[Teapot]

Hi, I’ve done a search on this and found some interesting content relating to monitor comparisons and reviews but not quite found the info I was looking for – so I hope this post is OK.

I’m ready for a new pc monitor, mainly for gaming with modern releases.

I have a 4k LG monitor currently which is beautiful in stills but a blurry mess as soon as anything moves onscreen.

My situation is unusual as I’ve gone down the CRT rabbit hole the past 2 years and recently done my PC Gaming on a LaCie Blue IV (19inch crt from 2004 with a max resolution of 1440p at 75hz – although I tend to run it at 1600×1200 at 90hz). It’s a joy to game on and I happily played the Witcher 3, GTA5, Final Fantasy XV and a few others on it. I love the motion clarity of the CRT but the pain of getting it to work with modern games and the relatively small screen size are major draw backs. However, it has rather spoiled me on LCDs and there’s no way I have the space for one of those 40inch (or even 32inch!) monitors from LG and Alienware that have good reviews.

I’ve got a couple of questions as to what my options are:

1. Are there any monitors (of any type/tech) around the 27inch size that excel at motion clarity?

2. People seem to get really excited about OLED monitors for colour and clarity, but there seems to be some debate as to if you need BFI to really improve motion. Should we wait for these and see how good they are?

I’m really interested in thoughts and feedback from people who’ve seen these monitors in person and can comment on motion and picture quality – which is so hard to capture in technical specs and static images or even video footage which is filtered by the limitations of whatever budget screen you’re watching it on!

Thanks,

Adam

[PCM2]

Hi Teapot,

You’re very welcome to post this thread. You may have already come across this thread on a similar topic. It primarily focuses on ~24″ monitors, but it points to a few things which also apply to some 27″ models:

– BenQ DyAc / DyAc+ is generally a good strobe backlight implementation. I’d actually add that BenQ’s monitors more broadly (including some MOBIUZ models) can offer a good implementation.

– Nvidia ULMB is usually tuned well, too.

– Avoid monitors which use KSF phosphors due to slow red phosphor decay. This causes red or magenta ‘fringing’ and colourful flashing artifacts. If in doubt, pretty much any wide gamut LCD that isn’t confirmed to use Quantum Dots for the backlight (QD LED) these days uses KSF phosphors.

I haven’t used a great number of 27″ monitors recently with a good strobe backlight mode – the BenQ EX2710(S) would count, but that’s a Full HD model which I’m sure would be an unacceptable downgrade given what you’re used to and what you’re really looking for. All of the current models with DyAc are also Full HD (plus TN, which again I feel would be a downgrade for you in many respects). So as far as LCDs go that I can recommend in this area, that leaves G-SYNC models with ULMB and no KSF phosphors. Yeah, I’m afraid I’m drawing a blank there as well.

As for OLED, that’s an extremely promising technology when it comes to pixel strobing or BFI implementations. You don’t need to worry about KSF phosphors or issues including trailing or overshoot due to pixel response time weaknesses (or strobe crosstalk, if properly tuned). OLED models are absolutely the perfect candidates for such technologies and I certainly look forward to these two being married together in the monitor world. The level of perceived blur is optimal on OLED as far as sample and hold monitors go as there are no visible weaknesses related to pixel responsiveness – a 240Hz OLED certainly offers strong motion clarity. The X27U, 27GR95QE-B and PG27AQDM would be great examples of that. But sampling method and eye movement is still important and will provide further improvement at a given refresh rate. It’s also useful if you can’t run your games at high enough frame rates to make really good use of a high refresh rate OLED, but could manage say 120fps solidly. The difference between 120Hz sample and hold and impulse type (BFI etc.) is highly significant, even for OLEDs.

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