[luisdent]

I think I’m keeping the samsung. I just played tomb raider in hdr, and while it’s sometimes hard to tell it’s on, other times bright shiny things look so awesome 🙂 like reflective metal objects and glistening water.

I tried playing solely with the aoc hooked up and set the samsung aside, and I think 1080p is just not enough for me. If it were only games perhaps, but even then, the samsung just looks a little better to my eyes. And oh the size. 27″ is perfect. And hdr is just an added bonus. But thinking of keeping this for 5+ years, hdr and 1440p seem much more forward thinking while also being great now.

So thanks for all the help! I’m a happy camper. Maybe in 5 years they’ll make a monitor that has the best of all panels. 😛 until then, I don’t think I can ever go back to IPS, and definitely not TN. Props to all you TN users. I understand the speed thing, but I love me some inky darkness. Haha.

Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to test on my monitors before I send the aoc back. Part of me will miss it. I’m almost getting used to it as a secondary monitor. Haha.

[luisdent]

I have a question about something that is sort of bugging me, but I don’t know what it is.

Now and then why I’m just going about my business playing a game or using windows, I notice something strange. The only way I can describe it is that I see what looks like old tube tv scan lines. It’s very distracting when it happens, but then I look for it and can’t detect it again until I just keep going and them it randomly pops up again.

It’s incredibly faint, and it almost seems to affect certain shades or something. But im curious if this is a) a problem with the monitor, b) expected, and c) common to all VA panels?

After noticing it, I went back and checked, and the closest I can see is that you talk about interlacing artifacts in your review. Is this what I’m seeing? I just can’t reliably detect it. But it happens a lot in shadow of the tomb raider. It’s as though I’m playing and suddenly there is a mesh or horizontal scan lines very faintly passing over a part of the display. I have tried back up pretty far, but I must have eagle vision because I always see it. I haven’t noticed it on the aoc, but it’s also smaller and possibly a different pixel design?

I took a photo of the screen close up, and I do notice that the pixels have darker spots at the bottom, which taken all together align and could present as horizontal lines even on a pure grey background. But that is just an observation and theory. Sometimes being so picky is a curse. 😛

But this seems unusual to me. I have never seen this effect in any other monitor I use…

[PCM2]

Yes, those are dynamic interlace pattern artifacts you’re observing as described in the review. I didn’t observe these on the AG273QCX I tested, athough they’re usually related to voltage control and that one used significantly weaker pixel overdrive so that might’ve been why.

[luisdent]

Bahumbug. I though I could deal with the black crush and viewing angles. I do consciously think about them sometimes, but they are somewhat predictable and the overall quality is great, but these interlace artifacts are literally distracting. I feel like I’m putting up with so many compromises already, that these artifacts are just a slap in the face. :-/ still debating now again.

Everything I said holds true, but I’m very sensitive to things are are more “glitchy.” I could put the other stuff down to quality of the technology, but I’ve never seen this in any monitor I’ve ever used, and while it may not be in technical terms, in actual use it is unpredictable and distracting. I may see of I can adapt, but I’m surprised sitting farther away doesn’t eliminate it. I can’t push the monitor any further back on the desk, so I’m literally at arms length to my keyboard and mouse as reasonable as possible, and while it may make the effect less like distinct “lines” I still perceive a waviness from it. I don’t want to dissuade others from the otherwise good monitor, but I guess each person is sensitive to certain things. I feel like it’s a nicely present dinner plate with hairs on the food. 😛

[luisdent]

That model doesnt appear to be available. Do you know how it would compare to the cq27g1?

[PCM2]

Ironically the CQ27G1 isn’t available here in the UK, so I can’t compare it. But based on what I know about it you can expect definite similarities with the AOC AG273QCX. The aesthetics, ports and featureset are definite differences. In terms of image quality and responsiveness it’s difficult to say with certainty without testing. One definite difference is the backlight, you’re only getting ~sRGB coverage with the CG27G1 vs. ~90% DCI-P3 (similar to your Samsung) with the AG273QCX. So things will appear less vibrant and saturated.

[luisdent]

The biggest drawback I see is 250 cd/m2 brightness… that’s lower than my samsung running at 30 brightness setting. And with lights on I turn it up a bit higher…

[PCM2]

Yes that’s true. The backlight has much more limited luminance vs. the HDR-capable models. So if you enjoy using your Samsung at higher brightness levels than ~250 cd/m² (~30 as you point out) then that could prove an annoying limitation.

[luisdent]

Only if my wife is in the room. She hates having the light off using her computer. So I have to push it closer to 50 or 60 sometimes. I can easily use it at 100 with games in hdr though. 😛

I do like the hdr. Just an added bonus on specular speculate highlights and whatnot. More pop. If they lost the interlacing, made it a flat panel, and improved the VA consistencies (viewing angle, crush) it would be the best monitor out there! 🙂

[luisdent]

I played with all four of my monitors last night (my desk looks ridiculous). And I think 250 cd/m2 is not enough sometimes. It may be sufficient for dark room, but even with the small lamp on I bump the samsung up and it helps. Frankly, after fixing the limited color setting the asus looks pretty impressive for a TN. Unfortunately it’s not 144hz. And while the contrast blew me away after knowing it was a TN panel and switching that setting expecting crap performance, it still isn’t VA level. So it would make a perfectly suitable secondary monitor or for 1080p when scaling isn’t working. And really, I’d highly recommend it for someone playing brighter games for the price. But it’s nowhere near the color accuracy of the others. Not even close. Just… no.

The hp apparently has a worse backlight than I remembered. It’s smooth and surprisingly good black levels at the supposed 1000:1, but the bottom left and right are lighter up at least 40% of the screen. So based on vertical angle the screen isn’t uniform. But the contrast is better than the supposed 1000:1 of the asus with any settings.

Anyhow, the more I get used to the monitors the more little differences I’m seeing. At least on my unit, the samsung clearly has the better color. The better everything almost. The aoc second best color and overall, the hp 3rd in color, but the asus better in consistency of viewing. The issue with the aoc is that even it doesn’t get as bright as I would like ideally. Very close, and plenty in a room with no light.

Comparing the samsung and aoc is difficult, but if I set the samsung to 1080p and both to 144hz I can get a general idea of the color and quality of the screen image just keeping in mind the samsung looks even better at 1440p. Doing this, for a while I thought the aoc had better contrast, but if I manually adjust the colors on the samsung to all be a lottery higher on the color sliders, keeping the same ratio between them, and then lower the brightness to 25-27, the samsung then looks almost identical to the aoc at max brightness. This shows just how bright the samsung can get. It is very noticeably superior in brightness.

When perfectly calibrated, the red colors on the samsung have what I would call a slight push. Candle sticks in shadow of the tomb raider have and almost slightly unnatural saturation of red. But not comparing them side by side it doesn’t stand out at all. But comparing them all other colors are similar saturation levels. The samsung has slightly worse backlight/black level blind spot consistency. The aoc just looks a tiny bit more easy to look at without having to be dead center. And even perfectly dead center and farther back the Samsung obviously has a bit of difference in tone and lightness around the edges. The aoc wins here. But I wonder how a 27 aoc would fare or maybe a 24 samsung. I’m guessing the size has a large impact on this as it is more area to spread the light across.

Anyhow, amazingly, I never really noticed the interlacing artifacts last night. Although I started getting flickering that was driving me mental on all displays. I finally found out the display port cable was failing. Perhaps I switched it too many times and wore it out. 😛 replaced it and all is good.

I wish the samsung had a bit less viewing angle inconsistency, but overall the more I use them the more it seems superior overall. Brightness, color, clarity, smoothness, all seem a bit better than the aoc. Which means the aoc is impressive for the price. I would highly recommend it for anyone who is in a dark room and wants the best 1080p gaming visuals. Bone of this takes into account the added hdr of the samsung, the higher resolution, etc. Those are extra bonuses. I could try the 27 aoc listed earlier but that is the same price as the samsung, so the difference is probably minor. Or I could try the lower end Samsung without hdr, but some specs aren’t as good.

So all things are still pointing to the samsung. Just thought I’d share all that.

[PCM2]

Thanks for sharing more impressions with that cross-comparison. It is nice to have your journey documented in this thread and your thoughts on how 2 different VA models, an IPS and TN compare. I’ve enjoyed reading your thoughts and I’m sure others will too.

[luisdent]

Oh my. So many typos! Sorry. 😛 (mod edit: no problem, I corrected some as I know editing is locked for users a few mins after posting).

I would like to reiterate that in a dim to dark room, without comparing anything, the aoc was sufficiently bright and gave excellent vivid, constrasty images. Only when the lights go up or you compare it side by side to the samsung did it seem dim. And even then, everyone will probably have a different tolerance of how bright their eyes can take or how low they feel comfortable too. So take that most as a comparative note. For me, never seeing anything else, I could have gladly used the aoc for general purpose, but I probably would have just always instinctively turned down the lights to maximize the experience.

[luisdent]

Apparently my journey is destined to be laden with issues. Now I’m getting bad brightness flickering on every monitor with games. I disable freesync and it goes away, but it is then not consistently smooth. I’ve got the latest drivers, etc. New cables. It happens on the aoc and samsung. Any idea how to fix that? I tried limiting the framerate. I can easily limit it too, and keep it at, 60fps to 144fps with rocket league and it still happens.

[PCM2]

Make sure you’ve only got a single monitor connected up and reinstall the graphics driver. Unfortunately having multiple monitors connected can cause issues with FreeSync. Flickering during wild frame rate fluctuations or where the frame rate passes the LFC boundary (at the floor of operation) is pretty common on Adaptive-Sync models, but you said you had a consistent frame rate at 60fps or 144fps so I’m not really sure why you’d be seeing it. I seem to recall others mentioning this sort of thing on Rocket League, specifically. Is that the only title you notice it on? If so just ignore it and disable FreeSync – if you have a solid 144fps, FreeSync deactivates itself anyway. But having it “enabled” could be causing some other issue even if it’s not doing anything useful.

[luisdent]

No, unfortunately it happens with one monitor on every game. I found a workaround the “seems” to be fixing it. In the nvidia control panel, I can set it to use freesync on full screen and windowed mode. So far this has resolved the issue completely. It also has the added benefit of making alt-tabbing faster, however it makes some windows outside of a game just a black square. But only until you exit the game.

I’ve tested three games with good results. So far last night was my best gaming experience so far. No flicker, good image quality, o ly noticed interlacing once for a fleeting second. Overall, very good. But I think I’m going to try an lcd (mod edit: assume you mean IPS?) just to put my mind to rest.

[luisdent]

Yes. Sorry. Already ordered it. 🙂 I will put my mind to rest at least.

[luisdent]

I’ve received the FI27Q and initially had an issue with the brightness auto-adjusting with dim content (dynamic contrast) that could only be disabled with the sRGB mode. I updated the firmware on the monitor, and so far *crosses fingers* the auto brightness thing is gone! wow.

And i can say with 100% confidence that after using all these IPS screens, I don’t think i like VA very much. The samsung AND the AOC look somehow worse to me. They just seem rougher and the colors seem less liquid. I mean no disrespect to anyone who likes and uses them, but they just sort of look like inferior screens to me, but with the added contrast. But so far the benq and gigabyte have very close contrast to the “overall” contrast of the VAs. No the blacks aren’t as black, but overall the “impression” i get when using them is similar with a bit more washed out look, but only a bit.

If that issue is truly fixed I have very high hopes for the gigabyte. It is very very similar to the benq with the added gaming features like refresh rate and freesync… commence testing! my heart can’t take any more stress 😉 haa

[PCM2]

Yup, updating the firmware is always the first thing I’d recommend users do with Gigabyte monitors!

[deisuke]

Hello,
I have a question regarding buying a monitor that gives that cinematic experience from the games. From what I read Philips 328E1CA
is supposed to be very good as a monitor but I don’t know if that is the right choice for me on the other hand a friend of mine recommend me to get ASUS ROG STRIX XG32VQR.
I am not sure what to get.

Ps. Excuse me if my English is not the best.

[PCM2]

Hi deisuke,

I’ve merged your thread with this one, on a similar topic. I’d recommend having a read through this thread because there are some important points raised here. It might help if you’re more specific about what you mean by “cinematic experience”, but if you’re expecting amazing depth and contrast whilst sitting in a dark room you need to adjust your expectations. All I would say is that the Philips 328E1CA offers relatively strong static contrast and it’s a large screen with a very nice pixel density. Coupled with vibrant colour output and an attractive price tag, it’s an obvious recommendation just generally. And offers a fairly ‘cinematic’ gaming experience in some respects.

The ASUS XG32VQR is simply the same product as the XG32VQ we’ve reviewed in detail. With a more powerful backlight and basic HDR implementation whacked on top. I’m not a massive fan of the lower pixel density or the obvious text clarity issues associated with it. The text clarity issues are naturally more problematic on the desktop, but the pixel density on the Philips is vastly and to me very noticeably superior when gaming as well. The refresh rate is nice, but there are some clear weaknesses in pixel responsiveness to be aware of as well. It certainly doesn’t put its high refresh rate to the best use. It also has some (to me and quite a few others) obvious interlace pattern artifacts.

[Author]

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