Corsair XENEON FLEX 45WQHD240 Monitor Review

The Corsair XENEON FLEX has a unique design with a bendable screen and all inputs on the stand. You can adjust the screen's curve from flat to an aggressive 800R curve. There are retractable handles on the sides to bend the screen. It's a bit difficult to adjust, especially if you aren't sure how much force to use the first time you do it. It's different from the LG 42 OLED Flex, which has a mechanical bending mechanism, but the manual adjustments on this display allow you to fine-tune the curve to your liking.

The build quality is good. The stand is solid and holds the screen fairly well, but it can wobble easily on the table while bending the screen, as it takes a bit of force to flex it. The handles on the sides and the flexing mechanism on the back are also cheap-feeling plastic, so it may seem like you're breaking it when flexing the screen. While the monitor is well-put together, and there aren't any obvious issues, the screen looks wavy towards the sides, but this is only something you can notice when looking at the monitor directly from the sides.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX 45WQHD240 has terrible ergonomics as you can only tilt it and adjust the screen's curve. You can't remove the stand either, as all the inputs are in it. It doesn't offer any cable management either.

The thickness from the screen to the back of the stand depends on its curvature. The results are with it at its max curvature, and the thickness is 9.4" (23.8 cm) at about a 50% flex and 7.3" (18.5 cm) when it's flat. While the display is thin, you can't remove it from the stand.

There are three buttons at the bottom of the stand, facing the front, to control the on-screen display. The joystick on the right is hard to use, and it's easy to accidentally click the wrong input.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-C cable
• USB-C to USB-A cable
• Power supply and cable
• User documentation, including calibration report

The Corsair XENEON FLEX has an OLED panel with a near-infinite contrast ratio, meaning it displays perfect blacks next to bright highlights in dark rooms.

OLED panels like this one don't have a backlight, so they don't require a local dimming feature. However, with a near-infinite contrast ratio, there isn't any blooming around bright objects, and it's the equivalent of a perfect local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so you can see how the screen performs and compare it with a monitor that has local dimming.

Settings

• Preset Mode: Standard (after calibration)
• Color Temperature: Custom (R100, G97, B84)
• Brightness Stabilizer: Off
• Brightness: 100

The SDR peak brightness is decent. While it doesn't get bright enough to fight a ton of intense glare, it's fine if you have it in a room with a few dim lights. However, there's an aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) with Brightness Stabilizer off, causing large windows to be dimmer, which means full-screen webpages or documents aren't as bright as some other content.

If the aggressive ABL distracts you, you can also enable Brightness Stabilizer, which limits the brightness to a more consistent level across all content. This means there aren't any distracting changes in brightness, but the screen doesn't get very bright either, as you can see below:

• Peak 2% Window: 138 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 139 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 141 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 142 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 140 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 138 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 139 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 141 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 141 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 139 cd/m²
• Automatic Brightness Limiting (ABL): 0.002

Settings

• HDR: On
• Color Temperature: Standard
• Brightness Stabilizer: Off
• Brightness: Locked to max

The Corsair XENEON FLEX has alright HDR brightness, even as of firmware V108. While it fights glare in some well-lit rooms, and makes small highlights pop, it doesn't sustain this brightness with larger highlights. While its PQ EOTF is fairly accurate, it has a slow roll-off before its peak brightness, so it doesn't let highlights get the brightest possible.

Changing Color Temperature to 'Default' makes the screen brighter, as you can see with the results below. However, the color temperature is much colder with that setting, so the image is less accurate.

• Real Scene: 403 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 977 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 750 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 430 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 247 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 150 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 901 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 732 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 425 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 246 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 148 cd/m²
• Automatic Brightness Limiting (ABL): 0.110
• EOTF

The horizontal viewing angle is incredible. While it technically isn't perfect, you won't notice any issues viewing the screen from the sides. You can also see the same viewing angle video with it at its max curvature.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX has a fantastic vertical viewing angle. Because you can't remove it from the stand, we couldn't actually measure the vertical viewing angle, and these results are from the LG 45GR95QE-B, which uses the same panel. Like with the LG, this monitor gets a bit brighter at the top of the screen than the bottom.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX has excellent gray uniformity. There aren't any visible uniformity issues, and content with large areas of the same color looks amazing. Like any OLED screen, there are thin vertical lines in near-dark scenes, but they're hard to notice unless you look for them.

The black uniformity is perfect, thanks to its OLED panel. This means it displays an even black level across the screen.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX 45WQHD240 has excellent accuracy before calibration in the sRGB mode. It locks colors well to the sRGB color space, and even the white balance and color temperature don't have noticeable issues. However, gamma is slightly brighter than the intended sRGB curve, mainly with brighter scenes. 

The sRGB mode locks the following picture settings:

• Sharpness
• Contrast
• Color Temperature
• Gamma
• Saturation

If you want to adjust those, you need to use another, less accurate mode.

The accuracy after a full calibration is fantastic. There aren't any noticeable issues, and while gamma isn't perfect, it's better than before calibration.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX has a fantastic SDR color gamut. It displays all the colors needed in the commonly-used sRGB color space. It also has fantastic coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo publishing, but it undersaturates greens and oversaturates reds. That said, you may be able to fix this by using an ICC profile with a color-managed application.

This monitor has an incredible HDR color gamut. It displays a wide range of colors in both the common DCI-P3 color space and the wider Rec. 2020 color space. However, it doesn't tone map well in DCI-P3 with a 75% stimulus, which is what we test it with and represents a brightness of around 1,000 nits. This means that bright colors aren't very accurate, but it tone maps better with a 50% stimulus, which is darker colors.

These results are with Color Temperature set to 'Standard', which is the default setting, but we also measured it with it set to 'Default'. It has the same gamut coverage, as you can see below, but the color temperature is colder.

DCI-P3

• DCI-P3 Coverage: 97.6%
• Tone-Mapped DCI-P3 Coverage: 80.7%

Rec. 2020

• Rec. 2020 Coverage: 71.5%

The HDR color volume is good, but it struggles with displaying bright colors like on a QD-OLED. These results are with Color Temperature set to 'Standard', and it performs similarly with it set to 'Default' instead.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX has mediocre text clarity. Its low pixel density and RWBG subpixel layout contribute to this, as text looks blurry and hard to read. Instead, you can also increase the text scaling so that it's easier to read. As Windows ClearType doesn't render text well with RWBG subpixel layouts like this one, there's color fringing with ClearType enabled (top photo), so if that bothers you, it's better to disable ClearType. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see it in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

This monitor doesn't have distracting reflections. It reduces the intensity of direct reflections, and the remaining glare isn't strong as it spreads light out across the screen. These results are with a curved screen, and you can also see it with a flat screen, which has a Peak Direct Reflection Intensity of 17.0%. The main difference between having a flat and curved screen is that with it curved, light is concentrated towards the center.

This monitor does a decent job at maintaining low black levels in bright rooms. However, they still rise a bit, so you may want to use it in a light-controlled environment if you want the deep and inky blacks that OLEDs are known for. 

While this monitor minimizes direct reflections, it spreads light out instead. It doesn't do it evenly, though, as some reflections look warped with the screen curved. It's actually worse with it flat, though, as it spreads light out more, and the Total Reflected Light Intensity is 28,108%⋅ pixel.

The gradient handling is remarkable. While there's some minor banding in darker shades, it's hard to see, and you won't notice much banding in real content.

Your graphics card needs to support Display Stream Compression (DSC) to reach the max refresh rate.

This monitor also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

This monitor has incredible motion handling across its VRR range. Any blur you see at low refresh rates is persistence blur.

The refresh rate compliance is remarkable. Its response time is fast enough that it makes most full-color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 240Hz is remarkable. Although there's a bit of overshoot with some transitions, motion looks sharp without any noticeable blur or inverse ghosting.

The CAD at 120Hz is remarkable. There's a bit more blur and inverse ghosting than at its max refresh rate, but that's normal.

The CAD at 60Hz is incredible. Any blur you see is persistence blur.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX 45WQHD240 doesn't have an optional black frame insertion feature to reduce persistence blur.

This monitor has bad VRR flicker with changing frame rates. Although it looks a bit worse in the video than in person, it's still distracting, particularly in dark scenes.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX technically isn't flicker-free because there's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the 240Hz refresh rate. However, it isn't the same as pulse-width modulation like on LED-backlit monitors because it isn't a full screen on and off.

The input lag is low enough for a responsive feel, but its 60Hz input lag isn't ideal for competitive gaming as it's higher than expected. We confirmed these results with multiple testing tools.

The large screen has a low pixel density, but if you want a super ultrawide display with a 49-inch screen, 32:9 aspect ratio, and higher pixel density, check out the Samsung Odyssey OLED G9/G95SC S49CG95.

Thanks to its HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, the Corsair XENEON FLEX supports any signal from the PS5, but because the console doesn't support ultrawide gaming, you'll see black bars on the sides. As the monitor is limited to 24 Gbps bandwidth over HDMI and the PS5 doesn't support compression, it displays chroma 4:2:0 with 4k @ 120Hz signals instead of the usual 4:2:2, slightly negatively impacting text clarity.

There aren't any compatibility issues with the Xbox Series X|S, but you need to enable the console's HDMI override setting for 1440p @ 60Hz to work, which also disables VRR. The console doesn't support ultrawide gaming, so you'll get black bars on the sides. Also, even though it's a 1440p monitor, it still accepts and downscales 4k signals, which results in a more detailed image than native 1440p. This is also useful for HDR, as the console only supports HDR with 4k signals.

The USB-C port on top supports DisplayPort Alt Mode with 30W of power delivery, which isn't enough to charge most laptops while using them. The other USB-C port is an upstream port and delivers 15W of power.

This monitor works well with macOS, but you can't enable VRR and HDR at the same time. Regardless, HDR looks good in game, and VRR works without issues. If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their original position when waking it up from sleep or reopening the lid when using USB-C.

The Corsair XENEON FLEX has a few extra features to improve the user experience. You can use its Picture-by-Picture and Picture-in-Picture modes to view images from two sources on any of its inputs. It also has a KVM switch that makes it easy to switch between sources and use the same keyboard and mouse connected to the monitor. It works well, and even if switching inputs takes 2-3 seconds, there are no issues.

Like any OLED, it has features to reduce the risk of burn-in. It has an Orbit setting that's meant to shift the pixels to avoid image retention, and there's also an Image Retention Refresh setting that initiates a pixel refresh cycle. It's also advertised to come with a three-year warranty, but it's unclear if it specifically covers burn-in. As warranty varies between regions, it's best to contact Corsair directly if you have any questions.

The monitor includes other features, like Crosshair and FPS Counter, to help with your gaming experience.

You can learn more about the OSD with Corsair's quick start guide.