ips led lcd panel review made in china

Flat-panel displays are thin panels of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying text, images, or video. Liquid crystal displays (LCD), OLED (organic light emitting diode) and microLED displays are not quite the same; since LCD uses a liquid crystal that reacts to an electric current blocking light or allowing it to pass through the panel, whereas OLED/microLED displays consist of electroluminescent organic/inorganic materials that generate light when a current is passed through the material. LCD, OLED and microLED displays are driven using LTPS, IGZO, LTPO, and A-Si TFT transistor technologies as their backplane using ITO to supply current to the transistors and in turn to the liquid crystal or electroluminescent material. Segment and passive OLED and LCD displays do not use a backplane but use indium tin oxide (ITO), a transparent conductive material, to pass current to the electroluminescent material or liquid crystal. In LCDs, there is an even layer of liquid crystal throughout the panel whereas an OLED display has the electroluminescent material only where it is meant to light up. OLEDs, LCDs and microLEDs can be made flexible and transparent, but LCDs require a backlight because they cannot emit light on their own like OLEDs and microLEDs.

Liquid-crystal display (or LCD) is a thin, flat panel used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. They are usually made of glass but they can also be made out of plastic. Some manufacturers make transparent LCD panels and special sequential color segment LCDs that have higher than usual refresh rates and an RGB backlight. The backlight is synchronized with the display so that the colors will show up as needed. The list of LCD manufacturers:

Organic light emitting diode (or OLED displays) is a thin, flat panel made of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. OLED panels can also take the shape of a light panel, where red, green and blue light emitting materials are stacked to create a white light panel. OLED displays can also be made transparent and/or flexible and these transparent panels are available on the market and are widely used in smartphones with under-display optical fingerprint sensors. LCD and OLED displays are available in different shapes, the most prominent of which is a circular display, which is used in smartwatches. The list of OLED display manufacturers:

MicroLED displays is an emerging flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Like OLED, microLED offers infinite contrast ratio, but unlike OLED, microLED is immune to screen burn-in, and consumes less power while having higher light output, as it uses LEDs instead of organic electroluminescent materials, The list of MicroLED display manufacturers:

Sony produces and sells commercial MicroLED displays called CLEDIS (Crystal-LED Integrated Displays, also called Canvas-LED) in small quantities.video walls.

LCDs are made in a glass substrate. For OLED, the substrate can also be plastic. The size of the substrates are specified in generations, with each generation using a larger substrate. For example, a 4th generation substrate is larger in size than a 3rd generation substrate. A larger substrate allows for more panels to be cut from a single substrate, or for larger panels to be made, akin to increasing wafer sizes in the semiconductor industry.

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The AiPlus4k is an adequate alternative to other budget 4K televisions. It displays 4K content at 60Hz. That"s suitable for the last generation of consoles, like a PS4 Pro, as well as PC gamers. And its LCD panel"s contrast ratio is good. But the value isn"t equal to better-known television brands.

Caixun (pronounced "Kai-Shuin") is a sub-label of Express Luck Technology, a 20-year-old TV manufacturer out of China. They use panels from a variety of sources, including CSOT, AUO, and others. However, it"s unlikely that anyone in the United States has even heard of them, although you may have owned a television of their design.

Its 8GB-sized storage capacity has 2GB available to the user. The limited space makes it useful as a streaming box with few installed apps. Don"t expect to play large games, particularly given that Android devices can become progressively slower as free storage decreases.

LED 4K screens don"t look as good as OLED panels, with comparatively mediocre black levels and contrast ratios. However, they"re extremely resilient and long-lasting, being almost immune to burn-in, also known as image retention. While LED-backlight technology isn"t state-of-the-art, it"s more durable and power-efficient compared to OLED panels. And if you"re on a budget, they"re cheaper than the latest LED-related tech, like LG"s NanoCell or Samsung"s Mini LED and Micro LED technologies.

The 4K panel itself doesn"t show any stuck pixels or screen imperfections, although if you did detect one, Caixun"s customer service requires that you return the unit through Amazon"s 30-day return period.

All budget LED-lit IPS LCD panels look bad compared to OLED. You might notice small degrees of uneven black levels around the edges of the screen, and blacks that are nearly grey in dim lighting. The AiPlus4K doesn"t magically solve the problem with LED-lit televisions.

As with most In-Plane Switching (IPS) LCD panels, the 4K display on the AiPlus4K remains adequate from all angles, but the whites deteriorate in quality the further you move away from the dead center. Overall, the screen doesn"t show any serious signs of poor quality.

As with all televisions in this price segment, the refresh rate when using YouTube or other streaming video apps comes in at less than 30Hz. VLC Player indicated that the refresh rate while playing 4K content is 24Hz. Additionally, I noticed high levels of smearing and ghosting while playing back 4K content, but only for dark scenes. Otherwise, the panel"s image quality remained consistent.

To the best of my knowledge, the Sansui ES55XS1A and the AiPlus4K look like the same television. There"s a lot of evidence suggesting that they are the same.

While this does not mean the AiPlus4K is a bad television, it does mean it"s overpriced. And, as of the writing of this article, Amazon"s stock of budget 55-inch LCD smart televisions are severely limited.

Caixun contracts with Premier Customer Service for technical support in North America. I called the customer service line with a bogus technical support issue and spoke with an operator named "Delorse". Delorse mentioned she hadn"t encountered a Caixun failure yet and because of this, she was less familiar with the return process.

There are no teardowns of the AiPlus4K anywhere, but you shouldn"t need one for two reasons. First, disassembly doesn"t require removing security screws. Second, accessing the logic board doesn"t require any special instructions. Simply unscrewing the rear access panel provides a full view of the electronics driving the television.

If you suffer from either a failing capacitor or a desoldered GPU, replacement only requires a soldering iron and basic electronics safety measures. I"d still recommend taking the TV to a repair shop, rather than fixing it yourself, because of the potential for injury. But overall, the AiPlus4K"s electronics are extremely easy to repair, unless you"ve broken the LCD screen, which is difficult and expensive to repair.

IPS stands for in-plane switching, a type of LED (a form of LCD) display panel technology. IPS panels are characterized as having the best color and viewing angles among the other main types of display panels, TN(twisted nematic) and VA(vertical alignment). However, IPS panels are also the most expensive of the three.

When choosing a PC monitor, you may opt for an IPS panel because of its great image quality. Their best use case is professional (art, graphics et cetera) work. On the other hand, gaming monitor manufacturers tend to opt for TN panels because they"re the fastest of the three main LED panel types and are speedy. In fact, for a while it was rare to find an IPS panel with a refresh rate high enough for acceptable gaming (at least 75 Hz, although most gaming monitors offer at least 144 Hz). This is changing, but, again, comes at a premium in terms of price.

Note that some display may be labeled "IPS-level" or some other variant. This means that the panel was not made by LG and, therefore, the vendor isn"t allowed to call the display IPS. However, the technology and end results should appear the same to the naked eye.

DisplayWorst viewing angles;Worst colorViewing angles typically better than TN, worse than IPS; Good color; Best contrast;Best image depthBest viewing angles; Best color

Based in South Korea, Samsung has become one of the world"s leading electronic brands. Like many companies in this list, their monitors mainly focus on gaming. Their models are unique since they don"t primarily use IPS panels, as many have VA panels with a high contrast ratio and curved screen. Although VA panels look great in dark rooms, the main downside is that they have narrow viewing angles, which isn"t ideal for sharing your screen with others. They"ve even started including Mini LED backlighting on some models, which further improves the picture quality, peak brightness, and dark room performance. It helps that Samsung already produces TVs with this Mini LED technology, so they"ve become an industry leader for monitors with it.

The Studio Display – Apple"s new 27-inch, 5K monitor that was released alongside the new Mac Studio desktop – is one of the most difficult displays I"ve had to review. On the one hand, the price tag is sky-high for a 27-inch 5K panel that "only" promises coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut and is basically incompatible with Widows. On the other hand, it"s extremely color accurate, color uniformity is excellent, and if you doown a Mac, it offers a seamless experience previously only available on the muchmore expensive Pro Display XDR.

I have a hard time praising the Studio Display because it"s not the "baby Pro Display XDR" that I was hoping Apple would release. I"d much rather Apple had budgeted the $1,600 differently by swapping the webcam, speakers, and microphones for a miniLED backlight and a true 10-bit panel that covers 98%+ of bothDCI-P3 and AdobeRGB. That"s what I consider a "Studio" quality display.

All of the variations use the same 5K 27-inch 60Hz IPS LCD panel that promises full coverage of the Display P3 color gamut (DCI-P3 with a D65 white point), for a base price of $1,600. That will get you the standard glass version with either a tilt-adjustable stand or a VESA mount. Spend an extra $400, and you can upgrade to a nicer stand with a height adjustment mechanism similar to the one you found on the Pro Display XDR, albeit without any rotation. And if you want to go all out, you can spend another$300 for the Nano-texture glass.

If you"re using an NVIDIA-powered device, you are able to control basic display parameters like color format and bit depth from the NVIDIA Control Panel, and we can confirm that this works. Changing from 8 bits per channel (bpc) to 10 bpc in the control panel actually made the change at the hardware level. But settings like Brightness, Contrast and Gamma won"t work properly if you adjust them at the level of the GPU.

If you have an NVIDIA-powered PC, you can control a few settings from the NVIDIA Control Panel app. Things like resolution, color format, and bit depth.

The experience above is in sharp contrast to using this display with a Mac, which is totally seamless. All of your settings are controlled from the MacOS Display menu, there are a bunch of accurate built-in profiles, and you can even fine tune the white point of the display at the hardware level by adjusting it in settings (more on that in a second).

The panel at the heart of this display is, spec wise, identical to the panels used in the 5K iMac and the 5K LG UltraFine display that Apple has been selling for several years, but it is not the same panel. Apple confirmed to me that this is a new panel specially designed for this new thin-bezel monitor.

Apple also confirmed this is not a true 10-bit panel. There were several mentions of "over 1 billion colors" during the presentation, but it"s an 8-bit panel with temporal dithering (AKA Frame Rate Control) just like the LCD panels in the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. The only true 10-bit panel is Apple"s lineup is still the Pro Display XDR, and it"s safe to assume that it will stay that way.

We"ve highlighted this feature before in our MacBook Pro 16 review, but in case you missed it, all you have to do is type in the measured white point and brightness from your colorimeter, the target white point and brightness that you"re hoping for, and voila... RGB gains are automatically adjusted to get you there.

Of the 34 test patches, 29 passed recommended tolerance with a Delta E of less than 2, and the remaining 5 were all within nominal tolerance with a maximum Delta E of less than 4. This is exceptional performance that you really only see from high-quality photo- and video-editing displays that put a premium on panel uniformity.

From a performance perspective, this is an excellent panel. My only complaint is the color gamut, which could definitely be wider given the $1,600 price tag. But 99% coverage of DCI-P3 is already great, and when you combine that with the color accuracy and uniformity results above, you"ve got a display that can and should be used for color-critical work.

But while these features, when combined with a color-accurate 5K panel, justify the Studio Display"s $1,600 price tag, I would argue that Apple missed the mark by focusing too much on day-to-day usability and too little on the real-world photo-, video-, and graphic design studios that this display is supposedly meant for. Most studios don"t care about webcams or built in speakers, and some even use PCs in addition to (or instead of) Macs.

I said this was a difficult review for me, and this is why: most of my gripes aren"t with the monitor, but with what the monitor might have been if Apple hadn"t chosen to save all their latest display tech for the next generation of the Pro Display XDR.

During their review of the Apple Studio Display, the Verge noticed that the webcam quality is quite poor. We compared it to the MacBook Pro and the 4K Logitech Brio camera to find out for ourselves.

Earlier today, in their review of the Apple Studio Display, The Verge pointed out that the Studio Display"s webcam image quality left something to be desired. Not properly testing the camera quality was a major oversight on my part, and so I"ve gone back to compare the Studio Display"s built-in webcam against the FaceTime HD camera inside the 14-inch MacBook Pro and a dedicated Logitech Brio 4K webcam.

Narrow Bezel is a slim frame that reduces visual obstruction for improved TV viewing and with the addition of slim depth panels provides an elegant design for your living room.

Today, there are only a handful of TV brands left outside of China: Samsung and LG (South Korea), Sony (Japan), Philips (EU) and Vizio (US). A company in China had attempted to acquire Vizio in 2016, but that deal never happened so as of now they’re still a US company (they recently had their long-awaited IPO).

Here’s where it gets complicated. As we’ve seen in posts for other kinds of products, you simply can’t find a TV where 100% of the components are made outside of China. For example, LG Electronics (who builds TVs) sources its WOLED panels from LG Display, who had produced their panels in South Korea but is shifting production to Guangzhou, China. So regardless of what TV you buy, a portion of it is going to prop up the CCP.

But you can stem the bleeding. For one thing, if you buy from the big non-China brands: Samsung, LG, Sony, Philips and Vizio, at least you can support some non-China employees, such as their product development, marketing, or administrative departments.

Manufacturers tend to be coy about where their parts come from and where their products are assembled. If you read what their PR departments post as a response to Amazon questions a typical responses is something vague like “our TVs are built all over the world”, so we don’t know if 99% of a TV was made in China and the other 1% was divvied up between other countries.

A little Internet sleuthing helps, however. As of 2021, Samsung has recently ceased TV production in China. Sony TVs intended for the North American market are assembled in Mexico. LG TVs are also produced in Mexico for the North American market and in Poland for the European market. Vizio does maintain manufacturing facilities in Taiwan and Mexico, so there’s a decent chance your North American-based set was made there.

The only way to tell for sure is to visit your local electronics store and see for yourself what the “Made in” or “Assembled in” label says on the particular unit you’re looking for. You can also search for “China” or “Made in” in Amazon reviews to see if anyone reported widespread sales of China-made units to the US.

LG’s lineup can be a confusing mess of alphabet soup, but all you need to remember is that there are three ranges of LG OLEDs for 2021: The A1 sits at the low end (sacrificing things like refresh rate for price) while the G1 sits at the high end (adding some bells and whistles like an art gallery-worthy design). But the C1 is by most accounts the one to get as it manages to offer exceptional performance at a reasonable price.

LG also offers LCD sets, but OLED is the way to you. OLED is made up of organic material, so pixels “light up” themselves as opposed to traditional LED screens which are lit by a backlight. The results are much blacker blacks, much more accurate and vivid colors, and a near-infinite contrast ratio. It features Dolby Vision IQ and Dolby Atmos sound, a 120Hz refresh rate for gaming, and an α9 Gen4 AI Processor 4K chip to optimize content in real time.

Sony’s TV lineup also consists of OLED and LED models. While their OLED models are excellent TVs, especially for home theater setups, most reviewers give the overall OLED edge to LG.

However, there may be reasons you’re in the market for an ordinary LED panel. The most common reason has to to with screen burn-in. There is no more helpless feeling than paying thousands of dollars for a new OLED TV or smartphone, and then after accidentally leaving it on having images burned into it. With traditional LED TVs, that’s never aa concern–you can leave it on the same channel as long as you like or use it as a computer monitor.

Not surprisingly, Sony has squeezed a lot out of the TV. It achieves a high contrast ratio and decent blacks without OLED. Its fast response time, HDMI 2.1 ports, and 120Hz refresh rate make it very good for gaming.

This is the top of the line TV from Samsung. Its quantum dot technology allows for a full range of vivid colors even at high brightness levels where OLED starts to falter. It also introduces a new backlighting technology using Quantum Mini LEDs that are 1/40th the height of conventional LEDs and which can be packed together in tight spaces, allowing for stunning brightness and contrast and deeper blacks that rival or surpass OLEDs, all without burn-in.

Cello has an impressively low price point (alas, it would be cost-prohibitive to ship them across the Atlantic Ocean, so we can’t find them here in the US). Their reviews on Amazon are consistently high (sadly, it looks like China trolls are on Amazon UK upvoting every negative comment to get them to rise to the top, but focus on the overall ratings). If you need a basic TV at a great price that supports communities and the economy in the UK, you should definitely get one of these.

As we head into the new year, we"re going to see a lot of new monitors and display technology coming out of CES 2023. From high refresh rates to mini-LED panels and more, there are going to be a lot of exciting monitor tech to come in 2023. If you"re not all into that razzle-dazzle though, this is also great news since many of the best monitors, including the best 4K monitors from 2022, are going to get some healthy price cuts as the new models get announced and retailers have to make room for new inventory.

Whether you"re looking for the best 5K and 8K monitors for creative work or the best cheap gaming monitor deals for some casual esports, we"ve tried and reviewed just about all of them.

And, below we"ve broken down our top picks of the year – from the best 144Hz 4K monitors and the best high refresh rate monitors to the best monitors for video editing – and compiled them in this handy guide to make your buying decision easier than ever. We"ve also written up a guide for how to pick the best monitor to help you find what you"re looking for, no matter what your need or budget might be.

The Dell S3221QS is a gorgeous monitor inside and out. Its simple yet elegant silver design gives it a unique look that sets it apart from all the gamer-centric or boring black office monitors you"re most likely to find. It comes with a stunning 4K VA panel to match, making everything from movies to gaming a pleasure to watch.

If you"re on a high-end gaming desktop with the best graphics card on the market, then a 4K monitor or even an 8K display might be more of what you"re looking for. 4K monitors are only just now starting to get higher refresh rates like 120Hz and 144Hz, so these are definitely the 4K panels that you need to keep an eye out for.Which monitor brand is most reliable?There are a lot of PC monitor brands out there making everything from cheap, portable office monitors to high-end gaming PC monitors with ultrawide aspect and 1000R curve rating, 1ms pixel response, and blazing fast refresh rates.

We review monitors based on a number of factors including price, design, and performance. We consider the size of each display, as well as the number and type of ports on each monitor to determine who each display would benefit most. Each monitor is used in a variety of scenarios, so we use it for work, media consumption and gaming to test what it’s best suited to.

The 2022 5-Series possesses the same advanced technologies as previous 5-Series versions. The full-array LED backlight uses local dimming to achieve a better black level and overall dynamic range, which is the cornerstone of any good digital image. Although this year’s 5-Series boasts fewer zones of local dimming than in the previous model, TCL has refined the local-dimming operation enough that the TV consistently provides satisfying black levels while also getting bright enough to combat ambient light from lamps and windows. During my testing, I measured black levels as low as 0.025 nit coupled with peak brightness just shy of 700 nits (during HDR playback), both of which are excellent results for a TV in this price range.

If you’re interested in HDR video or HDR games, the 5-Series supports the most popular HDR formats: HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. Not only does it have the brightness to create satisfying HDR images, but also its color is enhanced by quantum dots to provide notable improvements to red and green primary colors. While watching Edge of Tomorrow in Dolby Vision side by side on the TCL 5-Series and the Hisense U6H, I paused the opening scene of Tom Cruise lying in a helicopter with the sun streaming through the window, and I asked my wife which TV looked better. She said that the window on the U6H gave the impression of light, while the window on the 5-Series looked like actual light—a telling-enough explanation of the two TVs’ brightness and uniformity differences. The 5-Series can’t produce the full gamut of HDR colors, and it isn’t as accurate while playing HDR content as pricier LCD TVs we’ve tested—but it comes close.

Like the previous version, the 2022 5-Series comes in 50-, 55-, 65-, and 75-inch screen sizes, and each model boasts four HDMI 2.1 inputs, with one reserved for eARC to send high-quality audio, including Dolby Atmos, from the TV to your soundbar or AV receiver. The design features two feet that you can mount either toward the middle of the panel or out toward the edges (on the larger sizes), which is a nice perk considering the inherent variability in the width of home TV stands. Because it has a panel with full-array local dimming, this is not the thinnest of TVs and wouldn’t disappear on a wall—but you can’t find that kind of design in this price range unless it’s an edge-lit TV, and those tend to have poor picture quality. Overall, the latest 5-Series feels well built and reliable, and we have no concerns about its long-term durability.

As for picture quality, the 5-Series’s biggest flaw is that its brightness sometimes outstrips its local-dimming abilities, creating a bit of bloom or glow around bright objects situated in darkness (such as the moon in a dark sky) or brightening its letterbox bars in 16:9 content. This effect is only slightly perceptible when you’re viewing the TV head-on, but it becomes more distracting during off-angle viewing, when you’re sitting to either side of the screen. You can eliminate the glow by turning down the backlight, but the TV’s brightness is one of its key strengths, so we don’t necessarily recommend that. The TV’s overall viewing angle is fine, but it suffers from the usual contrast loss and color shift associated with LCD TVs.

The most important thing you can do to get the best performance from any TV is to set it up correctly. For the TCL 5-Series, we recommend using the Movie picture mode and reducing the sharpness control to zero. In our tests, we preferred Contrast Control Zones (local-dimming control) set to high, as the low and medium settings offered little improvement (if any) over leaving it disabled. Other image-processing functions, such as Dynamic Contrast, should be disabled, as they actually cause the TV to lose dynamic range. The Natural Cinema function should be enabled so that the TV produces motion that is accurate for TV shows and movies. You should disable all of the Auto Power options in the System Power menu.

When it comes todisplay technologies such asprojectorsand panels, factors such as resolution and refresh rate are often discussed. But the underlying technology is equally, if not more, important. There are tons of different types of screens, from OLED and LED to TN, VA, and IPS. Learn about the various monitor and television types, from operation to pros and cons!

The most common form of monitor or TV on the market is LCD or Liquid Crystal Display. As the name suggests, LCDs use liquid crystals that alter the light to generate a specific colour. So some form of backlighting is necessary. Often, it’s LED lighting. But there are multiple forms of backlighting.

LCDs have utilized CCFLs or cold cathode fluorescent lamps. An LCD panel lit with CCFL backlighting benefits from extremely uniform illumination for a pretty even level of brightness across the entire screen. However, this comes at the expense of picture quality. Unlike an LED TV, cold cathode fluorescent lamp LCD monitors lack dimming capabilities. Since the brightness level is even throughout the entire array, a darker portion of scenes might look overly lit or washed out. While that might not be as obvious in a room filled with ambient light, under ideal movie-watching conditions, or in a dark room, it’s noticeable. LED TVs have mostly replaced CCFL.

An LCD panel is transmissive rather than emissive. Composition depends on the specific form of LCD being used, but generally, pixels are made up of subpixel layers that comprise the RGB (red-green-blue) colour spectrum and control the light that passes through. A backlight is needed, and it’s usually LED for modern monitors.

Please note that some of the mentioned types may be considered a sub-category of LCD TVs; therefore, some of the names may vary depending on the manufacturer and the market.

1)Film layer that polarizes light entering2)glass substrate that dictates the dark shapes when the LCD screen is on3)Liquid crystal layer4)glass substrate that lines up with the horizontal filter5)Horizontal film filter letting light through or blocking it6)Reflective surface transmitting an image to the viewer

While many newer TVs and monitors are marketed as LED TVs, it’s sort of the same as an LCD TV. Whereas LCD refers to a display type, LED points to the backlighting in liquid crystal display instead. As such, LED TV is a subset of LCD. Rather than CCFLs, LEDs are light-emitting diodes or semiconductor light sources which generate light when a current passes through.

LED TVs boast several different benefits. Physically, LED television tends to be slimmer than CCFL-based LCD panels, and viewing angles are generally better than on non-LED LCD monitors. So if you’re at an angle, the picture remains relatively clear nonetheless. LEDs are alsoextremely long-lasting as well as more energy-efficient. As such, you can expect a lengthy lifespan and low power draw. Chances are you’ll upgrade to a new telly, or an internal part will go out far before any LEDs cease functioning.

Ultimately, the choice between LED vs VA or any other display technology will depend on your specific needs and preferences, including things like size, resolution, brightness, and colour accuracy.

Please note that some of the mentioned types may be considered a sub-category of LED TVs; therefore, some of the names may vary depending on the manufacturer and the market.

Further segmenting LED TVs down, you"ll find TN panels. A TN or twisted nematic display is a type of LED TV that offers a low-cost solution with a low response time and low input lag.

These displays are known for their high refresh rates, ranging from 100Hz to 144Hz or higher. As a result, many monitors marketed towards gamers feature TN technology. The fast response time and low input lag make them ideal for fast-paced action and gaming. However, TN panels have some limitations.

Overall, while TN panels are an affordable and fast option, they may not be the best choice for those looking for accurate colour reproduction and wide viewing angles.

Like TN, IPS or In-plane Switching displays are a subset of LED panels. IPS monitors tend to boast accurate colour reproduction and great viewing angles. Price is higher than on TN monitors, but in-plane switching TVs generally feature a better picture when compared with twisted nematic sets. Latency and response time can be higher on IPS monitors meaning not all are ideal for gaming.

An IPS display aligns liquid crystals in parallel for lush colours. Polarizing filters have transmission axes aligned in the same direction. Because the electrode alignment differs from TN panels, black levels, viewing angles, and colour accuracy is much better. TN liquid crystals are perpendicular.

A VA or vertical alignment monitor is a type of LED monitor that features excellent contrast ratios, colour reproduction, and viewing angles. This is achieved by using crystals that are perpendicular to the polarizers at right angles, similar to the technology used in TN monitors. VA monitors are known for their deep blacks and vibrant colours, making them popular for media consumption and gaming.

The pricing of VA monitors varies, but they are typically more expensive than TN monitors and less costly than IPS or OLED monitors. Overall, VA monitors are an excellent option for those looking for a balance between good picture quality and affordability.

A quantum dot LED TV or QLED is yet another form of LED television. But it’s drastically different from other LED variants. Whereas most LED panels use a white backlight, quantum dot televisions opt for blue lights. In front of these blue LEDs sits a thin layer of quantum dots. These quantum dots in a screen glow at specific wavelengths of colour, either red, green, or blue, therefore comprising the entire RGB (red-green-blue) colour spectrum required to create a colour TV image.

QLED TV sets are thus able to achieve many more local dimming zones than other LED TVs. As opposed to uniform backlighting, local dimming zones can vary backlighting into zones for adjustable lighting to show accurate light and dark scenes. Quantum Dot displays maintain an excellent, bright image with precise colour reproduction.

Please note that some of the mentioned types may be considered a sub-category of Quantum Dot TVs; therefore, some of the names may vary depending on the manufacturer and the market. Also, it"s worth mentioning that not all brands use the same technology. Some are using QD films or QD-LEDs, others are using QD-OLEDs, and the list could go on.

An OLED or organic light-emitting diode display isn’t another variation of LED. OLEDs use negatively and positively charged ions for illuminating individual pixels. By contrast, LCD/LED TVs use a backlight that can make an unwanted glow. In OLED display, there are several layers, including a substrate, an anode, a hole injection layer, a hole transport layer, an emissive layer, a blocking layer, an electron transport layer, and a cathode. The emissive layer, comprised of an electroluminescent layer of film, is nestled between an electron-injecting cathode and an electron removal layer, the anode. OLEDs benefit from darker blacks and eschew any unwanted screen glow. Because OLED panels are made up of millions of individual subpixels, the pixels themselves emit light, and it’s, therefore, an emissive display as opposed to a transmissive technology like LCD/LED panels where a backlight is required behind the pixels themselves.

The image quality is top-notch. OLED TVs feature superb local dimming capabilities. The contrast ratio is unrivalled, even by the best of QLEDs, since pixels not used may be turned off. There’s no light bleed, black levels are incredible, excellent screen uniformity, and viewing angles don’t degrade the picture. Unfortunately, this comes at a cost. OLEDs are pricey, and the image isn’t as bright overall when compared to LED panels. For viewing in a darkened room, that’s fine, but ambient lighting isn’t ideal for OLED use.

OLED:Organic light-emitting diode display, non-LED. Emissive technology is where negatively and positively charged ions illuminate individual pixels in a display.

Please note that OLED technology can be applied to various displays and devices, and the list mentioned above may not be exhaustive. Also, some types may be considered a sub-category of OLED.

As you can see, a wide variety of displays are available on the market today, each with their unique advantages and disadvantages. While many monitors and TVs are referred to by various names, such as LED, IPS, VA, TN, or QLED, many are variations of LCD panels. The specific technology used in a display, such as the colour of backlighting and the alignment of pixels, plays a major role in determining the overall picture quality.

Earlier this year we reviewed the Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX, a $3,000 beast of a monitor packing 32-inch 4K 144Hz specs along with full HDR functionality. It"s one of the best HDR gaming monitors you can buy today, but it still felt compromised in other aspects, especially for a product that costs a few thousand bucks. But for those that won"t spent the price of two LG OLED TVs to spend on a single gaming monitor, Asus has an alternative monitor that we"re looking at today.

The ROG PG32UQ -- basically the non-X variant -- is the same type of monitor at 32-inch 4K 144Hz IPS, intended for high end gaming with features like adaptive sync and variable overdrive. Instead of providing full HDR through a 1152-zone mini-LED backlight, Asus has opted for a lower cost edge-lit HDR setup giving us DisplayHDR 600 instead of 1400.

The overall design is... well... we"ve seen this before. If you"ve seen any other recent Asus ROG monitor, you"ll know what we"re in for here. Three-pronged metal stand legs which look nice and feel premium, then the rest of the monitor is basically standard plastic with the usual ROG gamer style. Big RGB LED logo on the back as well.

If anything, it"s a small improvement on prior monitors as Asus has replaced the copper highlights on the stand with black, creating a more neutral color palette that will work better with more setups. It"s still a gamer-styled monitor and it"s clearly liked by many as Asus does sell a ton of monitors.

Although Asus lists this monitor topping out at a 144Hz refresh rate, the PG32UQ is actually a 155Hz display through an "overclocking" feature included in the OSD. We guess Asus is segmenting out the 155Hz functionality into an OC mode because not every display will be able to do this in a stable fashion, and also some setups and cables might struggle with the slightly higher bandwidth requirements of that refresh rate at 4K. Our review unit seemed to work fine at 155Hz and in the past we"ve usually had no problems with OC features either, but just a note that it may not work properly with all models.

With that in mind, let"s get to testing response time performance at 155Hz across Asus included six overdrive modes, which are listed as variable overdrive. Level 0 is effectively overdrive disabled, and both Level 1 and Level 2 are quite similar in that response times are slower than 10ms on average but produce virtually no overshoot. You"re probably not going to want to use any of these three modes for gaming.

Then we get Level 4 overdrive which improves performance to an 8.88ms average response time and this only comes at the expense of a slight increase to overshoot. With cumulative deviation decreasing now to 624, this is the best overdrive mode we"ve tested so far and the ideal mode for gaming at 155Hz. Unfortunately though, this mode still isn"t that fast and refresh compliance below 50% is disappointing, suggesting perhaps the panel isn"t quite fast enough for gaming at this refresh rate.

Compared to other displays, the Asus PG32UQ delivers disappointing response performance at its maximum refresh rate, dare I say poor performance to be honest. It"s no better than the PG32UQX, which I slammed in its review for being slow and using outdated IPS technology. The PG32UQ is simply not capable of the same performance as the best 4K displays of today, including the LG 27GN950 and Gigabyte M28U in the 27-inch class, or the Gigabyte FI32U which is a direct competitor to the PG32UQ at 32-inches. The FI32U does deliver more overshoot at the highest refresh rate, but it"s considerably faster and better tuned than the PG32UQ.

The PG32UQ also isn"t impressive on average across the refresh range, despite using variable overdrive. The level of overshoot is low which is good to see, but it"s still easily beaten by products like the 27GN950 and FI32U, although the FI32U lacks a single overdrive mode experience and has high levels of inverse ghosting at some refresh rates. Really neither the FI32U nor the PG32UQ deliver ideal response performance, which is frustrating as the experience with smaller 4K high refresh panels is a noticeable step better.

However on the whole, the PG32UQ is still not that amazing and falls behind IPS panels that appear to be using newer, faster technology. Again the 27GN950, VG28UQL1A and M28U are examples of this at 27-inches, so for whatever reason I"m yet to see that performance at a larger 32-inch size. The nearest equivalent to the PG32UQ is the Gigabyte FI32U and here the FI32U is marginally better - 12% better on average - but again neither of these displays are quite at the level I"d like from a modern high-end IPS monitor.

Power consumption is as expected. This display is 13% more efficient than the Gigabyte FI32U and a decent 35% more efficient than the PG32UQX, suggesting that dropping the mini-LED backlight and G-Sync module does indeed save a bit of power and heat output.

The PG32UQ does support backlight strobing through ELMB-Sync, meaning it can be used with or without adaptive sync enabled. When it"s used with adaptive sync, this is one of the better implementations I"ve seen from Asus, it looks like they"ve put some work in here to reduce the blur that was in this mode previously. The PG32UQ still has some strobe crosstalk as the panel itself isn"t fast enough to keep up with the strobing, and you can"t tune strobe length or brightness in this mode, but you can adjust the clarity position. This is handy because there"s a limited range where you get the best clarity, in the default middle position there is a lot more crosstalk in the top and bottom sections of the monitor.

Next up we have color performance the PG32UQ is an exceptionally wide gamut monitor. Not only do we get 95% DCI-P3 coverage, we also get 100% coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, making this a highly versatile 4K display for content creators. The benefit here is you could be working on your wide gamut images or videos, then later log off from work and start enjoying games at 4K 144Hz. That"s the beauty of these sorts of panels, which in this case is providing a whopping 84% coverage of the Rec 2020 color space, higher than most other panels on the market and well above the Gigabyte FI32U.

When a panel has such a wide color gamut, this introduces challenges for color performance. Out of the box color calibration for greyscale is strong, with virtually no tint to the white point and reasonably good but not perfect adherence to the sRGB gamma curve. However by default for regular sRGB or Rec. 709 content - which is the majority of content today including most YouTube videos - the PG32UQ is hugely oversaturated. This is immediately obvious when using the display, and causes the "sunburn" effect on skin tones where colors that should be pink to brown are all shifted into the red zone.

I recorded quite a decent contrast ratio for an IPS panel with the PG32UQ, and this is without local dimming enabled, which is the default configuration. 1067:1 puts this monitor in the upper end for IPS panels, similar to most modern AU Optronics models and better than the Gigabyte FI32U. However, contrast is still poor in general, as IPS panels are absolutely destroyed in black levels by VA panels and OLEDs.

Viewing angles are a non-issue with this display as it uses high-end IPS technology, although my unit did suffer from moderately low IPS glow. Uniformity was okay, could be better though not the worst result I"ve ever seen and the majority of the panel looks reasonable in this area.

Wrapping up the testing we have HDR performance. The PG32UQ is a semi-HDR panel, because it meets two of the three main criteria for HDR and has limited local dimming functionality. Brightness exceeds 600 nits which is what we want to see, and the panel is capable of a very wide color gamut. However the key area to HDR is contrast, and 16 edge lit dimming zones is not sufficient for true HDR, though it will have some benefit over SDR in ideal conditions.

Sustained brightness is solid at a touch over 650 nits which is mid-range for an HDR panel, and obviously about half that of the PG32UQX. Similar brightness at a 10% window, so the PG32UQ appears to cap out at this brightness level. Indeed when measuring both peak and sustained brightness, I reported no difference at all, so the PG32UQ can"t push up brightness for short flashes either.

Then for worst case HDR contrast in the checkerboard test you get native panel performance as edge lit dimming is totally unable to dim small areas and therefore just enables the backlight at all times. This performance is plainly not suitable for HDR and about a quarter of what you get from the PG32UQX. What this means is that in a large portion of HDR content that has complex areas that need dimming or brightening, the PG32UQ is unable to deliver anywhere near an HDR experience

Saturation accuracy for BT.2020 isn"t great despite covering a lot of this color space. P3 and Rec. 709 inside HDR are also a bit oversaturated, especially for greens, but not horrendous. Would have liked to see a bit better accuracy here as this cannot be calibrated, but given the rest of the panel"s HDR performance this is fine.

With the ROG Swift PG32UQ it comes mostly down to response time performance. For a monitor released in 2021, the PG32UQ has previous-gen IPS response times, failing to get near the best on offer from this panel type today. This causes a bit of ghosting, and while it does have variable overdrive - an annoying omission from the Gigabyte FI32U - it just isn"t that fast.

From our testing we can ascertain that top 27-inch 4K panels have better motion performance than any of the 32-inch variants released so far. Our hope was the PG32UQ would address this and give us top-end IPS speed at this size, but it doesn"t. And while it isn"t a super blurry display or anything like that, there"s enough of a difference to say it"s noticeably slower than the FI32U it competes against.

And that"s a shame because in most other areas performance is strong. This is a very wide gamut panel which gives it great versatility for both gaming and content creation, especially handy at 4K and at this size, yet it still has a decent sRGB mode for everyday use.

Contrast is pretty good for an IPS panel, as is brightness, and the backlight strobing mode through ELMB-Sync is improved on what Asus has been offering in the past and is going to be usable for some buyers. It also features HDMI 2.1, an embarrassing omission on the more expensive ROG PG32UQX flagship.