LG UltraWide Ergo 34WN780-B review: Armed and ready

It’s unusual for a monitor’s stand to be more noteworthy than the screen it supports, but LG’s Ergo range manages it. The most striking thing about this 34in screen – other than its full name of 34in UltraWide QHD IPS HDR Monitor Ergo – is not its flat IPS panel but its stand. Or rather, lack thereof.

Instead, LG supplies an arm mount that you attach to the rear of your desk. The obvious advantage is that you can push it away when you finish working, and pull it close when you need to focus, and while the same functionality can be achieved with an inexpensive third-party monitor arm, the 34WN780-B’s simple setup justifies its usefulness. It’s a high-quality piece of engineering and also offers a handy 130mm of height adjustment.

The panel delivers the same level of quality, with 98% coverage of the sRGB gamut out of a 104% volume and an average Delta E of 0.4. With a maximum value of 1.25, you can be extremely confident that you’re seeing the colours you should be. It’s a similar level of quality to that offered by its stablemate, the LG Ergo 27QN880-B.

However, while we liked that monitor’s flexible arm stand and high sRGB colour accuracy, the atrocious OSD was one of the things that marked it down. Thankfully, that’s now been addressed, and the 34WN780-B offers one of the most intuitive OSDs we’ve seen, allowing you to easily switch between colour presets.

For instance, if you find the default colour temperature (which we measured at 6986K) too cool, then you can switch to Warm or fine-tune it yourself. There’s also a Vivid preset, but like the 27QN880-B, this isn’t a wide gamut panel, as indicated by 74% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut. If you want to enjoy rich sunsets while watching BBC nature series, we suggest you look elsewhere. Likewise, peak brightness of 330cd/m2 makes its HDR10 support largely academic.

LG provides a discreet nod to gamers with support for AMD FreeSync, but a 5ms response time and maximum 60Hz refresh make it clear that work is the focus of this screen. With the UltraWide 34WN780-B, LG’s focus is instead on us worker drones, and a 3,440 x 1,440 resolution makes it easy to put two documents side by side – or work on one super-sized spreadsheet.

There’s no USB-C connector here, ruling this out as a docking monitor, but an old-fashioned USB-B input is there to grant access to the two rear-mounted USB-A ports. You’ll also find a pair of HDMI 2.0 ports, a DisplayPort 1.4 input and a headphone output. LG also packs in a pair of loud 7W speakers, addressing one of our other complaints about the smaller Ergo – just don’t expect subtlety to bring out the finer musical elements.

LG doesn’t get everything right with this 34in wide monitor – and in our ideal universe it would be slightly curved, like the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 – but we can’t argue with this monitor’s overall quality or its value for money.

LG UltraWide Ergo 34WN780-B specifications