Can Gigabyte's Gaming OLED Beat LG? - Aorus FO48U Review

[Music] welcome back to hardware unboxed today we're checking out the aorus fo48u the latest oled monitor from gigabyte or should i say tv it's 48 inches in size which hardly counts as normal monitor size but it is also maybe kind of small for a modern tv i guess it's just a big gaming display with a 4k resolution 120 hertz refresh rate and of course oled technology for that sweet sweet hdr goodness the fo48u is a particularly interesting display because well we already checked out the lg c1 oled on the channel a few months ago which uses the same panel as the fo48u we specifically looked at how the c1 goes as a computer monitor and while it's not exactly ideal for that use case it's also a very impressive content consumption display that's great for gaming the fo 48u offers us an alternative to lg's model with a few more pc specific features the big one is the inclusion of displayport which makes it more compatible with today's graphics cards the c1 requires hdmi 2.1 for 120hz operation so that does restricted to rtx 3000 and rx 6000 series gpus as well as current generation consoles the fo 48u supports displayport 1.4 with dsc and that makes it easier to use with last generation gpus that support tech that didn't end up getting hdmi 2.1 like nvidia's turing series gigabyte also offer kvm switch functionality allowing you to use a single keyboard and mouse with multiple input devices a very neat addition that's becoming standard across gigabytes lineup the osd is actually very similar to other gigabyte monitors so other features like their dashboard and cheat crosshairs are also included with gigabyte taking more of a monitor focus with their 48 inch oled this means there are no tv features at all the lg c1 comes with a full set of smart tv options and app support interesting image processing features like ai upscaling and noise reduction and a tv tuner the f048u has none of that now some might prefer not to have any internet connected features on their tv and just want it to be a dumb display i do get that opinion but there's no doubting the feature list suffers as a result the f048u also takes a backwards step with its hdmi inputs yes we do get displayport but there's just two hdmi 2.1 ports instead of four that you get on the lg c1 and the hdmi 2.1 ports we do get are limited to just 24 gigabits per second this means to achieve 120 hertz at 4k it needs dsc over hdmi which causes limits for some devices like the playstation 5 bit of a fail not to offer the full 48 gigabits per second here as for the design this is very much a tv in how it looks with zero ergonomic adjustment possible as the display is held up by two short fixed leg stands the build quality is really good overall with an expansive glass panel on the front metal legs and a reasonable use of plastic and metal on the rear like lg's version the top section of the display is very thin to highlight the thinness of oled though this balloons out in the middle and bottom to fit in the components as we've already been showing the inputs are all located on the left side of the display running along the bottom below the display is a speaker array which looks fine and the speakers themselves are this you know the basic sort of tv speakers you usually expect to receive and they should probably only be a backup audio source there is a directional toggle for controlling the osd along the bottom edge and gigabyte also include an extremely basic ir remote if you're using the f048u more like a tv before getting into the performance section of the review i think it's important to first bring up some of the things we talked about in our c1 review on what it's like to use a 48 inch oled as a monitor this sort of display is huge and requires a large desk it's 25 centimeters wider than a 34 inch ultra wide at centimeters wide and 68 centimeters tall so at normal desk viewing distances it really does seem massive and might be larger than your field of view you'll want to sit back further than normal to use it i'd recommend at least a one meter viewing distance whereas for other monitors you know 60 to 70 centimeters is more appropriate so that is going to require some desk optimization pixel density is the same as a 32 inch 1440p monitor which is fine and gives you a lot of screen real estate however the rgbw pixel layout does affect text clarity for desktop usage so at 100 resolution scaling it's not as sharp as a standard rgb panel like a regular ips monitor even after a run through windows clear type utility this display is not really designed for fine text rendering in desktop apps it's more of a content consumption monitor the panel uses a glossy finish with an anti-reflection coating which does deliver increased clarity and a wow factor that you only get with glossy finishes i think this generally looks great in darker environments but in rooms with a lot of backlighting the coating is less effective than the more matte anti-glare coating you get on other monitors the f048u is much more likely to reproduce clear defined mirror-like reflections than the less obvious diffuse reflections from anti-glare monitors now lg's anti-reflection coating used with their oled panels is one of the best as far as cutting down on the possible reflections from a glossy finish but it still wasn't enough to fully alleviate the issue in my brightly lit office especially with the lower brightness of an oled display there's also the quite serious risk of permanent burn-in with an oled panel especially if you plan on using this display as a desktop monitor where there will be lots of static content linus recently did a video explaining his experience with an oled as a desktop productivity monitor where he experienced burning rather quickly so i would be cautious of using the fo 48u in that way linus did present what i feel is kind of a worst case scenario for oleds and his specific use case was highly at risk for burning more so than with typical usage but there's no doubting that oleds are at risk while lcd monitors are not the f048u also doesn't have quite as many burn-in protection features as the lg c1 the c1 has automatic logo dimming and pixel shifting capabilities now pixel shifting isn't great for desktop use but it's not included at all on the gigabyte model gigabyte do implement automatic dimming after periods of inactivity eventually culminating in a built-in screen saver after 15 minutes though this only applies when the content on screen doesn't change at all this is handy when you're away from your pc but won't necessarily save it for actual use with static desktop apps on a positive note gigabyte do include automatic pixel refreshes like the lg model has while this all might sound a bit scary my personal experience using oleds over the last few years my main tv is an lg oled suggests that burn-in is extremely unlikely if you're using the display for content consumption and gaming even after several years my tv has no burn in even though i watch a lot of sports on it with static logos this is generally what other people have experienced too with the latest panels however i would recommend against buying the fo48u for heavy all-day desktop productivity usage a bit of desktop use mixed in with gaming and video playback isn't going to be a big issue but lots of static content is an issue and it is something to be mindful of in terms of response time performance as the f048u is an oled panel it's extremely fast and doesn't require overdrive settings the automatic brightness limiter did make it a bit more difficult than usual to gather these numbers but we found a suitable workaround that's very accurate which was basically to make the test window small as such what you'll see here at 120 hertz are results very similar to the lg c1 oled in that the average response time is around 1.5 milliseconds using our strict test methodology with zero appreciable overshoot and ludicrously good cumulative deviation of below 100 which indicates in the instant response behavior this behavior is held at lower refresh rates so whether you're running the display at a fixed 120 hertz fixed 60 hertz or with adaptive sync variable refresh rates performance is always excellent and so the monitor has a single overdrive mode experience well it would have one anyway as there's no overdrive modes but you know what i mean performance is great across the refresh range and is fantastic for pc gaming compared to other monitors the f048u destroys lcd panels under the best conditions performance is very similar to the lg c1 so you're not missing out there at all while overall response times are several times better than even the best lcd monitors the motion clarity as a result is unparalleled and this is one of the major reasons to get an oled instead of an lcd it gets better looking at average performance across the refresh range where the f048u is even further ahead of the lcd pack not only is overshoot completely negligible on average response times are outstanding so at any refresh rate you can be sure motion performance is as good as you can get but it's not just about response times cumulative deviation is also important to getting an idea how fast the f048u and oled panels are these displays aren't just fast but they are fast over the vast majority of the transition with very little lingering delay at either end this leads to exceptionally good cumulative deviation as the transition behavior is very close to the ideal instant square edge response lcd panels are laughable in comparison as seen in the huge deltas between them and the top of the table oleds 120 hertz performance is excellent either for pc gaming or use with current generation consoles no other display i've tested comes close to the motion performance on offer here at the same refresh rate it's similar at 60 hertz the response behavior is limited by the refresh rate itself which causes motion blur inherently with a sample and hold display however this is clearly as good as it gets from modern displays at 60 hertz input lag is a non-issue with the f048u coming in at under one millisecond of processing delay and a total delay in the chain equivalent to 240hz monitors due to its extremely fast transition times this means that while the f048u doesn't feel as smooth as a 240hz monitor as you're only seeing half the amount of refreshes the actual delay to getting the image into your eyeballs is basically just as fast however the f048u has no inherent delay advantage over the lg c1 which in its pc configuration also has very low input lag so removing all those tv features hasn't really given gigabyte any leg up in this area power consumption is very high typically double that of an lcd due to its size and that's at a lower brightness level as well as the f048u can't actually hit 200 nits for a full screen white window that we test with for power consumption it's actually dimmer than the lg c1 as we show later in this video which causes the discrepancy between the gigabyte and lg models but basically oled is not as efficient of a technology as lcd for displaying bright images so power consumption is high df048u does support backlight strobing or in this case black frame insertion as the oled panel doesn't technically have a backlight unfortunately it doesn't work with adaptive sync simultaneously the aim stabilizer feature is only accessible at fixed refresh rates though both 120hz and 60hz operation are supported while the 120 hertz mode is very similar visually to the lg c1's oled motion pro feature in that it delivers well perfect strobing with an extremely clear image there's an issue with the 60hz implementation at 60hz it looks like the fo 48u is double strobing which causes two images on the screen at the same time this is ugly it looks pretty bad so the lg variant has the superior backlight strobing implementation as it's actually usable at 60 hertz color performance is generally very good from the f048u and other oleds based on lg's panels the display is wide gamut and optimized for p3 with a very high 97 coverage of that gamut in our testing however it's not as wide as the best lcd panels of today which offer full adobe rgb coverage as well the f048u covers less than 90 of adobe rgb leading to a total rec 2020 coverage of 70 that's a good result but it's not the best that i've seen though it is still sufficient for hdr use one of the main issues with the lg c1 was terrible out of the box calibration particularly for grayscale that's less of an issue with the gigabyte model the default mode isn't perfect and both the gamma and color temperature charts are a little wonky for sigb usage leading to only mid-range delta e's but this is miles better than how the c1 comes configured unfortunately while the c1 defaults to an srgb color space for sdi usage the f048u does not so colors are oversaturated out of the box even with the color space mode set to auto this is more in line with typical monitor performance though it's not accurate and the way the lg oled handles things is better this isn't the end of the world but when you check performance up against other displays the f48u is only mid-table in both our tests in fact grayscale performance could probably do with a bit more optimization with that said the f048u does come with an srgb mode which improves performance significantly grayscale performance is more accurate to the sigb gamma curve although it did adjust color temperature negatively and this can't be changed once again it's dumb that some displays don't allow white point adjustment in the srgb mode and this monitor is one of those monitors however it does effectively clamp the gamut so overall delta e performance is pretty good and this mode in general is very usable for regular sdr content when it comes to calibrating the f048u this display acts mostly like a monitor so it really lacks the advanced calibration features of the lg c1 the c1 gives you much greater control over white point and grayscale adjustments and you can tweak all sorts of values straight in the hardware so you don't really need to rely on icc profiles in fact you can even use special paid software like calman for lg to enhance the calibration further none of this is available with the fo48u so its calibration options are much weaker you can achieve great results with the calibration pass in portrait displays calman software but we're talking about a pure software solution that relies on icc profiles and app compatibility so while the results are decent the f048u suffers from less robust hardware calibration support peak brightness from a full white window is awful and remains the major issue with oled technology and why i wouldn't recommend using this display for desktop usage not only is the f048u dimmer than the c1 for full white images which affects desktop apps it also has a more aggressive automatic brightness limiter the abl feature means that the f048u increases display brightness when the content on the screen has a lower average picture level in other words if there's more black or dark areas on the screen the brighter white areas will become this is most noticeable when resizing app windows on the desktop if you make a bright browser window larger brightness will drop and vice versa there also appears to be no way to get around this on the lg c1 you could either make the display even dimmer which tended to stop the abl from activating or use the service menu to disable the feature in some firmware versions the f048 used abl is always active and it's more noticeable in use i don't think this is a big deal for content consumption as it's not that visible in videos or games but when using this display as a desktop monitor in desktop apps it's pretty annoying minimum brightness is unbelievable though this is not a joke when the brightness level is set to zero the display tops out at one nit i'm not sure how very useful that is in practice but that is pretty dim contrast is infinite with the f048u as the oled panel is self-lit so each individual pixel has the capability to fully switch off to display black this is far superior to any lcd monitor i've tested and black levels are a lot darker than the best v8 lcds the glossy panel helps accentuate this in most viewing environments leading to spectacular visuals it's also one reason why oleds can get away with lower peak brightness for content consumption as the deep blacks still produce a high contrast experience that your eye can adjust nicely to viewing angles are superb and i find the f048u and other oleds to be highly viewable even at crazy angles uniformity was also very solid with my unit at times oleds can be a bit iffy with uniformity but my f048u is actually better than my c1 in this regard leading to strong results one of the big selling points to buying an oled like this is the hdr experience the f048u offers a true hdr presentation hitting all major criteria including the big one in contrast as i've been talking about self-lit panels are capable of incredible contrast ratios which is the entire benefit to hdr and why oled is especially well suited to hdr at least in contrast to most of today's lcd monitors in real world hdr content whether that's games or videos the f048u has no blooming like you would see with an lcd with full array local dimming bright and dark areas can peacefully coexist on the screen simultaneously with no crossover leading to absolutely stunning hdr visuals combined with deep blacks and a lot of depth to shadow detail i think the f048u looks great in most hdr content but the one area where this display suffers is once again in brightness oleds do compensate for this to some degree by their zero black levels but a full screen white image topping out at 123 nits can only take you so far this pales in comparison to the best lcd monitors of today there's also really no capacity for this display to produce a bright full screen flash for something like an explosion which is disappointing the main issue with the f048 use hdr performance is small window brightness the lgc one does pretty well here reaching 775 nits which means that bright highlights on the screen are genuinely quite bright the f048u doesn't fare nearly as well in its default hdr mode only reaching 555 nits yeah this is better than sdr performance but it's hardly impressive and well behind the c1 that uses the same panel the f048u does include an hdr vivid mode which increases brightness in the same test and gets closer to what the c1 can do but it completely destroys accuracy darker tones are too bright in this mode and the white point is strongly tinted blue so it seems this mode is trying to i guess cheat a high brightness level for the sake of testing we haven't used this mode in our charts for that reason as it doesn't look good in practice in real world usage the fo 48u is dimmer than the lg c1 and that's just the reality of it brightness versus window size is a little better for the f048u which performs similarly to the c1 down to a window size of 25 percent and eventually closes the gap a little bit at smaller window sizes like two percent fundamentally though hdr brightness is on the weaker end of the scale and while i still think it does look great for hdr content in general it's not as great as the lg c1 obviously the main advantage here though is the contrast ratio while lcds top out at around 12 000 to 1 in our worst case single frame contrast tests oleds are still capable of infinite contrast so they look far better and don't suffer from blooming issues hdr accuracy is acceptable the f048u is a little bright when displaying darker tones and the aggressive roll-off can hurt the level of detail in bright scenes as the roll-off point is quite early in the eotf curve but overall it's not too bad then for color tracking results are okay as well this display isn't unnecessarily over saturating colors in the hdr mode which is a good thing for the visual presentation overall the gigabyte aurus f048u is one of those displays where if you had it in isolation you didn't compare it to many other products i think you'd be very happy with it there is no doubting it looks excellent when displaying content whether that's movies or games in either it's hdl or sdr modes and that's all down to the use of oled technology blacks are extremely deep contrast is infinite and response times are lightning fast to the point where it basically embarrasses lcd panels in motion clarity unfortunately for gigabyte though the f048u just isn't as good as lg c1 oled that we reviewed earlier despite both using essentially the same lg oled panel or a close variation of the same panel the c1 is a more feature-rich display with better performance in some key areas on the flip side gigabyte don't have many unique features of their own that are worth caring about while the f048u is essentially the same as the c1 in areas like response times contrast and color gamut the c1 is noticeably brighter in hdr content to the tune of 100 to 200 nits brighter that's a big deal on an oled panel where brightness is less than amazing and yeah sure both panels have poor full screen white brightness that makes desktop usage less than stellar but in the hdr mode the simple reality is the c1 looks better the c1 also has a less aggressive auto brightness limiter though both panels are still annoying in how brightness changes depending on the content the c1 is a far more feature-rich display it comes with four full bandwidth hdmi 2.1 ports versus two 24 gigabits per second ports on the gigabyte model it has a full array of tv functionality including smart tv apps a tv tuner ai upscaling denoising and more it supports dolby vision where the f048u only supports hdr 10 and hybrid log gamma it has a much better range of hardware calibration features it has a better black frame insertion mode and then on top of that it's got a decent set of features to make it compatible with pcs and gaming setups including a low latency mode allowing it to match other gaming monitors the f048u counters that with a displayport connector a kvm switch and some gaming specific osd features that's not anywhere near enough to make up for the big list of emissions for example i'd rate supporting dolby vision as far more important than having a display port the reality for gigabyte is that they are competing against a tv giant that has refined their offering for gamers over several iterations now launching a first gen oled offering with key feature emissions it isn't really going to cut it of course this can all be salvaged with a competitive price point the fo 48u in my opinion has to be several hundred dollars cheaper than the lgc one to make sense but that's not really the case and can differ depending on the region in the us the msrp of both products is the same fifteen hundred us dollars and often the c1 is cheaper due to discounts and promo pricing at the moment when making this video it was about two hundred dollars cheaper in australia the retail price is less than that of the lg model but like in the us the c1 frequently receives discounts to nullify that gap this makes it hard to recommend the gigabyte model even though it's far from a poor performer and that's just the reality of a competitive display landscape at the moment a few feature differences here or there and some pricing discrepancies can badly hurt an otherwise decent product and i think that's where the fo48u suffers anyway that's it for this review if you're interested in supporting our display testing getting things like our icc profiles discord chat monthly live streams all that good stuff please consider supporting us directly through our patreon or floatplane accounts links to those are in the description below um yeah not much more to say on this one enjoyed testing an oled as always thanks for watching and i'll catch you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 151,884

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: UniOmgwna7M

Length: 23min 56sec (1436 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ethanethereal]

It has the same panel from the 48” C1 but performs worse overall and is also slightly more expensive than the C1 too. A bit pointless.

[u/Nicholas-Steel]

Is it using an LG display panel? If yes LG doesn't really care.

[u/azardak]

Many 48" C1's are shipping with WBE "Evo" panels cut from the same glass as the G1. A few months ago you could change the TV's model to G1 in the service menu and get a free 10-15% boost in peak brightness but LG has since gimped it via firmware update.

The new panel is more resilient since it's not being used to it's potential in terms of brightness compared to the G1 leaving more headroom for compensation but also it's more efficient in terms of power/heat.

If you don't have a service remote the easy way to tell the older WBC panel apart from the WBE is that the WBE has a pink tint on white which was immediately noticeable to me coming from a CX.

I just don't see a point in this when a C1 is $1299 locally and has gone as low as $1199 while performing better.

Use this to turn the TV on/off like a monitor on it's own:

https://github.com/JPersson77/LGTVCompanion

Use this to control/shortcut settings:

https://github.com/Maassoft/ColorControl

Read this to get an idea how janky this monitor is based on users experience:

https://hardforum.com/threads/gigabyte-aorus-fo48u-48-4k-120hz-oled.2011874/

[u/Cynical_Cyanide]

Man, I was looking at that $2K+ AUD pricetag and trying to justify it ... Until he mentioned the desktop sharpness issue.

For a monitor that's trying to be more of a monitor feature-wise but at TV-size ... It really fails a key monitor use case ... Displaying text. That isn't even touching the burn-in.

So what is this display intending to be? ... A desktop monitor? A TV that isn't a TV? I can't imagine someone paying this much money for a display to use a console rather than a PC to game on this thing.

[u/wizfactor]

I'm actually impressed that this OLED "monitor" is able to match a Smart TV in pricing without the help of subsidies from data collection.

If this is a sustainable price for OLED monitors, this monitor makes FALD monitors look really really bad when it comes to value.

This monitor may be the new go-to choice for HDR gaming on PC, but do be mindful of the risk of burn-in.

[u/Forgiven12]

Stopped watching when he mentioned "RGBW pixel layout" at 4:29. That's gonna be a deal breaker for any screen described as "a monitor"

[u/inyue]

Can't the third party manufacturers cut the panel in half? Serious question :V

[u/OSUfan88]

The answer to any article that has a question in the headline: "NO".

[u/baryluk]

Is windows code for displaying text aware of oled specific subpixel layout?