MSI’s foray into the display panel world has been nothing short of impressive. Over the last six months, I’ve played with three of their newest models, and each one seems to offer superb value for money and excellent performance for gamers.
What I was not prepared for was the insane curvature of 1000R of the MSI Artymis 343CQR monitor. Okay, I may have oversold the insane part of that sentence, but this was the first time I sat hands-on in front of a screen that has such a strong curve. To put that into context, the higher the number, the flatter the curve. A curved monitor with a 4000R radius will be much flatter compared to a 1000R monitor like this one, which has a far more pronounced curve.
This got me curious about curved monitors and their ratios, so I did some digging and found something rather interesting. The human eye, with its outward-facing arc, has a curvature of around 1000R. It is this arc that gives us peripheral vision. In 2016, a Harvard School study also showed that curved monitors reduced eyestrain, and participants reported fewer difficulty-to-focus and blurred-vision symptoms compared to a flat monitor. This makes sense as your eye does not have to focus as far to either edge of the screen when looking at something, like the enemy behind that building.
The MSI Artymis 343CQR is the latest gaming monitor from MSI that aims to entice gamers with fast performance, good looks, and high-end features, especially if you are into first-person shooters. Even spreadsheet junkies and video editors will find some benefits to this wide and curved screen. The screen offers an aspect ratio of 21:9, a UWQHD resolution of 3440 x 1440, and a refresh rate of 165Hz. While only AMD FreeSync is officially supported, Nvidia’s G-Sync works just fine. On the back, MSI Artymis 343CQR features 2x HDM ports, 1x Display Port and a USB Type C port that you can use to charge your phone and, if you want to stay in touch at all times, have your phone screen displayed on the side of your MSI Artymis 343CQR screen. If you want even more immersion with other content feeds, you can select a few picture-in-picture modes to display other content.
If you enjoy console gaming and want to benefit from a wide-screen monitor, then MSI has you covered too. The MSI Artymis 343CQR will downscale a 4k input from your PS5 to match the monitor resolution.
On the back of this monitor, there is a neatly placed RGB strip to light up your desk along with the power button, menu joystick, and a key to activate the Gaming OSD application that lets you customise your display to best suit your preferences when you game.
The stand to which this monitor is screwed is also very sturdy and provides a 30-degree swivel and a -5 to 20-degree swivel forward and backwards, respectively. The stand also delivers a nice 100m lift in height.
One of the most surprising accessories to a monitor I’ve seen in a while is the mouse bungee that this monitor ships with—I kid you not, you can attach it to your monitor and hook in your mouse cord to give you more freedom in moving your wired mouse around.
While I’ve never been a fan of large-screen curved TVs, I think the more personal, close-up experience of a PC monitor is the perfect way to enjoy a curved screen. Sitting about a meter away, this 1000R curved monitor from MSI feels really immersive, and I felt myself lost in gaming again as the screen wrapped around my eyeline. I played my usual array of first-person shooters, and each one of them felt a bit more alive compared to my old, flat, monitor. The colour reproduction and brightness of the screen are also great, with a good range in both departments, giving me a solid gaming experience on my mid-range gaming rig.
I also spent a few days doing heavy video editing on this beautiful wide-screen monitor, and it did what I feared most: make me dependent on a wide-screen for video editing. Having more screen real estate to edit across your video timeline saves a lot of frustration.
While its price tag of nearly R18,000 is out of my budget range for a monitor, I will certainly be putting a hardware request in at the office in the next financial year. The MSI Artymis 343CQR is one of the most memorable gaming monitors I’ve used in a long time. Not only does it deliver on its promises, but thanks to its frameless design, if you put three of them together, you’ll be able to complete a nearly 180-degree gaming screen to do with as you please. Just a thought.