Review: AORUS CO49DQ ultra-wide OLED Monitor

The experience of using the AORUS CO49DQ Super Ultra Wide OLED Monitor begins well before it makes onto your desk.

Rather than carrying the box to your doorstep, the delivery person must mount the box on a set of wheels before struggling up your stairs and plonking it in your living room, where the box will take up more space than your coffee table.

All of which helps to remind you that this is a serious, sporty, highly-tuned and most importantly—enormous—monitor, probably much bigger than most photographers are used to experiencing.

Probably more at home hunching over laptop screens in local cafes or balancing some array of monitors on old Magnum Photos books in the home office/bike storage/ironing room/linen closet, photographers often seem all too eager to overlook the benefits of ultra-wide monitors.

But at a time when photographers are required to post to social media while editing photos, sending invoices and maintaining their own website all at once, monitors like the CO49DQ ($1,799) can offer an unparalleled ability for multitasking. The sheer width of the screen also offers great functionality for video and audio editing.

And—perhaps surprisingly—might even save you space at home, as you can comfortably use the CO49DQ for watching Netflix or perhaps even gaming, as the screen was designed for.

If you’re happy to look past some industrial/gamer interface design, the CO49DQ offers a lot for photographers and might just be the multitasking solution you were looking for.

Under the hood

The first thing to know about the CO49DQ is that it’s first and foremost designed to meet the high demands of modern gamers. The 49 inch display is a 32:9 aspect ratio, which is the equivalent of two 16:9 27” QHD displays sitting side by side.

The monitor is curved at a curvature of 1800R making for easy viewing, despite the need to physically turn your head when looking from extreme left to extreme right of the display.

Sporting 10 bit colour depth and a whole gamut of colour-precision and colour-adaptability features, the CO49DQ offers much for those who are looking for both the ability to dial in their favourite settings and to be able to switch between devices seamlessly.

Reminding us of its gaming pedigree, the CO49DQ comes built in with “tactical features” like “Game Assist” “Black Equaliser” and “6 Axis Colour Control”—most of which will be of little use to photographers.

However, the monitor’s “Dashboard”—allowing you keep a constant eye on CPU performance—might come in handy for pixel-peepers and video editors.

Interface and ergonomics

Once you’ve migrated the CO49DQ’s box from your living room to home office and cleared the tangle of cables, old monitors and hard drives and Cartier-Bresson books from your workspace, you’re ready to put the CO49DQ—and only the CO49DQ—on your desk.

Despite its size, the monitor’s box is labelled with clear instructions for which size to approach the leviathan from and once cut open, you’re presented with the back of the monitor, which slips easily onto the conveniently placed foot and arm.

The arm screws straight onto the foot so you’re able to have the monitor set up and on your desk literally within seconds, with to screwdrivers and/or Allen keys in sight.

The CO49DQ took up the entire width of my desk and the wideness takes some getting used to. Pushing the monitor as far back as I could on my desk, I still needed to physically turn my head to look at both sides of the monitor.

Thankfully, the intuitive nature of the interface gets you up and running and feeling more at home quite quickly, though the orange, sort of industrial feel to the text and design are obviously catering to gamers.

The physical menu button was where you expect/hope them to be (in the middle) and was easy and intuitive to use, giving you access to essential menu items.

There’s also a “quick switch” by pushing the button in various directions, giving access to select the input, the audio mode, the picture mode or the black equaliser.

Having quick access to the input, picture and audio modes is great as you’re likely going to be tempted to use this huge monitor for a number of uses.

When you’re done editing photos, flick over to your Apple TV input for a few episodes of Fallout and then flick back to your PC for some gaming. These buttons are also customisable to almost any setting.

With the press of a few buttons you can also easily switch between “Standard”, “RGB” and “reader” modes will be appreciated by photographers.

Once mounted, the monitor is easy to adjust with the stand allowing for swivel, tilt and height adjustment. The foot for the monitor is fairly cheap-feeling plastic but it’s extremely wide so the monitor feels well-supported and didn’t bounce around as I typed or if I accidentally bumped my desk.

The slim profile was also appreciated along with the black logo on the monitor. It’s nice to not have a logo glaring back at you all day and it gives the monitor a kind of cool, stealth feel that I’m sure gets a lot of brownie points with gamers but might also have some resonance for street photographers.

Plenty of ports on the back of the CO49DQ are easily accessed and will support almost everything you need. There's two HDMI 2.1 ports, a Displayport 1.4 port, a USB Type-C port (with Power Delivery up to 18W), two USB 3.0 Downstream ports, a USB 3.0 Upstream port and an earphone jack.

Final thoughts

The CO49DQ means business. Forged with performance in mind, it's a monitor that has a physical presence in any room and backs it up with a lot under the hood—maybe more than the average photographer needs.

But much must be said about the CO49DQ’s extraordinary aspect ratio and sheer screen real estate that are a dream for the avid multitasker.

After a few days of constant use, and some figuring out of how best to use so many pixels, I found Outlook on my left, Lightroom in the middle, Firefox on my right and even then still plenty of space to access folders and hard drive short cuts—all of which made for more productive work without the need to always be flicking between windows.

If you’re a photographer running a small (or large) business or avid photo/video all-rounder an ultra-wide monitor like the CO49DQ could be well worth a look at, to save you some precious seconds or expand your workspace and reduce those scrolls, swipes and mouse clicks.

The CO49DQ also brings a lot to the table in the form of versatility. The monitor’s well-thought out ergonomics make for an easy transition between inputs and devices and its size makes it just as appropriate for watching a movie as it is editing video or gaming.