Unless you were at rAge Expo 2022, the brand name Martian probably doesn’t ring a bell, but I’m here to tell you that Martian is a bell ring that you should keep your ears peeled for. It’s a local, yes, that’s right, a South African brand of monitor coming to the market hopefully soon. The company says it’s aiming to launch at the beginning of 2024.
The Martian team is creating a competitive and professional product for the South African market and was nice enough to send through a few of their “generation 2” monitors for us to play around with.
Before I get into any of the details, Martian sent us two engineering samples from their 2nd generation to look at—one from the A series and one from the B series. At the time, the A series would be the high-end range, while the B series was aimed more at the budget gamer. However, as we all know, technology moves faster than you can hit the off button, and since the samples have been sent through, Martian is already market testing their 4th generation of monitors. With this, they have announced a new series of monitors, the AF. The B series will be their low-end range, the A series will be their mid-range monitor, and the AF will be their top-end or flagship model. This also means that there is a chance that the monitors I have with me now are more than likely not the exact monitors that will be released into the wild. For better or worse? I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.
First, let’s talk about what they look like since we will be staring at them all day anyway. There were only some slight differences between the A and B series monitors. The B had RGB and a glossy black logo, whereas the A had no RGB, and the logo was silver. I hope they opt for the black, as the silver looked a bit tacky, and I would honestly rather have no logo on the monitor than the silver one. But besides all that, I loved the general look of the monitors. They had a very slim bezel on the top, sides and a little bit of a thicker one on the bottom. I like this look; it feels gamey and at home on my desk. The monitor stands are also very appealing. They are sharp and angled and give a very aggressive look to the monitor. The samples we were given had a hint of red; however, in the render, I was provided for the 3rd generation monitors, the Martian team opted for an orange colour over the red. I like orange more. It reminds me of those sexy AF Predator monitors released in 2008. In fact, there was also a render of an A series monitor with a full orange shell, and I’m pretty keen to see what that’ll look like. The new generation B series looks quite similar to some classic Samsung-y office monitor/TV you would be used to looking at every day. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, and I prefer the sharper-edged, more aggressive look they have on some of their other models.
Secondly, let’s look at the performance of the monitors. On paper, the two monitors are nearly identical. The samples we were provided seemed to have been at the higher end of the B series and the lower end of the A series. I played around more with the B series model as it had the fancy RGBs on the back; also, it has a faster response time of 1ms to the 3ms on the A. I had no issues here.
The monitor performed as expected. 144Hz on the monitor, no sweat. The brightness was decent, and the non-glare coating provided a nice matte finish. It helped a little with the sunshine in the early mornings but wasn’t completely successful at removing the glare. The A series does push out a higher refresh rate (180Hz), but other than that, I felt the “higher end” B was my preference of the two. One thing that does concern me, though, is that the predicted refresh rates of the newer generation monitors, and that of the AF series, don’t seem to go any higher than 165Hz. I mean, 165Hz is nothing to laugh at, but monitors these days are coming out at 500Hz! At the very least, I hope they have a 240Hz screen in the range.
Both monitors were sturdy that sat comfortably at my desk, they didn’t wobble about or anything of the sort. They clipped into their stands at the back which I really liked, the less screws the better, and they swung and spun with ease. Besides the bottom end B series, it seems as though the newer generations will also include a 90-degree swivel built in, as did the two units I had with me, which is great. A lot of creators are using their monitors in portrait mode and to have a monitor come standard with that setup is always a plus. The OSD is nothing to write home about, but what OSD is on a monitor? And there are a decent amount of ports on the screens. Each had an HDMI 2.0 port and two DP 1.4 ports, an AUX jack if you do plug in to the back of your monitor and a USB port. The Martian team says this is only for uploading firmware, but it did provide enough power to keep a Raspberry Pi running. The A series monitor did have both G-sync and Freesync stamps on it as well as HDR600; however, the generation 3 spec sheets showed that only the AF would have HDR, and it didn’t specify which one. Also, they were only listed as having adaptive sync.
The HDR600 is a bit of a biggy here, though. Most monitors with HDR will only come out with HDR400, meaning the Martian monitor has 50% more peak luminance than other monitors. This makes a huge difference when it comes to enjoying your games. If that is in fact, what the new generation monitors come with.
You can colour me impressed with these Martian monitors, and, by the sounds of things, the team behind them are pushing to get something great out there into the South African market. I’m super keen to see what the guys can pull off here. A South African brand breaking into a market that’s already got some real heavy hitters isn’t going to be an easy task, but I have this sense of pride in me that’s keeping all my fingers and toes crossed that they can pull it off. The only thing that has me a little worried, for now, is the pricing. Martian has been unable to supply anything at this stage as they are still in talks with local distributors and, as I said earlier, still working on the actual product that will be hitting our shelves. While the words “competitively priced” sound hopeful, I guess we’ll only really know when we see some real numbers.
Martian, I wish you guys the best of luck; bring us, something killer. There’s a whole proudly South African team of gamers out there who, I’m sure, would pick up a local product in a heartbeat.
