Why do we still put up with IPS glow when it's been solved for fifteen years? [All modern IPS monitors are trash]

[Sheninat0r]

https://imgur.com/a/MBqzaj9

I've recently been in the market for a high quality display and I've found nothing that comes even close to my 15 year old NEC MultiSync LCD2490WUXi in terms of black quality. That monitor has the "A-TW" or "Advanced True Wide" (or is it "Advanced True White"? No one knows for sure...) polarizer which eliminates IPS glow in exchange for color shifting when viewed off axis -- see the album for a demonstration, and remember that cameras greatly exaggerate the color shift caused by the polarizer similar to how they exaggerate the effects of IPS glow and backlight bleed.

Why was this polarizer technology abandoned? In the last few weeks I've bought and returned an Asus PG279QZ (twice), Acer XB271HU, Acer XB271HK, and a Nixeus NX-EDG27s v2 because they all look terrible compared to my ancient NEC. On these modern monitors I can see glow in the corners during normal usage (movies and games), and some (Asus) had such bad backlight bleed that it was visible in the daytime with the sun shining directly on the panel.

It's insane to me that we've been stuck with the same trash-tier AUO IPS panel for the last 5 years with zero improvement (in fact, a regression) in image quality over its decade-old predecessors. I remember when the Asus PG279Q first came out it seemed like the perfect monitor until the bleed, glow, and QC issues came up; the "revised" PG279QZ is a worse monitor in all respects, having lower brightness and thicker bezels without any accompanying improvements. Innolux's IPS panel and other VA panels are all cursed with stupidly slow response times and ghosting issues.

I will give these newer monitors credit where it is due, though - variable refresh rate technology is amazing, input lag is essentially a non-issue now (my NEC has >100ms input lag), and modern IPS panels can have response times which once were thought to be exclusively achievable by TN panels.

But why did we give up improving on black quality? The common refrain nowadays is "wait for OLED" or "wait for microLED", but why should that stop us from improving what we already have? Emissive displays aren't going to be economical for some time yet, and the other paths forward that are being explored are misguided (FALD) or similarly uneconomical (stacked LCD; Eizo sells this, but for $30,000).

 

[PlanetJosh]

I put up with it for the brilliant bright colors and sharpness. Not that it justifies it. I have a Samsung 32" IPS 4k monitor U32E850R. But the glow can be annoying yeah, like in space sims such as X Rebirth the background of outer space is grey in most places instead of black.

So to solve the glow issue I got a OLED monitor, the Dell 30" 4K UP3017Q. And yes the space background in X Rebirth is a very nice super black but it has to be tweaked in settings a lot to get the colors of ships and other objects to try to approach the brilliance of my IPS monitor. And I got the colors pretty good I think.

In some other pc games the contrast is great and the colors nice with a kind of natural look (on the Dell OLED.) But it has just a bit of subdued look possibly due to not being as bright compared to my Samsung IPS. Should note that I tend to like a bit saturated look to colors. I know that may put me in a low class user category to some but I think I can handle it.

For movies and videos the Dell OLED above is not great. I'm not the only one. Owners of it over in Overclock.net complained about its lack of visual punch for video no matter how much the settings are adjusted. A couple of them said it was great for movies but that's got to be individual eyesight preference. I would not recommend buying it for video/movies. The Spyder calibrator doesn't even work on it according to articles on the net which can be looked up.

So that was $3,000 usd not well spent for me on the Dell as far as video. But I still keep it running on one of my PCs for some games because of great contrast and a natural pleasing look to gaming graphics although not as bright/brilliant as my IPS.

So after all that I wrote it does't solve the overall issue of finding the ideal monitor. Except maybe for Eizo you mentioned. And Sony. Sony makes a 55 inch OLED 4k monitor PVM-X550 . Not a tv, it's a monitor. The downside is it doesn't have a DP connection. So it's HDMI and another type of connector. But it's over $20,000 which isn't practical except for a few people. So is the Sony bright enough? Someone buy it and tell us please.

I may have rattled on too much again. I guess I could've condensed it somewhat.

 

[mopardude87]

Guess i have been lucky with my IPS panels.Between a QNIX 2710 and my Acer K272HUL i haven't ran into any bleeding that severe.If anything my QNIX had slight in the corners and my Acer has essentially none.Hurting more about giving up a 144hz refresh rate at 1080p to hopping on a 60hz 1440p panel then anything else.

 

[KeithP]

Why do we still put up with IPS glow when it's been solved for fifteen years?

I think under normal use most people simply don't notice the problem. The fact that you can easily see it when nothing is displayed on the screen is of little consequence if you are only looking at your monitor when it is in actual use.

-KeithP

 

[Furious_Styles]

Eh there's trade-offs for every panel type just about.
TN: viewing angles for response times
IPS: Reverse of TN
VA: Better contrast but worse response times.

There's more to them than that but that's just the quick and dirty. Too bad you can't stand the PG279Q or the XB271HU they are truly great all-arounders and until we get the HDR capable ones or OLED then you really just have to buy what you think is best.

 

[Igo69]

I don't think it is the monitor(s) but the quality control that is lacking. My Asus MG279 have been great for 4 years now and I am starting to look at 32" 4k monitors but afraid to change because of many complains.

Have you looked at BenQ?

 

[Sheninat0r]

Guess i have been lucky with my IPS panels.Between a QNIX 2710 and my Acer K272HUL i haven't ran into any bleeding that severe.If anything my QNIX had slight in the corners and my Acer has essentially none.Hurting more about giving up a 144hz refresh rate at 1080p to hopping on a 60hz 1440p panel then anything else.

I had a 144Hz BenQ XL2411 for a few years and thought that returning to 60Hz would be unbearable, but I actually ended up liking the sharpness of 27" 4K60 better than 24" 1080p144 for any usage besides twitchy gaming. Text quality is seriously on another level on a 27" 4K monitor, almost approaching cell phone screens. If I were forced to choose between the two form factors, I would pick 27" 4K60 with no hesitation - I spend way more time looking at text than I do gaming.

I think under normal use most people simply don't notice the problem. The fact that you can easily see it when nothing is displayed on the screen is of little consequence if you are only looking at your monitor when it is in actual use.

-KeithP

It must be nice to have low standards. I don't mean this as an attack towards you or "most people", but I absolutely do notice and get distracted by the terrible black quality on all of these monitors during normal use, across almost every use case - web browsing, gaming, media consumption, and more. Every time I glance towards a video game UI in the corners of the screen during a dark scene I notice the glow; every time I watch a widescreen film with black bars I notice it as well. Browsing websites with dark backgrounds is no good either. If I could just be satisfied with "good enough" then I would be a lot happier, but I am an unashamed perfectionist.

I don't think it is the monitor(s) but the quality control that is lacking. My Asus MG279 have been great for 4 years now and I am starting to look at 32" 4k monitors but afraid to change because of many complains.

Have you looked at BenQ?

Did you have any particular models in mind? I didn't see them recommended as much as the models that I tried and returned. I've had decent experiences in the distant past with a BenQ FP241W and XL2411 (non-Z), but the FP241W was purchased before I did any major research (I upgraded quickly from it to the NEC) and the XL2411 was gifted to me and used as a secondary gaming-only monitor.

 

[mopardude87]

I had a 144Hz BenQ XL2411 for a few years and thought that returning to 60Hz would be unbearable, but I actually ended up liking the sharpness of 27" 4K60 better than 24" 1080p144 for any usage besides twitchy gaming. Text quality is seriously on another level on a 27" 4K monitor, almost approaching cell phone screens. If I were forced to choose between the two form factors, I would pick 27" 4K60 with no hesitation - I spend way more time looking at text than I do gaming.

I think next year i may move to a 27'' 4k when and if next generation gpus come.I almost jumped on a 4k over my 1440p but was more or less told if its under 40''' 4k isn't ideal for gaming due to ui scaling.I don't think i would want to pair my 1070ti to a 4k currently anyways.I miss going to Frys Electronics and messing about with their gaming set ups which had usually the good monitors.Last visit seriously looked like they are going out of business.Any and all demos or physically displayed items completely removed.Would have been great to hop on a 4k gaming desktop to see how it looks for myself.It's going to be a leap of faith basically if i do upgrade since i can't find a live demo anywhere.

I only know one person who games at 4k and that is on a 60'' t.v. Obviously not to impressed cause of ppi in comparison to my 1440p.

 

[nOOky]

We put up with IPS glow because the benefits for that type of monitor outweigh he drawbacks. Unless you can control the manufacturer's QA department there's not much the readers here can do. You can try to limit it yourself by trying a few things. I don't even notice it on my monitor the way I have it set up.

https://www.displayninja.com/what-is-ips-glow-and-how-can-i-reduce-it/

 

[nOOky]

I think next year i may move to a 27'' 4k when and if next generation gpus come.I almost jumped on a 4k over my 1440p but was more or less told if its under 40''' 4k isn't ideal for gaming due to ui scaling.I don't think i would want to pair my 1070ti to a 4k currently anyways.I miss going to Frys Electronics and messing about with their gaming set ups which had usually the good monitors.Last visit seriously looked like they are going out of business.Any and all demos or physically displayed items completely removed.Would have been great to hop on a 4k gaming desktop to see how it looks for myself.It's going to be a leap of faith basically if i do upgrade since i can't find a live demo anywhere.

I only know one person who games at 4k and that is on a 60'' t.v. Obviously not to impressed cause of ppi in comparison to my 1440p.

I had a 32" 4k monitor before I went widescreen. I don't play online FPS games so I thought 60hz was still acceptable. When I went to 144hz to be honest I wasn't like OMFG it's incredible I can never go back. Some games definitely feel smoother, general Windows use honestly I can't tell much difference that it annoys me anyway.

I would not buy a 27" 4k monitor, the display size and scaling just sux. IMHO the sweet spot for a 4k gaming monitor is 36" or larger, and you don't find any of those around as far as I know.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/9xeto5

 

[mopardude87]

I had a 32" 4k monitor before I went widescreen. I don't play online FPS games so I thought 60hz was still acceptable. When I went to 144hz to be honest I wasn't like OMFG it's incredible I can never go back. Some games definitely feel smoother, general Windows use honestly I can't tell much difference that it annoys me anyway.

I would not buy a 27" 4k monitor, the display size and scaling just sux. IMHO the sweet spot for a 4k gaming monitor is 36" or larger, and you don't find any of those around as far as I know.

]

I was on 144hz for a short bit,IF and when games would push close to 144 fps it certainly felt smoother.But having been on several IPS panels in the past i certainly enjoy that every game will benefit from better color reproduction then maybe some games benefiting from 144hz.I do enjoy my eye candy but yeah 4k IPS while it sounds dreamy could perhaps not work out in my case.Its possible i could wall mount a 32'' which puts it about 8 more inches away from my current 27'' but if its worth the extra cost and hassle and overall that much of a better experience would be up for debate.I got issues with distance vision so even that idea may not work.