Samsung Odyssey 3D Feels Like a Novelty, but It’s Still Endearing

If there’s one thing I would defend to the death, it’s the 3D effect of the Nintendo 3DS. When all my friends preferred the 2DS, I stuck by the older handheld with its awkward 3D slider and finicky viewing angles. Now I’m all grown up, and I feel a kinship with the glasses-free faux 3D on Samsung’s Odyssey 3D monitor. It costs as much as two high-end OLED monitors for the sake of an IPS display with 3D effects.

The basic pitch of the Samsung 3D monitor is, for $2,000, you too can sit in front of a screen that makes some images in some games pop more than they do on a traditional display. We’ve seen the Odyssey 3D in action at Samsung’s last two CES tech showcases, but the company invited me to put the display through its paces in a more laid-back atmosphere. There’s a jumble of interesting tech behind the Odyssey 3D’s capabilities, even if the specs seem incredibly basic. Behind the 27-inch, 165 Hz 4K IPS LCD panel, the monitor uses two cameras that track your eyes. This means you’ll never be without the 3D effect, no matter which angle you’re looking at it from.

It’s as if we’re back to the days when companies like Samsung pushed concepts for 3D LCD TVs (long after TV makers have largely abandoned those decade-old concepts). Now, we’re living in an age where every major monitor maker is promoting a $1,000+ 4K, 240 Hz QD-OLED display. I’ve used Alienware’s recent rendition, and now Samsung itself has its Odyssey OLED G81SF up for preorder, selling for $1,300. I sat in front of the new G8, enjoyed the deep inky blacks and relatively glare-resistant screen, but it’s hard to care about that screen when the 3D monitor is screaming at my eyeballs “go on, try me.”

Getting a 3D picture in your games isn’t as simple as plug and play. The device requires users to go through Samsung’s Reality Hub app, which you need to install separately to your PC. This acts as a game launcher for 12 select titles that will support these 3D effects at launch. Currently, the list of supported games includes: Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Lies of P, Palworld, Psychonauts 2, Little Nightmares II, SpongeBob SquarePants: the Cosmic Shake, Like a Dragon: Ishin, F.I.S.T: Forged in Shadow Torch, Only UP, Octopath Traveler, and KHAZAN: The First Berzerker. Samsung told me they were planning to add more to the list in the near future, including some older titles like the Definitive Editions of Grand Theft Auto III through San Andreas.

Characters and objects in those games jut out from the screen without the kind of odd coloration you get from 3D glasses in a cinema. The strength of the Odyssey 3D is its dedicated keyboard shortcuts for controlling the “3D depth” and “3D popout.” Together, these affect how severe the 3D effect gets. Sitting only a desk’s length away from the screen, anything higher than middling settings creates an unpleasant, near harrowing experience where characters felt like they were encroaching on my eyeballs.

Samsung worked specifically with the developers of KHAZAN: The First Berserker to make the game’s 3D effects pop. In that Souls-like, the falling snow whips at your head through the screen, and the blood spraying from the yawning wounds my character dealt sprayed with a satisfying, practically cell-shaded depth. Immersive isn’t the right word for playing with the 3D effect on. Instead, the 3D novelty enhances the stylized sensibilities of those games with flatter textures and brighter colors. The 3D effect felt more in tune with SpongeBob SquarePants and its bright colors than in muted and muddy GTA: San Andreas.

At $2,000, the display needs to offer something more than just 3D effects in a bare few games. The expensive Odyssey does let you access a 3D-like effect when watching some 2D content on your monitor, but it won’t work on protected content through Netflix or other streaming apps. It does make some images pop slightly when watching videos on YouTube. It’s a nice effect that’s not too distracting either. With the built-in spatial audio through dual speakers, the display may be a better-than-average way of burning time watching trailers for upcoming movies or the guy who goes camping with his kids in Alaska.

I recently experienced a similar concept from Lenovo, but it was a curved, ultrawide monitor. I didn’t like it as much as I liked this though. I think 27 inches is just the right size to make the 3D effect pop without being too overwhelming. The first iterations of the Nintendo 3DS back in the day had issues with the 3D at odd angles, but it worked well in Nintendo’s colorful, first-party games. It took time for Nintendo to build up that library, and even then the company dropped the price after low sales at launch. You need strong support from a ton of games to make the 3D effect impactful, and currently Samsung’s paltry selection and enormous asking price means it will be a tough sell, no matter how many fellow 3DS fans are out there.