LG 32GK650F-B Review

The LG 32GK650F-B is a 32-inch, curved-screen monitor created for gamers seeking to curb motion artifacts, like screen tearing and motion blur during intense gaming. It builds on LG’s popular gaming monitors, featuring an ultra-wide, In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel with a terrific 144Hz refresh rate and uses AMD’s FreeSync technology to deliver a butter-smooth gaming experience.

Additionally, it boasts plenty of basic and advanced settings. While it doesn’t match our Editors’ Choice super-wide-screen gaming monitor, LG’s very own 38UC99-W, in terms of performance and feature set, costs half as much, making it quite appealing.

LG 32GK650F-B Specs

Design

The QHD 2560 x 1440 screen is housed in a bezel-free black cabinet dotted with a splash of bright red on the rear panel. It’s an 18.3-pound cabinet supported by a black-and-red, V-shaped stand that provides height and tilt adjustments, as well as swivel and pivot. The stand is removable, especially when you need to hook it to a wall via four VESA mounting holes on the back.

The 32GK650F-B’s non-reflective panel has a 3,800R curvature (meaning if you place several of these monitors side-by-side to create a full circle, the circle’s radius would be 3,800mm). Apparently, that’s not as pronounced as the 1,800R curvature on the Asus ROG Strix XG35VQ, but it offers a better immersive experience as compared to a flat-screen panel. Its peak brightness tops at 350 cd/m2, has a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, a 21:9 aspect ratio, and a 5-millisecond (gray-to-gray) pixel response.

Ports

All I/O ports are located on the rear of the cabinet, facing outward. You’re getting two HDMI inputs, one DisplayPort input, and a headphone-out jack. It doesn’t include USB ports and lacks speakers, unlike the LG 38UC99-W which has a set of powerful 10-watt speakers.

There is a joystick located in the middle of the bottom edge of the cabinet, that you can use to access and navigate the on-screen settings menu.

Settings & Presets

On the 31.5 LG 32GK650F-B, you get a decent assortment of gamer-friendly features. The present game modes include two First-Person Shooter (FPS) presets, one Real-Time Strategy (RTS) preset, and a Custom (user-defined) preset. Additional settings include Motion Blur Reduction which helps reduce ghosting, four crosshair-aiming, and a Black Stabilizer setting to enhance shadow detail in very dark game scenes.

Other picture presets included in the 31.5 LG 32GK650F include Photo, Reader (optimized for document viewing), Cinema, and Color Weakness (for users who have difficulties distinguishing between red and green colors). You also have settings for Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness, and Color Temperature, as well as adjust Black Level, Red-green, and Blue intensity levels.

The 31.5 LG 32GK650F Review: Performance

The 31.5 LG 32GK650F performs solidly in modern games. You’ll notice very little motion blur and no obvious screen tearing on modern games like Crysis 3 (PC) and even Grand Theft Auto V (PlayStation) at a steady frame rate for as long as your graphic card can push a string signal. If you experience minor blurs during gameplay, enabling Motion Blur Reduction settings eliminates the blurring. Also, with FreeSync enabled, games look much smoother, and image detail is simply enhanced, with colors appearing rich and well saturated.

Out-of-the-box color accuracy is good, but not ideal. On chromaticity tests, red and blue colors are closely aligned with their ideal CIE color coordinates, but green is slightly outside its ideal zone. As mentioned earlier, the monitor’s colors appear well saturated and there isn’t evidence of tinting, so the skewed greens will likely go unnoticed during gameplay.

Input lag (the time it takes for a monitor to react to a controller command) comes in a fairly short 10.1 milliseconds, which is not quite as short as our Top Pick, the BenQ XL2430T (9.4 milliseconds), but way better than the AOC U2879F (29.7 milliseconds).

The 31.5 LG 32GK650F consumes 46 watts of power in both Cinema and FPS1 modes but can go down with lower brightness. That’s at par with most gaming monitors, including the more expensive Gigabyte M32 gaming monitor.

Bottom Line

The 32-inch LG 32GK650F-B is a great deal if you’re looking for a monitor that lets you enjoy your games on an extra-wide, extra-large curved screen. Its mild curve keeps you glued to the action, and its VA panel delivers strong grayscale performance, though it suffers from narrow viewing angles as compared to IPS panels.

For the price,  you’re getting a solid selection of gamer-friendly features with this display, several gaming modes, and AMD Radeon FreeSync makes it even more exciting.

Is there a better alternative?

The most direct alternative is Acer’s Predator Gaming X34 Pbmiphzx, another 34-inch gaming monitor with up to 4ms response time. Both monitors feature popular gaming features like adaptive Sync, only that the Predator comes with Nvidia G-Sync instead of the AMD Radeon FreeSync on the LG monitor.

The big difference? The Predator Gaming X34 will cost you more, but offers better gamer settings, has a 1900R curvature, has a higher resolution (3,440 x 1440), uses IPS technology, offers USB 3.0 ports and includes two built-in speakers.