[matthias]

Hello @all.

For quite a few years now, I have been looking to replace my 27″ LG IPS display with a 32″ that does not have all the bugs and quirks I have to endure every day right now: very severe image retention (takes mere couple of seconds for static elements to persist), raised blacks with limited range signal level, unusable 50hz UHD due to tearing/corruption and more.

I had tried the new Acer X32 FP MiniLED last year which was a complete disaster which I posted about here: many dead pixels (and they kept on coming), really bad backlight bleed, and IPS bloom. Also the customer service was subpar as well.

Since I am physically disabled due to a major severe illness I have been fighting for the last 10 years, I cannot afford major stress due to my health. Thus ordering and returning models until I get a decent one is definitely out of the question.

The display usage is 70% work (software engineer/security researcher, Linux, lots of static elements) and the rest is media consumption (Netflix & Co) as well as gaming with my partner (MMO, platformers etc. … no shooters or anything alike).

Since I feel like the IPS market is somewhat dead and there are just no good IPS MiniLED displays coming anymore, I have been seriously considering getting a WOLED from the new generation with the updated subpixel layout but due to my usage (static elements), I am very hesitant that I might end up with burn-in rather soonish. QOLED is out of the question since the display faces a window and as such, QOLED with its polarizer issue would give me the grayish IPS look (raised blacks) most of the time.

Mainly the display should have at the very least DisplayHDR600 (IPS) or DisplayHDR True Black 400, flat and not curved, proper blacks, no dead pixels, low/no bloom, proper implementation of limited range signal level, functioning 50/60hz as well as 24hz/25hz/… if possible and fanless.

I should mention, I tend to notice panel imperfections rather easily and find them very distracting, so uniformity and such are very important to me.

I can’t believe I am saying this but price does not matter. I am willing to spent any kind of money (within reason) to finally get a good display and throw my current one out of the window. I am desperate, quite honestly. I am open to IPS with MiniLED (given enough zones) or WOLED. Unfortunately VA is out of the question since we watch media together and game together on this display, so the limited good viewing angle is a no-go.

Thanks for any help and suggestions in advance!
Matthias

[PCM2]

Hi Matthias,

Given your sensitivities, desires and previous experiences going down the Mini LED route, I’m tempted to say given the current market the WOLED options will still suit you best. I do have to give some caution about burn-in given your usage is 70% work. That in itself isn’t necessarily a guaranteed dealbreaker, it really depends how that work is broken up. If it’s continuous for several hours a day and the monitor isn’t allowed a break to run its maintenance cycles, you may well experience accelerated burn-in. It’s possible the monitor could still give you good performance for years even with that usage, but the odds wouldn’t be in your favour. If you just allow the monitor a break for say 10 minutes to run its cycles (or simply sit in standby for a while) a few times during the day it can make all the difference to that. Also, if you’re able to set the brightness some way below the maximum rather than cranking it all the way up that will help. Quite a few of the displays will provide 2 year warranties which include burn-in cover so that it least gives you some peace of mind.

My recommendation in the space would be the ASUS PG32UCDP, which unlike the competing and generally cheaper LG 32GS95UE performs well on the desktop due to lacking a forced CPC feature. Whilst I think you’ll enjoy the overall image characteristics, as pointed out in the review you can expect some dark grey uniformity issues as typical for WOLED. Nowhere near as obvious in my view as VA inconsistencies and probably less annoying (if sensitive to it) than general inconsistencies caused by a clear mismatch between zone count and pixel count on Mini LEDs or ‘IPS glow’ type issues. It’s unfortunate that QD-OLED wouldn’t work in your situation as that’s definitely an area that they’re stronger in. But with the current market I simply don’t think you’d be satisfied with any of the Mini LED options.

[matthias]

Thanks for your detailed answer- and sorry for my delay but I was trying to gather my thoughts and do some more research before replying.

I was afraid of (and also expecting) this answer. I was kind of hoping there would be some models out there with MiniLED that are just expensive but well implemented and “premium” from a quality perspective. Or at least some upcoming models like that. But with LG already having sold off its LCD TV panels fabs, it is only a matter of time before they do the same with the fabs for their smaller lcd monitor panels. And then we are left with just AUO (which I personally dread) and all the chinese manufacturers. 🙁

But back to topic.

WOLED feels like a compromise through and through, from my perspective. It is not really outstanding in any areas and the technology is clearly inferior (imho) to QD-OLED. If it weren’t for the missing polarizer and the glossy coatings on all the (3rd gen) QD-OLEDS, I would consider the ASUS 32″ with Dolby Vision.

Back to the PG32UCDP. It seems they fixed things up a bit with the recently released MCM103 firmware in terms of the visibility of darker gray shades but according to TFTCentral, in HDR, everything from 7 and below is still crushed to black. That’s quite a bit of black crush. It might be fixed in future firmware updates, but who knows.

Also, you mentioned in your (excellent!) video review something along the lines that the gamma changes with the refresh rate? Did I get that correctly? This was really something odd to hear. Since I would mostly use 60Hz (or even below for streaming), I am somewhat worried how the display behaves in that range in terms of black crush/gray reproduction and so forth. Recent high refresh rates displays seem to do really well at those high refresh rates and rather poorly at a more standard 60 Hz. Also, is VRR flicker still an issue (or even more so) with 60 Hz and below when gaming?

The most major point, though, still is burn-in risk. I am a rather disciplined person, so running the pixel refresher periodically is not a problem at all. If I researched it correctly, the default is every 8h? Would every 4h have any advantages/disadvantages or even be advised against? I just really have no idea how good (or badly) the display would hold up with my usage pattern before burn-in becomes a noticable issue for me. And everyone seems to have their own opinions (and experiences) with it, which cover all the spectrum. I would naturally use all the care options, run the pixel refreshers, use dark mode (I already do because I do not like starring in a light bulb all day) but still… there are many static elements left that I either need or cannot control. At least, from my understanding, the 3 year warranty in Germany covers burn-in.

Are dead pixels the same (imho) major issue with (QD/W)OLED as with their IPS counterparts today? Or are the chances of getting a “perfect” panel a lot better here? So far, all OLEDs I have got were perfect (including the Tab S9 Ultra).

Also the rather limited height adjustment for the stand has me worried as well. Do you happen to know what the distance from the bottom edge to the desktop is on its lowest and heighest setting? Due to my unique sitting setup (see health above) here, I am not that flexible and have me current display set rather low.

In terms of the fringing, I do not like the color fringing with improperly implemented subpixel rendering and I am really bothered by it, so that has more somewhat worried as well. But it seems drastically improved by this generation WOLED as confirmed by your video review and TFTCentral. So there is hoping at least with that.

In general, I am having a really hard time deciding what to do. I really cannot and do not want to use my current display any more but everything I can buy today, comes with major compromises that are partly hard to perdict how they will play out and partly also hard to swallow for the price point. I would like to use a display for a few years.

But WOLED seems to be my best bet, like you already said. It would have been nice if ASUS included Dolby Vision and HDR10+ as well as an ambient light sensor and hardware calibration. Especially the latter two would have been high on my must-have list.

As the PG32UCDP is not in stock in Germany anywhere, I still have time to ponder about this. I just hope it does get available again in a reasonable timeframe and doesn’t delay to Q1/2025 or something like said. Not unheard of with ASUS.

Oh, before I forget: Can I change the signal level (video/limited, full) manually if it is detected and set to a wrong value? Also, the display does properly handle video/limited range?

Thanks again for your patience- and sorry for my rambling. This is really tough to decide. I would rather pay more and get something more overall fitting/safe.

[PCM2]

No worries. 🙂 I’ll try to address your points (sorry if I miss anything). And I appreciate it’s a difficult decision as there are indeed compromises with any monitor and it can be tricky weighing them all up if you’re potentially sensitive to quite a few of these issues.

– There could be some inter-unit variation going on here in terms of HDR calibration. This isn’t uncommon in the monitor space and ASUS are certainly no stranger to that. But TFT Central’s unit showed this odd cut off for blacks in the DisplayHDR TrueBlack 400 mode as well, whereas if you look at Monitors Unboxed unit that wasn’t observed. Meanwhile, my take on it (as shared in the review) is that it was a relatively minor issue – at least on my unit.

– There were gamma changes with refresh rate, but as noted in my review 60Hz was actually the most accurate without masking SDR dark detail in the same way as higher refresh rates. As I noted there it wasn’t a major issue in my view, but performance was still better at 60Hz in that respect.

– VRR flicker is an issue at any static refresh rate you select on the monitor if you’re using VRR and the frame rate isn’t all that stable (refer to this post as well). If you can maintain a solid 60fps or the fluctuations from that are really slight, it shouldn’t be an issue.

– I’m not sure there would be an advantage to running the cleaning cycles more frequently than advised, though perhaps ASUS chose 8 hours between runs to try to minimise disruption rather than optimise for longevity. Some manufacturers will use 4 or 6 hours for the cycles, if I recall correctly. Giving the screen some off time would be sufficient in my opinion and you don’t want to run the cycles far more frequently than recommended as it can actually degrade the panel (very slowly and by a tiny amount, but it adds up).

– I’ve yet to observe dead pixels on any OLED I’ve tested and anecdotally they don’t seem to be reported very frequently compared to LCDs..

– There isn’t a way to select the signal range manually, but it should detect this automatically and respond properly for a limited range RGB signal. I don’t routinely test that, but I have with some ASUS models in the past and they always seem to handle the signal well.

[matthias]

Hi.

Thanks, again, for taking the time to answer my questions!

I have gone ahead and made the jump last week and ordered a PG32UDCP. They should have it in stock by Wednesday/Thursday, so there is a slight chance I could receive it already this week– but since this retailer is based in Denmark (they have a very good reputation and I am not so keen at all to order at the big A), delivery could slip to next week. Please keep your fingers crossed it is a good unit because I doubt I would take the stress to order a second one when sending this one back.

It is interesting, quite a few retailers received units last week ahead of what was announced by ASUS as delivery day to the retailers and they have sold out within hours (mostly retailers, btw, where I personally wouldn’t order).

So, I will report back when I have my unit and have given it a spin and gathered some experience with it. I don’t remember the last time I was actually excited and looking forward to getting something new, so that is nice. 🙂

In the meantime, I hope you don’t mind a couple more questions:

– Is the height adjustment 8cm or 11cm? Some reviewers report 8cm, some 11cm. The manual I downloaded says 8cm and the ASUS website shows 11cm. This is really confusing and chaotic.

– The short compensation cycle should probably run every 4h, just the reminder seems to be set to a default 8h. The 4h interval also pretty much seems to be the agreed upon default amongst all (QD/W)OLED devices. What I find strange and a bit worrying though, there is no mention of a long compensation cycle– neither for the ASUS, nor for the LG model with the same panel. I thought the long compensation cycle was also very important for the panel longevity and should run every 1500h to 2000h hours, depending on panel and model. One clearly cannot run a long compenstation cycle by oneself– and both manuals also don’t say anything about it running automatically. Do you happen to have any information about this?

– Also, I have gone ahead and made my Linux environment even more OLED safe already (black background, no window title bars, taskbar gone, …). The only thing really bothering me is the missing background image. For the rest, I mostly use the keyboard and shortcuts anyways, so that’s not really a bother. But I am a bit worried now that I have gone too far and risk reverse burn-in that way. Any thoughts? 🙂

– Is there any news if ASUS is working on a new firmware to fix the remaining issues?

– Last but not least. Does LG now use deuterium in all of its panels– TV and monitor or is this (still) only for the larger TV panels?

Have a great start into the new week!

Thanks,
Matthias

[PCM2]

I do have to step in at this point and say that I’ve been very generous with my time. I will answer these questions but won’t be answering further questions as I do make it clear in the forum rules that this isn’t a free technical support service. Also consider how you can support the time I’ve spent assisting you, but be assured that any feedback you can give after using the monitor is also valuable. And I sincerely hope you enjoy the monitor and get a good unit. 🙂

– It’s 80mm (~3.15 inches) for height adjustment, which is also confirmed on some of their product pages (including their main one).

– Very few models have or require a ‘short’ and ‘long’ compensation cycle. That’s only something I recall seeing on early models from the likes of Dell Alienware models. Might’ve been through an abundance of caution and it turned out to be unnecessary or not useful.

– I use OLEDs the same way I do LCDs, just making sure the screen has regular breaks as I mentioned before. I personally wouldn’t go as far as removing the desktop background. That’s only really a problem if it’s going to be visible for long periods of time without moving, but I don’t see why it would be as you’ll either be running programs on top of it or the screen should have set itself to standby or similar.

– Not aware of any upcoming firmware.

– No idea about LG’s panel materials, specifically.

[matthias]

I am sincerely very sorry. It was never my intention to exploit your generosity / goodwill. I have made a small donation via PayPal. And naturally I will no longer bother you.

Once I have tested the monitor and do have something meaningful to say about it, I will report back to help other users decide who might be in a similar predicament than me.

[PCM2]

I appreciate your support and I look forward to your thoughts on the ASUS when you’ve had a chance to test it out. 🙂

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