OLED vs. IPS for Gaming – Which One Wins?

[madprice88]

I'm currently looking to upgrade my monitor and torn between OLED and high-refresh IPS panels. OLED offers deep blacks and incredible contrast, but IPS still has advantages in brightness and longevity. For gaming, especially fast-paced shooters, which one do you think is the better choice?

[kyube]

I'm currently looking to upgrade my monitor and torn between OLED and high-refresh IPS panels. OLED offers deep blacks and incredible contrast, but IPS still has advantages in brightness and longevity. For gaming, especially fast-paced shooters, which one do you think is the better choice?

If you are looking for the best sample & hold experience and don't mind the issues (light flicker, subpixel layout), 480Hz WOLED is the best experience for any type of use, be it casual desktop use or gaming.
If you are looking for the best strobing experience, the XG2431, XL2566K & the E-TN's would very likely be adequate for your use-case.

There's much more nuance to this topic, especially in games which have a hard-locked frame rate limit.
If this is the case, only strobed displays would help you achieve the best motion clarity possible.

There are also the topics of eye-tracked vs static-gaze motion blur, stroboscopic effect...
There are many topics on Blurbusters about this, feel free to do your research.

[purplemelon1]

I'm currently looking to upgrade my monitor and torn between OLED and high-refresh IPS panels. OLED offers deep blacks and incredible contrast, but IPS still has advantages in brightness and longevity. For gaming, especially fast-paced shooters, which one do you think is the better choice?

You shouldn't misunderstand the brightness. Nits are not linear so 200 nits to 400 nits does not mean twice as bright. It's more like 50% appearance. I can't explain the math.
Don't go in thinking strobing is only a plus thing. Make sure you know what the costs of it are. There is a guy in the strobing section wondering if his 600hz monitor is suppose to look like how it does.

I recommend going for one of the 360hz oleds if you want one of the cheaper options. You might be concerned about longetivity. But even long after you get burn in, you are not going to notice the brightness loss and colour shift until you get a new display.
Tcl already showed off a 4k 1000hz last year. Even if it takes another 4 years to arrive. Are you sure you want a display that lasts 15 years if motion clarity is that important to you?

[mbm]

As alot of us are used to LCD... I my self have a hard time to get used to OLED as a gaming monitor.
I think OLEDS are too dim and too "black".... not always good for competitive gaming.... but panelspeed offcouse OLED is a winner.

[yuri]

OLED, is horrible because of stroboscopic effect.

If someday with find a solution for that, OLED will win.


But for now IPS is better.

[DeltaForCain]

As someone who made the exact switch in 2022: If you can afford it, go for OLED. The colour quality alone blows LCD out of the water, and the perfect contrast is great in games, especially coupled with the fact that you see details like specular highlights much better since every Diode is self-emitting. They also have great motion clarity.

Downsides are risk of burn-in (so far, not a hint, after ~2.5 years, but I also always let it do its pixel refreshes regularly). As for brightness: I use the HDR True Black mode exclusively (I never switch to SDR mode any more) and despite the specs saying it peaks out at 400 nits in that mode, white webpages are like a flashbang. That being said, I also don’t sit near a window, so I have full control over what light shines on the screen. If you regularly sit in sunlight, an OLED will suck for you.

Motion clarity and fluidity are amazing, especially if you set it all up properly (Gsync + Vsync, Reflex On).