IPS vs VA vs TN vs QD-OLED vs WOLED - Which Display Tech is Best?

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00:00 - Welcome Back to Monitors Unboxed
00:50 - Main Differences Between Display Tech
04:09 - SDR Brightness
05:08 - Contrast Ratio
06:50 - Viewing Angles
08:21 - Color Gamut
10:27 - Refresh Rates
11:26 - Response Times
14:07 - Motion Clarity
15:38 - HDR Characteristics
19:45 - Summary

IPS vs VA vs TN vs QD-OLED vs WOLED - Which Display Tech is Best?

Disclaimer: Any pricing information shown or mentioned in this video was accurate at the time of video production, and may have since changed

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Outro music by David Vonk/DaJaVo

[monitorsunboxed]

Check out the LG UltraGear Black Friday deals:

[swecreations]

You managed to get a broad overview of almost everything in the monitor market in just over 20 minutes. Extremely impressive!

[raffaelerusso]

The content of the video, the accuracy and the exhaustiveness of the explanations (typical Tim style) are fantastic. We must applaud the impeccable video editing, which adds an extra gear to content, which is already excellent. You're a wonderful team, guys!

[sme]

Outstanding work at packing this much of information! Not too dense nor too surface-level, specially with those many graphs and backlight zoning examples, just perfect, and that B roll is *chef kiss*.

[HappyHubris]

As someone who needs to use one monitor for work and gaming, the stagnation of mini LED options is depressing. My office workflow would wreck an OLED.

[rangersmith]

Excellent summary. I have all these LCD technologies, and yes, all have their place, though it's unlikely I'll ever buy another TN panel. I think your viewers would benefit from a sort of how-to video on monitor calibration, at least including the consumer-level tools available and how they work. Seems like maybe you did one years ago, but a refresh would be great. Even though you're in Australia, Happy Thanksgiving, US-style!

[steinkoloss]

I sure hope that "MicroLED" can soon be listed here aswell.. ;)

[Bigdude]

YouTube recommended with the rare 1 minute ago upload.

[JoelRosP]

When I was younger chosing the monitor was not a big deal: better refresh rate or better colors. Nowadays it requires a PhD on Panel Engineering lmao. I have plans to change my monitor by 2027 so let's see how the market evolves. For now, i'd still choose IPS as durability is a must for high end PCs unless u're rich.

[Sock-qvwr]

When someone asks me about the differences in these technologies, I'll send them this video.

[demonfedor]

As of yesterday I am a proud owner of a 3rd-gen QD-OLED gaming monitor. Also it's my first HDR monitor. And I must say wow, it's incredible. No ghosting no overshoot no halos . All I have to do now is figure out how to properly work with icc profiles in Windows 10.

[toddbrewer]

Thank you again. I ended purchasing the Alienware 34DWF based on your recommendations, and cannot believe the picture I am looking at...amazing colors.

[AdnanKhan-bedr]

TN Daddy Tim delivering an updated, well-detailed rundown of current market display technologies. 22:30 catch me Daddy Tim

[danieloberhofer]

Graphs and infos on screen are outstanding in this sum-up. If you did them, Tim: Extremely well done. Otherwise, give that praise to Balin, please!

[paulbrooks]

Thanks for doing this. Been using monitors since I was a kid in the 80's and I feel that the most noticeable attributes are: 1. Anything that degrades the experience--color, ghosting, angles, text, max brightness, and responsiveness--if it feels bad or it can't be tuned, pass on it immediately. 2. Anything less than 120 Hz. 3. Brightness, gamma, and contrast. 4. Color gamut and accuracy 5. Is the HDR experience real or just hacked together/weak or minimal performance.

[OriginalMergatroid]

Nice video.
A couple of things.
1. I have seen many lcd panels suffer from burn-in. Often confused with image retention. For one example, one car insurance company sent us about 30 monitors under warranty with their staticly displayed software burned into the panel. I did not see this issue on these monitors from other businesses or consumers. Just this one company with a static display. This is just one example of many.
2. Not a single word on the scurge of modern monitors...VRR flicker.
I have sold off two ultrawide monitors with vrr flicker over the last few years. Nothing could be done to eliminate it and it's definitely a deal breaker. Vrr flicker is unacceptable. If I had known about it before the purchase I would never have purchased those monitors.
Basically vrr flicker is a thing on some VA and OLED panels. If causes the brightness to flutter or flicker and can happen anywhere, in game, during cutscenes, in menus and even on the desktop. Always caused by variable refresh. On both those ultrawides I had to shut freesync off and use fastsync in the nvidia control panel. This worked well until I could sell those monitors.
After that I went with a Samsung CRG9 49" SUW with a VA panel and quantum dots. Best VA panel I have ever used. Edge lit unfortunatelty but still did local dimming and HDR. Very bright and...VRR flicker. I was crushed. I was going to return it but found a firmware update that had a osd setting that eliminated vrr flicker completely. Turned out to be an excellent monitor.
Now, thanks to a black friday sale, I have an MSI 49" OLED SUW. I did vrr research on this before purchase. No results. On facebook one guy said he had a 32" MSI OLED and it would flicker if the fps went below about 60. I don't usually see anything under 80 with one exception so I bought the 49". I have not seen any VRR flickr on it in any games.
Very disappointed that this channel did such a great video on panel types with no mention of VRR Flicker.
I would like to see lists of what monitors suffer from this issue and I would like to see it mentioned in EVERY monitor review.
There is no such thing as a good monitor review if it doesn't mention VRR flicker.

[barryjones]

This is the best explanation I have seen on this topic! Well done!

One thing I noticed based on someone elses comment below is that it would be good to compare the contrast of WOLED vs VA with 300/500+ zones vs VA with 1000+ zones vs IPS (same zones as the VA ones), vs QD-OLED in a bunch of scenes with some light in the room. The HDR spec says to always use some light, 5 nits, so your eyes don't get too effected when there is some sudden bright flash or scene, that's why SDR starts at 0 nits and HDR starts at 0.005 nits I believe. This would also more realistically test the black level on the OLEDs which can look raised with some light on in the room. Making the comparison closer to LCDs than we might first

Also I disagree with the whole OLEDs have infinite contrast, since there are some LCDs that do turn off the back-light. So it would be more accurate to say OLED gives you a higher contrast more consistently compared to LCDs which can vary more between scenes. But especially in HDR since it starts at 0.005 nits, the contrast can't ever really be considered infinite in HDR at least. For SDR they seem even closer since on a LCD at 100 nits it doesn't struggle as much to control the back-light at lower max light levels.

Just an idea maybe for a future video or to incorporate as part of your future testing methodology since HDR should always be watched with some light on in the room. 😃

[vensroofcat]

Since I tried VA, I just can't go back to IPS. Because of the deep, articulated blacks and contrast. Sure, for a designer you would want IPS color accuracy. But for single player gaming or movie watching, casually dark scenes VA is the life saver. Eye saver. Since VA I have never had trouble with dark games and "you should barely see this" tests at the start of many.
Looking forward to OLED soon. My guess is it should go down in price for 1/3 or so within a year or two. Even though I could afford one right now, that would be premature investment. Better tech at cheaper price to come. And TN is just trash budget range. Angles and everything.

[BUDA]

be aware of Dark Level Smearing on cheap VA panels, I know it got a lot better in recent years/models, but depending on where you live and budget, you can get a dud

[Starfals]

Cool, VA for me then! OLED is stupidly expensive and it wont last long the way i use monitors. Best VA sounds pretty good to me.