Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 review: Ultra wide, not ultra expensive | Expert Reviews

Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 review: How good is the image quality?

This being a gaming monitor first and foremost it makes sense to start with motion fidelity. On this front, the GCB4580DQSN is good, certainly on a par with its cheaper Iiyama stablemate the GB3467WQSU-B5, but I have seen better – for instance on the 240Hz Agon AG325QZN.

Running the Blur Busters tests there was some ghosting to be seen which means that in fast eSports games, things aren’t as sharp as I’d like. The issues are very hard to discern in Triple-A gaming, though, and it could be argued that a 165Hz ultrawide gaming display is not what you’d buy for eSports gaming in the first place. 

There is a five-position Overdrive adjustment but this doesn’t change much other than to reduce the levels of inverse ghosting, or overshoot, against bright backgrounds. There are other options such as Direct Drive and the five-position Motion Blur Reduction system but these don’t have much effect, either, and enabling them means having to run without adaptive sync enabled.

In all other ways, the GCB4580DQSN makes a good account of itself. There’s plenty of colour around colour reproduction at 123.3% of sRGB, 85% AdobeRGB and 87.3% DCI-P3. The GCB4580DQSN doesn’t have any pre-set colour profiles but the average Delta E variance against the sRGB profile registered at a perfectly commendable 1.9 making it suitable for some creative work out of the box.

Being a VA panel, brightness and contrast ratio are not an issue. In SDR mode, the panel peaked at 429cd/m2 and 2,559:1, the latter typical of VA panel technology. In HDR playback – something you need to enable in the monitor menu as well as in Windows – the maximum brightness level jumps to 503cd/m2 when measuring a white patch 10% the size of the screen area against a black background. That’s more than enough to earn the Iiyama its VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification.

How does HDR content look on the GCB4580DQSN? Pretty impressive, with bold, sumptuous colours and great levels of contrast. In short, it’s better than on a non-Mini-LED IPS panel if not as good as a decent OLED display.

In its natural habitat, playing Triple-A games that support the ultrawide format, the  GCB4580DQSN is in its element. Halo Infinite was a very impressive experience: smooth, colourful and highly immersive. I don’t think you can do better for this sort of money.

Affordable, aggressively curved panels tend not to be poster children for uniformity, but the measurements from the GCB4580DQSN were solid enough, with all but five of the 25 rectangles measured across the screen (those on the far left) falling inside the recommended luminance tolerance levels.

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