I’ve always gravitated toward ultrawide monitors. The extra screen space is great for work, but in most cases, you have to compromise somewhere. Text isn’t quite sharp enough, the display is too short vertically, or the panel prioritizes gaming at the expense of everything else I spend considerably more time doing. Samsung’s 40-inch ViewFinity S8 largely avoids those problems.
After spending time working and gaming on Samsung’s enormous $1,999 5K2K monitor, its biggest strength isn’t simply that it’s large. It’s that the 5120 x 2160 resolution gives me enough room to comfortably replace the two-monitor setup I’d otherwise want on my desk. At 40 inches, it takes up a lot of that desk. But that’s sort of the point.
The ViewFinity S8 uses a 40-inch VA panel with a 21:9 aspect ratio and a fairly aggressive 1000R curve. At first glance, the curve looks dramatic and overwhelming, but it makes much more sense once you’re sitting in front of the monitor. At this size, a flat display would force me to look toward distant corners at an awkward angle. Instead, the ViewFinity S8 wraps the workspace around me.
The 5120 x 2160 resolution is what makes it particularly useful. I can comfortably keep a browser open alongside a document I’m writing while leaving room for Slack, email or reference material. Video editing similarly benefits from having a long timeline without sacrificing room for preview and editing panels. It’s effectively the vertical resolution of a 4K display with substantially more horizontal workspace. That’s important because some ultrawides feel wide at the expense of usable height. The ViewFinity S8 doesn’t. Text also looks sharp enough that I can spend hours writing and editing without feeling like I had to rely on my other two monitors as much.
Samsung rates brightness at 350 nits, which isn’t exceptional, particularly if you’re expecting the punch of a modern OLED. One small hitch is its auto-calibration. When watching a trailer or video, the display dimmed during darker portions by default. It’s a small hiccup, as it takes a moment to recalibrate afterwards, and it’s noticeable. HDR10+ is supported, but I wouldn’t run out to purchase the ViewFinity S8 primarily for HDR movies. For productivity, however, that’s less of a concern. The panel covers 99 percent of sRGB and offers a 3,000:1 contrast ratio.
The obvious hurdle when setting up the ViewFinity S8 is the space needed. In my own workspace, I had to clear out a considerable amount of room not only for the ultrawide monitor’s wingspan but also for the base. Thankfully, you can mount the Samsung monitor if you have the hardware.
The ViewFinity’s other major strength is connectivity. Thunderbolt 5 provides up to 80Gbps of bandwidth and can deliver up to 140W of power to a compatible laptop. That means the monitor can become the centre of a desk setup rather than simply another thing connected to it.
It has five USB-A ports alongside USB-C, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, Ethernet, and a headphone jack. Plugging a laptop into Thunderbolt can provide display output, charging and access to peripherals through one cable. For someone regularly moving a laptop between a desk and everywhere else, that’s much more useful than it sounds on a specification sheet.
Samsung also includes a built-in KVM switch. Connect two computers and the same keyboard and mouse can control both. Picture-by-Picture takes that concept further by displaying two sources simultaneously. For anyone bouncing between a work laptop and personal computer, the ViewFinity S8 can essentially behave like two monitors without requiring two physical displays.
Samsung Display Manager provides easier access to those split-screen, KVM and picture settings from the desktop.
ViewFinity is Samsung’s productivity line, but the ViewFinity S8 is much more capable for gaming than I expected. The panel reaches 144Hz and supports AMD FreeSync Premium. Moving around the desktop already feels noticeably smoother at that refresh rate, but the benefit becomes much clearer once a game starts moving quickly. I played most of Silent Hill: Townfall on the ViewFinity S8 and was fairly impressed by how it handled visuals.
The 21:9 aspect ratio is also excellent when a PC game properly supports it. Filling your peripheral vision with a 40-inch curved display creates a sense of scale that a conventional 16:9 monitor can’t really reproduce. As someone who never latches onto PC gaming and prefers the console space, it’s hard to dispute the clear advantage an ultrawide monitor provides for pure immersion.
There are caveats to consider when looking at the ViewFinity S8 for gaming. Driving 5120 x 2160 at high frame rates asks a lot of a graphics card, and the VA panel has a rated 4ms response time, so latency could be lower. Competitive players chasing extremely high refresh rates will still be better served by one of Samsung’s dedicated Odyssey gaming monitors. Consoles are also designed primarily around 16:9 output, so they don’t exploit the ultrawide canvas the way a PC can.
Although the ViewFinity S8 can support gaming at a high fidelity level, the latency doesn’t make it a monitor to chase if you’re playing Call of Duty or Valorant. The same screen that’s excellent for writing and editing can deliver a genuinely immersive PC gaming experience, but it won’t meet competitive needs.
It has built-in speakers, but I’d still pair a monitor this large with dedicated speakers or headphones if audio quality matters. The stand offers height, tilt and swivel adjustments, which you’ll want given the sheer size of the display. Without the stand, the monitor weighs 9kg; with it, that jumps to 14kg. Thankfully, Samsung’s Easy Setup Stand doesn’t require tools or screws during assembly.
The ViewFinity S8 ultimately makes the most sense for someone who uses their computer as both a workstation and an entertainment system. If you only need somewhere to answer emails, a 40-inch 5K2K monitor is obviously excessive. Likewise, someone interested exclusively in gaming can find faster OLED displays with stronger HDR performance.
It’s the middle ground where Samsung gets this right. I can spread work across one continuous desktop without a bezel dividing everything in half, connect a laptop with a single Thunderbolt cable and then take advantage of 144Hz and FreeSync Premium when work is over. After using that much space, returning to a conventional monitor feels surprisingly cramped. The ViewFinity S8 isn’t trying to replace a single display. It’s trying to make the second and third one unnecessary.
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