The Samsung Odyssey Ark: Consider yourself engulfed by a monitor. You’re playing “Doom Eternal,” glory-killing demons with a chainsaw, subwoofers blaring, and a four-foot-tall monitor enveloping your face. That was Samsung’s pitch to tech enthusiasts earlier this year when it unveiled the Odyssey Ark monitor at CES 2022 in Las Vegas. And it lives up to the hype.
Even when rotated to a vertical position, the Samsung Odyssey Ark feels every bit as large as its 55-inch size suggests.
Using such a large display, in this case connected to an Xbox Series X and a PC equipped with a high-end graphics card (Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti), is a strange and somewhat overwhelming sensation. Employees at Samsung joked about daisy-chaining an entire room full of them together to create a tidal wave of monitors. Another amusing image suggested by Samsung representatives was that of Wall Street traders using the massive monitors, possibly at the New York Stock Exchange, just a few blocks from the August protest.
Samsung manufactures some of the largest gaming monitors on the market today, with the largest measuring 49 inches. However, 49 inches will seem small in comparison to its new 55-inch Odyssey Ark.
Here is a first look at the INSANE Odyssey Ark from @Samsung! This is a curved 55" 4K Monitor with a 16:9 aspect ratio… Can do some serious gaming/multitasking on this! #ces #samsung pic.twitter.com/Y82hbeY9gg
— Tim Schofield (@qbking77) January 5, 2022
Features
The Odyssey Ark, which was first shown at CES earlier this year, employs a quantum mini-LED panel with a 1000R curve. That display has a 4K resolution, HDR10+, a 165Hz refresh rate, and a one millisecond response time. This means that gamers will get a crystal clear image without having to worry about lag interfering with their gaming experience.
The Odyssey Ark will support AMD FreeSync Premium Pro for variable refresh rate in addition to providing a high refresh rate (VRR). VRR is critical for maintaining a smooth, artifact-free picture when gaming because it eliminates screen tears.
A six-speaker setup is another impressive feature included with the monitor. Whereas most other monitors treat audio as an afterthought, the Odyssey Ark does not. Samsung designed the Odyssey Ark to surround the user in a dome of sound, with speakers on each corner of the monitor and two woofers. It will also include Dolby Atmos audio to improve the sound quality even further.