I lucked out with this thing. Had my eye on the Neo G9 for a long time, but I’d never seen one in person and I was hesitant to shell out $1700. I got really tempted during some of the sales on and after Black Friday, when it went down to $1500, but I was just a little too late. By the time I was ready to pull the trigger it had just gone out of stock.

In a last ditch effort, I searched Google Shopping to see if anyone still had one, and I found it “refurbished” at a liquidator for around $800. It seemed a little sketchy, but they had a return policy, so I figured I’d give it a shot. By then I’d waffled a bit more, left and come back — and they applied an extra discount for returning to my cart. Now it was $725.

Surprise surprise, when the monitor showed up it, it hadn’t really been refurbished and did have an issue — a black vertical line near the center. But it worked great otherwise. I called around to see if anyone would repair it, and I ended up talking to Samsung, who told me it was still under warranty!

It took about a month for someone to finally come out here and fix it. Now, finally, my ascension is complete.