Ever since LG teased the UltraGear GX9 at CES 2025, I’ve been buzzing like a kid on the last day of school. A 45-inch, 5K2K OLED display promising both immersive single-player epics and a sprawling productivity canvas sounded almost too good to be true. After weeks of living with it, I can confirm this beast absolutely delivered—though not without a few caveats that are impossible to ignore.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: the price. Here in Australia, the GX9 costs a whopping AUD 3,499. By any standard, that’s twice as much as the best 34-inch ultrawides from Asus, Alienware and Lenovo. So, are you getting twice the monitor with the GX9? No you are not. But what you are getting is certainly one of the best productivity and gaming experiences money can buy and its not even close.
Unboxing this monitor felt more like unveiling a home-theatre masterpiece than setting up a desktop display. Its sheer size demanded I clear every peripheral off my desk before even attempting installation. Thankfully, the setup process was straightforward, thanks to a toolless stand. However, make no mistake: this is a colossal monitor, measuring 89cm in width and weighing nearly 10 kilos.
The stand, simple yet elegant in design, features a cable management slot near the base and provides all the usual tilt, swivel, and height adjustments. Despite its size, the stand holds the panel’s massive frame with remarkable stability, minimizing wobble effectively.
That said, you can mount it to a monitor arm thanks to VESA 100 × 100 support—but you’ll need a rather strong one to handle the size and weight. Mounting the gargantuan GX9 on an arm is a tricky affair best handled by two people. I almost dropped it in the process. The result, though, felt worth the effort: once secured, the GX9 becomes a floating, cinematic portal.
Speaking of trade-offs, the port selection left me scratching my head. Two HDMI 2.1 ports and one brand new DisplayPort 2.1 for upto 8K certainly covers the gaming essentials. A USB-C port with 90W power delivery and data is welcome for laptop-powered setups. But for all its size (and price), the GX9 offers only two USB-A 3.0 down ports and no USB-B upstream, and it comes with an external power brick to boot! That means no built-in KVM switch to share peripherals between devices, something essential for power users and multi-taskers.
The GX9 features two 10W speakers, which, while functional, fall short of delivering a truly immersive audio experience I expected. The sound quality is adequate for casual use, but it lacks the depth and richness that would complement the monitor’s stunning visual capabilities. Given LG’s expertise in audio technology, incorporating its Pixel sound system could have elevated the GX9’s auditory performance to match its visual prowess.
Speaking of prowess, the GX9 is a multi-taskers dream come true. As someone forever juggling large design canvases, DaVinci Resolve video edits, scripts and research tabs, I found my workflow transformed. Resolve occupied half the screen, my script in Notion sat neatly alongside reference materials, and I still had room for email, Spotify and stray browser windows—all without a hint of clutter. With 5,120 × 2,160 pixels spread across 45 inches of real estate, the GX9 is like nothing else on the market.
The extra pixels deliver a pin-sharp 125 PPI that makes the GX9 irresistible to graphic and UI designers: details are crisp, text and icon clarity is on point, and everything looks fantastic. Panning across a Figma prototype felt as expansive as drafting on a light table, with tool palettes and menus never getting in the way.
All the benefits of LG’s WOLED panel bear fruit here: 98.5 % DCI-P3 coverage and a Delta E < 2 out of the box make for a trustworthy workspace on color-critical projects. The panel’s exceptional color accuracy ensures that every hue is rendered with precision, making it ideal for tasks like photo editing, video grading, and graphic design. Whether you’re working on intricate details or broad strokes, the GX9 delivers a reliable and vibrant canvas.
That said, some might find the 800R curve of the monitor less than ideal for work where straight lines must remain straight. It isn’t as aggressive as Samsung’s Neo G8, and I found it just right to help alleviate eye strain when tracking across this huge canvas. Best practice is to sit at least three feet from the screen for the optimal viewing experience—it all comes back to the depth of your desk.
The Anti-reflective coating is a subtle yet crucial feature of the GX9. It effectively minimizes glare and reflections, ensuring that the vibrant colors and deep contrasts of the OLED panel remain undisturbed, even in brightly lit environments. I really appreciated how it easily handled distracting bright lights and reflections without compromising on vibrancy and brightness of the image.
But it’s gaming on this panel that is truly otherworldly. In addition to superb color and high resolution, the GX9 also boasts a 165 Hz refresh rate and a 0.03 ms response time. Additionally, it supports NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatible, VESA Certified AdaptiveSync, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro so no matter your graphics card, you are covered.
I just finished my playthrough of Doom: The Dark Ages, and slaying hordes of hell on this monitor was an absolute delight. When I dove into Cyberpunk 2077, the rain-slicked neon streets glowed with uncanny realism. Every billboard and puddle reflected light as if I were peering through a panoramic windshield. Games have always looked spectacular on OLED’s but taking things up to 5K2K resolution on a massive 45-inch panel really changes the game.
Turn on HDR, and the experience is nothing short of breathtaking. Roaming Night City with HDR on the GX9 feels like stepping into a vivid, hyper-realistic dream. The GX9 is VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certified, ensuring unparalleled contrast and color depth. It can achieve over 1,300 nits of peak brightness in small portions of the display, making highlights pop with dazzling intensity. Combine this with the perfect blacks inherent to OLED technology, and HDR content transforms into a visual masterpiece, offering a level of immersion that’s hard to match.
Even in competitive multiplayer—Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, for instance—the instantaneous pixel response gave me an edge. Sniping felt precise, as if the slightest twitch translated to on-screen action with zero lag. It’s a testament to this panel’s versatility, balancing cinematic depth with esports-ready speed. But wait—you might ask, how can you play FPS games on such a huge, high-res monitor?
Well, that’s where LG’s Dual Mode feature comes in. At the press of a button, the 45-inch, 5K2K 165 Hz display swaps to 2,560 × 1,080 at 330 Hz for faster fluidity and gameplay. What’s more, you aren’t forced to stick with a 21:9 aspect ratio. Dual Mode lets you choose several aspect ratios and viewport sizes. You can run full 45 inch at 21:9 or switch to 32-, 27- or 24-inch viewports in 16:9. Just pick your poison in the OSD settings, and every time you hit the Dual Mode button, the monitor switches between your chosen configuration and native resolution.
It all works wonderfully, but the unavoidable resolution drop dulled tiny UI elements and softened text edges in ways that clashed with the sublime clarity I’d grown accustomed to in native 5K2K. Dual Mode is a clever trick for short gaming bursts, but after a few weeks, I just couldn’t bring myself to use the duller, lower resolutions. You get this monitor for its ultrasharp 5K2K—so what’s the point?
Verdict
The LG UltraGear GX9 5K2K OLED is an impressive gaming monitor that excels in delivering immersive atmospheres for story-driven games and luxurious productivity workflows. It’s big, audacious, glorious and a true delight to use in almost every scenario. 45-inches of OLED is hard to beat but upping the resolution to 5K2K really takes things to a whole other level.
However, some design choices undermine its value at such a high price. The limited USB ports, missing KVM functionality, external power brick, and lacklustre speakers are notable drawbacks. Competitors like the Asus ROG PG34WCDM and the Lenovo Legion Pro 34WD-10 offer all these features if you’re willing to forgo the higher 5K2K resolution and Dual Mode. At $3,499 those missing bits which ordinarily would be easy to forgive aren’t as easy here.
Still, powering it on reveals why CES 2025’s hype was justified and I absolutely loved the experience of using the GX9.
LG Australia kindly loaned the UltraGear GX9 to PowerUp for the purpose of this review
