OLED monitor selection is pathetic. 2023 can change that
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After using a Samsung QLED TV for a couple years, I started really noticing the downgrade when using my computer monitor. I haven't been able to convince myself to pay for any of the current OLED monitor offerings, but I'm eagerly awaiting a reasonable desktop-sized offering.
Edit: Should have mentioned that I'm aware QLED and OLED are different, I'm just noting that the QLED TV is far superior to any computer monitor I've ever used.
Edit: Should have mentioned that I'm aware QLED and OLED are different, I'm just noting that the QLED TV is far superior to any computer monitor I've ever used.
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QLED isn't OLED. That's Samsung's deliberate marketing trick to confuse consumers.
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OLED is nice, but we still don't even have much more basic things:
We're more than a decade into the era of high-DPI PC displays and there are still almost no high-DPI options in the whole market with any panel technology.
Concretely, useful high-DPI at desktop display viewing distances generally means ~220 PPI or greater. This has long become common in laptop displays and high-quality all-in-ones like iMacs, but the number of standalone displays available in 2021 was 2 and has recently grown to 3 (all Mac-oriented, single Thunderbolt 3 input only, painfully priced from $1300 to $6000).
We're more than a decade into the era of high-DPI PC displays and there are still almost no high-DPI options in the whole market with any panel technology.
Concretely, useful high-DPI at desktop display viewing distances generally means ~220 PPI or greater. This has long become common in laptop displays and high-quality all-in-ones like iMacs, but the number of standalone displays available in 2021 was 2 and has recently grown to 3 (all Mac-oriented, single Thunderbolt 3 input only, painfully priced from $1300 to $6000).
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We really need an order of magnitude improvement in the emitter aging before OLED monitors can go mainstream. There are already plenty of examples of burn-in with the AW QD-OLED monitor and LG C series TVs used as monitors. It's inevitable with the uneven wear patterns PC use presents. You can pixel shift, equalize wear, and auto-dim / ABL / ABSL all you want, but it's not as effective on displays used primarily for non-video content.
Consumers are now used to their monitors lasting for a very long time and displaying virtually no degradation over time no matter how they are treated. I am not sure how well they will be received when that's no longer the case.
Consumers are now used to their monitors lasting for a very long time and displaying virtually no degradation over time no matter how they are treated. I am not sure how well they will be received when that's no longer the case.
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The burn-in factor has already made me more or less banish games and anything else with static content from my old LG C8. Until OLED burn-in time is measured at least 10x longer than it is now, it's just not suitable for use on computer displays at all. You will burn in your taskbar within 18 months or so based off of RTings' tests using stations with static tickers and logos like CNN.
Lovely tech and it looks way more impressive than LCDs do, but as long as it burns in harder than even old CRTs do, I'll stick with LCD.
Lovely tech and it looks way more impressive than LCDs do, but as long as it burns in harder than even old CRTs do, I'll stick with LCD.
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Depends which kind of OLED. LG WOLED has somewhat dirty whites and struggles to get full screen brightness. The JDI RGB OLEDs and SDI QD-OLED are quite good and very vibrant. The main issue with high density mini-LED displays are cost and complexity.
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Would pixel-shifting schemes not be a lot more effective if a manufacturer built say, a 2600x1480 "raw" panel that presented itself to the host as 2560x1440? Having 40 pixels of margin to work with to gradually shift the image around would do a lot to soften any burn-in from static elements, which combined with other techniques (dark themes, dimming, short power-off timers) would do a lot to alleviate burn-in.
Especially with OLED, you wouldn't even get any distracting "glow" from the extra margins; if you paid close attention the image miight look a bit off-center in the housing as it shifts around, but that's a price I'd gladly pay to reduce burn-in.
Especially with OLED, you wouldn't even get any distracting "glow" from the extra margins; if you paid close attention the image miight look a bit off-center in the housing as it shifts around, but that's a price I'd gladly pay to reduce burn-in.
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It is rather unfortunate that Apple is the only company that pushes the envelope regarding displays. We should have tons of 5K 27 inch PC monitors out there, but there just aren't.
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It helps more but it's no panacea. If you look at the LG B7/C7 and earlier generation TVs, they gradually develop a huge green blob in the middle of the screen as the red emitter degrades due to the center of the screen showing skin tones more often. Even spread out, the gradual differential aging becomes visible.
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I imagine that Windows still not supporting high DPI displays well is part of the issue. I regret getting a 4k laptop screen every time a menu comes up illegibly small or inexplicably blurry.
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At this point it looks like emitter aging only improved a small increment in the last decade, so I think order of magnitude improvements are a pipe dream. Most likely burn in will always be a fact of life with OLED.
I don't care about winning over the mainstream from LCD buyers. Get the price down of that new $999 LG to about half that, and IMO there will be plenty of buyers, myself included, that would be willing with live with the burn in risk (and mitigate for it), for the superlative image quality improvement.
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There are a number of blue emitters on the horizon within the next 2-5 years that will more than triple efficiency, so I wouldn't count out one order of magnitude.
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OLED will end up being replace with microLEDs fairly quickly in the desktop monitor segment since people tend to keep their monitors for a long time and the risk of burn is still a downside that at lot of people will not overlook. Brightness being the other but at least that can be controllable some what
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One problem with this is +/- 20px from the center of an icon is likely to be the same color, not that there is any single magic bullet solution. (I'm mad now imagining a bunch of pixels I'm not allowed to use)
I happen to really enjoy the automatic theme settings on windows 11 which colors your interface elements to match your wallpaper. Combined with WinDynamicDesktop which changes your wallpaper a few times a day to emulate the sun moving across the sky & you have a very pleasant effect which could well give your RGB a relatively good break.
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Windows supports high DPI screens just fine. It's crummy developers that don't play nice with Windows' scaling. It's painful that so many games don't take into account scaling given how it's become relatively rare to see titles have an actual exclusive fullscreen mode. Fullscreen these days typically means borderless windowed mode. Since all the features that used to require exclusive fullscreen also work these days in a borderless window.
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People tend to view bigger screens from a further distance, so less PPI is needed.
220 PPI is "retina" at about 16" viewing distance which may be reasonable when using a small laptop screen.
But a large desktop screen is more like to be viewed at 24"+ viewing distance making 32" 4K 138 PPI screen have the same effective density.
Apple aims for 5K screen because of a quirk in their scaling. Their high DPI mode doubles everything in size making that 4K 32" screen only display as much screen real estate as a 1080p screen. It's not a PPI issue, it's an awkward Apple scaling issue.
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There are no MicroLED monitors, and there won't be for a VERY long time. Check back in 10 years.
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I have a 48" LG CX that I've used as my monitor since March 2021 — a little more than 18 months. If/When it dies, I'll replace it with whatever the current-at-that-time model is.
I was concerned about burn-in, and was very careful for about the first six months. Since then, I haven't really given it a thought. At this moment, it's got 7,037 hours of usage... and not a hint of burn-in. I work from home as a video editor and UX designer... and portions of the screen are static for extremely long periods of time. I also play World of Warcraft a lot (yes, I'm a nerd) which also has a lot of static UI elements. So, I'm averaging more than 11 hours of use per day... and it's been absolutely perfect.
I was concerned about burn-in, and was very careful for about the first six months. Since then, I haven't really given it a thought. At this moment, it's got 7,037 hours of usage... and not a hint of burn-in. I work from home as a video editor and UX designer... and portions of the screen are static for extremely long periods of time. I also play World of Warcraft a lot (yes, I'm a nerd) which also has a lot of static UI elements. So, I'm averaging more than 11 hours of use per day... and it's been absolutely perfect.
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With VRR technology that isn't really true. You don't need to hit the monitors max refresh rate at all.
All new monitors should be at least 120hz in my view. Gaming or not. Especially if they are OLED as the tech lends itself to being able to achieve high refresh without the sacrifices of pixel overdrive compensation.
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Yes and no. macOS is perfectly capable to render the desktop at a higher 2x resolution and then downscale to whatever actual resolution your screen has. But yes, it does look marginally better without the downscaling.
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I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned in the article (I guess because it's a "gaming" monitor), but Samsung just launched a monitor and a couple of TVs with OLED backlighting and quantum dot filters for the colors. This lets the OLED panel use larger, brighter pixels as backlighting, and let the dots handle the colors.
This means the displays can be brighter than normal OLEDs while also having better color gamuts. It even costs less to produce.
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Brightness should really be a non-issue in most scenarios. You need a screen capable of high brightness in a living room, or on a laptop that may be taken outside or used in a variety of locations, but for a screen to be used indoors where you're sitting on average 18"-30" away, 200 nits is plenty for almost any use case.
Just give me a 27" 1440p/120Hz option and a 32" 4k/120Hz OLED option for ~$400-$600 and I'm there. Until we get such options at such prices, I'll stick with my IPS screens.
Just give me a 27" 1440p/120Hz option and a 32" 4k/120Hz OLED option for ~$400-$600 and I'm there. Until we get such options at such prices, I'll stick with my IPS screens.
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Yes, this is true. I just bought one, the QD-OLED S95B 65" TV. It's the best quality display I've ever seen. Brilliant colors and deep blacks. Has some nice features with it too. Expensive, but affordable, and I am not regretting it at all.
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Btw did you disable the auto dim? It's quite distracting for design work for me.
Oh and did you get color bleeds on left/right when displaying a solid block of yellow?
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Isn't that's the qd oled that been mentioned in the article?
Or it's something else that's under QLED moniker?
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As someone who just today worked on an iMac with the dock burned into it's LCD display, I can say I have zero interest in an OLED computer monitor regardless how good it looks.
Not sure if it would have ever scaled down to computer monitor size, but I still long for the alternate reality where SEDs actually became a reality. It seems like computer monitor sized micro-LED displays are almost as much of a pipe dream at this point.
Not sure if it would have ever scaled down to computer monitor size, but I still long for the alternate reality where SEDs actually became a reality. It seems like computer monitor sized micro-LED displays are almost as much of a pipe dream at this point.
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It's better nowadays; most games will scale their UIs, or at least offer an in-game scaling option. I'm running at 4k @ 150% DPI and haven't had too many problems, though some older stuff I do have to drop to 1080p because they don't scale at all.
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Unfortunately instead of games I have the pleasure of working with Enterprise Grade Software.
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A 3:2 high ppi display is even more of a unicorn. I'd settle for slightly lower ppi that makes text look seamless. I can't stand seeing pixels on text any more.
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I got an LG CX 48” for my WFH setup in later 2020, love the size and the black levels, but mine had a sealing issue that started causing clusters of dying pixels along the top edge of the screen. Got it thru Costco, so the return policy was great. “Upgraded” to the same sized C2 for roughly the same price, and it’s been going fine since.
Only thing I preferred on the old CX was the dedicated play/pause button on the remote.
But I’ve gotten so used to the large size and 4k real estate, I basically can’t get any work done on a single 1080p screen anymore!
Only thing I preferred on the old CX was the dedicated play/pause button on the remote.
But I’ve gotten so used to the large size and 4k real estate, I basically can’t get any work done on a single 1080p screen anymore!
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FALD is plenty good at the high end these days - I have an LG A2 and a Pro Display XDR, and I can't say I've ever felt that contrast was lacking on the latter.
The XDR is expensive, but I would sooner bet on high resolution mini LEDs falling in price than an easy solution to OLED burn-in. That said, OLEDs are getting to the point where they are almost a consumable. The cheapest OLED TVs are under $600 these days.
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What? Next you'll tell me my 0LED isn't the real thing!
But seriously, if you have the money, OLED is the biggest, best upgrade I've seen since we transitioned to flat panels in the first place. My LG B8 and Alienware 34 are killer.
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dogs4funlove
Smack-Fu Master, in training
It's probably because I run them fairly dim, being very sensitive to brightness, but no I've never had burn in. My first Oled years ago had over 60k hours on it when I broke the screen zero burn in no green blobs or any other problems.
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Yes, it's very much related to brightness. Not everyone has it severely or notices it either.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/help-green-spot-in-middle-of-lg-oled.2154188/
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I use Windows on a 5k screen daily and would never want to go back to chunky pixels. Yes, there are some glitches, but most apps work fine and text is razor sharp. (And I'm still on Win10.)
Those remaining glitches would get ironed out in good order if there were enough HiDPI monitors in users hands to create demand. The hardware is really holding it back.
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I always thought 5K was targeted because Apple wants you to be able to edit 4K content and have room for tools around the video. At least, that's the reason I want a 5K display
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