Picture Quality

The Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 features a 45-inch ultrawide 10-bit OLED panel, manufactured by LG Display, with a native resolution of 3440x1440, giving it a dot pitch of 0.3065 mm, and a subpar pixel density of only 82.87 PPI. That brings me to by far the worst aspect of the Xeneon FLEX: its overall picture sharpness. In terms of pixel density, the Xeneon FLEX falls below even cheap 24" Full HD monitors.

In addition to the low pixel density, another strong blow to the (un)sharpness of the Xeneon FLEX's display is delivered by an anomaly known as fringing. WOLED panels, like the one this monitor is based on, have a nonstandard Red-White-Blue-Green (RWBG) subpixel layout, which causes fringing around text; operating systems expect a RGB subpixel arrangement when rendering text. Fringing looks like text elements have a thin shadow added to them, making them look slightly out of focus and softer than expected. Fringing can manifest in various colors and in many situations. As I'm writing this review, I can't notice it in the Microsoft Word window, where I'm using a dark gray background and white font color. At the same time, the other half of the screen is taken up by a standard white-background webpage, where fringing is very apparent. To find out more about fringing in general and see some great examples of WOLED and QD-OLED panel fringing issues, I recommend you check out an excellent article published by PC Monitors.

This of course isn't a critique aimed at Corsair. Every WOLED (and QD-OLED) panel suffers from some level of fringing; it's something you simply have to deal with if you decide to go down the OLED route. For gaming, video and similar types of usage, fringing isn't an issue you should be worried about. However, if you mostly work with text and graphics, especially on a professional level, this could be a reason to steer clear of current OLED monitors altogether. They simply aren't a good choice for productivity and pose a substantial downgrade from higher-end LCD monitors in that regard. This is especially true for very large OLED panels, such as the 45-inch monstrosity offered by the Xeneon FLEX. The only way to combat OLED fringing is with high pixel density (this is why fringing is less apparent on 27-inch 1440p OLED monitors), but the Xeneon FLEX fares poorly in that regard. In short, if you're working with text or graphics on a daily basis, you shouldn't come anywhere close to this monitor. If you're anything other than a completely casual user, you won't be able to get used to the softness of such visual elements and/or the ugly fringing.

The Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 doesn't have a traditional LED backlight unit. Individual pixels of an OLED panel are self-emitting, and that's where many benefits of such panels, such as infinite contrast, perfect blacks, absence of haloing, and superb response time, come from.

The Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 uses a fairly heavy matte screen coating. It does a very good job of reducing reflections and preserving OLED blacks even in bright conditions. Don't underestimate this aspect of the Corsair's monitor. With SDR brightness being the biggest challenge for all OLED monitors currently on the market, having a screen coating that manages to preserve it in difficult surroundings is hugely beneficial. To some, the coating of the Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 might seem too heavy, but I don't have a problem with it, because the picture isn't perceived as grainy or dirty from a normal sitting distance.

To test the picture quality of the Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240, I've used a combination of the X-Rite i1Display Pro, DisplayCAL – a powerful software solution for display calibration and profiling that is completely free assuming you own a supported colorimeter – and Calman, the industry-standard display testing and calibrating software suite.

Measurements shown below were made with Brightness Stabilizer on. Brightness Stabilizer completely subdues the Auto Brightness Limiter (ABL), to prevent oscillations in picture brightness depending on the content currently being displayed, but at the expense of overall brightness. It's also important to point out that I used the latest available firmware (V110). An earlier firmware update brought a 30% boost in brightness when Brightness Stabilizer is activated, meaning Corsair addressed the single biggest issue that the Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 had when it originally launched. Various other bugs were squashed through firmware updates, such as those related to the KVM switch and Brightness Stabilizer behavior.

Picture Quality at Factory Settings

I tested the picture quality of the Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 at its factory defaults right after plugging the monitor in and allowing the panel to warm up for about an hour. The only change I made was to turn the Brightness Stabilizer on. It's off by default, which makes sense for HDR content, but I find it too distracting for anything else.


At default settings, the Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 shows decent grayscale performance (average ∆E is 2.2), some slight RGB imbalances past the 15% brightness level, and decent gamma tracking to around 80% level, after which my colorimeter starts to pick up strange readings, with a substantial dip in measured gamma, which drops slightly below 2 relatively close to full white. I've measured gamma multiple times with identical results, so I have no reason to believe that this is a measurement issue. By default, the Brightness setting in the OSD is set to 75, which results in 168.57 cd/m² of actual screen brightness with the Brightness Stabilizer activated. The color temperature is sitting at 6,139 K, so some 360 K away from preferred 6,500 K value.


The default color accuracy is mediocre when tested within the sRGB color space, with an average ∆E of 3.52, and a recorded maximum of ∆E 6.9, caused by the oversaturation of the red color due to the wide gamut coverage of the OLED panel. The CIE diagram shows the oversaturation nicely and confirms its presence both in reds and greens.

The white balance can be improved by visiting the Picture menu in the OSD and changing the Color Temperature setting to Custom. That gives you access to individual RGB color channels. To get the white balance closer to 6,500 K, I had to set the red channel (R) to 98, green (G) to 97, and blue (B) to 84. I also cranked the Brightness setting, found in the Picture menu, to 100, knowing that it's not likely that it will go much above 200 cd/m² with Brightness Stabilizer active. Let's compare the measurements before and after doing the OSD tweaks.



After adjusting the settings as described above we see improvements to the white balance, much better RGB balance, and vastly increased grayscale accuracy (∆E down to 0.7, from 2.2). There are some minor improvements to color accuracy, too, although nothing revolutionary. The gamma didn't change much, still displaying a strange dip around the 90% level. Gamma-related issues are generally very hard to correct without a proper calibration of the monitor. It's worth mentioning that the panel can reach a stable brightness of a little over 200 cd/m² with the Brightness Stabilizer active, so you don't have to limit yourself to using it in a dimly lit room to be able to see what's happening on the screen.


This is what the CIE diagram looks like. I measured a 99.9% coverage of the sRGB and 94.1% coverage of the DCI-P3 color spaces. The gamut volume equals 141.4% for sRGB and 100.1% for DCI-P3 color spaces, respectively. The measured Adobe RGB coverage is 87.6%, with Adobe RGB gamut volume reaching 97.4%.


This is what the luminance and color uniformity of the Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 look like when measured at 25 different patches across the panel. Please click on the image to see it in high resolution and examine the data in greater detail. There's of course no backlight bleed anywhere on the screen because there's no traditional backlight that could cause it. The brightness uniformity is solid overall, staying within -10% across the panel. The upper edge of the panel measures the worst, but the deviations present there aren't visible to the naked eye. The contrast deviation is great, but the color uniformity could definitely be better. We can see average deviations close to ∆E 5 along the upper edge of the panel. This won't be an issue for gaming and media consumption, and the Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 isn't a viable productivity monitor anyway, so the issues with color uniformity aren't that big of a deal.

Picture Quality After Calibration

I calibrated the display using the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter and the DisplayCAL software solution. Here's what we get after calibrating the monitor.



OLED monitors are much harder to calibrate than LCD monitors, but we still see great improvements to color accuracy in the measured sRGB color space. The average ∆E is now as low as 0.46, with the largest deviation not going past ∆E 1.47. The gamma tracking improved by a lot as well, as did the white balance, now settled at 6,497 K. All that with a stable full screen brightness of 207 cd/m².

HDR Performance

Because of their technological characteristics, OLED monitors, including the Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240, are a great choice for HDR gaming and content consumption. To get the best performance in HDR mode, you should deactivate the Brightness Stabilizer and let the Auto Brightness Limiter do its thing. With that comes an annoyance: even though the Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 correctly recognizes when HDR mode is active, it's not capable of turning the Brightness Stabilizer off on its own, so you have to do it manually. Constantly turning the Brightness Stabilizer on and off quickly becomes a nuisance. Corsair should look to implement a feature where it would activate and deactivate depending on the detection of an incoming SDR/HDR signal. Perhaps an idea for a future firmware update?

Depending on the amount of bright content on the screen, the monitor will reach brightness peaks of around 800 cd/m² for 1% white window sizes. At 5% window size, you can expect around 700 cd/m², then around 630 cd/m² for a 10% window size, 400 cd/m² for a 25% window size, and around 150 cd/m² for full-screen sustained brightness (100% white).

Viewing Angles

The viewing angles of the WOLED panel built into the Corsair Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240 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 FLEX 45WQHD240. 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 8 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 very convinced that burn-in isn't a real risk with the Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240, or their other OLED monitor, the Xeneon 27QHD240. They're covering both with a three-year warranty, which includes burn-in, 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 two months of daily driving the Xeneon FLEX 45WQHD240, 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.