Samsung’s behemoth Odyssey Ark, a $3,500 55-inch curved gaming monitor, is going on sale today after a few weeks of being available for preorders. And — somewhat shockingly, given how gaming launches have gone in the past few years — you may actually be able to just walk into a store and buy one. Checking stock at our local Best Buys, several Verge staff members found that stores had one or two models available for pickup today.
To be clear, I’m not saying that you should casually spend a month or two’s rent on a mini LED gaming monitor that’s the size of a decent TV. In fact, it feels a little bit wrong that it could even be that easy — there have been nine months of hype building around the Odyssey Ark since its CES 2022 debut, and it’s such a bonkers product that it feels like you should need permission from someone to get it. At the very least, your chiropractor should have to sign a note saying that you understand the risks of using a computer monitor capable of completely towering over you.
With that said, I totally understand if you find yourself puzzling out how much you’d get for selling your car and then trying to figure out how you’d get the Ark’s undoubtedly massive box home. (The solution to that, by the way, is just ordering it from Amazon.) But maybe try to resist the call of the void on this one, at least until we’re able to properly review it — Samsung’s similarly outrageous 49-inch Odyssey G9 has found a home on several editor’s desks, but this takes things to a perhaps unconscionable level.
My colleague Cameron Faulkner has spent a little time with the Odyssey Ark, but it’s going to take a lot more testing to determine if something this massive in both price and size is actually worth it versus, say, just buying an LG OLED TV and plonking it on your desk. However, one of those wouldn’t come with Samsung’s Gaming Hub built in, which lets you connect to game streaming services like GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud Gaming without the need for anything but your monitor and some kind of input device (though let’s be honest, anybody buying the Ark probably has a pretty beefy gaming setup to go along with it).
There will be some who give in to the temptation; in fact, the Best Buy closest to me now says that I’d have to wait until Saturday to do an in-store pickup for the Ark, even though there was one available for pickup when I looked earlier this morning. That means that someone in Spokane has dropped $3,500, plus 8.9 percent sales tax, on this monitor. They may even be gaming on it as we speak. If that was you and you end up reading this, please reach out and tell me what your thought process was and how the Ark is treating you so far. (Also, do you wanna hang out? Yes, I’m only interested in seeing your monitor, but I’ll bring Pizza Pipeline or something to make it up to you.)