect the ease with which the VESA can be installed.
Once installed, the display looks good and is easy to interact with, as the joystick used to invoke the on-screen display (OSD) is mounted on the bottom of the display.
Also, note that this monitor doesn't have any built-in speakers, so you'll need to provide your own. This isn't a huge loss, as most of the speakers built into the display aren't particularly of high quality, but it's nice to have them in a pinch.
Excellent colors and a high refresh rate make it a killer gaming monitor.
The 1700R curve is subtle, but it's noticeable when you're sitting directly up front.
Our Alienware 32 QD-OLED review device is a great pleasure to unpack and use in my daily calculations because it's easy to assemble, looks great on the desktop, and makes everything I do on it look beautiful.
I'm not a big fan of curved monitors, but the size and 1700R curves of this monitor are subtle enough that it's not difficult to see the monitor from an angle, or to operate it on a table. When I sit directly in front of it, there's a subtle feeling that no matter what game I'm playing, I'm more engaged.
I played a variety of games on the Alienware 32 QD-OLED during my testing, and with a 240Hz refresh rate, the monitor was able to keep up with the quiet, eerie scenes and fast-moving debris of Alan Wake 2. Erupted in Doom: Eternal. Both types of games look great on this screen, with Alan Wake 2 benefiting from the deep blacks produced by the monitor, while Doom: Eternal's bright colors and high frame rate look striking from the other side of the room.
Alienvision mode is an interesting but ultimately useless feature.
The easy-to-use OSD is accessible via a joystick mounted on the lower edge**.
As I mentioned earlier, our Alienware 32 QD-OLED review device has a simple and easy-to-use menu interface that is easily accessible once you know how to do it. Instead of fiddling with the power button on the bottom right edge of the monitor, you can access the interface by pressing the small joystick mounted on the bottom edge of the monitor**.
Doing so results in a small rectangular OSD located in the center of the lower half of the display, which has two layers: a quick menu that allows you to quickly switch between popular options like brightness contrast control, display mode selector, input menu, and minimenu. Alienware's special "Alienvision" display mode.
These modes are designed to give you an edge by superimposing crosshairs on the display** for easy aiming, or placing a night vision filter on a part of the screen to make details in dark scenes easier to discern. It was an interesting feature, but after testing it for a few minutes in various games, I finally found it useless and turned it off.
The Alienware 32 QD-OLED is a great 4K curved gaming monitor that is easy to use and easy to set up. While I'm a little frustrated with how annoying it is to install or remove on the monitor arm, it's worth the hassle to install a monitor of this quality and style on my desk.
I really like the low-profile design of the Alienware 32 QD-OLED, and while I can do without the mismatched RBG panels on the back, they're at least relatively small and hidden from view. While I can keep or preserve the curves in the display, I can't dispute the visual quality of this monitor's 1700R QD-OLED panel. Playing games and watching movies on this monitor is a pleasure, especially when you can take advantage of its HDR and Dolby Vision support.