LG’s 32-Inch 4K OLED Monitor Goes on Sale for a Scary $3,999

Tsing

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LG’s heavily anticipated UltraFine 32EP950-B OLED monitor has officially gone on sale according to multiple listings at popular retailers that include B&H Photo and Best Buy. The price tag might be a problem for many display enthusiasts, however.



LG’s UltraFine 32EP950-B costs $3,999 and $3,999.99 at B&H Photo and Best Buy, respectively. This is a relatively ridiculous cost considering the fact that users who are seeking the ultimate in visual quality could go so far as to purchase a 77-inch LG G1PUA OLED TV for just $300 more. The G1PUA is a 2021 premium OLED that boasts LG’s latest evo panel, which boasts a higher peak level of brightness.



That said, LG’s UltraFine 32EP950-B is one of the only real choices for OLED fans who have limited desk space and need to keep to a display with a moderately sized panel. The UltraFine 32EP950-B might also be...
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It's still 60Hz, and I'm betting that 32" OLEDs aren't going to be competitive in terms of ROI for a while. 32" is still pretty big for a desktop monitor for most, and even if they could drop the price by 75% to ~US$1000, they'd still be priced at a premium as LCD panels can be had with the same dimensions and resolution for under half that.

I expect their production volume to be low, and for a select demographic to take notice.
 
$4000 for a personal monitor is absurd but for a pro-level display, it's 'cheap'
It looks amazingly good for that.
 
$4K for 4K, hmmm.

Even if I had that kind of money lying around it'd still be a hard pass.
 
On the flip side, one could spend $3K on this 85" beast and have a pretty phenomenal experience for the money with only a couple of caveats.

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My friend paid $1400 for a 55" LG CX with 120Hz VRR, so yyyeeeaaahhh...
Of course that's way too large to use as a monitor, but that 32" monitor is way more than 3x the price of the CX, and it is only 60Hz. Having DP is nice, but DP 1.4 doesn't have as much bandwidth as HDMI 2.1 so eh. I honestly have no idea why they priced this thing at 4 f*cking grand. I have no idea who would actually pay for this thing.
 
It's intended for the pro crowd and priced as such. Hopefully in a year or two we'll see "consumer" and "gaming" models that bring the price down, and the tech will have had a chance to get shaken out for PC use.

In the mean time - there's still the C1 line if you can go big.
 
I picked one of these up to try out last week - saw one in stock at a local Microcenter. I use an older Sony PVM-2541A and X550 daily (both were bought used and have served me very well), plus a C7 and C9 for general HTPC and gaming. With a 2080ti I can't break 4k/60 so have sat out the CX/C1 gen.

It's definitely very much a pro monitor, awesome color accuracy and able to run several demanding color gamuts. The SDR picture is unreal, HDR is... accurate I guess? Decent for media, but put to shame by the x550 (has a high brightness mode that gets it up to about 720 nits), C7/9, and at times even the 2541a with downscaling and tone mapping via an HdFury Diva. In games the HDR is frankly very disappointing, part of that is the very limited settings in HDR mode (you pick between a couple of presets, and custom mode has most settings disabled). FW updates may open this up a bit.

It's great to see a consumer (well 'pro' consumer) model in a great size/resolution setup, motion handling and response time are phenomenal as well like most OLEDs. I'm very excited to see this type of panel applied to gaming and media consumption models, with higher peak brightness and wider settings for both use cases. The smaller Sony 1080p models were $5k+ MSRP, and the x550 was $20k+. It shouldn't be out of the question to see consumer 27 and 32" sets in the $1500-2500 range, where a TV would still be a much better value prop, but the benefits of a small desk form factor would be intriguing.

Overall for a first gen product it's phenomenal at its intended use, but very much limited to that. I'm planning to keep it for work, and enjoy some breaks with SDR gaming. I hope enough of these JOLED 32 and upcoming 27s sell that mainstream models tweaked for gaming and media start rolling out in the next year or two. Even at 4k/60 I will gladly take the OLED benefits especially around inherent motion handling over any IPS panel (I got rid of my 34gk950f and 27gn950 to get this).
 
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