Alienware - AW3225QF 31.6" Quantum Dot OLED Curved Gaming Monitor - 240Hz - NVIDIA G-Sync - VESA - HDMI, USB-C - Lunar Light

Fantastic monitor the monitor I’ve been waiting for I purchased it from Dells website. Almost everything is perfect about it. If I had to pick one complaint, it would just be there’s a few minor software bugs that need to be worked out like Dolby vision issues when switching between content and the inability to change your HDR profile without turning off HDR. Kinda weird screen flicker as well.. but overall I would still recommend, doesn’t really affect too much with gaming and the picture. Quality is amazing.

** Summary ** The 32” Alienware AW3225QF is hands down the best gaming monitor I’ve ever experienced. My previous main display was a 27” Sony 4K HDR with a 144Hz refresh rate, and this Alienware blows it away in every category – size, design, picture quality, brightness, backlighting evenness, and of course, that 240Hz refresh rate. I was able to quickly adjust to the larger 32” size, and I found it perfect for everything I do with a computer – gaming, browsing the Internet, reading articles, streaming music videos and TV shows, photo and video editing, and word doc and spreadsheet work. In other words, it’s wonderful and a fantastic product. _____ *Pros: -Cool-looking curved design with subdued LED lighting on the back. -Easy to use joystick for OSD navigation. -Excellent calibration out-of-the-box. -Ultra clear, crisp, and bright display. -240Hz refresh rate. -Both the DisplayPort and HDMI ports support 4K at 240Hz. -The eARC HDMI port supports Dolby Atmos sound. -Tool-free assembly. -3-year OLED burn-in warranty. _____ *Neutral: -No built-in speakers or audio-out jack. -Max SDR brightness of 240 nits. _____ *Cons: -None *** Design, Build Quality, & Utility *** The moment I laid my eyes on the gigantic box, which is almost as big as my 100lb Goldador’s dog bed, I knew there was a very special monitor inside. The Calibration Factory Report worksheet inside built up my hype and expectations for quality as I removed the monitor pieces one by one and began the assembly. The installation didn’t require a single tool, and the parts slid and snapped together perfectly. Everything I needed to start using it was in the box – the power cable, DisplayPort cable, HDMI cable, and even a USB-B cable. All the pieces felt solid, durable, and high quality, and the assembled product looked fantastic with its black and white design that gave it a striking and classy look. There is some LED backlighting on the backside of the panel, but it’s nothing over the top or garish, which was to my liking. In a pitch-black room, it’s enough to provide some lighting so you don’t bump into things accidentally. The height, tilt, and swivel can be adjusted, and in everyday usage, the monitor stand was very stable and wobble-free on my desk. There are plenty of ports provided (1x DisplayPort, 2x HDMI, 1x USB-C, 3x USB-A, 1x USB-B), and thanks to the hole cutout on the monitor stand, all the cables can be neatly routed and organized. What’s cool about the AW3225QF is that the DisplayPort and both HDMI ports all support the max 4K resolution with 240Hz refresh rate – some other monitors only support the full spec on the DisplayPort and not on the HDMI. The USB-C port is nice to have, but it, unfortunately, does not support video-in. You can use it, though, to charge a smartphone. Thankfully, there were no dead pixels or backlighting issues with my unit – the calibration was right-on out of the box, and everything looked perfect and peachy no matter what type of content I threw at it. The standout feature of the Alienware AW3225QF is its 240Hz, 4K OLED display, and it is truly lush, sharp, and bright, all of which should make you feel very happy and content for all the coin you had to drop on this high-tech monitor. The OLED makes the contrast and the blacks amazing, with the dark areas appearing perfectly dark, which aids in the perception of depth and realism when watching movies or playing games. With a pixel density of 137 pixels per inch, everything looks sharp and very crispy, and it will benefit not just gamers but also people who will use this monitor for other common scenarios, such as photo and video editing, document and spreadsheet creation, streaming video content, and just browsing and reading stuff online. The AW3225QF does everything well, it’s quite a looker, and it’s a prime example of a well-crafted machine with excellent build materials and quality components that back up all of the marketing claims. *** Gaming Performance *** The Alienware AW3225QF was an absolute joy to play games on. Thanks to my 9-year-old daughter, I’m perpetually behind and catching up on my gaming backlog, but all the games I found time to play – Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Horizon Forbidden West, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Left 4 Dead 2 - all looked gorgeous and fantastic. The game characters and environments pop and stand out more, thanks to the lush OLED display as well as phenomenal color calibration from Alienware. Even when things get very hectic with hundreds of enemies coming at you (like in Left 4 Dead 2), the AW3225QF handled motion clarity very well, retaining texture detail and allowing easy identification of objects and enemies despite fast-scrolling with abrupt camera movements. Also helping with the smoothness is support for Nvidia G-Sync, VESA AdaptiveSync 240 certification, as well as AMD FreeSync. Coming from a 27” monitor, the 32” widescreen noticeably felt like an upgrade, feeling like a small television, with added immersion thanks to the curve. The 1700R curvature is subtle and not too extreme, which is just fine with me. *** Is it worth the coin? *** Absolutely. If you’ve always wanted a high refresh rate, 4K display for years but passed on it due to high prices (>$2,000), then the AW3225QF at $1,200 makes it affordable for the masses. The industrial design and color scheme look cool, the build materials and quality are excellent, and that OLED display is truly a stunner, offering deep blacks, lush colors, and a high refresh rate that can handle fast motion very well. It comes with a 3-year OLED burn-in warranty, which is very reassuring. It’s a complete Win. 5 Stars.

The Alienware - AW3225QF is definitely a spectacular display to look at and presents some real POP. I won’t spend a whole lot of time discussing setting it up because it was rather quick & straight forward. The main panel chassis is relatively light and easy to handle and Dell provides good graphical instructions as to how to assemble the display, right in & on the packaging. The stand is cool and easy to connect. Port locations are good and all the necessary cables are provided to get you hooked up. A color function keyed Power button off to the right and a centered joystick/control nib for all the heavy lifting. When I first connected the Alienware - AW3225QF and went into the onboard control menus, the panel status indicator was a yellow dot and doing a pixel refresh didn’t remedy the condition. So, I updated the available firmware via the USB cable (which took a few hours to complete) and did a panel refresh. That solved the issue and the status indicator went thumbs-up green. Will be keeping an eye on this! The onboard menu system is well laid out but I would have preferred the entire thing to be scaled much larger. Doesn’t make much sense to me why the Dell engineers standardized the size to something so small in layout for such a big screen and expensive item. Once connected to my Legion gaming laptop, everything played nice and Dolby Vision kicked in as I check my Nvidia drivers & controls along with the Windows 11 HDR settings. One thing I noticed about this display is its ability to provide some real POP even when Windows HDR mode was turned off. Many gaming monitors tend to do either/or well, not both. That sets the Alienware - AW3225QF apart. For comparison reference, I have 12+ months of experience gaming & creating on a ROG 32-inch VA-based 170 Hz gaming monitor that performs remarkably well and produces inky blacks in normal, ambient lighting conditions – but nothing like what an OLED display can do uniformly, corner to corner – in any lighting environment. This AW3225QF did demonstrate some slight motion blur during various games and that leads me to be a touch skeptical about the truly 240 Hz performance level this thing is spec’d out to do. I’ve not noticed much in the way of motion blur on various other high performing monitors of the last several years, so this came as a bit of a shock. I did fiddle around with some of the Game mode enhancement settings but without much improvement. To be clear, the motion blur isn’t horrible - - just noticeable because of the size of the format. Being a 4K monitor, I expected that pixel pitch + 240 Hz would pretty much squash any potential for motion blur – but I was mistaken. Apart from that, I have experienced some strange scaling aberrations when navigating around Windows and various apps. In one instance the entire Windows 11 task bar was flickering & rendering in a strange, overlapped triplicate manner. It may have been somehow related to utilizing the HDMI port and not a Display Port connection, which I am not set up to do at the present time. So, for any new owners of this Alienware - AW3225QF, pay close attention to how your system interacts with this display. Check it at 120 and 240 Hz and keep a watchful eye on scaling, rendering consistency and signs of subtle flickering. If you noticed anything odd, make sure you’ve updated to the latest firmware and check using an alternate GPU port (if you’re able to do so). Like most Dell peripherals, this one triggered an installation of the Alienware Command Center which is sort of annoying. But this application gives you some basic control functions from your Windows operating system. It is laggy and I did have a couple of instances where it crashed... but that’s typical Dell software. In summary, I am impressed with the Quantum Dot OLED performance, be it the striking color rendition or the sheer, mind blowing Pop of its ability to highlight brightness where needed. Compared to a VA based panel, the difference is pretty striking in terms of pop & dynamic range. The motion blur has me a little bit concerned but there is a vast array of things to try & tweak to get it sharpened up… so fingers crossed. Regarding the potential for burn-in, I guess only time will tell. Having owned several generations of OLED televisions, we’ve been lucky to have never experienced any kind of burn-in or panel degradation, even beyond the 10,000-hour level. But this is Quantum Dot OLED – so there’s that bit of unchartered territory. Apart from some subtle motion blur to varying degrees – game dependent – overall the image presented on the Alienware - AW3225QF is well balanced, bright when you want it to be and the color reproduction is spectacular. Does this level of display justify the massive price difference versus a high-performance VA-based gaming monitor in the same size format and lower refresh rate? I tend to think not. But if cost is no object, give this beast I try! Pros That Alienware styling Wide dynamic range Comprehensive onboard settings Plays nice with a rig capable of Dolby Vision supervision and HDR capable Mind blowing color rendition and Pop Cons Quirky and laggy AWCC (control center) software that automatically installs Varying levels of subtle but detectable motion blur I can recommend that those with Nvidia 30xx or 40xx generation, high-end GPUs should give this gaming monitor a try!