Things I love: Brand new gaming monitors.Things I don't love: Brand new gaming monitors that have defective screens out of the box.I wanted to upgrade my monitor and my partner had owned a previous iteration of this monitor. They strongly recommended it, so I placed the order for it. Set up was super easy and the movable monitor stand clicked into place very easily. I booted this baby up and immediately saw there was a thin blue line on the left side of the screen. I did some Googling and answered ranged from "bad display cable" to "bad monitor." I swapped out the provided display port cable with the provided HDMI cable. I even tried checking on both my mac and pc to see if it was a graphics card issue. None of that. I debated whether I could live with it, but just couldn't choke it for a monitor that cost hundreds of dollars.For what it's worth, barring the blue line issue, the color looks great the screen is super responsive.I've initiated the return process and will update this review once I receive the replacement monitor.UPDATE 1/23/2024:Alright my friends. I got a replacement monitor. It was pretty straightforward to get it returned to the company (which is actually Beach Co or something)? They were pleasant to work with and got my refund issued in about a week.Packaging:I admittedly was a little weirded out because when the second package showed up, I immediately noticed some differences between packaging in this first box and packaging in the previous box. Whereas the provided cables had been stored in a separate carboard box previously and were black and red fabric cables, these cable were kind of just tossed in a bag and were black rubber cables. Both this monitor and the previous monitor were allegedly new, so that was a little suss, but at this point I cared more whether the monitor worked or not.The new monitor has not shown any lines, so that's exciting.Performance:I have hooked this monitor up to both my 2017 Razer 15 personal laptop and my 2023 Macbook Pro work laptop. For both laptops, I used a CalDigit TS3+ dock to connect the laptop to the monitor.The monitor works great with the PC laptop. Colors are beautiful and it's been a delight playing various games on steam.As for the Macbook... things are a little weird. I pretty frequently switch around windows on my work laptop, so I was surprised to stumble across a ghosting/burn in issue when using the monitor with my mac book. It seems to be particularly bad with darker colors (as a dark mode person, this is unfortunate) and when windows are in full screen mode. I had Slack pulled up for maybe 5 minutes and, when I switched to a different screen, I noticed the lower left hand corner of the Slack window had burned in. Switching to a window with a white window doesn't show it, but the second I switch back to another window with a dark background, the ghost is there. After turning the monitor off for the day yesterday and coming back in this morning, the ghost is gone, but I have some major anxiety about leaving ANY window on too long when using my mac.Also, even though this product page and the analogous product page on the LG website SAYS there is a speaker on this monitor, there is absolutely NOT a speaker, so don't drive yourself crazy trying to get that to work like I did.TL;DR After issues with the first monitor, the new one works great with my PC laptop. It's a little janky when paired with a MacBook Pro, but maybe some screen optimization could be done? DOES NOT HAVE A BUILT IN SPEAKER LIKE PRODUCT PAGE SAYS.