Innocn 49Q1S review: a cheaper alternative to the Odyssey OLED G9?
Table of Contents
If you like your monitors immersive, curvy, very wide and (relatively) short, then this Innocn 49Q1S monitor could be just the ticket. Forget ultrawide (which is typically 21:9 displays of 3440×1440), this is a super ultrawide display, with a 32:9 resolution of 5120×1440. 7680×2160 models of the super ultrawide aspect ratio also exist, like the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9, which are essentially two UHD/4K screens placed side-by-side; however, even the most powerful computers would have difficulty running games at this native resolution. A 5120×1440 display is essentially two 1440p screens seamlessly joined together, which is much easier for a gaming rig to handle if you want to get solid FPS. It also gives a great deal of screen real estate for productivity purposes – allowing for multiple windows to be opened next to each other.
Like the competing Samsung Odyssey OLED G93SC and G95SD models, this particular display comes with a very nice OLED panel, capable of unbeatable contrast and detail in darker scenes, plus a 240Hz refresh rate that is ideal for fast-paced competitive gaming. The OLED panel also means top-notch response times as well – also great news for gamers. The Innocn 49Q1S comes in at a lower price point than similar offerings from the better-known brands, however – let’s see if it’s still worth your money!
- Panel type: QD-OLED
- Resolution: 5120×1440 (32:9 super ultrawide)
- Refresh rate: 240Hz
- Response time: 0.03ms
- Panel size: 49”
- Screen curvature: 1800R
- I/O ports: 1x HDMI 2.1, 2x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x USB-C (90W PD), 2x USB-A 3.0, 1x USB-B 3.0, 1x RJ45 (100Mb), 1x 3.5mm headphone jack
Packing the same superb 240Hz QD-OLED panel as the more widely known 5120×1440 monitors out there, plus a solid amount of features and an array of ports which is actually superior, this Innocn display is available for around $200-300 less. The trade-off, however, is that you sacrifice much in the way of build quality, plus have to put up with a high susceptibility to screen wobble.
For some, the limited vertical dimensions of this type of display (and others like it), relative to the expansive horizontal ones, might be a bit of a turn-off. The relatively limited number of games that support this resolution also means you often have to use vertical black bars on either side of your game window. If a 49” 32:9 display fits your needs however, then this is an excellent, cheaper alternative to the more premium Samsung offerings.
- More affordable than the competition
- A huge amount of screen real estate
- 240Hz refresh rate at super ultrawide resolution
- OLED panel has fantastic contrast ratio
- Excellent response time & motion clarity
- 100% sRGB coverage is achievable with high color accuracy
- 90W USB-C Power Delivery, KVM switch, ethernet port & integrated mic
- Lots of screen wobble
- Cheap build quality
- Limited brightness, as with most OLEDs
- DisplayPort 1.4 only
- This size & aspect ratio isn’t for everybody
Pricing & availability
The stated MSRP of the Innocn 49Q1S is $974.99, which is what you can pick it up for on their website. At the time of writing, the monitor is available on Amazon US for slightly more money – $994.99. We haven’t seen any listings as of yet on Amazon UK for this latest model.
The most obvious competitors to the Innocn display are the Samsung Odyssey OLED G93SC (with a glossy screen, like the Innocn), or the newer Samsung Odyssey OLED G95SD (with matte screen and improved burn-in protections), which have much the same specs and are often available for somewhere between $1,200-$1,300 on Amazon. Although both of these monitors have more in the way of features within the OSD, they lack USB-C power delivery, an ethernet port, or KVM switch functionality.
Additionally there’s the cheaper Innocn 49Q1R to consider (available for $799.49 on Amazon and $782.62 off the Innocn website), which comes with similar specifications, including and OLED panel, but is limited to 144Hz maximum refresh rate, and has two HDMI 2.1 ports and a single DisplayPort 1.4 socket, whereas the 49Q1S has the opposite: one of the former and two of the latter.
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Design & specifications
In terms of looks, the Innocn 49Q1S appears pretty basic – you wouldn’t call it ugly but it’s hardly a looker either, still, it’s mostly the image on the screen that will be drawing your attention. Besides the solid metal stand, the majority of the rest of this monitor is built from fairly low-quality plastic, feeling particularly thin around the top of the reverse of the monitor – this is likely not a display that will withstand many knocks and bumps. The fold-out headphone stand located on the ‘stem’ of the base feels flimsy, and it’s very easy to get the screen wobbling with the slightest bit of movement.
As stated, the 49-inch screen has the same QD-OLED panel as the other big-name brands producing this type of monitor. The screen comes with a glossy finish and HDR 400 support. It has a 5120×1440 resolution in a 32:9 aspect ratio (effectively two 2560×1440).
The maximum refresh rate of the display is 240Hz, which can be achieved through either the HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 1.4 connections (with Display Stream Compression, although this is the same as other competing models in this size).
Besides this, the array of ports and sockets is surprisingly strong. You get the expected pair of USB-A ports, 3.5mm headphone jack, and single USB-B socket, but in addition, you also get a RJ45 ethernet port with 100Mb bandwidth and a USB-C port with 90W power delivery, which are very nice features indeed. A 22W stereo speaker setup is integrated within the monitor, but, as is almost always the case with displays, quality is poor, so we’d only really use these in emergencies. More unusually however, there is also an integrated microphone setup housed in the bottom bezel, which is surprisingly ‘not bad’, and would work for video calls in lieu of a better option.
The joystick to access the OSD sits below the screen, under the logo, and also serves as a power button and power status light.
OSD, features, settings & warranty
The joystick can be pressed in and upwards to turn the monitor off, or double-clicked to access the On Screen Display (OSD) menu. The OSD on the Innocn is refreshingly easy to navigate, without the myriad layers of sub-menus you typically have to go in and out of when trying to set up your monitor, and with straightforward controls.
The selectable visual presets within the menu are limited to just four: Standard Mode, sRGB Mode, Adobe Mode, and DCI-P3 Mode, although we don’t really consider this to be much of a negative because most of the time, only a fraction of the presets you find in other displays (that often have about ten of them) are useful. You can see how each of the presets fared in our testing below.
The fully integrated VRR on this display is FreeSync Premium, compared to the FreeSync Premium Pro in the Samsung Odyssey OLED G93SC and the integrated G-Sync of the G95SD, however, in practice, G-Sync is still ‘supported’ by the Innocn display.
Other features include Picture In Picture and Picture By Picture (PIP/PBP) support, allowing you to input from multiple sources on the same screen, although it’s important to note that this is capped at 60Hz.
Finally, another feature not really mentioned in the marketing for the screen is the built-in KVM switch, which lets you control multiple devices with a keyboard and mouse plugged into the monitor via the USB-A ports, switching between the devices that can be plugged into the HDMI/DisplayPort/USB-C. If you have a tablet or laptop that has the necessary USB-C connectivity, you could connect this to the 90W port and receive input data as well as internet data via the monitor, which could separately be connected to a desktop via the HDMI/DisplayPort – very useful indeed for productivity!
Screen testing & performance
Moving on to our screen testing, let’s see how the 49Q1S managed.
Color gamut
Innocn claims gamut coverage of 99% DCI-P3, but we didn’t quite see this in our testing. The best results overall were found with DCI-P3 Mode selected from the presets, which is what you can see above, with the monitor reeaching 96.8% DCI-P3 and 99.7% sRGB gamut coverage (effectively 100%). The sRGB Mode preset produced a worse sRGB gamut score (92.7%), although the Adobe Mode preset produced the best Adobe gamut score (93.7%). Based on these results alone, you could definitely use this monitor for professional-grade work in the sRGB space, and could get away with using it for more amateur work in the DCI-P3 space.
Color accuracy, contrast, gamma & brightness
If you look at the table below, we’ve listed each of the presets we tested from the OSD. We measured the white point, black point, contrast ratio, average deltaE*00 (a measure of color accuracy), gamma, and brightness data for each preset. The top row of the table shows the ideal values for each of these data points, though it should be noted that the ‘ideal’ here is a technical standard, and might not represent the preset you would personally prefer when viewing different content.
| Monitor preset | white | black | contrast | average deltaE*00 | max deltaE*00 | gamma | recorded luminance | brightness setting |
| IDEAL | 6500K | 0 cd/m2 | infinity:1 | <2.00 | 2.2 | |||
| Standard Mode | 7300K | 0 cd/m2 | infinity:1 | 2.83 | 7.31 | 2.19 | 202.29cd/m2 | 90 |
| sRGB Mode | 6849K | 0 cd/m2 | infinity:1 | 1.12 | 3.77 | 2.21 | 214.1cd/m2 | 90 |
| Adobe Mode | 6861K | 0 cd/m2 | infinity:1 | 3.32 | 7.98 | 2.15 | 212.2cd/m2 | 90 |
| DCI-P3 Mode | 6874K | 0 cd/m2 | infinity:1 | 2.5 | 6.79 | 2.15 | 211.9cd/m2 | 90 |
As you’d expect from an OLED panel, black point and contrast were perfect across the board for all presets. The best result in terms of color accuracy was the sRGB Mode preset, which achieved a respectable white point result, a very good gamma score, as well as a fantastic average deltaE*00 score (with anything below 2.00 being the threshold for professional color-accuracy). DCI-P3 Mode scored the next best, and as we’ve seen above, this is the best one in terms of giving you the widest gamut for color-accurate work.
The highest SDR brightness that we recorded was 225.25cd/m² when we set the brightness to 100% under the Standard Mode preset – a pretty low result, and not great for brightly lit environments, but what you’d expect from an OLED panel, which are always limited in this area compared to IPS panels and particularly Mini-LED displays. The lowest brightness measurement we recorded was 9.85cd/m² at 0%, and at 54% brightness we recorded 120.32cd/m² (the approximate value for natural light).
Panel Uniformity
The final step in our DisplayCAL analysis is the panel uniformity assessment, which checks how consistently the display maintains brightness and colour across its surface. To do this, the screen is divided into a 5×5 grid, using the centre square as the baseline against which every other region is compared.
Any section scoring below 1.00 is shown in green, meaning the deviation is so small that it’s essentially imperceptible in real use. Scores between 1.00 and 3.00 appear in yellow, representing mild variation; values closer to the lower end of this range are rarely visible and generally acceptable even for semi-professional colour work. Readings above this level are marked in red and indicate more substantial inconsistencies.
Looking at the results in the image above, we can see that the Innocn 49Q1S basically achieved top marks, with every test zone falling comfortably into the green category. Based on this data, we can say that the display is definitely good enough for color-accurate work.
That being said, it is important to remember that uniformity can vary from unit to unit due to the ‘panel lottery’. Although these measurements give a general sense of what to expect, your own monitor may perform slightly better or worse than the sample tested.
Viewing angles
As you’d expect from an OLED monitor, viewing angles were excellent in terms of image quality, with no noticeable loss of color or vibrancy all the way up to 180°, although the curved nature of the monitor does mean it’s hard to see much of the screen before you reach this point.
Gaming performance
We tested the Innocn 49Q1S on our usual raft of titles: Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 6, DOOM: The Dark Ages, CS2, and also gave it a spin on Sons Of The Forest (as pictured). Results were great in terms of image quality, fluidity of movement in those faster-paced titles, and in terms of response time (as you’d expect on an OLED). No ghosting was detected whatsoever and we didn’t notice any screen-tearing in our playtime.
Darker scenes looked fantastic in particular on the OLED screen, and the colors really popped with the aid of the glossy finish.
General performance & productivity
The sheer size of the Innocn 49Q1S makes it great for multi-tasking, and the various connectivity features we’ve already mentioned – namely the 90W USB-C port, ethernet socket, and integrated KVM switch are all fantastic aids in productivity workflows. Video/photo/audio editing on this monitor is great for all these reasons, plus the strong sRGB color replication for any color-accurate workflows.
Text clarity isn’t as good as you’d find on a high-res IPS panel, although text-fringing (a known weakness of some OLED screens) was fairly minimal. The limited max brightness does mean it’s not great for use in very bright environments however, and you can expect a fair amount of screen glare in such environments, due to the glossy screen.
Finally, the addition of the integrated mic, with its decent voice pickup clarity, does also give the display additional utility for video calls in a working setting.
Final Word: Is the Innocn 49Q1S worth buying?
If good build quality is low on your list of priorities and you don’t mind putting up with a bit of screen wobble, then we can heartily recommend the Innocn 49Q1S as a cheaper alternative to more premium ultrawide OLED gaming monitors. The image quality you’ll enjoy is basically identical to more expensive products with the same panel, and it comes with connectivity features that are actually better than much of the competition – making it a terrific gaming and (as long as you don’t mind the low max brightness) productivity monitor, particularly when you factor in the strong sRGB color replication.
Those who are fine with a 144Hz max refresh rate and who are looking to save a bit more money might also want to consider the Innocn 49Q1R, which is available for around $200 less.
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