VRR Flicker On OLEDs Is A Real Problem

oleds have a problem though their premium picture quality high-end feature set and of course instantaneous response times are so enticing as is the on thebox guarantee that it all works as it's supposed to they still flicker hi I'm Abby from ratings.com where we've spent the past few months overhauling our monitor test bench so you don't have to rely on sideof thee boox certifications Forum posts YouTube snippets and Word of Mouth to know how your monitor is going to perform in this video investigating the issue of vrr Flickr on monitors with a focus on oleds we'll look at the causes the effects and what trade-offs you'll have to make to try and fix the flick so stay [Music] tuned many people have seen and experienced this phenomenon while gaming yet despite it being a constant issue it seems the only people who ever bring it up are people with flickering monitors not reviewers while we have had a flicker-free test for a while now it isn't the same thing that we're talking about here when you see flicker free it's referring to the backlight being flicker-free as opposed to using pulse width modulation or flickering to control the brightness this really isn't an issue for OLED panels since they don't have a backlight like LED TVs do the flicker we're talking about here vrr flicker is caused by the implementation of variable refresh rate settings and how that interacts with pixels on the electrical level it occurs with when the frame rate is inconsistent or unstable while you have vrr enabled a little frame rate drop well that's why vrr exists in the first place but let's say this is your situation contrary to backlight flicker this one is erratic variable one could say since the OLED doesn't have a fixed stable refresh rate this makes flicker caused by vrr hard to predict and mitigate the effect from flicker though mostly manifests an annoyance distraction and an uptick of Reddit POS the human optical system is also quite sensitive to changes in luminance amplitude also known to most people as brightness especially if our own viewing environment is dim to begin with what makes this type of flicker even more annoying and noticeable is that it isn't the entire screen it's usually only the darkest Parts Even in our bright daytime sample image there's flickering in the shadows attracting your gaze while the sky remains stable and unmoving so sadly for those of you who live in the shadow realm you're more likely to experience the more intense effects of flicker than CS2 or Minecraft players as their environments are a bit lighter obviously this is a problem for display manufacturers but short of hoping for Endless eclipses to get us all staring at the sun there's very little they can do to stop us from observing what's happening on screen except you know robust R&D to fix the issue but we aren't there yet and we might not be for a while at least in May of 2022 the good Folks at Vasa created cre a monitor obstacle course for products that earn an Adaptive sync certification this certification guarantees higher refresh rates and low latency optimized for gaming plus a lab certified Max refresh rate so you know your display's full potential while the certification doesn't Focus solely on vrr or on oleds it does include a test to measure vrr Flicker at this point the list of products with this adaptive sync certification includes quite a few models across Brands like Asus Dell Novo LG Electronics and even some Samsungs some of the 310 monitors that have passed through our lab are adaptive sing certified in our first sample of 25 we included six which should mean they really don't flicker when you have vrr enabled and yet of our sample size we see three adaptive sync certified monitors flickered so what's the discrepancy here it boils down to methodology the Vasa method relies on measurements for flicker using an RGB 127 value now that seems reasonable it's the midpoint it's neutral if anything flickers it'd likely flicker here right we decided to build on basis test because we weren't convinced especially when most of the user recorded evidence of flicker was captured while the monitor displayed a dark scene not a mid-range gray scene as part of our testing methodology we take measurements at 10 different RGB values RGB 127 happens to be one of them so we've already covered the Vasa test requirement we attached this light sensor tool to the screen face hugger style over top of an RGB patch the light sensors on the bottom of the response time tool then measure the fluctuations and light output over the RGB patch and generate a graph to set the scene we use our specially designed dx9 torture test to induce the conditions for flickering this program uses images from cyberpunk 2077 a game with all the perfect ingredients to Showcase flicker we use a night and day scene to compare the flicker visibility for darker and lighter images flicker by its very nature is caused by inconsistent frame rates measuring by principle requires consistency the biggest challenge of this test development is merging those two facts how can you consistently measure something that isn't consistent you got to control a variable the dx9 program simulates a game allowing us to control the frame rate of this game and thus creates and control the conditions for inducing flicker we do this by dropping the frame rate to 10 HZ from the maximum refresh rate at 100 millisecond intervals this induces Flicker at a mostly consistent rate of 50 Herz you may notice Flicker at this threshold While others don't flicker sensitivity is completely dependent on individual factors the fuchsia line shows the fluctuations and brightness of the RGB patch while the monitor is steadily at its Max refresh rate the yellow then shows the resulting change in brightness when the frame rate drops to 10 FPS for 100 milliseconds each Spike would would translate to your screen as one single flick the colorful sections also indicate the portions we use to obtain our average measurements shown in the review we do this for each of the 10 RGB values to really paint a picture of how this monitor Stacks up in the review you'll see the worst three offenders from these runs one for each gray scale range dark mid and light now that we've gotten some data we can see how our results compar to Vasa we'll take the results from two adaptive sync certified monitors the Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 and the LG 27 GP 850b for comparison will'll also include the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 which has a VA panel and the Corsair Zenon 27 QHD 240 another OLED just for funsies these last two monitors are not adaptive sync certified for good reason for darker RGB values only the LG doesn't flicker the other three monitors are having a little dance party at RGB 127 importantly only the Corsair and the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 the monitors not adaptive sync certified flickered even though the Odyssey OLED G9 exhibited quite a bit of flicker in the dark gray range in the lighter RGB values even the Corsair isn't flickering as badly now this is just a sampling of four monitors the trends across the 30 plus we've tested paint a similar picture at RGB 127 Flickr just isn't as apparent as it is for lower RGB values so while we appreciate vas's attempt to categorize monitor performance we're not convinced that their methodology Paints the full picture of if or when a monitor flickers with vrr enabled especially when it comes to oleds part of the reason to buy an OLED is this incredible contrast ratio which helps immerse you into the world of the game especially if you're playing a horror game but it might be a little hard to get immersed when it looks like this although we've been picking on oleds quite a bit there are a few other interesting trends of all the panel types VA panels consistently perform worse and this is true whether it's dark mid or light gray on screen on the contrary IPS panels are consistently good they might have a slight amount of fluctuation but it isn't enough to appear as flicker likewise though we've only tested two TN panels so far they appear to also not flicker so what does this all mean what if you already bought an OLED and it flickers what can you do buy another OLED buy an OLED avoid all VA panels well that seems like it would be easy except that VA and OLED panels kind of dominate the market right now so just avoiding two very popular panel types really isn't feasible plus IPS and TN panels tend to be a little more expensive than vas meaning you might be priced out depending on your budget and while they don't flicker as much there is a trade-off to be made in contrast and picture quality in the form of washed out images leaving you with a few different options to fix the flick for starters flicker doesn't occur when you have vrr off of course that introduces the potential for screen tearing if your frame rate drops so it isn't the best solution but it could be depending on the type of game you play and whether you really need vrr secondly since this issue only happens with unstable frame rates another solution could be a frame rate cap to ensure that your frame times are more consistent and you don't invite those massive swings that cause flicker of of course the problem there is that you might not be getting the most out of your monitor if you have to cap the refresh rate for the GPU to keep up meaning the last solution might just be to upgrade those components you're a lot less likely to experience flicker with a stable frame rate and a GPU that can support your monitor's capabilities will go a long way especially if you're using a crazy high refresh rate OLED at the end of the day though the decision is yours we're just here to help the data for our monitor 2.0 test bench with the new first of its kind vrr flicker test is now available over at our website currently over 30 of our most popular models have been updated and their reviews now include a video recording of the monitor on the test to Showcase whether it flickers along with the waveform graphs we showed you earlier just to note that due to video compression sometimes we can't always capture what we see with our eyes so we'll let you know in the text whether that's the case so while oleds do have a vrr flicker problem so do vas it seems seems and the Quest for a perfect issue-free monitor continues of course what you'd consider a perfect monitor might not be the same as another so the decision is always yours but if you're comparing a $1,000 monitor with another ,000 monitor you're going to want to know which one will give you a headache until next time I'm Abby from ratings.com where we help you find the best monitor for your [Music] needs it's what it's Asus who said ASUS ASUS not ASUS ASUS yeah like Asus as s u s Asus like the card got it okay tomato tomato Asus Asus

Channel: RTINGS com R&D

Views: 158,434

Keywords: monitors, response time, best monitors, vrr, vrr flicker, oled, oleds, gaming monitors, best gaming oleds, oleds for gaming, oled problems, monitor testing

Id: 1_ZMmMWi_yA

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024