Monoprice’s Exceptionally Flat 40in UWQHD CrystalPro Monitor

A New Choice In UltraWide Gaming Monitors

144Hz Adaptive Sync and HDR600* Included

The battle for our eyeballs and wallets has changed from 1080p versus 1440p to a choice between 4k or ultrawide resolutions, such as the 3440 x 1440 CrystalPro monitor from Monoprice.  NVIDIA’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR have made 4k gaming far more accessible to the crowds but you lose out on the extra screen space which fills more of your peripheral vision that an ultrawide provides.  You could try to opt for both, but that requires a substantial financial investment to pull off properly.

Monoprice is hoping that those who are opting for an ultrawide will consider the CrystalPro monitor, and have again found a way to shave off a little cost as an incentive.  The most marked attribute of this display is it’s lack of a curve, something which may immediately drive some away.  It doesn’t actually seem to make a huge difference, after all the curves on monitors tend to be very slight.  This CrystalPro monitor is advertised as offering HDR600, however Windows does not consider it certified.  The datacolor Spyder agrees with the marketing however, and detects a far higher level of luminance than on a Dell S3220DGF certified for HDR400. 

Getting It Together After A Rough Trip

The courier was not kind to the Monoprice CrystalPro monitor, as evidenced by the remarkable dent in the side of it’s box.  The protection inside was more than enough to protect the contents of the four foot long box, and everything arrived in working order.   The metal and plastic stand has a cable management hole, though no clips, with nice red highlights at the top and near the legs.  Those legs look spindly but they have been holding up the monitor for some time now quite stably, and the design minimizes the amount of desk space you lose.

To clip the stand in you do need to apply a fair amount of force to engage the clipping mechanism so you should make sure you have a large flat surface to place the monitor on.  You won’t have much fun trying to attach the stand in a vertical position.  Once mounted you get a fair amount of vertical travel but the rotation is fairly limited.  The flat design helps when you are moving the monitor to it’s new home as the force of your grip travels along a straight plane, not a curved one you need to be very careful with.

You can see it is quite a bit wider than the 28″ 4k CrystalPro display we reviewed earlier, and as mentioned before your eyes really don’t notice the lack of a curve after a few minutes of use.  Your brain just edits it out, at least at this size.  If it was much wider, like some of the 57″ models, that would probable not be the case, but at 40″ it works.

Delving Into The Specs

This CrystalPro monitor offers two HDMI 2.0 ports, a single DP 1.4 and a USB-C which supports DP-Alt as well as providing up to 90W of power to the laptop it’s plugged into.  The official specifications include an upstream USB-B plug and two USB-A of indeterminate generation, however on this review model they were not present, nor were there cords included.  This may be specific to this review model, we haven’t heard back from Monoprice about that as of yet.

The use of HDMI 2.0 presents an issue, as it can’t support everything this monitor can handle.  The USB-C performance seen is likely more reflective of the 11th gen Rocket Lake laptop it was connected to, rather than the actual capabilities of that connection.  DP 1.4 offers it all, and is how I mainly used the display.

The colour gamut, after using the SpyderX is quite good, albeit not quite the range advertised.  However if you are willing to put the work in to fine tune the settings on the display it is possible you will reach the advertised range.  When you enable HDR, which Windows will happily allow you to do even if it claims it is not certified, that calibration goes out the window as with on any other display.  The peak brightness is impressive when you are gaming, but this CrystalPro monitor severely washes out your desktop when HDR is enabled.

The fact that you need to disable HDR for desktop use, or simply because your game doesn’t support it leads to the first trouble with this monitor.  It works perfectly fine in both modes, however turning off HDR resets the screens brightness to 90 every time.  With the calibration, this monitor looks much better at around 40 depending on the lighting in your room.  A minor annoyance, but one which happens every time you toggle HDR on or off.

The Enhanced OSD Of The 40″ CrystalPro Monitor

On the bottom of the monitor beside the power switch, and protected with a cover during shipping, is the OSD joystick.  Monoprice did manage to include a joystick style control instead of buttons, and the OSD offers a wide variety of settings.   Several of the options have two or three screens worth of settings you need to scroll through to find the one you want.  The Adaptive Sync is easy to find under Game Settings but you have to scroll down to find HDR.

There are several personalized colour schemes you can choose, if you are so inclined.  The display inputs can be chosen here, and it is worth mentioning that it will take several seconds to get your picture back if you do toggle modes.  A click to the right brings up the full menu, you can also quickly toggle inputs, crosshairs and temperature by moving the joystick in the other directions.  Nothing spectacular but a far better solution than having to reach far off the side to bring up the OSD.

Sadly, the reason that the PIP setting is a different colour is because this particular CrystalPro monitor does not support that feature.  There is a way to turn off the rear LEDs however, should you so desire.

Being Flat Isn’t Wrong

It would have been nice to test the 40″ ultrawide CrystalPro monitor with a laptop that could properly drive it, as one of the biggest selling points is the USB-C.  With a single USB-C plug you would get a display, charger and possibly an extra USB plug which makes this monitor a superior choice to similar models without that option.  That’s not to say there is anything wrong with the performance of the DP 1.4 port, though upgrading the HDMI ports would be a good idea considering the popularity of that connection for video capture.

The overall picture quality is gorgeous, and there is not a dead pixel to be seen.  There is no apparent bleed through of light on black sections and the brightness is definitely higher than on an HDR400 display.  The text in games was legible when quickly scrolling, the response time and adaptive sync implementation is bang on.

The monitor prefers sleep mode to being powered off.  When coming in from a cold boot it will take upwards of 20 seconds for the screen to come alive, which is a little slower than other ultrawide displays.  This is common to ultrawide displays, but can cause you some concern if you weren’t expecting it.  This particular monitor, attached to this RX 6800 XT would suddenly flicker off for a second or two and then come back after a cold boot as well.  That would last for about a minute and could be specific to this test setup, but perhaps should be addressed along with the brightness reverting to 90 every time you toggle HDR off.  These are not deal breakers, but do mean the monitor has more personality to it than you might want.

At the retail price of $550, there isn’t a lot of competition for a monitor of this size.  The others cost several hundred dollars more, though it is fair to point out a monitor of this size is usually 3840 x 1600.  That price makes a good middle ground for what you get.  The current price of $385 on the other hand makes this monitor a steal.   That is a price point for monitors with the a similar resolution but are around 34″ in size.   That gives you a higher pixel density, but you lose out on total screen space.

It seems that this display is exactly as big as Monoprice could make it.  If it was larger the lack of a curve would certainly become very noticeable, and you really don’t want to stretch out 3440 x 1440 any more.  If you are dreaming of gaming on a large ultrawide screen but the price prevents you from being able to, this is a solution to your problems.  The more expensive displays will give you more, but the Monoprice 40″ CrystalPro monitor will give you everything you need.