Gaming on monitors is becoming more and more common but it’s not just exclusive to PC gamers anymore. Gamers are finding that gaming on a monitor as opposed to a TV is a better experience for the games we play. The only real reason to play your games on a TV now is the size. It seems simple enough right? Buy a monitor, connect your console and you’re good. There are caveats however. There’s price, size and features that go into which monitor you ultimately end up buying and if you’re not careful with your budget, it can get real expensive real quick and that’s where the problems start.
About a month or so I had gone to an event here in NYC with a company called Drop (Formerly Massdrop) and they had a small showcase showing off some of their most popular and notable tech items. The techie in me saw a monitor and I had to go and check it out. It was the Vast 35″ widescreen gaming monitor.
When you look at the Vast 35″ it looks just like any other widescreen panel. Sleek, slim, slightly curved and well, wide. The Vast doesn’t really do anything that any other widescreen gaming panel doesn’t do. It does it what it does in it’s own way but what makes this such a great widescreen panel to have is it’s value.
The Vast was my first real experience with a widescreen panel and I am normally not a fan of the widescreen monitor as a whole. Using the Vast 35″ changed my otherwise negative view of the widescreen panel into an overall positive one. My perception of the widescreen has always been about work and I am not a productivity person, meaning, I don’t use my monitors for anything other than gaming. The Vast monitor is the perfect productivity tool too but, I game. I play most of my games primarily on console but I get it on with my PC too. The Vast was very accommodating to my console and my PC and I had a lot of fun gaming on a widescreen panel although I had to get used to it a little bit.
Console gaming for me on the Vast was pretty good. On the Xbox One I was able to play with the resolutions so I wouldn’t get a stretched out display while playing. I could do the same with the PS4 but some for some reason it never took and I ended up playing my games kind of stretched out. Not a dealbreaker. I still got my game on. For sure. Destiny 2 is always my game of choice and the Division 2, they were great on the Vast via console but again, better on PC.
PC gaming makes the best use of the Vast for obvious reasons. If you’re using a powerful GPU you’ll be able to use your game settings to their maximum from resolution to framerates. It’s better if you have an AMD GPU considering the Vast supports FreeSYNC. Depending on the game you’ll be able to take advantage of all 35″ of the monitor and games and some you won’t. Whether fullscreen or not, the games looked great and they were fluid and smooth when playing and I didn’t have any complaints. I was a little disappointed that the Vast doesn’t support HDR but I understand that to keep the cost down HDR had to be left out and I’m cool with that. It’s doesn’t make that much difference and not that big of a deal.
The VA panel on the Vast is pretty good. It’s gets reasonably bright at 300 nits and colors are also very good. I never felt like colors were washed out or dull although on console some of the games I played looked a little dull but for PC gaming, because of the level of control you have with the options, this was never the case. There are no speakers on the Vast so you’ll have to get a soundbar or some monitors, besides, monitor speakers suck anyway. No big deal here.
The vast also turns at a 90 degree angle as well. Yes, portrait mode. It’s kind of a specific feature and not so much a selling point because I wouldn’t buy a monitor just because it did that but for the people that would it’s good to know that it does.
The Vast has all of the ports that you need. You know the drill. Displayport, HDMI, etc. There is a little menu controller on the back of the monitor which I don’t love on any monitor that uses it but it works here and you can navigate through the menu pretty easily and make changes as you see fit.
Simplicity is the focus of the Vast monitor it’s really just to get your game on and productivity together and that’s it. You have to love it for that.
SPECS
The Vast monitor gives you some really solid specs for your money. What’s behind the screen might you ask? Let me give you the rundown.
Resolution: 3440 x 1440p
FreeSYNC compatible
1800r curve
100Hz refresh rate
DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0, 2x HDMI 1.4
16.7 million (true 8-bit) colors
VESA compatible
35″ widescreen VA Panel
THE VAST 35″ MONITOR IS A GREAT BARGAIN
The Vast 35″ monitor is a great bargain. While $600 is not peanuts it’s what we can consider affordable based on what the prices look like for mid to high end gaming monitors at this size and spec. As I said before the Vast doesn’t do anything in a new or different way. It’s the value that matters here. You can play all of your games on PC or console with ease and they’ll look and play great. The design of the Vast is clean and simple and wherever you put it, it’ll look great. I’m not a sucker for overly priced high end gaming monitors especially when you consider the times we live and the rate that things change.
Spending a lot of money on things like monitors almost doesn’t make sense anymore. I found that the Vast monitor gives you a lot for your money. Wanna know where to find it. Head over to drop.com and take a look at it for yourself HERE and maybe grab one. Best part? It’s now $401 thru 7/19 which makes the Vast 35″ probably the best widescreen monitor deal around.
