OLED Burn-In? G-Sync Module Still Relevant? When Will 1ms Lies Stop? January Q&A

welcome back to monitors unbox for our January q a session thanks to all of you guys who did submit a ton of questions to me either via our YouTube Community page or over on our Discord Community for patreon and float plan members I feel like these days you guys ask me so many questions that just keep getting more and more questions each month so I apologize to all the people who I won't be able to answer your questions this month I have picked out mostly the you know heavily upvoted questions the ones that I felt were particularly interesting but rest assured there'll be plenty more q a opportunities throughout the rest of this year so I guess without further Ado let's get into the questions the first one comes from our Discord community and it asks what does it take for manufacturers to stop advertising one millisecond of response time on their monitors yeah boy I would love for that not to be the case anymore I think it's pretty much a lost cause at this point unfortunately it's kind of one of those marketing things that is just so widespread these days that any company that would decide to move away from advertising one millisecond response times is going to be at a disadvantage because if you've got you know hundreds of monitor manufacturers there's probably not hundreds tens of monitor manufacturers all saying that their monitors are using one millisecond response times and then you know company a is trying to be honest and is saying oh our monitors are doing five millisecond response time six millisecond response times and then you're an average everyday Shopper that's not necessarily looking at reviews and critical analysis they're going to look at all those monitors advertising one millisecond and then you've got company a with the honest monitor at five milliseconds and you're not going to buy that product because it appears to be slower even if it's faster than some of the one millisecond products so this was kind of a battle that needed to be for I guess decades ago when the sort of one millisecond response times was starting to become more and more prevalent in terms of marketing it's really not something that I think is going to be fixed at this point and as we move into the OLED era where we're seeing monitors with 0.1 millisecond response times you know that that's kind of another opportunity that we have as an industry to sort of correct the course a little bit on those response times because yeah I guess it makes sense they're going from a one millisecond LCD to a 0.1 millisecond oh that is kind of equivalent to the difference between the performance of those two monitors but I really feel that if monitor manufacturers did opt to use more realistic numbers 0.3 milliseconds which I get isn't that different from 0.1 but it is a more real reflection of what those products can do if those manufacturers yeah are sort of producing 0.3 millisecond response times then it's still going to look pretty good up against an LCD that advertises one millisecond response time so I feel with this OLED transition we do have somewhat of an opportunity to fix that sort of system but certainly for the majority of LCDs unfortunately I do think that manufacturers are going to keep using these one millisecond response times and to be fair there are a lot of cases where manufacturers advertise one millisecond response times and one millisecond response times are somewhat achievable for example maybe the lowest the the fastest response time that we get is in the one millisecond range maybe there's you know an overdrive setting that produces one millisecond response times now in my opinion companies really should be using average performance as opposed to you know the fastest responses or choosing overdrive settings that aren't really practical that aren't usable because of the amount of overshoot that we're getting but a lot of the times companies aren't specifying what the one millisecond response time means they're not saying a one millisecond greater grade average or one millisecond greater gray in the normal overdrive setting some some companies will specify to the fastest overdrive setting but often it's not even mentioned as an average so yeah it's not something that I'm particularly happy about I think think a lot of people hopefully who are watching a channel like ours and who read reviews and stuff are kind of aware that one millisecond response times are not realistic at this point for a large portion of monitors but again any company that chooses to move away from that branding and go to something that's more realistic is going to get penalized by comparisons between other products so yeah unfortunately I don't see it improving anytime soon do you consider the port selection micro HDMI and Mini DisplayPort for Samsung's G8 OLED so Samsung's own use of the panel in the Alienware aw3423dw to be a problem or is this Choice fine so this question comes from our Discord community and this was something that was discussed a little bit when people started to receive their Samsung G8 oleds the reason why we haven't reviewed it here on monitors unboxed is that it's not available in Australia just yet Samsung locally tends to only sample us products that are available in Australia if they do sample us anything at all so we're still waiting for that product to be available but the port selection did come up as sort of a unique aspect of this product because instead of using full-size HDMI and full size DisplayPort like we see for the majority of today's displays they've opted for the micro variants and at least in my opinion I think this was a mistake and the reason why I say that is that most people today who are using you know desktop displays with their PC have quite a selection of cables to choose from you know you might have some existing DisplayPort cables existing HDMI cables and in the case of someone like me and several of you guys as well I'm sure you might have bought specific high quality cables that you can use for your specific setup like for example if you have your PC quite a distance from your monitor you might have invested in a good quality say five meter HDMI or DisplayPort cable which is going to have the full size connectors on either end so when you're moving to the Mini version of those connectors Mini DisplayPort mini HDMI suddenly that cable that you might have spent 30 40 on is not usable anymore because they've moved to different sort of connectors and then you're gonna have to invest in a whole new set of good quality display cables in those specific setups now talking about a fairly Niche use case here a lot of people are going to be fine with the included cables in the box which naturally would be the mini versions of those cables and they're still going to have one end that's a normal sized connector you plug that into your PC that's going to be fine for most people but I think it sort of limits the flexibility of the product it doesn't allow you to use it with as many cables that you might have access to and I don't really think there's any significant benefit to doing it like what what is the benefit from using Mini DisplayPort over full size display port it's a smaller connector but you're talking about a monitor that's large there's no real space constraint on that sort of product it would make more sense just to use the the normal full size connector on there I don't tend to find that especially with mini HDMI that the connector is not great it's not a very robust and reliable connector compared to the full size connector in terms of you know they're just more easy to break those sorts of connectors mean DisplayPort isn't too bad I really feel like if you're going to go with a small connector you want something that's I don't know it doesn't require as big of a connector head or you're looking for a sleeker look that filling it with USBC ports would have made much more sense whilst you're including the full size ports of course so if you wanted that Sleek look you could just plug in a small USBC connector a lot of laptops and those sorts of devices do support say the DP alt mode through USBC so yeah for me I think most desktop monitors these days should include full size display port and full size HDMI I don't think there's a lot of benefit from going down the path that Samsung did with the G8 OLED but of course I'm still waiting to receive that monitor to do a full analysis on it I don't expect this to be a particular deal breaker or anything it's just sort of a a minor nitpick but yeah I did think it was pretty interesting that Samsung went with those connectors all right we've got two very similar questions here one was asked by qh Freddie in our Discord there was another one by by Jonathan on our YouTube Community tab so I I think I'll roll these two questions into one so the first one is is there any reason to buy monitors with g-sync modules and the second question is what do you think of the state of the g-sync module does it relate to the absence of DisplayPort 2.0 on the 40 series might they abandon it moving forward and what are your thoughts on its comparison to freesync today so yeah a bit of a discussion on nvidia's Hardware g-sync module certainly over the last few years we've seen fewer and fewer monitors opting to use the g-sync module back when these Technologies were first released we saw many products using the g-sync module these days it's kind of restricted to just a few high-end products every year things like aw3423dw pg27aqn those are the sorts of products that we see using this particular module but I think over time it has sort of not being as relevant because many of the features that g-sync modules provide are also accessible with traditional scalers that support g-sync compatibles nvidia's branding for you know Vasa adaptive sync support and of obviously AMD freesync as well which again is sort of their branding for that technology so yeah the majority of monitors today especially if you're buying sort of the mid-range entry-level price points don't really require a g-sync module they've got all that functionality available to them via traditional scalers so having the g-sync module which is more expensive to integrate it uses more power it has some limitations obviously ports that we'll talk about in a moment and also it requires active cooling some of the time there's not really any incentive to integrate that into a product that doesn't really need it and in many cases today I really don't think it's required we've even seen from say aw3423dw versus the DWF model so DW has the g-sync module DWF has just a freesync version just a traditional scaler that there's really no difference between those two products and if they wanted to integrate all of the functionality from the DW into the DWF that would have been 100 possible the only real difference that we saw were things like slight differences to HDR performance which again would have been achievable on the version without the g-sync module so and then again the JW have actually had some additional benefits as well so um yeah from my perspective I think it's kind of an interesting choice because I still think nvidia's g-sync program in terms of the certification of validation that they do is quite good they're not generally going to accept products that don't provide a single overdrive mode experience they typically require quite strong robust levels of calibration as well from the factory which are things that you don't always get from g-sync compatible products freesync products just even products that have neither of those brandings so I think that there is still a reason for NVIDIA to step in and produce those high quality g-sync products I haven't really liked the watering down of g-sync ultimate in terms of the HDR requirements but still with a lot of g-sync ultimate products you are still getting you know in video looking at response time performance looking color performance and even integrating things like the reflex latency analyzer which I feel you know it's not a feature that everyone needs to have but it is you know it's a kind of a cool feature that you might find useful if you are an Esports type of gamer so I think the g-sync program is still good and still provides a strong level of validation I think it's a better level of validation than what you get from say vases programs like display HDR and those sorts of things those are not very good most of the g-sync module monitors that I've ever reviewed have been quite good products that have good levels of performance however obviously these days there are increasingly more and more limitations with g-sync module products mostly related to the ports and the bandwidth that you can get through those ports the modules only support DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 so for monitors which are trying to push the boundaries of performance in terms of you know 4K super high refresh rates or you know new Ultra wide formats and we're seeing up to 240 hertz those sorts of things HDMI 2.1 really is required on those products it's required for things like compatibility with game consoles you know if you're buying a 4k 144hz monitor you'll want that to also work with game consoles a lot of the time HDMI 2.1 is required there so from my perspective Nvidia really does need to upgrade the g-sync module to support those functions I think a new version that supports DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1 would be a nice upgrade to see that will allow it to be used in a lot of the upcoming monitors that we're seeing that are going to require the bandwidth of those particular products but at the same time you know is it really worth doing that work when a lot of those functions are being supported by traditional scalers these days could Nvidia get away with just applying their g-sync module certification process where they look for things like variable overdrive and high quality levels of factory calibration and just apply that to monitors that don't include the module I think that's probably probably the best way of going about it these days without requiring that Hardware module I think it is possible for them to phase it out but knowing Nvidia they could go either way there they could upgrade the hardware module and and go down that path or they could go down the path of continuing their validation but yeah either way I feel I do feel that the module in its current form is a bit outdated so they need to choose one way or the other I don't think we can accept in a lot of conditions the module being put into monitors where you know the ports are limiting the performance of that product I don't think that would be acceptable anymore so yeah I'm curious to see how that goes throughout 2023 when we start seeing some of those new monitors that would require more bandwidth than the g-sync module can provide are they going to you know go with g-sync certification is it going to be Json compatible it has lots to play out there so I'm I'm interested to see at least where that goes throughout this year next question is something that pops up quite often so I thought I'll tackle I think I've tackled this on a hardware unbox before I'll tackle this on my sandbox right now is there any scenario where upscaling from 1440p to 4k on a 4k monitor would look worse than native 1440p on a 1440p monitor of the same size what about driver-based up scanning methods like rsr which is Radeon super resolution if you've got an AMD GPU so yeah this question comes up quite a bit always comparing say oh you know what does 1440p look like on a 4k monitor versus 1440p on a 1440p monitor and you know same thing can apply with 1080P and a 1440p display versus a native 1080p Monitor and my opinion has always been that 1440p on a 4k monitor looks worse than 1440p on a 1440p monitor of the same size and but that only applies if we're talking about traditional scaling methods so for example if you're just going in Windows and you're choosing a 1440p display resolution for your 4K display it's not going to look very good and that's because most of the time the default scaling method that's applied in those operating systems either via the GPU side scaling or the display side scaling depending on how you're doing it it's not really using I guess an optimal way of scaling that we would like to see these days again it is quite difficult to upscale 1440p to 4K because it's not you're not going to get a one-to-one pixel Ratio or a four to one pixel ratio which provides nice integer scaling you're going to have to do all those sorts of other techniques for scaling which yeah tends to provide somewhat of a blurry image and the ideal scenario for all scaling is getting to that integer scaling one-to-one pixel scaling which is why 1440p on a 1440p display tends to look better than 1440p on a 4K displays because it sort of has to blend some of the pixels into multiple different pixels on the monitor which you know doesn't look great it's also why it is nice to see things like integer scaling supported in the drivers of the gpus or even on the display side itself we have seen I think there's a very few selection of monitors that does do integer scaling on the Monitor and that just allows if you're buying a 4k monitor and you want to upscale 1080p to 4K you can do integer scaling and it will look as good as 1080p on a 1080p display you know when you're UPS go in 1080P to 4K so yeah generally speaking I would say traditional scaling methods 1440p monitor running native 1440p is going to look the best rather than buying 4K and just attempting to upscale from 1440p but and this is the big caveat today is that we have got more methods available to us than just traditional scaling so specifically if we're talking about games today obviously we have Technologies like dlss FSR xcss and many driver versions as well we've got Nvidia image upscale and we've got rsr Radeon super resolution we've got there's probably more techniques than that but I'm not quite remembering at the moment but we've got many techniques that will provide basically software scaling so that before the signal is sent to the monitor the GPU can do something to produce a sort of native 4K image that's kind of taking 1440p it's processing it it's producing 4K then it's sending it to the Monitor and all of those techniques do look pretty good if we're talking about dlss or FSR as an example things that use temporal upscaling we're looking at a pretty decent image quality especially when we're talking about 1440p to 4K especially in games to integrate those Technologies the UI is going to be something that is rendered natively at 4K and that is going to provide a significant visual quality benefit because the UI tends to be very sharp it's going to use text and things like that things that are very noticeable when we were upscaling it as to you know sort of seeing a quality loss UI being upscaled poorly from 1440p to 4K is very obvious it's going to look blurry with things like dlss we get the native 4K UI but then the game itself the thing that matters in terms of performance and the reason why you'd want to do upscaling that is being upscaled through you know clever techniques that tend to provide a pretty good image quality at the end of the day so I guess from my perspective these days I think if we're talking about games with so many games supporting upscaling techniques and rendering the UI correctly that upscaling 1440p to 4K is not really an issue anymore and it's something that I think is definitely achievable for many people who are buying 4K monitors and I think it's a bit easier to recommend 4K these days than previously when those Technologies weren't available again it gets a bit trickier when we're talking about the sort of uh spatial upscaling techniques or the driver-based techniques like Nvidia image upscaling at rsr because in a lot of situations those Technologies are not integrated into the game engine so things like the UI are being upscaled it's going to upscale it better than what you'd see from just traditional scaling I guess but there is still some blurriness associated with those upscaling techniques for the UI it's can be hard to notice at 4K depending on the settings that you're using but still for me I think it's not the ideal solution and if you're relying on those driver features for upscaling you're probably better off choosing a native monitor to run those applications but but again these days you tend not to need to rely on those features as much because so many games are integrating the the better quality upscaling techniques and yeah these days I think 1440p to 4K upscaling four games is not really that much of an issue and is going to be perfectly fine for most people who are looking for that performance Advantage from running games at 1440p but they want that 4k monitor for you know I don't know productivity applications watching videos and that sort of thing all right we've got two OLED burning questions back to back so I think I'll merge these two into the one as well so we've got one question that asks has there been any advancements in reducing burn-in slash increasing longevity on all their displays now with more of them coming into the desktop monitor Market where there tends to be lots of static elements it would be nice to see any improvements in this area and the second question with the new Q OLED being so I guess QD OLED being more and more popular has the risk of burning been reduced enough for monitor use seems since it seems to use only one LED diode instead of one for each RGB color does that make it possible for it to you know burn in more evenly compared to having a static red logo on a standard OLED for example so yeah sort of looking at where's burning for all lead monitors today are we seeing any advancements so I'll tackle the advancements question first I haven't really seen any significant advancements in reducing burn-in for OLED monitors we're sort of in that position where a lot of the monitors do integrate some of the features that we're seeing on TV so things like pixel shifting pixel refreshing those sorts of things some of them use OLED sort of logo detection to dim static content on the screen that's kind of where we're at with OLED burn in hasn't really been any additional enhancements that I've really seen I guess the question would be what could they really do um to further reduce burning aside from improving the hardware itself and these days we haven't really seen any improvements in terms of the hardware at least monitor display panel manufacturers are not really talking about I guess the burning reducing features cutie OLED is supposed to work in a slightly different way to the other older displays we've seen But if we're talking beyond that as in sort of accepting that qdoll that is a technology now are we seeing any advancements beyond that again I haven't really seen anything that is really talking about reducing burn-in uh beyond what we're sort of seeing today so it'll be interesting to see whether as we get more and more older displays what will they do in terms of reducing burn-in whether it is things like detecting more of the screen and trying to dim those static elements I'm not sure but we already sort of have that as a feature so the question then becomes is the level of burn-in that we're getting today and the features that we've got today is that acceptable for monitor use and I think this is a really hard question to answer because a lot of the monitors that are available today with OLED technology haven't been really out on the market long enough to to make a good judgment call on how those monitors are going to burn in we've seen cases where people are using the LG panels things like LG C2 C1 and all the variants that use the the TV W OLED panels that it is possible to burn in those displays with static content again I wouldn't say relatively easily but easily enough that I think some people would be taken aback by you know trying to use them for productivity uses and probably wouldn't want the burn to occur that quickly yeah I think there's definitely still question marks over that technology peculi OLED again it really hasn't been out long enough to make a definitive call on how long it will take to burn in I think most OLED Tech these days with traditional typical use cases is really targeting like three four five years before you would see any sort of burn-in even we're seeing on TVs with sort of General content consumption use that with the w or lead panel the LG uses that you're unlikely to see burn in for many many years using those TVs you know for my personal use being a w OLED TV owner I've got one of the B series from several Generations ago and I haven't really seen any burning on my TV yet so for monitors again you know you're sort of looking at a different sort of use case productivity use more static usage but even there we're probably still going to need to wait several more years from cutie OLED usage before we start seeing you know the reports of burning from those first units even you know I'm sure there's some people out there who are using an something like an aw3423dw as a full-time productivity monitor who we might be starting to see reports of burning what we're sort of six six to 12 months on from the release of that monitor that's so probably where I think we'd start to see reports on places like Reddit from burning but certainly from my personal use of acute OLED monitor I haven't seen any burn-in and it seems like most people haven't seen burning either I'm not saying widespread reports of burning for those products so again it's one of those really hard to quantify sort of issues I don't want to sit here and say burning is not an issue for OLED monitors because we just don't really have the evidence yet we don't have the time span of those products being on the market yet to call it one way or another but I do think that a lot of the technology that has gone into those products with things like pics extra refreshing OLED care people just learning about burning being an issue and using their monitor in more of a way that won't produce burning like sticking to content consumption using dark mode you know trying to minimize static content on the screen is going to go a long way to increasing the longevity of OLED monitors and as well products like the Alienware monitor from Dell does have an OLED burn-in warranty I think it's three years so there is sort of somewhat peace of mind with that product and I would expect that maybe not expect but I would think monitor manufacturers should be providing a burner warranty in the three to five year range to sort of give people that peace of mind that if they do experience a lot of burning that they can exchange that product so yeah that's kind of where we're at at the moment as for this part of the question that says you know is moving to the One LED diode instead of each RGB color is that going to make it you know burn in more evenly I I don't think that will be too much of a factor because if you're using say the red sub pixels more than the green or blue subpixels I still would expect that single OLED diode to die more quickly for the red side pixels than what you see for green or blue so the the issue that we were seeing previously was sort of the each RGB color getting its own different Ole diode is that each of the diets would wear out at different rates so you know if they're producing a really good quality blue diode but then the green and red diodes die out more quickly over time you know if you're viewing just general content we're expecting you know each of the sub pixels to be activated at a fairly consistent rate over time then you're going to see the blue diode last much longer than the green and red diodes in that situation in which case then yeah you'd see burning for Reds and greens more more quickly than you'd see for the blue diet however these days both cutie OLED and LG's W OLED do not use that sort of Technology both of them use a single OLED diode for all sub pixels and then use filters or Quantum dots to produce the colors that we're seeing so yeah I still would think that even with that sort of Technology we would see uneven burning if you were using the pixels unevenly so for example if you're let's say you were using an application where the entire interface was green for some reason I'm not saying that's a realistic use case but you know just a an example for you if the entire interface was green I would still expect the green OLED diodes the sub pixels to die more quickly than the rest of the pixels but if we're talking about General use cases where you're doing content consumption static imagery you're using a lot of static content for productivity work is going to be white or grayscale colors then I would expect all the sub pixels to age evenly because yeah all all desktop monitor all the technology that we're seeing these days for gaming use at least does use the same uh sub pixel for all that old sub pixels so yeah that's kind of where we're at with OLED burning this is something that will be continuing to evaluate over time on the channel seeing how all lead burning goes but yeah for now I think it's really hard to make a definitive comment Beyond sort of what I've said in this question and answer section so yeah something to watch for the future why do you think monitor manufacturers almost exclusively put a matte finish over their monitors over a glossy finish to the point where our glossy Finnish fans can't find a single option on the market I understand people work on their monitors for extended periods of time but from what I've seen in the comments there's a good market for glossy monitors as well unfortunately they're in short supply so any particular reason for this so many questions that I saw from you guys in the YouTube comment section about glossy versus Matt why don't we see more glossy monitors so let's talk about glossy versus Matte and the reasons why we see more map monitors I think part of the reason for this is going to be I guess maybe some confirmation bias from peop from data from monitor manufacturers for example if you're selling a lot of map monitors and they're selling well then you're going to be incentivized to continue using that as a feature for future products so a lot of moment manufacturers aren't really experimenting with glossy in any significant way so they're not going to have a really good data set to say hey there's demand for glossy because if then map monitors are still selling really well and meeting their sales targets there's not really that incentive to produce a second variant for potentially a niche version of the market that you know may not sell as well as the map version secondly I still think there is a lot of reason to buy a map monitor and I still think a lot of people would prefer a matte monitor for their use cases a lot of times people are buying monitors for dual use cases so things like using it during the day for productivity work or browsing the web watching videos that sort of thing and then also using it for gaming at other times potentially in the evening in which case if you're using it under artificial lighting where there's you know potentially a window or sun coming in then and that monitor tends to deal with that better than a glossy Monitor and you know there is a lot of cases where people are using it in brightly lit indoor situations in which case yeah using a matte finish does make more sense on top of that a lot of monitors these days are using LCD technology and if we're talking about things like IPS LCDs where black levels are not particularly good things like uh you know IPS glow sort of issues backlight bleed can be issues glossy finishes are going to accentuate those issues so when we're talking about a monitor manufacturer that kind of wants to hide flaws a little bit if we're getting a glossy finish and then the black levels are really raised and you know glossy finishes tend to make Shadow detail pop a little bit more it makes you know high contrast displays pop more but if you've got a low contrast display like an IPS LCD you know it tends to not look amazing when we're seeing those black levels being raised with significant degree especially if you're using the monitor at a really high brightness level you're seeing those raised blacks with a glossy display I don't think it would look as good whereas matte finishes again it kind of hides that to some degree because again you're getting ambient light reflected in sort of a neutral way on the display it's going to hide some of those defects that we see it's not really a defect it's just the way the IPS LCD works it's going to hide some of that you know lacking contrast ratio so that's where I sort of see Matt sort of still dominating the field if we're still seeing a lot of demand for IPs LCDs I think we're still going to see most of those monitors being released with a matte finish because again it sort of is the best option in my opinion at least for IPs monitors the question is when we're starting to see VA displays which have increased contrast ratios and of course OLED why we don't see more glossy finishes um yeah it's an interesting question I don't think there's any real reason why we couldn't see more glossy finishes on VA displays or on OLED monitors I think some monitor manufacturers like let's say take Asus as an example for the pg4 to uq they wanted to just offer something slightly different to what we were seeing on the lgc2 you know if the C2 already offers a glossy display so maybe producing a matte finish is going to provide something a bit different for buyers to choose between the two options but then we're seeing you know the new LG 240 hertz OLED that's 1440p that uses a matte finish as well some of the alternate versions from other companies appear to be using a matte finish for that product as well again I would like to see more variety for those products but I think it is just sort of looking at the market research so thinking hey desktop monitor buyers buy and that monitors therefore our next monitor is also going to be a matte finish display which again sort of maybe too narrow of a focus for those products and maybe should be exploring why map monitors make sense and why glossy monitors make sense and potentially producing two different variants with the different finishes depending on what customers want but certainly for this OLED generation I think we do need to be seeing at least giving people the option produce the glossy mode his produce map mergers let let people decide which product they want for their use case because at least from my perspective there's really no right or wrong answer there as to which version you may prefer if you typically use your monitor in Darker environments then a glossy finish is going to provide a better experience but if you're typically using it in a really bright environment or you have a lot of you know light coming through windows or that sort of thing then maybe you would want a matte finish so yeah I would like to see more variety from monitor manufacturers but hopefully that gives you at least from my reasoning why we still see Matt dominating the field especially for LCDs that's at least the reason why I think they do it so yeah hopefully we see more variety in the future but yeah we'll see we'll see what happens there why do you think so few existing OLED displays support black frame insertion and what will it take to make it more coming strobing is such a natural pairing with oled's pixel response times and I'm really disappointed with how few displays combine the two yeah I'm really disappointed by this as well I think this is kind of an obvious thing you would think when you've got a display that produces really excellent quality in terms of pixel response that you'd want to include a feature like black frame insertion because the issue with black frame insertion or LCDs is that you need to be operating the black frame insertion the backlight strobing in such a narrow window once the pixel response has finished to get the ultimate in terms of the visual quality so if you've got LCDs that are taking a long time to transition then you're going to have a narrower and narrower window to hit in terms of when the strobe needs to take place and what we typically see with LCDs is that when you're strobing across the entire screen the top of the screen is going to look a little bit blurry the middle is going to look potentially nice and clear if they've optimized the timing and then the bottom of the display is also going to be looking a little bit off and that's because you know there's LCD scan out from top to bottom of the display you're going to you know it's going to refresh the top first then the middle then the bottom typically speaking and the backlight is going to have to strobe all at once so if you're sort of trying to Target that narrow narrow window for the LCD pixel response for the middle of the display then that's going to be producing you know the strobe at a different timing for the top and bottom of the screen that's why we sort of see with backlight strobing those issues at the top and bottom relative to the middle whereas with OLED you have a much longer period that you can Target for that strobe so for me it would make a lot more sense to use strobing on an OLED because you're not going to get as much of a difference at the top and the bottom of the screen you're going to see that that strobe timing is going to apply much better at the top and bottom also on oleds because they're individually backlit you don't really have to worry about strobing the image all at the same time you could activate the strobe at the top at a slightly different time to the middle and the bottom of the screen which would provide a really clear image from the top to bottom that's maybe a more difficult implementation as opposed to you're just saying to the monitors strobe all at once at this time because again there's going to be pixel scanner and those sort of things you're going to have to delay parts of the image I imagine that would be more complicated but even if you just went with a LCD like strobing design then you really should be able to get better results with an OLED so the question is why don't they do this I think part of it is that firstly we don't have a lot of OLED monitors on the market right now so there's not you know some Brands just don't like integrating this feature even into their LCDs so if those brands are also producing oleds then potentially we wouldn't see too much of a focus on that particular product secondly the issue with strobing is that you typically need to run the monitor at a higher level of brightness to get the same perceived brightness as from a static image so by that I mean with you know when we're strobing an LCD and you wanted to run it at 200 nits you actually need to run the monitor strobe at a much higher brightness like 400 500 nits for the strobe to have the appearance of a 200 nit image because of course you're flashing a bright image on screen for a period of time and then showing nothing so you know on average over that period of time the brightness is going to be lower and when we're talking about bright increasing brightness all ads don't like that very much oleds have low brightness compared to lce so to get acceptable levels of brightness on a display that already has fairly weak levels of brightness you're going to be needing to really push those pixels to the limit so I'm thinking that again I don't have a great answer for this as to why they don't do it I'm sure I could potentially reach out to some OLED manufacturers and get a more concrete answer on why this is not really something we're seeing as much now but I would imagine that if you're having to really push those olives to the Limit there's potentially burn-in and Longevity uh concerns and I mean that not because obviously if we're talking about running the pixels at really high brightness and then turning them off for a period of time you'd think that on average that you would see the same burden as running it at you know a non-strobed but lower brightness level but there is the potential that you know we're seeing non-linear degradation with pixels so for example at 400 nits they let's say we're talking 400 nits versus 200 nits it's possible that 400 nits degrades more than twice as quickly than running it at 200 nits in which case the strobed image is going to degrade the monitor more quickly that's just you know knowing a little bit about how oleds and things work I think that's a potential reason but maybe not enough of a reason to restrict the feature but again we have seen some TVs from you know LG in the past include black frame insertion they have sort of de-prioritized it as a feature over time which is very bizarre I don't really get the thinking behind that but yeah I think it is possible I don't think that the concerns with brightness and pixel degradation are enough to not include the feature so yeah I would like to see more monitor manufacturers sort of targeting black frame insertion for their oleds and hopefully as we move into this new generation of OLED displays we see that technology being used more so yeah do you guys think the new 27-inch 1440p OLED 240Hz monitors will be used in fps Esports or do you think the new 540 Hertz TN panels will be used I'm pretty sure the OLED will have better response times but TN panels are still Supreme in Esports events so yes I believe that OLED will have better response times I think that's pretty much a certainty because even the best TN LCDs that we're seeing today are still significantly slower than old Edge that's just the inherent nature of LCDs but obviously response times aren't the only consideration when it comes to Esports gaming you're also looking at things like the refresh rate because that's going to lower the input latency that you're seeing between your mouse and keyboard inputs to when you're seeing it on the display it's going to increase the smoothness so there's going to be more opportunity to see enemies moving on screens going to improve your ability to Target those images it's going to produce lower sampling hold motion blur as well so as far as the sample and hold aspect of the motion response that we see is going to be superior the higher refresh rate that we see so even with something like again what's the best way to explain this if we separate the blur that we're seeing into two components the pixel response blur so that's the blur contributed by how slowly the monitor transitions from one uh Great grayscale Value to the other grayscale value and we're also looking at the blur associated with how many images we're getting on the screen so the refresh rate blur the TN panel at 540 Hertz is obviously going to have much lower refresh rate blur than the 240Hz OLED will have but then you know the total blur that we're seeing the combination of the pixel response blur and the refresh rate blur is going to be much closer because the oil is going to have a big Advantage for Pixel response blur so the total blur we're seeing may be a bit closer but yeah those are still the reasons why you would be opting for sort of a 540 Hertz 10 panel potentially for Esports gaming I think generally what we're seeing these days the thinking is that a 240Hz OLED is probably going to be matching sort of the 360 Hertz LCD in terms of its overall blur that you'd be seeing on the screen so from that perspective the 540 Hertz TN is probably going to have an advantage over the OLED in total uh you know motion Clarity that we're seeing on the screen but again that's just an assumption because I haven't tested either of these two technologies yet to know that for sure so that's just the thinking based on what we're seeing from the advantages that we're seeing OLED versus LCD for current refresh rates so I would expect that the 540 Hertz TN would have Superior motion Clarity but again we'll sort of wait and see and then on top of that low input latency better smoothness because of the higher refresh rate so those are all the reasons why I think we would see Esports professionals I guess still prefer the super high refresh rate TN monitor over the OLED the OLED is obviously going to produce really great motion Clarity but it's probably going to be more of a balanced mix product for people also want it for HDR gaming and those sorts of things whereas pure Speed and Performance you probably opt for the higher refresh rate monitor on top of that there's question marks over as we've just been talking about whether those OLED panels would include black frame Insertion I don't expect many manufacturers to include that feature whereas for 540 Hertz 10 panels I think that's going to be a big focus is how well can we strobe the image can we get super crystal clear strobing on those products at really high refresh rates with low input latency if they can achieve that on that sort of Esports product then I think that's going to be the obvious go-to for um sort of your hardcore competitive Gamers Esports professionals people that must have the lowest latency the clearest images and the most smoothness so yeah I think it's going to close the gap certainly we're certainly going to see probably the best performance from a 240Hz monitor that we've ever seen for competitive games but 540 Hertz I still expect to be very compelling for certain types of buyers thoughts on LG's absurd pricing structure 27 inch panel costs more than 42 or 48 inch panels when made with the same Tech do you know why it's like that I know the refresh rate is much higher do you have any thoughts of them seemingly doing anything they can to make OLED monitors unaffordable yeah interesting question interesting question for sure so you would think based on the fact that a 27 inch panel is using physically less area of an OLED panel compared to a 42 or 48 inch panel that it's cut from that it would be cheaper because using less material but I think this comes down to probably two factors the first factor is of course just Market forces LG is going to price that OLED monitor as high as they can and as high as they think the market will bear regardless of how much it actually costs to manufacture so even if that 27 inch monitor costs less to manufacture than their 42 inch or 48 inch OLED TVs if the market is saying we'll pay a thousand dollars for that they're going to price it at a thousand dollars and certainly if we look at the monitor Market as a whole and pricing across all different sorts of monitor categories we're seeing that there's some pretty high-end monitors around that sort of a thousand dollar price point we're seeing you know 1440p 240 hertz sitting it for LCDs at least sitting in that sort of 400 to 600 range for a lot of products even high-end products going up to 700 800 we're seeing a lot of OLED monitors as well the Alienware you know cutie OLED ultrawide the DWF model is down at eleven hundred dollars Samsung Odyssey Neo monitors are around that thousand dollar price point as well so we're looking at all those factors then a thousand dollars for an OLED monitor that provides really good HDR good refresh rate you know it's a high-end product so they're going to price it in the high end of the market I think that's the dominant factor and the reason why we're seeing that sort of product being price where it's priced which is yeah over time as we see more and more competition that's what's going to lower prices today when the sort of that one panel manufacturer producing that panel unfortunately it's going to be priced at the high end of the monitor market for now the second reason is that TV pricing tends to have a different pricing structure to monitors for the reason that and this is kind of an unfortunate reason they are smart TVs Smart TVs make TVs cheaper because they're not just producing some nice features for you to use they are also opportunities to sell you things or produce money for the TV manufacturer and this comes from a number of factors for one you know app integration on some LG TVs you'll see buttons for things like Netflix Amazon Prime I don't quite know what they've got in their TV remotes at the moment but I would imagine that LG is selling that premium remote button real estate to those companies say hey Netflix do you want to pay us money to put the button on the remote I imagine I don't know for sure because I imagine that this is very much a sort of Private Industry dealing going on but you know it would make sense that that that button space is being sold which is going to subsidize somewhat the price of the TV similarly it'll be things like you know what apps are integrating to the smart TV by default things like they've got their own app stores and things available for TVs those are all going to subsidize and make it make it easier to sell TVs for cheaper on top of that there's a lot of data collection taking place what are you watching on your TV that's going to be scanned and probably sent to you know servers somewhere and sold you know you will see for some TVs that the license agreements do have Provisions for selling that sort of data which again all of those things are ways for LG Samsung all those you know TV manufacturers to create money from you know beyond the point of sale of just the panel itself so yeah all those Integrations are going to make it cheaper for the TV manufacturer to sell those TVs they're not going to need as high of a margin on those products whereas with a monitor that doesn't include Smart TV functionality they're not in Internet connected they're not going to be capturing the data of what you're seeing on the screen those things are going to mean that if they're targeting the same sort of margin for their monitor division is from their TV division the monitors themselves are going to need a higher overall margin than the TVs because the TVs again can be subsidized in terms of margin by deals that they're making with the smart TV sort of functionality so those are the two reasons that I think that we're seeing and this is kind of always been the case for monitors versus TVs people always saying oh TVs are so cheap to get those functions monitors are so expensive those are sort of the main reasons third sort of lesser reason is probably things like volume monitors are typically sold in less volume than TVs so that's going to impact you know things like the benefit you get from mass production the more you can produce something in bulk the cheaper it tends to be and all those sorts of factors so yeah I would expect Ollie to get cheaper over time but if people are willing to pay a thousand dollars for an LG all advantage and I certainly expect those monitors to fly off the shelves then they will produce them at that price final question from this q a video there may be a number of new monitors being released but older monitors at lower prices are equally exciting what monitor tiers do you think will drop in price this year great question love this sort of question um I think we'll see price movement across pretty much all aspects to the monitor Market we saw that last year as well I think though if we're talking about large movements in pricing there's probably the biggest range of movement possible in something like sort of that entry level HDR categories so if we're talking about not the oleds that we've just been talking about the reasons why those will be expensive but things like you know 500 Zone backlight mini LED LCD monitors for HDR I would expect those to sort of I believe now they're sort of in the 800 to a thousand dollar range it's possible that as we see more and more of those options coming to Market that those will come down in price I would expect as well price movement for 4K 144 Hertz non-hdr monitors because of that price pressure from the top end of the market so as we see more HDR options coming out it's going to be harder to justify spending you know six seven hundred dollars on 4K 144 Hertz so I'd expect that to fall in price significantly this here as well those are the again this is purely speculation I'm not someone that you know researches in detail what monitor you know I'm not like one of those analyst firms that does that sort of research but just based on what we're seeing in terms of releases the sort of areas that monitor manufacturers are really targeting at the moment which is 4K High refresh rate and HDR I think we'll see all those you know bubble with competition reducing prices I think if we're talking about things like 1080p that has been for a long time in the 150 to 200 range for most entry-level monitors unfortunately there hasn't been a lot of movement there bringing it down to say a hundred dollars so I expect with things like you know inflation sort of being a factor that those monitors will stay around that price for 1440p as well again we've sort of seen that big price movement over the last couple of years of 1440p medium refresh so 144 165 Hertz coming down from around 500 dollars to 400 300 and that's even like 250 dollars I'm not sure how much more price movement there is there maybe they'll get down to around 200 that's what I'd be hoping for but I would expect Less Price movement there than we've seen in some of the the prior months and then as well sort of we've seen the big movement of gigabyte and gigabytes m27qx bringing 1440p 240 hertz down to four hundred dollars I don't expect that to change too much but I would expect more monitor manufacturers to be targeting that sort of price range for that monitor so more options around 400 might be something that we see this year as well so yeah that's sort of my thoughts on what monitors I would expect to get cheaper I think over 2022 we saw a lot of really great options for people that you know don't want to spend a thousand dollars on their monitor and aren't targeting HDR there was still plenty of reasons to be excited about what was available for 250 or was available for 300 400 there were some really great options available producing new technology at those sort of price points so yeah I'd expect all that sort of thing to continue in 2023 I'm always surprised by how fast some of that price movement occurs 1440p 240 hertz at 400 is not something I would have expected last year so I'm sure there's going to be some more surprises up our sleeves uh for this year as well all right that's it that'll do us for this monitor q a for the month of January I will try and do this every single month throughout 2023 I think I only did two q a sessions last month up sorry last year but just based on the amount of questions that you guys have been asking I've already flagged some for future videos as well I'm sure I'll be having plenty of questions to answer throughout 2023 so yeah we'll be doing these monthly thanks everyone they did submit a question to us either via the YouTube Community tab or our Discord Community if you do want to come chat with us about monitors in our Discord chat and have sort of your exclusive Zone to ask us questions for these sorts of videos then do consider supporting us via patreon or floatplane links to those are in the description below it's a great place to get the latest news and and chat about monitor recommendations and all that sort of thing I'm always in there asking you sorry answering your questions as well even if it's not one of these q a sessions and of course you will also be supporting our independent monitor reviews and testing so yeah thanks for watching to the end of this what I'm expecting is long video I think I've been going for something like an hour now so who knows how long this will cut down to but yeah thanks for watching I'll catch you in the next one [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Monitors Unboxed

Views: 219,650

Keywords:

Id: eTNRlY1Wqz8

Length: 54min 28sec (3268 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 14 2023