First of all, this is NOT meant to be a bad review, it is just advice and help to get the best out of this product. If anything, aside from the small issues that are easily worked around with the info below, this is an amazing monitor that I highly recommend.
So I recently received my new Samsung Odyssey G9 and wanted to share my experience so far and hopefully help some of you out with troubleshooting the issues I have already come across and solved. One of the first things I wanted to do was to make sure I was on the latest firmware, however, updating the firmware is very problematic but, I managed to do it in the end.
So firmware, first of all, the firmware file on the Samsung website is located here:
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/odyssey-gaming-monitor-g9-series
Looks simple enough, just click the download button next to where it says Firmware... NO!!!
Clicking the download button downloads the instructions to install the firmware (which are wrong) not the actual firmware. You have to click 'See More' and then click Download next to the latest firmware version, in my case it was:
Upgrade File(USB type)
Version 1006.2
Now you have the firmware, unzip it, pop it on a USB, stick the USB in the service port and go to 'Software Update' under the 'Support' menu option of the screen. It probably won't work, first of all, the instructions tell you to rename the file to a binary file, with a .bin extension. DO NOT DO THIS, leave it as a .img file!!!
Secondly, these screens are very picky about which USB's they will work with, you can't just use any, believe me, I bought 4 all together trying to get this to work so let me save you the pain. It only works with a USB that is 16Gb and formatted as FAT32, any bigger than 16Gb and you won't be able to format it as FAT32. Even then it will only work with some makes of USB, not all, the one I bought that I can confirm as working is per the link below:
**No Competitors **
SanDisk Cruzer Glide 16 GB USB Flash Drive USB 2.0
Most other USB drives won't work, but this one does. Format the USB as FAT32 and put the .img file on there, from within the downloaded .zip firmware file, ensuring it is the ONLY file on the USB. Now you can follow the rest of the instructions to update the firmware. It's taken me about 8 hours of Samsung phone support and days of research to bring you this info so hopefully, it will help you out.
Next, after a bit of digging about Samsung recommends installing an application of theirs called 'Easy Setting Box' that lets you split your screen into sections to drag and drop multiple windows into predefined locations or screen sections, great for productivity but guess what, it doesn't work!!! At least when I tried it, it didn't. Whenever I dropped an application into a screen section the window just turned completely black and you couldn't even close it, it was just a black box on the screen. You could move it about but it never came back to normal view again, I had to close it from 'Task Manager'.
Luckily, I found a great, FREE, alternative that works an absolute treat and does exactly what the Samsung product is supposed to do, if not even better and easier to use. It's called FancyZones and is part of a suite of small free applications called PowerToys available at the link below:
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.23.2
Scroll to the bottom and click on the 'PowerToysSetup-0.23.2-x64.exe' or whichever is the latest version, download and install, it's pretty easy to set up once installed.
Anyway, there you go, that's my help and advice to anyone buying one of these, or has already bought one of these screens. Once all the faf and hassle of sorting this stuff out is done, it really is a beautiful and stunning bit of kit, you won't be disappointed with.
If anyone from Samsung happens to read this, I recommend this product should ship with a compatible Firmware USB stick and USB extension cables. Getting to the USB ports at the back, and taking the cover on and off is a bit of a pain. It's not expensive to purchase these items separately and I recommend anyone buying one of these screens do so but, it would be so much nicer and easier if it came with them.
