help me choose (1080p,144hz gsync),1440p/1080p,60hz

[Vertiq]

Hi new here
My current monitor is a 1080P TN 60 hz monitor i bought 8 years ago

Can't decide between geting a 1080P 144hz TN monitor+gsync ( PG248Q specifically) or a 1440P 60hz IPS(MZ27AQ) or just a 1080P IPS monitor, and another thing is i don't have much of a choice between brands most brands like acer,viewsonic, aoc are sold out here( they'll restock again after a month but i don't wanna wait that long) and dell and benq are too expensive for what they offer so that leaves only asus, (samsung and LG don't offer much)

I wanna have a clear picture quality because i watch a lot of movies (sometimes shows) and i play a lot of games too,
I was gonna buy PG248Q but i'm seeing people on the internet saying how bad TN panels are so felt like i should ask you guys to help me with this
1- I play all kinds of games (mostly RPG like FFXV-Wicther 3 and sometimes For Honor and overwatch)
2- my setup
CPU:i5 6400
GPU:GTX 1070 G1
Ram:8 GB
PSU:Cooler Master 500W
can get over 60 easily in online game like bf4-OW and for honor but i struggle o hit above 60 on FF XV

2- i also wanna use consoles with this monitr (ps3,360,wii,PS4) so let me know if you think the picture of old consoles will look like crap on 1440p screen, some like wii already look super terrible on my LG 1080p OLED TV

3-My biggest issue currently is color banding(pixelated colors) , i can't stand it and i'm not sure if IPS is totally gonna remove that but i don't see it on my LG TV ( seems like most monitors are too crap in that regard even IPS+144hz ones that i can't afford )

So what do you guys think?

[lexlazootin]

That's a tricky one that is very difficult to answer because '1080p TN 144hz' and '1440p IPS' are two very different type of monitors with very different experiences.

1440p and IPS are very nice but i personally value the 144hz more and the quicker TN screen for pc gaming. Maybe if you're mainly going to use consoles the 144hz wont matter as much but it is your personal choice after all. 1440p shouldn't look worse then 1080p, upscaling is always going to look bad but a native 1080p ps4 image would look a little better on a native 1080p screen.

It's not a easy choice and there isn't really a right answer.

[Vertiq]

Thanks man, appreciate the answer

That's what i afraid of it seems like the era of having one monitor for all of your needs is dead(unless you wanna spend a lot on an Ips+144hz)

have you had any experience with PG248Q? reviews seem good but people are reporting problems about bad colors or so which is on the other hand is what i also hear about IPS glow on IPS displays

[lexlazootin]

The colors are not as good as a IPS display but in no way are they wacky tacky bad. It looks fine as most modern TN panels, no where as bad as a cheap laptop anyways.

I honestly believe IPS glow to be overrated, I've personally never seen a issue and i think people are just being silly. You won't have a issue unless you really really care.

[Vertiq]

Thanks man
The thing is I went to pc build communities ( r/builedapc , overclock forums and r/Monitors) looking for answers and found a bunch of people saying how terrible TN panels are and i thought to myself that these panels might even be worse than my 8-year-old TN panel

So that's why i went looking for an IPS cause i absolutely hate color banding and pixelated colors and what i gathered was that it mostly happens on 6bit+FRC panels than true 8 bit panels and etc

I know I'm being too picky here can't help myself, anyway Thanks again for the help

[KindOldRaven]

Thanks man
The thing is I went to pc build communities ( r/builedapc , overclock forums and r/Monitors) looking for answers and found a bunch of people saying how terrible TN panels are and i thought to myself that these panels might even be worse than my 8-year-old TN panel

So that's why i went looking for an IPS cause i absolutely hate color banding and pixelated colors and what i gathered was that it mostly happens on 6bit+FRC panels than true 8 bit panels and etc

I know I'm being too picky here can't help myself, anyway Thanks again for the help

The TN issue is overrated. There are horrible TN panels, but that's mostly due to bad gamma and/or lots of backlight bleed/clouding. If you've got a decent example, like the XB252Q I'm staring at right now you can get pretty darn good colors without noticeable backlight bleed or any other nonsense. The only myth that is *absolutely* true about TN panels though, is the horrible viewing angles. Especially vertically. Even moving a few inches will shift the image quite a bit. You won't really notice that when gaming too much, but you will during everyday use. Is that a killer? Nahh... but it is if you've got a crappy panel with the other issues *and* this one.

I've also got a Samsung CFG73 VA panel in this same room: best contrast you'll find, pretty insane colors and good viewing angles. Well... it still looks good from all sides, but only if you sit directly in front of it will the colors really 'pop'. That's a VA-thing though. Point I'm trying to make is that this TN on my own desk isn't that much worse at all. And IPS doesn't even have the contrast these VA panels have, only better viewing angles/motion clarity with certain transitions.

So don't worry too much ;p I'd personally go with 1080p Gsync 144hz and just enter the panel lottery until you've got a good one. If you game, you'll love the high refresh-rate. You'll also love Gsync to keep things feeling more consistent, even when frames drop below that magical 144hz number.

[Vertiq]

Thanks man
The thing is I went to pc build communities ( r/builedapc , overclock forums and r/Monitors) looking for answers and found a bunch of people saying how terrible TN panels are and i thought to myself that these panels might even be worse than my 8-year-old TN panel

So that's why i went looking for an IPS cause i absolutely hate color banding and pixelated colors and what i gathered was that it mostly happens on 6bit+FRC panels than true 8 bit panels and etc

I know I'm being too picky here can't help myself, anyway Thanks again for the help

The TN issue is overrated. There are horrible TN panels, but that's mostly due to bad gamma and/or lots of backlight bleed/clouding. If you've got a decent example, like the XB252Q I'm staring at right now you can get pretty darn good colors without noticeable backlight bleed or any other nonsense. The only myth that is *absolutely* true about TN panels though, is the horrible viewing angles. Especially vertically. Even moving a few inches will shift the image quite a bit. You won't really notice that when gaming too much, but you will during everyday use. Is that a killer? Nahh... but it is if you've got a crappy panel with the other issues *and* this one.

I've also got a Samsung CFG73 VA panel in this same room: best contrast you'll find, pretty insane colors and good viewing angles. Well... it still looks good from all sides, but only if you sit directly in front of it will the colors really 'pop'. That's a VA-thing though. Point I'm trying to make is that this TN on my own desk isn't that much worse at all. And IPS doesn't even have the contrast these VA panels have, only better viewing angles/motion clarity with certain transitions.

So don't worry too much ;p I'd personally go with 1080p Gsync 144hz and just enter the panel lottery until you've got a good one. If you game, you'll love the high refresh-rate. You'll also love Gsync to keep things feeling more consistent, even when frames drop below that magical 144hz number.

Your post made this easier for me

How good is your CFG73 btw? it's...out of stock atm i can import but i'm not gonna go through that with monitors since panel lottery is a thing due to terrible QA from most brands so importing and returning it would be a bit much

C27FG70 is currently available at my near store but i heard it has purple artifact issue and ghosting not to mention it's a 27" panel so 1080p is not gonna look that good compared to 24" (correct me if I'm wrong) but it's obviously cheaper than PG248Q which I'm gonna buy

[GammaLyrae]

I had a CFG70, one of the earlier models.

The big stink about 'purple trails' has to do with how Samsung tuned the pixel overdrive settings. The earlier models were too aggressive, and this resulted in inverted color artifacts trailing behind objects of certain colors, though it seems to affect darker and mid tones in a broad sense. Sometimes its your typical inversion trail artifact, other times it's more subtle and can shift the entire hue of the moving object to purple. I noticed it was most prominent in games like CounterStrike or Vermintide where various shades of grey and brown were more common.

Later firmwares "fix" this, and it's not a problem at all on the cfg73 series. But it's been "fixed" by making the pixel overdrive settings very tame in comparison, which affects the clarity of moving images. VA panels universally have issues transitioning from black to, well, anything else. While the CHG70 isn't the exact model you were looking at, it's another Samsung model that uses one of their VA panels. TFT central took some pretty detailed measurements of its response time.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/sam ... d_response

If you'd like an example of what this poor response time can look like in practice, there are videos on YouTube. Even though they're going to be grainy and compressed off-screen footage of the monitor in action, and may also be susceptible to any motion blur of the monitor you're looking at them on, it can let you draw comparisons, if, say, that particular user has also uploaded footage from the same game, same camera, and a different monitor.

Here's some footage of Crysis Warhead on an Acer Predator Z35, which uses a VA panel.

Highlights: All texture detail of the walls and ground are lost in motion, thanks to slow transition times for dark and intermediate colors. The black banding on the wire smears across the image because the response time from black to anything is so sluggish as to take up to 50ms according to tftcentral's measurements, which isn't even a response time suitable for 30hz. If your monitor already has poor response times, you can pause the video as he pans the camera around. Then you can observe as you're able to make out details on any of the brighter areas of the screen, but the darker areas will be a blurry mess, thanks to currently universal VA panel characteristics - slow 'rise times' (black to anything brighter would be considered a rise). Smaller transitions, and transitions from one bright color to another bright color are usually fine, but not every game is as bright and saturated as, say, Overwatch.

This same user has off-screen footage of the same game, taken while playing it on a PG279Q which uses an IPS panel. While they're far from the fastest...if you pause the video you can still notice some detail loss, the image is far more stable. You can still make out details on the ground and walls as he pans the camera around, and the wire spool doesn't smear all over the screen either, thanks to a much more uniform response time. If you watch the two videos back to back, the detail loss in motion as seen on the Z35 will be much more obvious. Your sensitivity to this may vary - there are things about VA panels to like, such as their very deep blacks thanks to the high contrast ratios they offer, generally better panel construction that limits or completely reduces backlight bleed, lesser 'glow' compared to an IPS panel, and excellent color reproduction.

Generally speaking, with the current technology we have, you must decide what elements of an image are most important to you, and pick a panel type that caters to your preferred strengths, that excels enough in one or more categories to make up for what are legitimately significant weaknesses.

For myself, I decided that I hated screen tearing, I enjoyed accurate colors, and I didn't want the image to change dramatically with viewing angle. This limited my options to VA and IPS panels, with freesync or gsync as features provided by the hardware of the monitor. TN panels have poor viewing angles, ruling them out. I enjoyed the essentially infinite contrast ratio of CRTs thanks to their "true" blacks, so I tried a VA panel first, with the Samsung CFG70. In practice, I found that the slow transition times were so distracting in games that I switched to a monitor with an IPS panel. I miss the contrast ratio, but everything else gained in terms of motion clarity made up for it, in my eyes.

[Vertiq]

Thanks, I enjoyed reading your detailed post, very informative

I'm also looking at Asus MX259H (cheap IPS 1080P) and MX25AQ ( 2K ips 60hz) but I'll probably go with 144hz TN if colors are really that bad I'll return it and get a 60hz IPS