KTC H34S5 Review: 3440×1440 180Hz UltraWide Curved Gaming Monitor

The KTC H34S5 is a 34″ 3440×1440 180Hz ultrawide curved (1500R) gaming monitor with a VA panel.

It’s the successor to the KTC H34S18S, which we’ve also reviewed, now upgraded to a higher 180Hz refresh rate from 165Hz and with an included sRGB mode.

Let’s see how it does in our tests!

Image Quality

The monitor is based on a VA panel with a wide 90% DCI-P3 color space coverage, 178° viewing angles, a 4,000:1 static contrast ratio, a 300-nit peak brightness and dithered 10-bit color depth support (8-bit + 2-bit FRC).

To test the display’s capabilities and accuracy, we’re using our Calibrite Display Pro HL colorimeter paired with DisplayCAL.

Note that we are testing the monitor with the SGP-1.0.1 firmware version.

In the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu, under the ‘Display’ settings, you’ll find several ‘Preset’ options: Standard, User (Default), Movie, Photo, RTS, FPS1 and FPS2.

Options other than ‘User’ simply apply preset brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and Black Equalize values, which you can’t adjust. So, for full customization, we recommend using the most accurate default ‘User’ mode.

If you scroll a bit further in the ‘Display’ section, you’ll find the ‘Professional Modes’ options, including ‘Native’ and ‘sRGB’.

Color Gamut

The KTC H34S5 monitor has a wide color gamut with a 132.5% sRGB volume in the ‘Native’ mode, resulting in vibrant colors.

By default, Windows doesn’t do proper color management, which results in SDR colors being oversaturated. Some users might prefer this look, but if you want better accuracy, you should use the ‘sRGB’ ‘Professional Mode’ instead, which clamps the gamut down to 95.8% volume and a respectable 92.8% coverage.

Image Accuracy

In the Native mode, due to over-saturated colors, we measured a Delta E of 2.38 average (color deviation from the target, less than 1.5 is considered good) and 6.23 maximum (target is less than 3).

Gamma tracking is decent with a 2.16 average (target is 2.2), and it follows the sRGB tone curve. Near-black (5% white) is a bit darker than intended.

Color temperature in the default ‘Preset’ mode was 7062K (target is 6500K), so we recommend using the ‘Warm’ mode instead, which is a bit more accurate at 6868K. It’s still a bit higher than intended, but there’s no noticeable tinting to the whitepoint.

We also measured the color temperature of the Normal (7684K), Cool (10180K) and User (6809K – but with a slight green tint) modes.

The sRGB mode offers better accuracy with a Delta E of 1.14 average and 3.06 maximum. Gamma tracking is decent with a 2.25 average, though now near-black (5% – 25%) and 95% white are a bit darker than intended.

Color temperature accuracy is excellent at 6484K. In the sRGB mode, you cannot access ‘Color’ settings (color temperature, gamma, hue/saturation, low-blue light and color range), but you can adjust everything else, including brightness.

While VA monitors have 178° wide viewing angles specified just like IPS panels, some minor gamma and saturation shifts can be observed on VA displays. This isn’t that noticeable in everyday use or an issue for basic content creation, but it is a concern for professional color-critical work.

Calibration

For full calibration, we set the brightness to 23/100 for 120-nits, used the ‘Native’ color temperature mode, and ‘Custom’ color temperature with red, green and blue channels set to 50, 49 and 49, respectively, to get 6553K.

We noticed an issue where adjusting the red, green, and blue channels would sometimes register half-steps. For example, we had to decrease the green value by two steps for it to change from 50 to 49, even though both adjustments resulted in a measurable change.

Due to panel variance, we don’t recommend copying these settings anyway, but it’s something to keep in mind if you decide to calibrate the monitor yourself using your own colorimeter.

Delta E improved to 0.44 average and 1.74 maximum with accurate gamma tracking (2.2 average). You can download our ICC profile here.

Brightness & Contrast

We measured a maximum brightness of 343-nits, and a minimum of 17-nits. In the sRGB mode, peak brightness drops slightly to 327 nits, with a minimum of 16 nits.

The monitor is suitable for use in both bright and dark rooms.

At around 200-nits, we measured a contrast ratio of 3281:1, which results in reasonably deep blacks, notably darker than that of IPS monitors with a typical contrast ratio of around 1,000:1.

Of course, blacks won’t be as deep as that of monitors with self-emissive OLED panels or LED displays with full-array local dimming (FALD).

HDR

Since the monitor doesn’t have a FALD backlight or an OLED panel, it doesn’t deliver a proper HDR image quality, but it can still accept and display the HDR10 signal.

Some HDR content can take advantage of the display’s DCI-P3 color gamut mapping and dithered 10-bit color support to reduce banding. However, shadow and highlight details won’t stand out or match the creator’s original intent.

In this price range, you can get a 27″ 1440p 180Hz FALD display, such as the AOC Q27G40XMN, while ultrawide monitors with FALD or an OLED panel can be found for around $500.

Subpixel Layout, Pixel Density, UltraWide Format

The 3440×1440 UltraWide Quad HD screen resolution results in a high pixel density of 109.68 PPI (pixels per inch) on the 34″ sized screen of the monitor.

In other words, you get plenty of screen real estate with sharp details and text without any scaling necessary. The resolution is a bit more demanding than 2560×1440, but still not nearly as taxing on the GPU as 4K UHD, allowing for higher frame rates.

It has the standard RGB subpixel layout, so there’s no fringing on small text and fine details.

The ultrawide aspect ratio provides you with a wider field of view in compatible games. Most games support 21:9 resolution natively, though in some titles you may need to use mods or tinker with some settings for proper support.

For more information on app support for ultrawide resolutions and useful tools to improve compatibility, visit our KTC H34S18S review.

Performance

The KTC H34S5 has a maximum refresh rate of 180Hz, which provides you with a huge boost in motion clarity in comparison to typical 60-75Hz displays. The higher refresh rate also lowers input latency and makes screen tearing less noticeable.

For latency and response time testing, we’re using OSRTT.

Response Time

The KTC H34S5 has five response time overdrive modes: Off, Standard, Advanced, Ultra Fast and Dynamic Overdrive.

At 180Hz, ‘Off’ is too slow, while ‘Ultra Fast’ adds too much overshoot. ‘Dynamic OD’ and ‘Advanced’ have the same performance with overshoot exceeding the generally acceptable 15% average error threshold.

The ‘Standard’ mode has a bit less overshoot and a good average GtG (gray to gray) pixel response time of 3.2ms, with 93.33% of all transitions making it in time with the 5.56ms refresh rate cycle.

There is some overshoot noticeable with 13.97% average error, but it’s less noticeable than the ghosting of the ‘Off’ mode with 8.58ms average GtG and only 26.67% refresh rate compliance.

In desktop use, the ‘Standard’ mode can make overshoot (inverse ghosting) more noticeable than in games, so you may want to dial it back to ‘Off’ when working.

Sadly, as you can see in the chart, the transition from black to dark gray (0 – 51) is 12ms, which causes noticeable ghosting behind fast-moving objects in darker scenes.

We find that the level of dark-level smearing won’t bother most gamers, some may even consider it negligible, but certain users are particularly sensitive to this type of visual artifact.

Here are the pixel response time speed results at 120Hz.

At 120Hz, the overshoot in the ‘Standard’ and stronger modes becomes too noticeable, leaving the ‘Off’ mode as the only usable option, but the response times are now too slow with a 9.08ms GtG average and 43% refresh rate compliance. A mode between Off and Standard at 120Hz would’ve been very helpful.

Next, here are the results at 60Hz.

Again, at 60Hz, only the ‘Off’ mode avoids intrusive overshoot. Refresh rate compliance improves slightly to 53.33%, but the overall response time could still be better, with a 13.33ms average GtG.

Here’s how these tests look in Blur Busters’ UFO ghosting test. We used 960 Pixels Per Sec, shutter speed set to 1/4 of the refresh rate with fixed focus, ISO and color temperature (6500K).

Here are the results at 60Hz and 120Hz.

And here’s a comparison to several other monitors we tested.

Motion Blur Reduction

The monitor also supports MBR (Motion Blur Reduction) via its MPRT feature, which uses backlight strobing to reduce perceived motion blur at the cost of image brightness.

It cannot be enabled at the same time as VRR and it introduces screen flickering that’s invisible to the human eye, but can cause headaches to sensitive users after prolonged use.

As you can see, motion clarity is significantly improved, though there’s some strobe crosstalk (image duplications).

Keep in mind that for the best results, your frame rate should match the refresh rate. If you can’t maintain 320FPS, you should lower the refresh rate when using MPRT.

With MPRT active, brightness is reduced to 80-nits at 180Hz, 82-nits at 165Hz, 87-nits at 144Hz, and 91-nits at 120Hz.

Due to high brightness penalty, strobe crosstalk and generally slow response times, backlight strobing performance isn’t particularly good on this monitor. Competitive FPS players should be looking at faster IPS, TN or OLED displays anyway.

Latency

Unlike some KTC monitors, the display’s latency doesn’t change depending on whether ‘Adaptive-Sync’ is enabled or disabled in the OSD menu.

The measured display latency is low and amounts to 3.55ms at 180Hz, 5.11ms at 120Hz and 9.82ms at 60Hz.

As the latency is lower than the refresh rate cycle, this means that you won’t be able to notice or feel any delay between your actions and the result on the screen.

Variable Refresh Rate

With ‘FreeSync/G-sync’ set to ‘On’, you can enable variable refresh rate (VRR) in your GPU drivers, which allows the monitor’s refresh rate to change dynamically according to your frame rates in order to prevent screen tearing at no perceptible latency cost.

So, if you’re gaming at 180Hz, but you’re getting 120FPS, the monitor will run at 120Hz in order to provide you with 120 whole frames per second without the screen-tearing artifacts.

The supported VRR range is 48-180Hz, but even if your FPS dips below 48, the monitor uses LFC (Low Framerate Compensation) to refresh the screen at a multiple of your current frame rate. For example, 40FPS would be displayed at 80Hz or 120Hz to keep tearing at bay.

The HDMI 2.0 port is limited to 100Hz at 3440×1440, with a 48-100Hz dynamic range.

Sadly, the VRR brightness flickering issue is noticeable in games with heavily fluctuating frame rates and in some in-game menus and loading screens, but this is common for high refresh rate VA and OLED panel displays.

Since screen tearing is not that noticeable at 180Hz (at least in comparison to 60-75Hz), you should simply disable VRR in the affected games or use V-Sync instead.

Uniformity & Quality Control

The bottom left and right corners of the screen are up to around 23% dimmer on 100% white and around 10% dimmer on 75% white backgrounds, but this wasn’t noticeable in everyday use.

Next, there was one dead green sub-pixel, which causes the pixel to be red on a white/yellow background (i.e., stuck red pixel) and black on a green/cyan background.

Luckily, it’s in the bottom-left part of the screen, and it wasn’t noticeable during regular use.

There was no excessive VA glow or backlight bleeding, no image retention or frame skipping. However, Lagom’s pixel inversion tests reveal flickering with patterns 1 and 3 (only at 60Hz), and a shift in gamma (from 2.17 to 2.34) and subtle horizontal scanlines at all refresh rates for patterns 1, 2a and 2b.

This is a common drawback of VA panels, and these are rarely visible in everyday use because the test patterns are intentionally designed to align with the panel’s inversion layout.

Real-world content, such as games, videos and desktop applications, rarely produce the same conditions and can only occasionally appear on webpages or UI elements with very fine mesh or checkerboard-like backgrounds, such as this one.

This test is included mainly for completeness and to help identify the cause if you ever notice similar artifacts on your monitor.

Moving on, the monitor uses a flicker-free backlight (unless MPRT is enabled), ensuring a comfortable viewing experience without the risk of eye strain or headaches for sensitive users during extended use.

There’s also a low blue light mode with four intensity levels (we measured color temperatures of 5904K, 5142K, 4587K, and 4146K), which can be helpful if you have trouble falling asleep at night after prolonged screen time.

Features

On the rear of the monitor, there’s a directional joystick for quick and easy navigation through the menu. Moving the joystick up, down, left or right also serves as a quick menu for input source selection, brightness, Game Plus (timer, crosshair, refresh rate tracker) and presets, respectively.

You cannot assign other functions to these shortcuts, as is the case on some other KTC monitors.

Besides typical image adjustment tools (brightness, contrast, color temperature), there are some advanced settings available too, including sharpness, aspect ratio (full, 16:9, 4:3, but these compress the image horizontally), gamma (from 1.8 to 2.4), color range (cannot access this option), hue/saturation and automatic input detection.

There’s also a DCR (Dynamic Contrast Ratio) option, which we recommend leaving disabled for optimal image quality.

KTC also offers a desktop application called MMC (Monitor Management Center), which you can use to make some OSD-related adjustments, assign keyboard hotkeys for certain functions or picture modes to different applications.

You can download the MMC app here, though you’ll need to change your browser’s preferred language to ‘Chinese (Simplified)’; otherwise, it will just take you to the English homepage. Alternatively, use this direct download link (clicking it will start the download immediately).

You can also use third-party apps, such as ControlMyMonitor, to make the following OSD settings:

Useful gaming features include Black Equalize (improves visibility in dark scenes by altering the gamma curvature), crosshair overlays, a refresh rate tracker and an on-screen timer.

Other OSD settings include language, OSD setup (position, timeout, transparency), audio, USB Upgrade and factory reset. You can’t turn off the LED power indicator, but it’s small and glows a subtle white, so it shouldn’t bother most users. In standby mode, it blinks orange.

The monitor also supports Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture, allowing you to connect two sources and display them simultaneously in different positions and sizes.

Design & Connectivity

The stand of the monitor is robust and offers full ergonomic support, including up to 110mm height adjustment, +/- 3° pivot, -5°/20° tilt, +/- 45° swivel and 100x100mm VESA mount compatibility (recommended screw size M4*10mm)

The screen has a moderate 1500R curvature for added immersion and a light matte anti-glare coating that prevents reflections without making the image too grainy.

Next, the monitor has 2mm ultra-thin bezels at the top and at the sides with a 6mm black border before the image starts, while the bottom bezel is a bit thicker at 16mm with a 2mm black border.

The KTC logo at the rear also has customizable RGB lighting (off, ‘breathe’ effect and static red, green or blue).

Connectivity options include two HDMI 2.0 ports, two DisplayPort 1.4 inputs, a USB port for firmware updates, a headphone jack and an external power supply.

Note that DisplayPort 1.4 without DSC is limited to 8-bit color depth at 3440×1440 180Hz. For 10-bit color, you’d need to drop the refresh rate to 144Hz.

However, most SDR content is 8-bit anyway, while for HDR content, dithering is applied on the GPU side, which is virtually indistinguishable from panels with native 10-bit color depth or 8-bit with 2-bit FRC.

In the box, along with the monitor, you also get the external power supply, a power cord, a DisplayPort cable, a user guide/warranty card and a factory calibration report.

Price & Similar Monitors

The KTC H34S5 goes for $250 – $300, which is a typical price for 34″ 3440×1440 high refresh rate curved VA monitors.

10% off code: 10DH34S5

The older KTC H34S18S model we reviewed goes for around the same price, though it can sometimes be found on sale for about $225, which we expect the H34S5 might also drop to during discounts.

Compared to the H34S18S, the H34S5 not only has a 15Hz higher refresh rate, but also adds an sRGB emulation mode for better color accuracy. The H34S18S, on the other hand, has a better overdrive implementation at lower frame rates when using VRR.

So, choose the model based on which of these features matters more to you. If neither is particularly important, simply go with whichever one is more affordable.

For more options and information, check out our comprehensive best gaming monitor buyer’s guide.

Conclusion

Overall, the KTC H34S5 is an excellent monitor for the price. You get a big 34″ curved ultrawide screen for an immersive viewing experience, a high contrast ratio for deep blacks and a wide color gamut for vibrant colors.

Further, the added sRGB mode is one of the main things the previous H34S18S model was missing, so we’re happy to see a well-calibrated preset included here.

The biggest flaw of the H34S5, as is the case with all budget VA models, is the slower response time in darker scenes, which some users can tolerate, while others may find distracting.

It also lacks well-tuned overdrive optimization for gaming with VRR enabled at lower-than-maximum frame rates, as the ‘Standard’ mode is too aggressive below 180FPS, while the ‘Off’ mode is rather slow.

Since screen tearing is much less noticeable at 180Hz, and VA panels are prone to the common VRR brightness flickering, many gamers may choose to leave VRR disabled anyway, in which case overdrive performance won’t be an issue.

Specifications

Screen Size	34-inch
Resolution	3440×1440 (UWQHD)
Curvature	1500R
Panel Type	VA
Aspect Ratio	21:9 (UltraWide)
Refresh Rate	180Hz
Response Time (GtG)	Not specified
Motion Blur Reduction	MPRT
Adaptive-Sync	FreeSync Premium (48-180Hz)
Ports	2x DisplayPort 1. 2x HDMI 2.0
Other Ports	Headphone Jack, USB 2.0 (for firmware updates)
Brightness	300 cd/m²
Contrast Ratio	4000:1
Colors	1.07 billion (8-bit + FRC) 90% DCI-P3
HDR	HDR10
VESA	Yes (100x100mm)