Blur Busters Forums

Hi!

I recently purchased an Acer XF270HUA (27", 2560x1440, 144Hz).
It is great, except this very visible distortion that I discovered recently.
If I open http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php#invpattern and select Pattern 1 the picture gets a very obvious green tint and the black box sets a very obvious horizontal dark shadow/band. See photo: https://imgur.com/ERFBSvA

I tried different cables:
- HDMI
- DVI (dual-link, it came with the monitor)

Different computers:
- PC with nVidia GT 530
- PC with Radeon 6770
- laptop (HDMI)

Also different operating systems: Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 16.04

They all behave the same. Also, if I display that web page in full screen and open the OSD menu of the monitor, I get the same effect (horizontal dark shadow left of the OSD menu).

And to top it of, my previous monitor (Samsung C27H711) had a similar problem (I returned it due to this problem, also it had flicker while the product description claimed it were flicker-free), see this photo: https://imgur.com/QlgVoMU (see the faint horizontal lines right of the bright window, along its top edge)

Do I just have incredibly bad luck with hardware purchases this year?
Or is this common, even normal?
I reset the monitor setting to factory defaults, but is does not help.

Regards,
David

I've seen similar behaviours on many 144Hz and 240Hz TN monitors, to varying-levels of extents. Some worse, some better.

Inversion artifacts (also seen at http://www.testufo.com/inversion ...) is a very common behaviour with many panels. Sometimes it does not happen with a checkerboard pattern but a different pattern (one of the Lagom patterns, or a new pattern).

The best panels I've encountered that avoids a lot of these, tends to be the 165 Hz IPS G-SYNC monitors. If you're really unusually concerned about inversion artifacts (and also row-leakage artifacts), the IPS panels generally have much less of these. You have a bit more ghosting/lag but if this is your priority -- then you might want to try out the IPS ones. If avoiding these artifacts are your priority (and you're fine with other potential IPS issues such as slower response), these monitors are favourable from the perspective of inversion artifacts:

High-refresh-rate IPS 1440p displays
- Acer Predator XB271HU
- AOC AG271QG
- ASUS ROG PG279Q
- Viewsonic XG2703-GS

If you prefer to stick to TN, I see much fainter inversion-artifact behaviours at 240Hz, none as terrible as this. I've encountered some 144Hz TN that is much better but also much worse than the pictures you have.

I discovered that if I set contrast to 62 or more, then the problem disappears (at least on this page, but then I get a purple tint on pattern 7b), also, the whites are then over-saturated (this page: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php almost all patterns are same color as background).

The problem on pattern 1 also disappears if I set gamma to 1.8 in OSD.

I'll return the monitor as broken. For 500 EUR I expect a bit more.