If you’re in the market for a curved gaming monitor but don’t want to pay that absurd premium that usually comes with it, the G34WQi may just be the display you want to cast your gaze upon. Both, figuratively and literally speaking.
What Am I Looking At?
If it wasn’t already obvious by the title, the G34WQi is a curved gaming monitor made by Xiaomi. It’s not the first time the Chinese brand penetrated said market; the first 34-inch curved gaming monitor made its debut back in 2020 but there have been changes since then.
First, the G34WQi feature a flat base, making it more useful than the forked-base design that, in my personal opinion, serves no indirect purpose whatsoever. Moving on, the spine is designed simply, with a small hole at near the base, and an unimposing RGB LED around the connecting point between the stand and monitor. Then, to finish it off, there’s Xiaomi’s branding on the right of it.
To lay down some specs, the monitor is a 34-inch UWQHD display, with a 180 refresh rate and 1ms MPRT response time. Ports-wise, the G34WQi gets a double-dose of DisplayPort and HDMI ports, a 3.5mm audio port, the DC In power port, and that’s it. Oh, accessing the onboard controls is done via the purple nipple-style joystick installed into rear and to the right side of the monitor.
What’s Good About It?
I also give props to Xiaomi for ensuring the G34WQi is an Adaptive Sync monitor, and with the odd 180Hz refresh rate, gamers who cherish higher framerates won’t have to worry about playing their games at just 60Hz. For that matter, the curvature of the monitor isn’t too extreme at 34 inches. As I’ve said in my other 34-inch ultrawide reviews, this is the sweet spot, both in size and its UWQHD (3,440 x 1,440) resolution.
Anything bigger than this, and I’d be swivelling my neck to extreme left and right, which can lead to a sore neck. Trust me, I had that issue with 49-inchers like the ASUS ROG Swift PG49WCD, and while it was nice being able to snap three browsers into the place, the recovery process wasn’t fun.
What’s The Catch?
As is the case with the majority of curved gaming monitors, the one thing that you’re sacrificing isn’t just peak brightness, but sharpness and overall clarity of words and images.
Despite being an HDR monitor, Xiaoxi surprisingly doesn’t seem to want to list that HDR certification with the G34WQi. Once again, it’s not the sharpest-looking panel out there; words already look fuzzy, and when I’m watching videos, the overall quality of the content always has this blurry, soft texture. Likewise, in gaming, that soft filter is prevalent and typical of an IPS panel. In addition, peak brightness is rated at only 350 nits which isn’t all that impressive, thus making its overall brightness look a bit dull and dim.
Other caveats to G34WQi that I personally think could be better is the number of display cables. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that Xiaomi bundled a DisplayPort 1.4a cable with it, but it would’ve been nice if the brand had provided an HDMI cable too. That being said, testing the monitor via HDMI reveals that the monitor limits its maximum refresh rate to 100Hz and not the full-fat 180Hz. Further, there is massive latency when gaming directly from HDMI, with input registering approximately half a second after the act. To be clear, I don’t get that issue when it is connected to my PC via DisplayPort.
Also, the spine is static and cannot be swiveled, which means you’re going to have to manually shift the entire monitor if you’re planning on viewing it at an angle. As in, from the corners of your desk.
Should I Buy It?
At RM1,499, the G34WQi is a very affordable curved gaming monitor, and relatively serviceable too. It’s not the best gaming monitor by any measure but it does technically follow Xiaomi’s philosophy of being the jack-of-all-trades brand name, to have a product for virtually every facet of someone’s life.
Honestly, you could do much worse than this monitor, especially if one of your primary goals in owning an ultrawide is the extra display real estate, for both gaming and productivity purposes.
Photography by John Law.
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