Innocn 49QR1 Gaming Monitor Review: You Get a Lot for the Money

The Innocn 49Q1R occupies a strange place in the monitor market; $800 seems like a great deal for a 49-inch, 5,120×1,440, QD-OLED display loaded with productivity-minded features that other monitors lack. But actually using it makes you wonder who exactly Innocn’s target buyer is given its odd mix of tradeoffs.

For instance, Innocn rates the monitor for a max brightness of 400 nits. It certainly can hit that high — in a 10% or smaller window and when the brightness-boosting Highlight mode is enabled. Its 144Hz refresh rate is relatively high for such a high-resolution display, especially one that frequently sells for only $750, but don’t expect to push that many frames at full resolution in more demanding games unless you have a powerful system.

Picture-by-picture (PBP) mode lets the 49Q1R be used as two separate 60Hz, 1440p monitors and works well enough, and 90 watts of power delivery over USB-C allows for a single cable solution for laptops. But an opaque OLED care system and one-year warranty undercuts its productivity potential. The contradictions continue across every facet of this monitor.

Design and features

Unboxing the Innocn 49Q1R reveals a monstrous display that will likely take up most peoples’ entire desks thanks to its width and depth. It comes with a somewhat flimsy stand: It’s stable and supports the heavy panel well enough, allowing for a good amount of tilt and swivel, but offers only basic cable management. A single plastic clip on the back toward the bottom helps route power and display cords but otherwise, they’re out in the open (a design we’re seeing on an increasing number of monitors).

Innocn 49Q1R specs

Price	$800
Size (diagonal)	49 in/125cm
Panel and backlight	QD-OLED
Flat or curved	Curved
Resolution and pixel density	5,120×1,440 pixels, 109 ppi
Aspect ratio	32:9
Maximum rated gamut	99% P3
Rated Brightness (nits, peak/typical)	400 nits
HDR	DisplayHDR True Black 400
Adaptive sync	VESA Adaptive-Sync
Max vertical refresh rate	144Hz
Gray/gray response time (milliseconds)	0.03
Connections	2 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x DP 1.4, 1 x USB-C (90w PD), 2xUSB-A 3.0 (1xUSB-B in), RJ45 Ethernet
Audio	3.5mm jack
VESA mountable	Yes, 100 x 100 mm
Panel warranty	1 year
Release date	January 2025

I also noticed a fair bit of wobble when typing this review on the same (stable) desk. If you want to upgrade to a beefier monitor arm that can handle an ultrawide monitor like this, that’s an additional expense.

This «just okay» build quality is consistent throughout, with a basic design and programmable RGB lighting on the back of the panel that I couldn’t actually see in a dark room. The lights are not only dim but in a position where there’s really nothing for them to reflect off unless your room is shaped like a polygon with more than four walls, as they’re slightly angled off to the sides.

Navigating the on-screen display is serviceable, accomplished through a small thumbstick.

Even the aspect ratio might give some people headaches. Consoles can’t take full advantage of a 32:9 display, and even some big-name PC games don’t, either. If you want to play Elden Ring, for example, it appears in a 2,560 x 1,440 window. And even some titles that fill the entire screen will push the HUD elements to the outer fringes, making it hard to pay attention to them and the action in the middle at the same time.

No OLED monitor review would be complete without mentioning burn-in. Normally, I think it’s overblown; take care of your display by hiding the taskbar when not in use, using an animated (or black) background, and letting the monitor sleep after a short interval when not in use will usually prevent it. The Innocn 49Q1R is so large, though, that most people will probably use it as their primary display for gaming and work.

The company makes it hard to feel confident that all of those static elements like spreadsheets or the line down the middle where the two 1440p windows meet in PBP mode won’t burn in over time; pixel shift (where the image occasionally moves around ever so slightly) is enabled by default, and Innocn claims that the monitor intelligently dims brighter static elements to help prevent pixels from wearing out but there are no user-configurable OLED care options.

For instance, if you notices image retention or burn in, there’s no way to run a manual refresh or cleaning to get rid of it. The warranty is only for a single year, too, whereas other manufacturers using the same panel offer three years of burn-in protection.

Performance and quality

Of course, the QD-OLED panel is the star here. Motion clarity — the absence of blur or ghosting — is excellent, whether in the Blur Busters UFO test or swinging around Manhattan in Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Fast-moving objects fly across the screen without any visible artifacts or motion trails and this comes with accordingly fast pixel response times, too. Input latency should be negligible assuming you can push enough frames and low-latency devices.

One big advantage Samsung’s QD-OLED has over LG’s WOLED technology (which transmits light through red, green, blue and white filters rather than electronically exciting quantum dots to produce colors) is a much wider color gamut: Even just browsing the front page of the Steam store looks more vibrant and colorful than on any IPS display.

Testing with the Highlight mode enabled, which bumps up the monitor’s peak brightness as far as possible, I measured sRGB gamut coverage at 96%, Adobe RGB at 94%, and DCI-P3 coverage at 95%. Those numbers are «fine» but fall short of the 100% sRGB coverage that competing QD-OLED monitors like the Alienware AW3225QF offer.

Innocn includes factory calibration reports in the box claiming an average delta E of less than 1, and it measured a perfectly respectable average dE of 1.2 and a maximum of 2.9 at 100% brightness. That would, in theory, be good enough for color-accurate creative work, but that’s only achievable for a 10% window in the middle of the screen. Increasing the test patch size decreases accuracy, meaning that this probably isn’t for creatives. At least viewing angles are uniformly excellent no matter where you’re sitting, because of OLED.

SDR Color measurements

Preset	Gamut (% coverage)	White point	Gamma	Peak brightness (full screen in nits)	Accuracy (DE2K average/max)
Default/Native	95% P3	7000K	2.0	245	1.2/2.9
FPS	n/a	9050K	2.5	373	n/a
RTS/RPG	n/a	6900K	2.0	279	n/a
MOBA	n/a	6950K	2.5	438	n/a

Games look good but not as amazing as they could, unfortunately. That’s likely because the 49Q1R does a relatively poor job of displaying blacks, which is odd. OLED monitors typically display perfect blacks because the pixels turn completely off when they’re not active.

In every game I tested — from Alan Wake 2 to Cyberpunk, Returnal, Avowed and more — the dark, shadowy areas failed to wow, looking hazy or gauzy and losing fine details rather than moody and atmospheric.

Enabling HDR does little to ameliorate the issue. In fact, it’s not worth turning on at all. The 49Q1R is rated for DisplayHDR 400 True Black but when viewing HDR content, I really couldn’t notice a difference. Playing LG’s HDR OLED test video on Innocn’s monitor with HDR enabled looked exactly the same on my laptop screen with HDR off. On the Innocn, highlights are a little bit brighter but it trades off by pushing up the brightness globally, resulting in brighter shadows as well, so it’s disappointing overall.

Therein lies the rub—the Innocn 49Q1R is relatively inexpensive and offers a great selection of ports, but competitors like the MSI MPG 491CQP are nearly identical and provide more peace of mind for only $100 more.

Innocn bounces upgraded versions of the same display in and out of availability so often that it also feels like whatever you purchase might be discontinued shortly after. As I was testing the 49Q1R, it was seemingly delisted from Amazon (although you can still buy it directly from Innocn’s website) and the same thing happened with the the 240Hz 49Q1S model. Gamers considering a monitor this large probably have a powerful — and expensive — enough rig to drive it. At that point, they should pay the extra $100 or $200 and get something better.

How we test monitors

All measurements were performed using Portrait Display’s Calman Ultimate 2021 R4 and later software using a Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus (formerly X-Rite i1Display Pro Plus) and a Murideo Six-G pattern generator for HDR testing where necessary, or the Client3 HDR patterns within Calman, where possible. How extensive our testing is depends on the capabilities of the monitor, the screen and backlight technology used, and the judgment of the reviewer.

On the most basic models we may stick with just brightness, contrast and color gamut, while on more capable displays we may run tests of most user-selectable modes for gaming or color-critical use, uniformity and so on. For the color work, we may also run tests to verify how white point accuracy varies with brightness.

Color accuracy results reported in units of Delta E 2000 are based on Calman’s standard Pantone patch set, plus the grayscale and skin tone patches. White points results are based on the actual white value plus the correlated color temperature for the entire gray scale (21 patches, 0 to 100%) rounded down to the nearest 50K as long as there are no big variations. We also use Blur Busters‘ motion tests to judge motion artifacts (such as ghosting) or refresh rate-related problems that can affect gaming.