Picture Quality

The Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C features a 34-inch ultrawide 10-bit QD-OLED panel manufactured by Samsung Display, with a native resolution of 3440x1440. This gives it a dot pitch of 0.2316 mm and a pixel density of 109.68 PPI, which is slightly higher than what you'd get from a 27-inch 1440p monitor. Compared to the 45-inch Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240, which stretches the same number of pixels over a larger area, the Xeneon 34WQHD240-C is significantly sharper, to the point where sharpness isn't an issue at all.

With OLEDs, a high pixel density offers another benefit: it makes fringing much less noticeable, to the extent that it becomes virtually impossible to spot. As a reminder, first-generation QD-OLED panels, like the one used in this monitor, have a nonstandard subpixel layout. In this layout, the red, green, and blue pixels are arranged in a triangle, with the green subpixel placed above the red and blue subpixels. Modern operating systems, however, expect pixels to be in an RGB stripe layout. This disparity results in fringing around text, which appears as a thin shadow, making text elements look slightly out of focus and softer than expected. Fringing can manifest in various colors and situations, and it's easiest to spot in high-contrast scenarios, such as displaying black letters on a white background. To learn more about fringing in general and see examples of WOLED and QD-OLED panel fringing issues, I recommend checking out an excellent article published by PC Monitors.

On the Xeneon 34WQHD240-C, fringing is nearly impossible to spot from a normal sitting distance. The image appears slightly softer than it would on an IPS or VA monitor of the same resolution and screen size, but with almost 110 PPI, fringing isn't an issue worth worrying about. With that in mind, the Xeneon 34WQHD240-C isn't just a serious gaming monitor but also a viable choice for users seeking a monitor that can handle productivity tasks. However, if you're looking for a monitor solely for productivity, you might want to avoid OLEDs altogether.

The Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C doesn't use a traditional LED backlight unit. Instead, individual pixels of the OLED panel are self-emitting, which provides many benefits such as infinite contrast, perfect blacks, absence of haloing, and a superb response time.

The Xeneon 34WQHD240-C uses a glossy screen coating designed to enhance color and contrast perception and increase overall brightness compared to matte panels. Thankfully, Corsair didn't go overboard, so the panel doesn't look or behave like a mirror. It does a reasonably good job of reducing glare in bright environments – not to the extent that I would recommend it for rooms with large windows or artificial light sources behind them, but good enough to make the monitor perfectly usable in rooms that aren't completely dark, especially at higher brightness settings.

Speaking of imperfect conditions, I should address the issue with raised black levels that first-generation QD-OLED panels exhibit in bright rooms. Unlike traditional LG Display's WOLED panels, Samsung's QD-OLED displays do not use a polarizer. A polarizer helps reduce reflections and maintain deep blacks in bright environments. Without a polarizer, ambient light can reflect off the screen and illuminate the black areas, making them appear gray rather than truly black. While this issue does exist and can be noticed when directly comparing a WOLED and QD-OLED monitor side by side in a bright room, I don't see it as a major concern in real-life scenarios. In most cases, you won't have two OLED monitors with different panel technologies connected to your PC, so there's nothing drawing attention to their differences in black levels. More importantly, if you're using a monitor in a very bright room - where this issue is most noticeable - you likely shouldn't be considering an OLED monitor in the first place. For such environments, you'll need significantly higher SDR brightness than any OLED monitor can currently provide, making IPS panels the better choice. Ideally, you should opt for an IPS display with a Mini-LED backlight if you're aiming for excellent black levels. In short, QD-OLED's raised black levels can be an issue, but primarily in conditions where OLED monitors are not well-suited to begin with.

To test the picture quality of the Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C, I used a combination of the X-Rite i1Display Pro, DisplayCAL – a powerful software solution for display calibration and profiling that is completely free if you own a supported colorimeter – and Calman, the industry-standard display testing and calibration software suite.

The measurements shown below were made with Brightness Stabilizer enabled. Brightness Stabilizer completely disables the Auto Brightness Limiter (ABL) to prevent oscillations in picture brightness depending on the displayed content, but at the expense of overall brightness. It's also important to note that I used the latest available firmware (V103).

Picture Quality at Factory Settings

I tested the picture quality of the Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C at its factory defaults right after plugging the monitor in and allowing the panel to warm up for about an hour.


At default settings, the Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C delivers decent grayscale performance, with an average ∆E of 1.7 and a solid white balance calibrated to 6,353 K. However, the colorimeter detected some red channel imbalance, and the gamma curve deviates slightly from the reference values, consistently measuring below the target. As a result, the actual image appears slightly brighter than the input signal dictates. Fortunately, this deviation remains mild overall, except for a more noticeable peak near full white. As expected, the contrast ratio is infinite, since the black level measures 0 cd/m²—the pixels turn off completely when they are not emitting light. In terms of color gamut, the monitor covers 100% of the sRGB spectrum, with an sRGB gamut volume of 158.9%. It also achieves 98.4% DCI-P3 coverage (112.5% volume) and 91.7% Adobe RGB coverage (109.5% volume). Measured color accuracy appears underwhelming, with an average ∆E of 4.71 and a maximum ∆E of 7.26. However, it's important to note that these values are based on sRGB color space measurements, while the QD-OLED panel has an extremely wide gamut. This results in oversaturation across all three color channels, extending well beyond the sRGB reference scope.


If you want to maximize the sRGB performance of the Xeneon 34WQHD240-C, Corsair has you covered with the appropriate sRGB picture profile (Picture > Preset > sRGB). While it greatly improves sRGB color accuracy (average ∆E 1.33, maximum ∆E 2.77), its white balance is too far from the 6,500 K target, and gamma tracking drops significantly. Sure, the oversaturation of colors is gone, but since the sRGB mode isn't calibrated well enough for serious use—and home users likely won't care about it—you're better off sticking with the default settings. Or better yet, use my modified settings, which I'll cover below.

Using the default settings as a starting point, you can further improve the picture quality of the Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C by adjusting only two settings: brightness and color temperature. To fix the color balance issues and improve white balance, simply switch the color temperature (Picture > Color Temperature) to Custom, then lower the red channel (R) to 96 and the green channel (G) to 98. The blue channel (B) performs best when left at 100. For brightness, home users should adjust it to their comfort level. If you're aiming for 250 cd/m², which I find ideal for both daytime and nighttime use in a home environment, set the brightness (Picture > Brightness) to 98. To prevent brightness deviations, keep the Brightness Stabilizer, found in the Screen Life Management menu, activated.

Let's compare the measurements before and after doing the OSD tweaks.



After adjusting the settings as described above, we see significant improvements across the board—especially in grayscale accuracy (ΔE 0.9), white balance (6,448 K), and gamma tracking. While we still haven't eliminated the peak near full white, the gamma tracking for the rest of the luminance range is much closer to ideal. The color accuracy didn't vastly improve, but let's now forget we're measuring it against the sRGB color space, so oversaturation is taken into account. To the naked eye, after these minor adjustments, the image quality of the Xeneon 34WQHD240-C appears stellar, thanks to its rich, punchy colors, deep blacks, and smooth tonal transitions.


This is how the luminance and color uniformity of the Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C perform when measured at 25 different points across the panel. Click on the image to view it in high resolution and examine the data in greater detail. Naturally, there is no backlight bleed anywhere on the screen, as there is no traditional backlight to cause it. The brightness uniformity is outstanding, staying within -1.5% across the panel—by far the best result I've seen on any monitor I've tested to date. The contrast deviation and color uniformity are equally impressive, with no part of the panel showing any visible loss in image quality for any reason.

HDR Performance

Because of their technological characteristics, OLED monitors, including the Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C, are a great choice for HDR gaming and content consumption. When HDR is activated in Windows, the Xeneon 34WQHD240-C automatically switches to one of its two HDR profiles: HDR or HDR Peak Brightness. Both automatically deactivate Brightness Stabilizer, which is a welcome sight to see, as some older Xeneon OLEDs required us to turn it off manually, which was a major annoyance.

Depending on the amount of bright content on the screen and the selected HDR profile, the monitor will reach brightness peaks of around 450 cd/m² (HDR profile), or 998 cd/m² (HDR Peak Brightness profile), both for 1% white window sizes. At 100% white window sizes, the brightness takes a major hit and drops down to around 270 cd/m² (both HDR profiles). You might be inclined to opt for the HDR Peak Brightness profile without giving it any additional thought, but there's a major downside to it – it causes substantial panel dimming in exceptionally bright scenes, which is a common occurrence with QD-OLED panels. For a balanced HDR experience, I suggest using the "regular" HDR profile, which is in line with the VESA DisplayHDR 400 specification and offers good EOTF tracking.

Viewing Angles

The viewing angles of the QD-OLED panel built into the Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C are excellent. There's no visible shift in colors from any sitting position or when changing positions.

OLED Burn-in Prevention Features

Aside from the Brightness Stabilizer, there are two other burn-in prevention mechanisms in place: Image Retention Refresh and Orbit. They're found in the System Setting menu in the OSD.

As I already mentioned earlier in the review Orbit is a feature that automatically shifts the image by one pixel per minute in a circular pattern while you're using the monitor. This is a way to fight against static UI elements. I usually find this feature distracting and undesirable, but I barely noticed it on the Corsair Xeneon 34WQHD240-C. Corsair found a good balance between how often the picture shifts, and by how much. There are also no issues with some Windows UI elements shifting away from sight, which I ran into on several previous occasions, for example, while testing the absurd INNOCN 48Q1V.

The Image Retention Refresh has to be initiated manually, either via the appropriate OSD setting, or by turning the monitor off after it's been used for eight hours, which you'll get reminded of through an on-screen notification. The procedure lasts for several minutes and can be interrupted at any time.

Corsair is including burn-in in the monitor's three-year warranty, as long as you're using the orbit function and do the image retention refresh regularly. I should point out that there were absolutely no signs of burn-in after over several months of daily driving the Xeneon 34WQHD240-C, with it being used 8+ hours per day, mostly for productivity work, and without any of the usual precautions, such as setting the Windows taskbar to autohide.