Asus Designo Curve MX38VC review: Designo thanks

There are three reasons to consider the Asus Designo Curve MX83VC over the spiritually similar LG UltraWide 38WN95C. The £239 price difference is the most obvious, because that still buys you a gently curved 37.5in IPS display, but Asus hopes to also tempt you with a 15W wireless charger. Place a suitable phone on the centre of its stand and a gentle blue light starts pulsing to show it’s working. There’s also a powerful pair of 10W speakers, with plenty of depth to accompany their volume.

The bad news for Asus is that in almost every other way the LG is superior. For a start, it’s brighter. While the Asus’s peak of 306cd/m2 in our tests is fine for most setups, it lacks the impact and HDR abilities of the LG with its peak of 543cd/m2. More crucially, the LG has a wider gamut. While the Asus covers the sRGB space well, with 98.1% coverage and 104.8% volume, it can’t hold a flame in DCI-P3: the LG’s figures were 94.2%/97.9%, the Asus 74.2%/74.3%.

You can flick between colour presets in the responsive and intuitive OSD, but we recommend you ignore the suggested sRGB mode: it dropped contrast to 571:1, giving the screen a drab look. The Designo Curve MX38VC was at its best in Standard mode, which returned a well balanced 6606K temperature and 977:1 contrast. Throughout our testing, the Asus demonstrated solid colour accuracy with an average Delta E of 0.92 and maximum of 2.38.

Like the LG, Asus offers a USB-C connection that can power laptops – although it doesn’t give a power rating – and there are two USB-A ports at the rear, but don’t expect a flexible stand. The only thing you can adjust is its tilt, and we miss having a swivel or height adjustment when the screen is so cumbersome. While the Asus’ unique extras are nice, when you’re paying four figures for a monitor, it pays to stretch another few pounds for the brighter and more flexible LG.

Asus Designo Curve MX38VC specifications