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There's a saying in sports about ‘a game of two halves', and that line of thinking perfectly encapsulates the iiyama GCB3480WQSU ultrawide monitor.
To be completely honest, my first impressions of this screen were very poor, simply due to the factory calibration. I can't remember testing a more inaccurate screen out of the box – the colour balance is way too cool (at 7700K instead of 6500K), and there's also no way to achieve an average gamma of 2.2, as the gamma settings do appear to be somewhat broken.
Thankfully there is user-configurable colour balance, which does help, but to get the most out of the monitor it really needs a full calibration which requires a colorimeter and proper software that most people simply won't have. Contrast is also slightly lower than advertised, at around 2900:1 instead of the claimed 4000:1, though a peak brightness of 400+ nits is decent.
Where the GCB3480WQSU impressed me, however, is with its response times and motion clarity. Now don't get me wrong, it's not a world beater, but for a VA screen at this price, I have to say I was very impressed by the level of fluidity on offer. Just take a look back on page 5 of this review and check out the BlurBusters UFO images – compared to other affordable VA panels we have reviewed over the last year, the GCB3480WQSU is streets ahead, with only a small amount of dark-level smearing.
That puts this screen in a fairly unique position where I'd only want to use it everyday if it were calibrated to fix the colour balance and gamma issues – but for gaming, it is one of the best VA ultrawide screens I have ever used. That does make it a tricky one to score, as you may not care too much about the factory calibration issues, or that could be a deal breaker for you. All I'll say is that surely – surely – with a firmware update to correct some things and give it a proper factory calibration, the iiyama GCB3480WQSU could be one of the best value gaming ultrawides on the market, but there's a way to go yet.
We found it for around £340 on Ebuyer HERE.
Pros
- Excellent response times and motion clarity for a VA panel at this price.
- Affordable.
- Decent gamut coverage.
- Low input lag.
- Increasingly popular size and format.
- Easy to use OSD.
- Great image quality once calibrated.
Cons
- Colour balance is all wrong out of the box.
- Gamma settings appear broken.
- sRGB mode is not functioning properly.
- Contrast is slightly lower than expected.
- Stand only offers basic ergonomic adjustments.
KitGuru says: This could be a seriously impressive monitor if it had a proper factory calibration.
