1440p 500hz vs 4K 240hz also QD-OLED text clarity is AWFUL

[Dalek]

tl;dr just wait for text clarity to be fixed, don’t bother buying OLED yet.

I recently had the chance to try a:
27” 1440p 500hz QD-OLED monitor
27” 4K 240Hz QD-OLED monitor to finally see what all of the hype is all about surrounding OLED, or more specifically QD-OLED.

Here are some key highlights from trying both of these monitors:

OLED Text clarity sucks – I ended up going back to my LCD monitor because of how much discomfort colour fringing caused.

It is a serious issue and a dealbreaker. Any form of text will look bad, even in games. Imagine chromatic aberration around every form of text and faintly around the outline of objects. People say you won't notice it in games, but I noticed it. You will notice it around any text in games and it’s even worse at 1440p especially, but it's still noticeable at 4K too.

Some people find it noticeable, others don’t. But to me it was painfully obvious, it isn't something you can get used to or ignore. It’s apparently worse on QD-OLED in comparison to W-OLED. I haven't tried W-OLED but apparently text clarity is slightly better for it.
If you use night light (removal of the colour blue) then text clarity will be even worse.

I would personally stick with an LCD or IPS monitor until colour fringing/sub-pixel layout is fixed. I don’t think you’re getting your money’s worth with text clarity being bad. When you’re paying that much for a monitor, it should be good for everything, not just one thing. Feels like my rant from a few years ago about monitors prior to fast IPS lol. Before anyone mentions it, yes I am well aware text clarity has been an issue on OLED monitors since the beginning. I didn’t realise how bad it actually was in-person and I don't think any reviewers clearly highlight how bad it actually is. Reviewers make it seem like a 4 or 5/10 issue, but it's a 10/10 issue.

Semi-gloss coating isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, even with lights on and in daylight. That being said, I would still go with a matte display since I still noticed it a little bit here and there and don’t want any form of reflection distraction. I didn’t really notice that much ‘sharp clarity’ with semi-gloss given how horrible text looked. I haven’t seen any matte OLED displays to compare, so I can’t verify as to how ‘bad’ they supposedly look. Matte displays can be done right and should still be a thing for OLED provided it's done correctly.

Further details below.

Motion clarity and 1440p vs 4K

The 4K visuals looked great, but switching down to 1440p, I can't say the downgrade was that noticeable. I'd definitely like to re-test this once subpixel layouts are fixed.

In terms of motion clarity, 60hz looked perfectly fine to me. I remember a lot of people complained about low refresh rates looking really bad on OLED, but for me it looked normal. Even snappier than usual playing an RTS game. Note: I was still used to looking at 60hz

For 4K 240hz, I started to get motion sickness from the MPRT. While it does look 'sharper' than LCD when it comes to motion clarity, the MRPT is morealess the same as LCD. It's like playing with motion blur switched on in a game’s graphical setting.

For 1440p 500hz, this was a huge improvement in motion clarity. Flick shots were much easier and the MPRT looked more natural and less annoying in comparison. I think 600hz or even 720hz would be the sweet spot for motion clarity for me personally. But I look forward to 600hz since it means video playback will be nice at all frame rates (e.g. 24, 30, 60 etc.)

Flicker: Flicker is one downside to OLED, but not once did I ever face any flicker. This is without switching on the anti-flicker feature on the monitor. So for me personally, I didn't have to worry about it. Maybe that's because of having newer hardware.

Pushing out 500fps increased the temperature of the room a lot quicker than usual, so room temperature will be another factor you will need to consider.

Brightness, colours and contrast: It's better than LCD, yes. Perfect blacks, the colours are more vivid. Definitely more immersive for darker games. The Last of Us 1 was a great game to play through that had wow factor, especially briefly playing it in the dark briefly. It does remind of me CRTs in terms of vibrancy.

Brightness at 100% is extremely bright. OLEDs are definitely bright enough at this point.

If you increase the gamma to the highest number in the settings to 1.4, you can make it look/feel like LCD in the sense that it doesn't look too dark or oversaturated. But with all of that being said, I still love LCD. I went back to LCD with no regrets.

You don’t need a 5090 to hit super high frame rates, a 9070XT will do it with no issues (assuming you also have fast RAM and something like a 9800x3D). You might need to lower some settings, but these days ‘Low’ graphical settings are more like medium quality more often than not and aren’t really noticeable. Don’t waste your money on an overpriced GPU like a 5090, especially since the 12vhpwr can just randomly melt.

Again, I will stress. When you're paying close to $1000 for an OLED, it should be perfect for both productivity, gaming, videos, etc. But it's not. Therefore I think OLED is a waste of money at this stage. I will re-visit OLED once the subpixel layout issue has been fixed. I know the fault is on Windows since they solely provide an RGB subpixel layout but even so, I don't think OLED should be out the door until this is fixed.

MacType is also not a valid fix as it only adjusts things slightly in Windows and not other apps.