The Huawei MateView GT marks the company’s first major step into the gaming scene. While we shouldn’t expect to see a huge wave of gaming-specific hardware coming our way, Huawei says that the company wants to offer something for everyone and this monitor is for the gamers out there. The Huawei MateView GT has some fantastic value for money. It is probably one of the most affordable 34-inch gaming monitors on the market coming in at R13,999.

You can pick up other 34-inch monitors for around the same price or less but the features won’t match up to this display. Huawei has packed in a superb soundbar, AMD FreeSync support and a decent panel with a great sweet spot resolution of 3440 x 1440p. Not only does the Huawei MateView GT make for a great PC gaming monitor but the latest consoles work great here too and general daily use was a dream.

Huawei MateView GT Tech Specs

• Display
  • 34-inch curved monitor
  • 165Hz Refresh Rate
  • WQHD (3440 x 1440)
  • 1500R curvature
  • 21:9 Aspect Ratio
  • 1.07 billion colours
  • 90% DCI-P3 / 100% sRGB
  • 350 nits brightness
  • 4000:1 Contrast Ratio
  • HDR: Yes
• Ports
  • USB C x 1 for Power Supply
  • HDMI x 2 (2.0)
  • 3.5mm headset and microphone combo jack
  • USB-C x 1 (supports display, data transfer, and 10 W max charging power)
• Sound
  • Built-in soundbar
  • 5W x 2
  • Touch volume control system
  • Lighting effects include 8 styles
• Microphones
  • DMIC x 2 Dual Microphone
  • 4-meter far-field voice pickup
• Gaming Features
  • Dark Field Control
  • Crosshairs
  • AMD Freesync (hidden feature)

Huawei MateView GT Design

Huawei really hit the nail on its head when it comes to the Huawei MateView GT design. Its is minimalist, easy to set up and the no-nonsense user interface makes it easy to master. Right from the unboxing experience, the Huawei MateView GT felt like a Huawei product through and through.

In the box, there is the monitor, the stand and a box containing all the cables and the instruction manual. I pulled the stand out, unpeeled the plastic and clipped it onto the back of the monitor. That was it. There are no screws to tighten, no thumbscrews to twirl. Nothing of the kind there. The set-up process takes literally 2 minutes and was a breeze.

On the back of the monitor, I was surprised to see a magnetic face covering that held all the ports packed on the device. The magnetic design means it clips on and off with ease and I didn’t have to shove or push any clips into a slot to get it to stay in place. Even when I wanted to plug something else in, I simply pulled the magnetic cover off, plugged it in and clipped it back. I wish more brands did this.

There’s also very little to gawk over on the Huawei MateView GT when it comes to design flare. The back houses a giant Huawei logo and a ring that doesn’t light up, there’s a button to clip the stand into the monitor and the stand itself is simple and matte metal. While other brands try and shoot RBG out of every corner of their gaming monitor, the Huawei MateView GT keeps it simple. The only place you’ll find RGB is on the soundbar. Attached to the front of the stand, the soundbar on the Huawei MateView GT doubles up as an RGB light and also a weight to keep the monitor on the table.

It is one of the most unique additions to a gaming monitor I have seen and if anything, changes up the game a bit. Instead of squeezing mediocre speakers into the back of the panel, this soundbar delivers premium sound while at the same time being something you’ll actually use. The RGB bar is also a touch panel so adjusting the sound meant I had to slide my finger up and down the bar to tweak the volume. As I slid my finger, the volume input adjusted on the screen in front of me so I could see what I was doing too.

Lastly, the display itself moves up and down on the stand. It can drop right down to the bottom of the stand near the soundbar or get pushed up to 110mm. The display also has a verticle adjustment of 25-degrees but cannot be tiled horizontally. You can also mount the display but that means you won’t get to use the soundbar anymore so you probably won’t do this. There’s also no cable management at all. It would have been nice to have a little hole to slide the cables through the back of the stand so they don’t just dangle out the bottom.

Huawei MateView GT Performance

Huawei MateView GT packs a pretty decent VA panel. Sure, there’s nothing high-tech about it such as QLED, OLED or even local dimming but this is an affordable LED gaming monitor so it makes sense that the company kept things to the basics. For the most part, the MateView GT delivers a great contrast ratio with incredible depth, colour range and somewhat decent brightness. Sadly, while the monitor boasts HDR support, it is a hit and miss in that department. The monitor can only reach a peak brightness of 400 nits and with that, a contrast ratio of 4989:1. This is way below the recommended brightness to experience real HDR quality.

The lack of local dimming also means the difference between SDR and HDR is hard to see. In fact, some content looks almost identical. You see, the Huawei MateView GT in SDR reaches a brightness of 305 nits and a contrast ratio of 5120:1. This means in SDR, the monitor has better contrast than HDR. Sure, the small bump in brightness when HDR is enabled does help a bit with content but the monitor is very far off from anything remotely HDR certified. I don’t know how it even got its certification with a brightness of 400 nits.

I also had major issues working with HDR on this monitor. The display settings would often show that HDR was disabled when I plugged in my Xbox Series X/S and PS5. All consoles also kept telling me that the monitor didn’t support HDR at all. Meanwhile, my PC and MacBook both showed it was enabled. I could not get HDR working most of the time and there’s no real indication as to why.

In other factors, the Huawei MateView GT has good colours. The screen rendered 99.2% of the sRGB gamut at 123%. It also displayed 87% of the DCI-P3 gamut. These readings mean that games and content will look fantastic on the display and content will also look accurate.

I do need to touch on the blur issues on the Huawei MateView GT. The monitor has a refresh rate of 165Hz and a 4ms response time. However, this 4ms response time means that image quality degrades a bit in games. There is black ghosting that appears on most objects when moving the camera and it sort of looks like a smudge. The monitor does include a few Overdrive settings that help reduce this. There are four levels and while they help reduce the blur, they don’t reduce the response time.

The mediocre pixel response just isn’t great. This is brought on by the VA panel that is used on the monitor. While most gamers won’t worry too much about this, any sort of pro gamer will have to overlook the Huawei MateView GT as an option of purchase due to this 4ms response time.

Other than that, the Huawei MateView GT checks most of the boxes for a great gaming monitor. The 3440 x 1440 resolution is a great sweet spot for most gamers. Anyone with an RTX 2070 will be able to max this out and games will look superb. It also means that the Xbox Series X/S can pump out 120Hz 1440p across certain supported games. Sadly, the PS5 does not support 1440p yet so you’ll have to settle for 1080p 120Hz.

I also need to mention that AMD FreeSync is supported by this monitor. However, Huawei for some reason doesn’t really advertise this as a feature. In fact, you need to research how to activate the feature too. There’s no menu for it and an easy way to find the settings. Rather, I had to hold down the joystick menu controller for 10 seconds by pushing it upwards to enable this. I don’t know why the company doesn’t want you to know the monitor includes some of the best sync technology around.

We also then have the Huawei MateView GT soundbar which is fantastic. The bottom of the stand doubles up as a loud and heavy soundbar with a thin strip of RGB on the front. This RGB light also acts as the volume controller. Sliding my finger across it turned the volume up and down. The speaker quality is decent on this soundbar. It heightens your gaming experience with heavy bass and deep sound. This sort of speaker is highly innovative too. It means you can enjoy your games without an external speaker system and having to wear a headset all the time.

The lighting can also be tweaked. You can turn the brightness up and down and adjust the animation on the RGB strip. These are simple presets so don’t expect anything highly customizable. It would have been nice to have the strip sync with games or have some sort of app to adjust the lighting styles.

There are also two dual-array microphones on the Huawei MateView GT. These are turned on by plugging in the USB C cable into a supported PC or mac. Without a camera, this feature is pretty pointless for those wanting to use the monitor for Zoom meetings. However, gamers can at least use the microphone for in-game chat.

Huawei MateView GT Review

This Huawei MateView GT review is based on a loan unit sent to us. You can find the monitor for R13,999 on the official Huawei site here.