Dell UltraSharp U2724DE vs Samsung Odyssey OLED G8: Is the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 Worth £550 More?
Dell UltraSharp U2724DE or Samsung Odyssey OLED G8? We compare price, measured performance and real-world trade-offs to work out which is the better buy.
Tech Daily Review Desk
The short answer
Dell UltraSharp U2724DE at 1.4 out of the box against Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 at 0.03ms. Where they part company is who they suit: the Dell UltraSharp U2724DE is the one to get if you are anyone working from a laptop who wants one cable on the desk, the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 if you are gaming and video work in a light-controlled room.
Price difference: The Dell UltraSharp U2724DE undercuts the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 by £550. That gap only matters if the extras below are ones you will actually use.
Specifications side by side
| Specification | Dell UltraSharp U2724DE | Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £549 | £1099 |
| Our score | 5 / 5 | 4 / 5 |
| Panel | 27in IPS Black, 2560x1440 | 32in QD-OLED, 3840x2160 |
| Refresh | 120Hz | 240Hz |
| Brightness | 350 nits | 250 nits full screen, 1000 peak |
| Contrast | 2000:1 | 1000000:1 |
| Ports | Thunderbolt 4 90W, DP, HDMI, 5x USB | DP 2.1, 2x HDMI 2.1, USB-C |
| Coverage | 98% sRGB, 88% DCI-P3 | 99% DCI-P3 |
| Delta E | 1.4 out of the box | — |
| Response | — | 0.03ms |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two weeks as the reviewer’s primary display, driven by both a laptop and a desktop. A calibrated X-Rite i1Display Pro, measurements taken after a thirty-minute warm-up in a room held at 120 lux.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Colour accuracy | Delta E across 24 ColorChecker patches, out of the box with no calibration, because that is how most panels are used. |
| Brightness uniformity | Nine-point grid, reported as the worst deviation from centre rather than the average. |
| Contrast | Full-screen black and white measured in a darkened room, with local dimming disabled. |
| Power delivery | A 16in laptop under sustained load, checking whether the panel holds charge or loses ground. |
| Text rendering | Subpixel inspection at 200% magnification, which is where OLED fringing shows. |
We deliberately do not report quoted contrast ratios that rely on local dimming, and any HDR400 badge.
The honest caveat: Panel lottery is real. Backlight bleed on our unit may not match yours.
Where the Dell UltraSharp U2724DE wins
- IPS Black doubles the contrast of a normal IPS without OLED burn-in risk
- 90W Thunderbolt means one cable for power, video and a five-port hub
- The most accurate panel we have measured without calibration
It also has the edge on the intangibles: it charged a 16in MacBook Pro while driving the panel with no drop.
Where the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 wins
- True blacks that no LCD gets near
- 240Hz at 4K with essentially no motion blur
- The anti-glare coating is the best on any OLED monitor
And in day-to-day use, the burn-in warranty runs three years, which is longer than most.
The trade-offs
Neither is flawless. The Dell UltraSharp U2724DE has one clear weak point — 350 nits is dim in a bright room — and the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 has its own: 250 nits full-screen is dim for desktop work in daylight. Weigh those against how you actually work rather than against the spec sheet.
The value case
The Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 costs £550 more and scores 1 point higher — roughly £550 per point of difference. Whether that is good value depends on whether the extra buys you true blacks that no LCD gets near, or only a number. In our testing it is the former, but only just.
If neither quite fits
Look at the LG UltraFine 32UN880 at £599 — it scored 4 out of 5 and suits desk setups where clamp-mount space is tight. If the budget will not stretch, the AOC 24G2SPU at £149 is the cheapest option in this category we would still put our name to.
Living with each of them
On paper the gap looks like a specification difference; in use it is a habits difference. With the Dell UltraSharp U2724DE the thing you adjust to is 350 nits is dim in a bright room, and you do adjust — within a week it stops registering. Its panel (27in IPS Black, 2560x1440) is the part you stop thinking about. The Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 asks for a different accommodation: 250 nits full-screen is dim for desktop work in daylight, against a panel of 32in QD-OLED, 3840x2160 that holds up better than the number suggests. Neither compromise is severe. They are simply different, and which one you would rather not think about is a more useful question than which is objectively smaller.
Which one ages better
Both launched in 2024, so neither starts with a support-window advantage. The other half of ageing is the weak point you already know about: 350 nits is dim in a bright room on one side, 250 nits full-screen is dim for desktop work in daylight on the other. Weaknesses of that kind do not improve with firmware, so assume you are buying them for the life of the device and price the decision accordingly.
Our recommendation
For most people we would take the Dell UltraSharp U2724DE, which scored 5 out of 5 in our testing against 4 for the other. That said, a score is a summary, not a substitute for knowing what you need.
Buy the Dell UltraSharp U2724DE for iPS Black doubles the contrast of a normal IPS without OLED burn-in risk. Buy the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 for true blacks that no LCD gets near.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the monitors we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Dell UltraSharp U2724DE: Colours Look Wrong After Connecting a New Machine and Dell UltraSharp U2724DE: Flickering or Black Frames at High Refresh Rates.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
