Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 review: Ultrawide, not ultra expensive

If you want a gaming monitor that’s big, good and feature-laden it’s usually a question of picking two of the three, because you seldom get all of them together. Iiyama is trying to square that circle with its new G-Master gaming monitor, which combines a vast 44.5in curved VA 5K panel with a price tag of less than £800.

To hit that price, Iiyama hasn’t skimped on the ancillary features, either, so you get a USB hub with KVM support and Ethernet, a more than decent speaker system and a stand with more adjustment options than you generally get with ultrawide monitors regardless of price. On paper, then, the G-Master GCB4580DQSN seems to offer it all.

Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 review: What do you get for your money?

The meat and veg of the GCB4580DQSN-B1 is the 5,120 x 1,440 VA panel with a pixel density of 120ppi, slightly more than the 109dpi you get from a 2,560 x 1,440 27in panel. This difference is invisible to the naked eye, though.

The panel has a 1500R curve, meaning it forms a segment of a circle with a 1,500mm or 1.5m radius. Of all the curved gaming monitors, 1500R is arguably the sweet spot between the highly immersive 1000R form for gaming and the 1800R flatter format, which is best for more general use. If you want a curved do-it-all monitor, 1500R is what you want.

The cabinet is a chunky black plastic affair with no fancy LED lights. Iiyama describes the monitor as “three sides frameless”, which translates into bezel widths of 10mm at the top and sides, and 25mm at the bottom. The stand is highly adjustable for an ultrawide: there’s 45 degrees of pivot and swivel, 130 degrees of height adjustment and tilt between -3 and +20 degrees. Underneath the quick-release stand bracket, you’ll find 100 x 100mm and 200 x 100mm VESA mounts.

All the monitor’s ports are grouped on the back face down, and each has its name printed below it, which makes plugging cables in a little easier than it would otherwise be.

Navigating the display’s menu system is done via a small joystick under the front of the cabinet, and there are pre-assigned shortcuts to each of the stick’s compass points: these are Input, I-Style (colour) Mode, Volume and Night Mode. It would be nice if these were customisable but, alas, they’re not.

It should go without saying that the G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 is big and rather heavy, so you might need assistance setting it up and you’ll want to check quite carefully if it will fit on your desk. At maximum height, it measures 1,090 x 275 x 539mm (WDH), and it weighs a substantial 11.2kg.

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Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 review: What connections does it have?

Iiyama deserves a pat on the back for fitting the GCB4580DQSN with a good selection of ports. For video, you get a brace of HDMI 2.1 inputs, DisplayPort 1.4 and a DP Alt Mode USB-C port that also supports 90W PD charging.

In addition, you’ll also find a USB-B port and three USB-A ports – all 5Gbits/sec speed – a 3.5mm audio jack and a gigabit Ethernet port. Together, they turn the Iiyama into a fine USB hub with full KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) functionality.

This, coupled with the G-Master’s Picture-by-Picture function, means you can run two 2,560 x 1,400 displays, each from a different source, side by side. That isn’t just useful for work; it means you can game in one space and run video, or anything else, on the other.

The one criticism I have here is that you can’t assign a shortcut to swap your keyboard and mouse between workspaces so you have to open the menu, navigate to Set Up, then KVM and swap the mouse and keyboard input there.

Given that the joystick supports four shortcuts on the L/R/Forward/Back axes, it’s a shame you can’t make one of them a KVM switch. A KVM shortcut is far more valuable than instant access to the Night Mode, which is basically a three-position brightness control.

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Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 review: How good is the image quality?

This being a gaming monitor first and foremost it makes sense to start with motion fidelity. On this front, the GCB4580DQSN is good, certainly on a par with its cheaper Iiyama stablemate the GB3467WQSU-B5, but I have seen better – for instance on the 240Hz Agon AG325QZN.

Running the Blur Busters tests there was some ghosting to be seen, which means that in fast eSports games things aren’t as sharp as I’d like. The issues are very hard to discern in Triple-A gaming, though, and it could be argued that a 165Hz ultrawide gaming display is not what you’d buy for eSports gaming in the first place.

There’s a five-position Overdrive adjustment, but this doesn’t change much other than reducing the levels of inverse ghosting, or overshoot, against bright backgrounds. There are other options such as Direct Drive and the five-position Motion Blur Reduction system but these don’t have much effect either, and enabling them means having to run without adaptive sync enabled.

In all other ways, the GCB4580DQSN makes a good account of itself. There’s plenty of colour around colour reproduction at 123.3% of sRGB, 85% AdobeRGB and 87.3% DCI-P3. The GCB4580DQSN doesn’t have any pre-set colour profiles but the average Delta E variance against the sRGB profile registered at a perfectly commendable 1.9, making it suitable for some creative work out of the box.

Being a VA panel, brightness and contrast ratio aren’t an issue. In SDR mode, the panel peaked at 429cd/m² and 2,559:1, the latter typical of VA panel technology. In HDR playback – something you need to enable in the monitor menu as well as in Windows – the maximum brightness level jumps to 503cd/m² when measuring a white patch 10% the size of the screen area against a black background. That’s more than enough to earn the Iiyama its VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification.

How does HDR content look on the GCB4580DQSN? Pretty impressive, with bold, sumptuous colours and great levels of contrast. In short, it’s better than on a non-Mini-LED IPS panel, if not as good as a decent OLED display.

In its natural habitat, playing Triple-A games that support the ultrawide format, the  GCB4580DQSN is in its element. Halo Infinite was a very impressive experience: smooth, colourful and highly immersive. I don’t think you can do better for this sort of money.

Affordable, aggressively curved panels tend not to be poster children for uniformity, but the measurements from the GCB4580DQSN were solid enough, with all but five of the 25 rectangles measured across the screen (those on the far left) falling inside the recommended luminance tolerance levels.

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Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 review: Are there any other features I should know about?

Buried inside the cabinet are two 3W speakers, which generate up to 79.4dBA, as measured against a pink noise source at a 1m distance. That’s enough to fill a reasonably sized room with ease.

They’re not only loud but they sound great, too, producing deep and resonant audio with lots of bass, albeit of a somewhat woolly nature. They’re right at home pumping out the soundtracks to the likes of Metal: Hellsinger or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, where power and volume are the watchwords rather than delicacy or detail.

The one area where Iiyama needs to up its game is the menu system. The design is starting to look rather dated and navigation is clunky compared to what’s on offer from some of the competition.

The presence of some arcane features that have little effect on the onscreen proceedings doesn’t help matters, either. I get the feeling that features such as the X-Res Technology feature, which apparently “enhances text and images to appear crisper and raise the sense of sharpness” (I had to look that up, I couldn’t work out what it did just by using it), are there just for the sake of it.

I’d rather Iiyama ditched the peripheral gobbledegook and gave gamers what they want, such as onscreen frame rate display, sniper scope or virtual crosshairs, all of which are missing from the GCB4580DQSN.

Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 review: Should I buy it?

Assuming that you have the space for a large ultrawide monitor, the Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 has a lot going for it. First off, AAA games that support ultrawide layouts such as Horizon: Zero Dawn and Halo Infinite look and sound great on it, with the panel’s minor motion-handling shortcomings pretty much impossible to detect.

When you’re not gaming – or gaming and doing other stuff simultaneously – the display’s versatility comes into its own with full KVM capability and the option to run two 2.5K 16:9 workspaces side by side. In every way, then, the Iiyama G-Master GCB4580DQSN-B1 is a lot of display for your money.