The computer and electronics super geek thread

[azrael]

9 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

i worried about burn-in for pc monitor use and decided to go IPS. I guess your braver than me.  i leave up alot of static images for about 6-8 hours, my for uses: I disable sleep, screen saver, dimmer.  Do you have any fears of static images on the Samsung or don't think about it? 

I'd recommend watching/reading Monitors Unboxed or RTings OLED burn-in series. The jist is, OLED will suffer burn-in, eventually. The good news is, thanks to the various anti-burn-in methods (pixel shifting, screen savers, power timeouts, reduced brightness, more black, etc) you can extend the life of the panel to where it may not be a problem by the time you upgrade. First gen panels are very susceptible to burn-in. Newer panels are much more resilient. And unless you're torture testing your panel, the chances of burn-in are significantly lower as long as you enable anti-burn-in features. 
That being said, the conventional wisdom still applies, if you are mainly doing productivity, go with IPS or VA panels. Content consumption & gaming? Go OLED.

Me? I'm sticking to IPS only because my productivity usage far outweighs my gaming and content consumption. Also DP 2.1 has cable signaling issues and I run 6ft cables due to my monitor arms (yes, I'm aware of HDMI 2.2). And seeing as I read a lot, text fringing would annoy me (but I hear that new 27" 4k 240Hz OLED panel that showed up at CES has really made this a non-issue).

[davidwhangchoi]

24 minutes ago, azrael said:

I'd recommend watching/reading Monitors Unboxed or RTings OLED burn-in series. The jist is, OLED will suffer burn-in, eventually. The good news is, thanks to the various anti-burn-in methods (pixel shifting, screen savers, power timeouts, reduced brightness, more black, etc) you can extend the life of the panel to where it may not be a problem by the time you upgrade. First gen panels are very susceptible to burn-in. Newer panels are much more resilient. And unless you're torture testing your panel, the chances of burn-in are significantly lower as long as you enable anti-burn-in features. 
That being said, the conventional wisdom still applies, if you are mainly doing productivity, go with IPS or VA panels. Content consumption & gaming? Go OLED.

Me? I'm sticking to IPS only because my productivity usage far outweighs my gaming and content consumption. Also DP 2.1 has cable signaling issues and I run 6ft cables due to my monitor arms (yes, I'm aware of HDMI 2.2). And seeing as I read a lot, text fringing would annoy me (but I hear that new 27" 4k 240Hz OLED panel that showed up at CES has really made this a non-issue).

thanks for the lowdown. i tried using my OLED C1 as a monitor but the text isn't as clear so i just use it to play games and movies.  

how many nits is your IPS monitor and what do you think is the bare minimum for a bright lit room or outdoor usage? 

My IPS screen is about 500 nits at max, i'm comfortable with it but wondering if i should go brighter.

 

[mikeszekely]

39 minutes ago, azrael said:

Me? I'm sticking to IPS only because my productivity usage far outweighs my gaming and content consumption. Also DP 2.1 has cable signaling issues and I run 6ft cables due to my monitor arms (yes, I'm aware of HDMI 2.2). And seeing as I read a lot, text fringing would annoy me (but I hear that new 27" 4k 240Hz OLED panel that showed up at CES has really made this a non-issue).

I think if you're primarily doing productivity, yeah, IPS is probably the better way to go.  For what it's worth, though, I don't notice any text fringing on my G9 OLED.  I'm not claiming it's not there, mind you.  Just that, from where I sit (two to three feet away, with my eyes level with the top third of the display) at 1440p and the scaling set to 100% I'm just not seeing it.  It's possible that I might if I got up closer, but as I'm now in my mid-40s* I'd need reading glasses anyway.

*I joined MW when I was in college.  It's weird to think that there are people here I've been talking to for basically my whole adult life yet I've never met any of you in person. 

[azrael]

1 hour ago, davidwhangchoi said:

how many nits is your IPS monitor and what do you think is the bare minimum for a bright lit room or outdoor usage? 

My IPS screen is about 500 nits at max, i'm comfortable with it but wondering if i should go brighter.

Gaming IPS is 400 nits. My WFH monitor for my work laptop does a max of 350 nits. Both are still completely usable in my bright sunlight drench room even at 25% brightness.

Bare minimum is 300 nits in a brightly lit indoor environment.

500 nits is definitely good enough, unless you are viewing HDR content. The best factor, though, is location. My back and monitors are not facing a window so, thankfully, I don't catch any glare. If you don't think its bright enough, consider rearranging furniture so you are indirectly getting light. Unless you are in a basement with no windows, in which case, move lights around as well as furniture. Or find something you to use as a divider to deflect some light.

[kajnrig]

12 hours ago, azrael said:

That being said, the conventional wisdom still applies, if you are mainly doing productivity, go with IPS or VA panels. Content consumption & gaming? Go OLED.

What's the advantage of IPS/VA over OLED for productivity?

[mikeszekely]

8 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

What's the advantage of IPS/VA over OLED for productivity?

It's not so much that IPS/VA has advantages as much as OLED has disadvantages in that area.

1. As discussed, long-term display of static images can lead to image retention or burn-in on OLED displays.

2. Due to the different way OLED subpixels are laid out Windows TrueType fonts can have fringing issues when displayed on OLED.

3. OLED tends to be more expensive (though not always).

Then it comes down to the fact that most of OLED's advantages are a boon for gaming and content consumption but have little bearing on productivity; better contrast, wider color gamut, true blacks, high refresh rates, less motion blur, wider viewing angles, etc.  If you're playing a modern video game or watching a movie in HDR then the picture quality of OLED just can't be beat.

This isn't to say that you can't use an OLED for productivity.  I definitely do productivity work on my desktop, and frankly the 32:9 aspect ratio (it's basically like two 16:9 27" monitors side-by-side) and Windows Snap is pretty great for the stuff I do.  But the thing is, I maybe put 4 hours of gaming in for every hour of productivity I do on my desktop, assuming I'm not just surfing the internet on something like the M1 MacBook I'm currently typing this on from the living room instead.  But if you're not really using your display for gaming then cons of OLED start to outweigh the pros.

[kajnrig]

Oh yeah, for whatever reason my mind just completely skipped over burn-in despite literally reading your discussion on it two seconds earlier. Oof.

[azrael]

17 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

What's the advantage of IPS/VA over OLED for productivity?

A few reasons.

Consistency. IPS panels color reproduction and accuracy, viewing angles are very consistent. OLED can do this as well, but over time, the organic material in OLED will begin to degrade. Keep in mind I'm talking about hundreds of thousand hours of use (for the majority of folks, we're talking 3...5...maybe 6 years of usage). My workplace still has IPS monitors from 10+ years ago still in service. For productivity, long-term usage and ROI are taken into account. IPS will deliver on that.

Text. OLED subpixel layouts are arranged in a way which has a tendency to cause fringing. This looks like the text on-screen has little hairs. As you get closer, the pixels get more jagged. As you get closer to where you can see the actual pixels, you'll see what causes that fringing. WOLED is a little better at this but that fringing becomes a blurring effect to smooth out the fringing. So you end up with a blurry-effect on text. Overtime, this will probably give you a headache. Not ideal if you are reading text all day.

Long-term durability. We've talked about burn-in. Productivity usually involves lots of static images and text on-screen. OLED, while the effect can be mitigated, it will still occur over time. A single 8-hour day will not cause burn-in. Neither will a single 40-hour work week or work month. A year of constant usage? Maybe. 2-3 years? Possibly. Over time, the risk of burn-in increases. As long as you use anti-burn-in features, an OLED panel will likely last for years and years.

It's not to say you cannot use OLED for productivity. But over time, the down-sides of OLED may impact your work. IPS doesn't have that problem.

[JB0]

Of course, if you're like me and disable subpixel anti-aliasing because it is garbage doesn't work for you anyways, you don't have to care about the subpixel layout. Hooray!