In the world of curved gaming monitors, you have to settle for whatever amount of curve the manufacturer decided was best. Not any longer, thanks to Corsair’s new “bendable” OLED gaming monitor, the Xeneon Flex 45WQHD240 OLED. In what seems like the first of its kind, the Xeneon Flex lets you bend the display to your preferred curvature. This bendable OLED technology was created via a partnership with LG display. The panel can be used in flat orientation for productivity, then bent up to an 800R curve for a more immersive experience.
The Xeneon Flex features a 45-inch W-OLED panel. These “white” OLED panels emit white light in addition to RGB colors, which helps boost contrast and color accuracy. Despite its large size for a gaming monitor, it sports a 3,440 x 1440 resolution with a 21:9 aspect ratio. The upside of this resolution is higher frame rates in gaming, assuming you have a GPU that’s up to the task. Corsair says the combo of the 45-inch display along with its wide aspect ratio grants you more screen real estate, and that it offers 20 percent more viewable area than what you get with a 49-inch 32:9 ultrawide. You also get 81 percent more screen area than with something like the Alienware 34-inch OLED monitor.
The range of the flex in Corsair’s monitor allows it to pull double-duty. (Image: Corsair)
Specs are decent, though Corsair hasn’t revealed all of the information just yet. The Xeneon Flex offers a peak brightness of 1,000 nits and a 1,350,000:1 contrast ratio. Its grey-to-grey response time is a snappy 0.03ms, and it offers a 240Hz maximum refresh rate. Corsair says the monitor is compatible with both AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync as well. As burn-in can be an issue with OLED panels, it also includes a “sophisticated” burn-in prevention program, but Corsair doesn’t elaborate on what it does. It offers a three-year warranty against burn-in and dead pixels, however. It’s unknown what ports it offers, its average brightness level, and if it supports HDR. It does appear to have a nifty I/O hub built right into its stand, though.
I do a lot of professional photography work in addition to gaming on a curved monitor, and I’ve always wished I could flatten it for photo work. I seem to be the target audience for this monitor, along with other “content creators” who don’t like curved displays for photo and video editing. Still, the big question is price. The era of OLED gaming monitors is just beginning, so prices are somewhat high compared with regular LCD panels. Still, something like the Alienware 34-inch OLED is just $1,299. Given its size advantage and the bendable aspect, we could see this landing at $1,999 or so. It will hopefully be less expensive than the $3,500 55-inch Samsung Ark Odyssey.
The choice of 144op is also a bit questionable on a monitor of this size. However, the reality is we don’t have GPUs that can drive a 4K panel at super-high refresh rates. There’s no way even an RTX 3090 Ti could run this at 4K and 240Hz. Maybe the incoming RTX 4090 will be able to do that, but we’ll have to wait and see about that. For now, 144op at a high refresh rate is the gaming sweet spot, and that’s Corsair’s play here. We’ll see about that price, along with further info and launch dates later this year.
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