Going into this, I thought I was buying a gaming monitor that could go very dim, due to the OLED panel's ability to turn pixels off completely. I chose this model because the port layout on the back of the monitor looked more convenient than other QHD OLEDs. Many reviews criticized the monitor's low brightness and auto-dimming features, which reinforced my hopes of a super-dim display. However, after using it, I don't think that's something the engineers at Corsair had intended (or even considered). Ultimately, there were too many issues and I decided to refund it.-----------------------------------------------------compliments-----------------------------------------------------1) Images and games can look beautiful, but you MUST fiddle with OSD picture settings to get great results. There's no "best" setting for everything because each image/game benefits from custom picture tuning. I often switch between various customizable picture modes in the OSD. Some images in SDR look slightly over-saturated, even at 0 saturation.2) OSD proximity sensor is very helpful for finding the buttons, but I do wish I could just use a remote control because I end up messing with settings a LOT. And obviously, the sensor can't help you find the power button when the screen is off.3) Built-in USB hub is nice to have if you're running out of USB ports. USB-C sockets are a step in the right direction, and I wish there were more of them. The only hub-connected USB-C socket is an upstream port, so a few downstream USB-C ports would have been nice.4) The O-ring in the stand is meant for cable routing, but can also function as a holding spot for your hand, letting you carry the monitor around more easily. But I wish it was horizontally wider than my (very small) knuckle, so I could grasp it from the top without doing a Spider-man hand gesture. Or maybe a bar at the top of the stand would make more sense.5) It's very easy to adjust the height, tilt, swivel, and pivot of the monitor. But the frame around the bezel is so thin that it's easy to accidentally smudge the screen edge with your fingerprints while trying to adjust it.-------------------------------------------------------criticisms-------------------------------------------------------1) The "0" brightness level is still too bright for my photosensitive eyes. The lowest brightness in SDR for this monitor is 40 nits according to RTINGS.com, which I failed to consider before buying. At night, my workaround was using software like f.lux to dim the colors far below OSD minimum. However, it's very difficult to make the display look pleasant in pitch-dark environments, partially due to the screen's graininess (discussed later). As for daytime, I still keep the display near minimum brightness since my monitor is never in direct sunlight.2) The LED power indicator at the bottom of the screen is too bright and distracting in pitch dark. This issue is especially irritating when the screen is rotated vertically. You could solve this by covering the light with electrical tape, but I wish I could turn off that LED during normal operation. This indicator is only useful 1% of the time, in exactly 2 situations: (1) during the Image Retention Refresh, to let you know it's finished after the light stops blinking and (2) when there is no video signal but the monitor is still on, the LED glows orange, reminding you to turn off the monitor. There is no tactical reason for the LED to glow during regular use, so a setting to turn it off would be nice. Or they should have made it way smaller and dimmer.3) it takes too many OSD inputs to initiate an Image Retention Refresh. This essential feature (that must be used daily) is buried deep in the OSD menu, requiring 10+ button inputs to initiate. What were they thinking? Luckily, this feature will force-run periodically after a (non-configurable) time-span of monitor usage. Every 8 hours of use, the OSD shows you a warning message telling you to perform a refresh. The next time you power off the monitor, the firmware would automatically run the refresh for about 5 minutes. I wish there were a dedicated button on the monitor that started the refresh, or a setting to have it refresh every time the monitor is powered off. An extra programmable button would have been nice, but Corsair didn't think of that. Having to do this refresh at inopportune times (whenever the warning shows up) is less convenient than initiating it manually before taking breaks. What I ended up doing is running a refresh manually once at noon, and another time, manually in the evening before going to bed. Keep in mind that you'd have to stumble through the OSD menu twice a day for the rest of your monitor's life if you buy this Xeneon. But you could theoretically work around this stupidity by spending exactly 8 hours per day using it.4) Sometimes, after seeing the retention warning, turning the monitor off, and watching the power indicator complete its LED light sequence (signaling an Image Retention Refresh), the warning window still pops up when you turn your screen back on. Did it do the light pattern, but forget to clean the pixels, or did the monitor not register that a refresh happened? Not sure what to make of this, besides buggy firmware. My Xeneon had V 101 preinstalled, and V 102 did not mention this issue in patch notes. Corsair might fix this in the future.5) OSD joystick is finicky to press, leading to accidental directional inputs. I wish there was a separate discrete button for selecting/confirming settings in the OSD, or a better joystick.6) OSD transparency setting is a binary on/off choice, where the "on" option is too harsh and bright in the darkness of night, and the "off" option is so translucent that it's almost invisible in the daytime. I wish there was a slider that would let you adjust the level of transparency to somewhere in between.7) Not all picture modes in the OSD let you adjust RGB levels, which is a strange restriction. Only "Standard" and "sRGB" modes let you adjust a custom color temperature. All the other modes have immutable "Default", "Standard", and "Warm" color profiles, but no "Custom" option.8) The screen panel shows a grid-like graininess on uniform gray/white backgrounds. Large areas of solid grayscale color will look like a cotton cheesecloth on this display (image 1). Some people refer to this as a "Venetian Blind Effect"? My phone's camera has trouble faithfully capturing the vertical stripes, so I've taken a pic of my laptop's IPS screen with the same camera for comparison (image 2). The OLED's graininess is especially obvious at super dim brightness in a dark environment, even on white backgrounds. Sometimes this texture visibly overlays on-screen photos and art, which just looks bad. I learned that this is a problem intrinsic to a majority of OLED monitors, maybe due to the lack of pixel uniformity? I'm not sure, but judging by forum posts, this problem is as old as OLED itself.9) Small white text often has red-ish color fringing, especially with numbers while using the "Warm" color temperature option (image 3). Larger text looks mostly OK, with a slight misalignment of colors. This is due to the W-OLED panel's "bookshelf" RWBG sub-pixel layout. Typography on operating systems is optimized for RGB pixels, so text on other pixel types tends to look less sharp.--------------------------------------------------noteworthy-quirks--------------------------------------------------1) Brightness Stabilizer sometimes draws bizarre gradient rings on solid backgrounds, where they shouldn't exist, and also introduces color banding in existent smooth gradients. you can turn it on to hard-limit pixel brightness to 150 nits, but the degradation in image quality is often substantial. I'm not listing this as a criticism because it's designed to prolong the life of the display. But what's annoying is that the stabilizer is not tied to the individual Picture presets, and has to be switched independently in a different menu.2) If you turn Brightness Stabilizer off, the ABL (Automatic Brightness Limiter) takes over, and the screen will automatically adjust dimming to prolong pixel life. Auto-adjustment typically happens as you zoom into an image with a white background. The white background gets progressively darker as you zoom in, and inversely lighter as you zoom out. This also affects an image's color vibrancy; as you zoom in to the threshold where the white background reaches the screen edges, all image colors get dimmed/diluted. There is also an ASBL (Automatic Static Brightness Limiter), which affects still images; colors fade from the image over time, the longer it sits on-screen.3) In HDR mode, the display goes into maximum brightness, and brightness adjustment becomes locked. This is the only mode where the Brightness Stabilizer feature looks acceptable IMO.4) Orbit mode (burn-in prevention feature) will cause the image to be off-center on the monitor frame, by design. This feature will shift the screen by 1 pixel every minute, slowly orbiting in the frame, which may bother some people (it can be turned off).5) If you're using this as a second monitor, and you turn it off, Windows will still think it's connected and active. Any application panes that are on the Xeneon monitor before it's turned off will remain on that monitor; you have to turn the Xeneon monitor back on to drag them back to your other monitor (unless you can do it blind).6) My windows 10 laptop often blue-screens when connected to this monitor. This started happening since the second day of use, occurring shortly after the laptop wakes up from sleep mode while connected via HDMI. I've got a fairly recent graphics driver from Nvidia (it's newer than required by the monitor), so I doubt that's the issue. I don't know what causes this, but it might just be a Windows stability bug. My seven-year-old gaming laptop is probably not the best video source.----------------------------------------------------final-thoughts----------------------------------------------------I realize I'm not the typical "PC gamer" that modern companies market towards. My needs are more niche and utilitarian, so I focus on versatility and usability. This monitor has design flaws that are difficult for me to overlook. It's evident that the engineers did not consider small quality-of-life details that would benefit end-users in a home environment. It feels like little care was put into the OSD design, testing, layout, and controls, which is a shame. Build-wise, it looks great (ignoring the oversized power LED), which is what ultimately fooled me into buying it.If you are photosensitive, I suggest getting a monitor with less than 15 cd/m² minimum brightness. Personally, I will look for a Mini-LED IPS display with FALD backlighting. This Xeneon was my first experience with a WOLED display (I haven't tried QD-OLED yet), and it seems like OLED technology still has a few issues. Maybe if we wait long enough, MicroLED will come to market and surpass OLED.This review took me a long time, requiring multiple drafts. Thank you for reading!