Input lag showdown! Samsung HDTVs vs Viewsonic Monitors

[AdamK47]

I've had the Samsung 37" LN37A550 for close to two years now and have been using it as my primary monitor for my PC the whole time. There really wasn't a problem with it, but I wanted to try something new. I've tried two Samsung 40" HDTVs and both had a very noticable problem, input lag. Hoping it was just a problem with these specific displays I purchased a 32" LED/LCD UN32C6500. I liked the smaller size since the 37" was a tad too big to take in all at once for gaming. It had a bright picture and the coudiness in the center wasn't as bad as on one of the 40" LED/LCD Samsungs I tried. It had one major flaw and that was input lag again. Game mode cuts it in half, but you don't get great colors and 1:1 pixel mapping. PC mode gives the same reduction in input lag, proper 1:1 pixel mapping, and more PC friendly colors. No matter how hard I tried to trick myself, I could not get over the input lag. This was especially true for gaming. It's very hard to enjoy an FPS game with input lag in the mix. So, I decided to test for input lag after about reading how to do it. I had a spare Viewsonic from 2005, the VX2025WM. This monitor has no perceivable lag. I'm not saying there is absolutly no lag with it, but it's most likely under 5ms.

For testing I placed two displays side by side. I then duplicated the desktop across both. The program used for the test is a simple Java app that counts up time in milliseconds. As the timer was going on both displays, I took a picture with my digital camera.

The Results!

UN32C6500 (HDMI) vs VX2025WM (VGA)

Ah ha! The truth is out! Given that both displays operate at 60hz (with 60 frames per second), a 50ms to 60ms delay means that the UN32C6500 lags behind the VX2025WM by between 3 to 4 frames. 60/(1000/60) = 3.6 and 50/(1000/60) = 3. This is considered fairly bad and would be very noticable to any regular FPS player.

LN37A550 (HDMI) vs VX2025WM (VGA)

In one shot you can see that it was nearly identical, but in the other two it showed a 40ms delay. This 37" Samsung has around a 1 to 2 frame lag, which is very hard to notice unless you are really sensitive to it.

LN37A550 (HDMI) vs UN32C6500 (VGA)

The truth about input lag on the 32" Samsung becomes clearer when comparing the two HDTVs. A 30ms to 40ms delay is roughly a 2 frame difference.

 

[AdamK47]

VX2739WM (HDMI) vs VX2025WM (VGA)

And now onto my new primary monitor, the 27" Viewsonic VX2739WM. So new in fact that this was the first thing I did with it. Yes, it's a TN panel, but it's also very fast. Both in dealing with input lag and pixel response time (two seperate things you dolt!). The input lag on both Viewsonics are the same, none.