Dough Spectrum Black 32 OLED review

Formerly known as Eve, The cake is this kind company you want to like. It’s an independent startup with a self-proclaimed community approach, not a sprawling, faceless corporate entity. And it shows on the monitors, both for better and for worse. It is worth noting that there were solemn errors in the actual shipment of products. This probably comes in startup territory.

This startup mentality is also absolutely evident in the Dough Spectrum Black 32 OLED, the brand’s newest computer monitor. It raises the bar for Dough to a full 32 inches of gorgeous 4K OLED action and, like the original Spectrum, you feel the effort and investment in design and close attention to elements such as design aesthetics and build quality have gone into this recent OLED panel. You just don’t see that with bigger brands.

While models from more popular monitor manufacturers feel a bit budget-friendly, plasticky and mass-produced, even in this premium end of the market, the Dough 32 OLED has a luxurious metal back cover and a gorgeous, beautifully designed aluminum alloy stand, though the latter feature is optional and available for an additional fee of $100.

Add to that a silky Corning Gorilla Glass screen protector and a minimalist design, and you have easily the most physically attractive 4K OLED display we’ve ever reviewed. This makes most alternatives feel like budget-friendly, disposable toys.

It is also mostly well defined. Dough opted for LG’s WOLED option over Samsung’s QD-OLED technology. Both types of panels have advantages and disadvantages, but LG’s 4K panel is the company’s third-generation WOLED technology and, importantly, it fills the gap with Samsung in terms of full-screen brightness.

In fact, if anything, it’s a slightly brighter full screen for shades of white, although QD-OLED probably still has the edge in terms of color brightness. This is because WOLED, as the name suggests, has an additional white sub-pixel to escalate brightness, which of course deals best with white tones.

In any case, Dough set this panel to 240Hz, like most 4K OLEDs, and its full-screen brightness of 275 nits and peak HDR brightness of 1,000 nits (in a 3% window) are largely par for the course, similarly as declared response time performance of 0.03 ms.

To this you can add HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 connectivity, as well as a 100W USB-C interface for seamless single-cable connectivity, although the 100W power rating, while at least equal to that of most comparable displays, means that you won’t has enough power for a real gaming laptop. The only possible exception is the recent HP Omen Transcend 32 OLED with a 140W USB-C interface, which will be more than enough for some RTX 4060 laptops with lower specs.

Either way, while there’s USB-C for video input and charging devices, there’s no USB hub for connecting peripherals. At least for this model, there isn’t one that costs $1,099 or $1,199 with a stand. Coming soon is a so-called “Hub” model that will add this functionality and a few other features, but will be priced at $1,299 without stand. Ouch.

It’s a pity, because the USB-C interface without a hub rather undermines the entire concept of single-cable connectivity. If you’re not going to have a hub, it’s probably wise to skip USB-C altogether and go for a lower price point. Still, at $999 with a stand, the Dough Spectrum Black OLED is actually quite attractively priced given its overall feature set and its clear advantage in build and design quality over the competition. If it performs well, opting for the current 32-inch 4K setup may be an obvious choice.

Unfortunately, this is not entirely true. Out of the box, the sRGB calibration in SDR mode looks great, delivering correct colors and plenty of power with increased brightness. There is a slight ABL-dependent brightness change depending on how much of the screen is lit. However, it’s not as distracting as the ABL features or automatic brightness limiters on previous-generation WOLED-equipped LG monitors.

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The Gorilla Glass cover is also very nice and provides a sense of increased contrast but without excessive lithe reflection. In fact, this is the best shiny OLED implementation we’ve seen. You’d really have to utilize this monitor in incredibly glowing ambient conditions to choose the matte version. The Dough will also start at $899 without the stand and USB-C port.

As an SDR panel it really is impressive, the pixel density thanks to the 4K resolution is fantastic, and on top of that you get all the usual benefits of OLED, including ridiculously rapid response times, great viewing angles and excellent illumination per pixel. However, the problems start when HDR is turned on.

For starters, despite updating the firmware to the latest software that supposedly fixes the HDR brightness issue, our sample review didn’t deliver full HDR performance.

Meanwhile, SDR tone mapping in HDR mode is fundamentally broken. This means you have to switch between SDR and HDR modes depending on the type of content. Isn’t this the end of the world? NO. However, this is an issue that has been present on many HDR monitors, but there are far fewer of them these days, and it contributes to the broader feel of a monitor that isn’t quite ready for retail availability.

As such, the USB-C interface in its current state is fundamentally broken and only works intermittently with many of the laptops we tested with. This should be a fairly straightforward solution for Dough, much like SDR tonemapping in HDR mode. But as we write this review, actual customers are receiving the monitors and they really shouldn’t ship them with these fairly basic flaws.

This is, honestly, a bit disappointing. At $999 with stand, this may be our favorite 4K OLED. The design and craftsmanship are lovely, and the LG WOLED panel is simply fantastic. Fix the SDR tone mapping and USB-C interface and it will be a killer product. At the moment, Dough Spectrum Black 32 is a hold rather than a buy.

If you are interested, our advice is this keep an eye on the weather on the Dough Reddit forum and turn on when it is clear that all problems have been resolved. It is very likely that this will be the case, and then the Dough Spectrum Black 32 OLED with Gorilla Glass will be very attractive, although at this price.

Ideally, we’d like to see a Gorilla Glass version with the arguably unnecessary USB-C and offered for about $100 less. That would be a very compelling proposition. In the current situation, we recommend caution for now. As it stands, the Dough Spectrum Black 32 OLED is not yet ready for purchase.