Samsung’s 55″ Odyssey Ark 2nd Gen Might be Ultimate Curved Monitor for Gaming and Productivity

The Samsung Odyssey Ark 2nd Gen, priced at $1,300 (was $2,700), is a seriously massive monitor, measuring 55 inches and designed to handle everything a gamer or heavy multitasker could throw at it. In the middle of this beast is a VA panel with the latest quantum mini-LED illumination tech, which manages to deliver stunning 4K resolution at 3840 by 2160 pixels. To make all that detail silky smooth, you get a 165Hz refresh rate, paired with a 1ms response time and over a thousand dimming zones.

Brightness is no issue either, as the Odyssey Ark 2nd Gen achieves 600 nits in normal mode, and even more with HDR content, not to mention HDR10+ for scene-by-scene adjustments. If you’re running an AMD system, you’ll be happy to hear that the monitor has FreeSync Premium Pro, eliminating all the frustrating screen tearing and stuttering you’d get with less capable hardware. The big news with this new version, though, is the connectivity, which includes three HDMI inputs and a DisplayPort 1.4 port.

There’s also a built-in KVM (keyboard, video, and mouse) switch that lets you control multiple computers from one keyboard and mouse. As for Multi-View mode, this lets you see up to four different inputs on the screen at once, either in a horizontal layout or three when you tip it on its side. Each window can still run independently, so you can be playing a game while checking your email or working on a project at the same time.

In the vertical position, the 1000R curve wraps around you from a more intimate distance, thus transforming the screen into a stack of three or four smaller monitors. As for the audio setup, you get 60 watts of 2.2.2 channel sound from a system that includes four separate speakers and two woofers that’ll shake your floor with a 45Hz bass response. If you’re watching something with Dolby Atmos in it, the sound is more immersive than ever, thanks to a built-in AI sound enhancer.

The built-in smart features on this monitor run on Samsung’s own Tizen OS, so you can access all the usual streaming apps and cloud gaming services, as well as a dedicated Gaming Hub for all your gaming needs.

Using Multi-View entails having numerous computers feeding separate portions of the screen, so you could have a desktop for your primary task, a laptop for email, and even a console sitting in the corner waiting for you to move over. If you use it in vertical mode, it’s perfect for vertical scrolling jobs like long web pages or timelines since it stacks windows in a neat column, decreasing the amount of panning required.