Anyone else find OLEDs' progression disappointing?

[NDUS]

For the past ten years or more, I've been saying to myself: I can't wait for the next year or two, when OLEDs finally become superior to all the other options. But it hasn't materialized and it seems like it never will.

In terms of their biggest deficiencies (burn-in, color drift) they are a little better than they used to be, but it's still a big factor for anyone using an OLED as a daily main monitor.

But in terms of what used to be marketed as their biggest upside (refresh rate, motion clarity) they are still inferior to strobed TN panels. As anyone who's seem both side-by-side, or looked at motiontracked comparisons online can tell you, strobed TN still beats OLED badly. And OLEDs cannot strobe at refresh rates remotely close to what TN is capable of.

How can this be? Nothing prevents OLED panels from running at arbitrarily high refresh rates except the manufacturer's willingness to write faster / more optimized firmware and implement it on sufficiently strong controller chips. In terms of the physical hardware, OLED should be able to do any refresh rate (just like how LEDs can effortlessly run at a duty cycle of 40,000hz.)

So why don't we at least have OLEDs which have strobe + refresh at frequency parity with TNs? Are OLED manufacturers fundamentally incompetent or lazy in some way that TN manufacturers are not, and so they are unable or unwilling to produce high-refresh-rate display controllers? Is this because OLED has historically been a luxury home theater product, where product engineering quality is not emphasized as much as marketing? I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Firstly, motion blur is pixel visibility time, ala Blur Busters Law:
1. Motion blur of flickerless displays = frametime
2. Motion blur of flicker displays = pulsewidth (how much a frame flashes for)

So why don't we at least have OLEDs which have strobe + refresh at frequency parity with TNs?

It's a technology limitation.
- LCDs have a separate lighting (backlight) and panel. Lighting can be controlled independently of panel.
- OLEDs combine the lighting and panel. Lighting is unavoidably tied to the refresh cycle.

We already have 480-720Hz OLED with less motion blur than LightBoost TN displays, if you use third party strobing instead of the built-in BFI feature. The main blame is the hardware BFI feature built into OLED. LightBoost strobe backlights used 2.4ms MPRT, while using software-based BFI using 1 visible frame for every 7 black frames = 60fps with 2ms MPRT (1/480sec) = less motion blur than LightBoost. But, the BFI built into OLEDs are 50% duty cycle.

Displays are literally historical $10,000 supercomputers (e.g. 4K in year 2001, aka IBM T221 monitor -- look up its price 25 years ago) that have been miniaturized in a race-to-bottom pricing of just $300-$1000 approximately, and sometimes features just aren't fitting the budget of modern lower-cost display engineering. So sometimes, features are a collision between (A) technology limitations and (B) feature limiations.

Are OLED manufacturers fundamentally incompetent or lazy in some way

I would word it differently. Manufacturers often have to outsource to low-cost development (Scaler/TCON) that may not fully understand variable-persistence BFI (adjustable pulsewidth in BFI). The BFI checkbox is 50%:50% (1 black frame for every 1 visible frame) which only reduces display motion blur by 50%

Moral of the story.
1. Buy more refresh rate.
2. Use software BFI like ShaderBeam app that can outperform hardware BFI

Then you can get motion blur similar to TN LCD strobing. 720Hz OLED strobed at 1 visible frame vs many black frames = 1/720sec MPRT = 1.4ms = fairly competitive to most strobe backlights, albiet very dark. While a lot of strobe backlights can go briefer than that, a lot are roughly in that territory, so we're already getting there.

Most strobe backlights use voltage over-boosting so strobe backlights can strobe brighter than 1000-2000 nits to compensate for its dimness. OLEDs are not particularly bright with BFI so brief strobe are darker.

For playing more with variable-pulsewidth in software, play with the settings at www.testufo.com/blackframes to understand the science. (Turn off the brightness equalizer, and you will see that the briefer-flickering UFOs are darker)

Also, if you don't use strobing, 720fps 720Hz gives you strobeless motion clarity that's better than early TN strobe backlights (e.g. LightBoost), but without needing the flicker of strobing. From this point of view, OLEDs at extreme frame rates can produce rather impressive motion clarity that is far beyond any LCD. Making strobing obsolete (in theory) -- but it requires lots of framerate to do framerate-based motion blur reduction.

[NDUS]

So why don't we at least have OLEDs which have strobe + refresh at frequency parity with TNs?

It's a technology limitation.
- LCDs have a separate lighting (backlight) and panel. Lighting can be controlled independently of panel.
- OLEDs combine the lighting and panel. Lighting is unavoidably tied to the refresh cycle.

I realize OLEDs are self-emissive, but on the other hand, there is no liquid crystal panel which has to undergo physical twisting. So I don't see how we can call it a physical limitation. To put it another way, if we suddenly had a zillion-dollar Earth-scale Apollo-like mission to make a 10,000hz display that strobes, that display would inevitably be an OLED, not a TN. Even you yourself have said in the past that OLED should allow for arbitrarily fast refresh rates (and therefore strobing)

We already have 480-720Hz OLED with less motion blur than LightBoost TN displays, if you use third party strobing instead of the built-in BFI feature. The main blame is the hardware BFI feature built into OLED. LightBoost strobe backlights used 2.4ms MPRT, while using software-based BFI using 1 visible frame for every 7 black frames = 60fps with 2ms MPRT (1/480sec) = less motion blur than LightBoost. But, the BFI built into OLEDs are 50% duty cycle.

But that's only true at lower refresh rates like 60hz, which is cool for retro gaming I guess, but 1) probably still inferior to CRTs for that, and 2) hugely inferior to strobed 540hz TNs for high framerate games. This should be embarrassing to OLED companies when a huge chunk of performance is basically being left on the table, only gated behind firmware / controller design effort. It's also a sort of performance which would be immutable: OLEDs inevitably lose their color accuracy, but they never lose their refresh rate.

I just find it insanely disappointing that OLED manufacturers have been fiddling with their thumbs for ten years when, if they put in effort, and didn't want to sell incremental upgrades, we could've had a 1000hz strobing OLED ten years ago, let alone today. It's not like it's so inconceivable to make a 2000hz display controller, the energy dissipation permitted in a monitor allows a lot of computation. Nvidia has been selling monitors with a coprocessor that drinks an extra 20 watts of energy for a long time and it works fine.

[kyube]

For the past ten years or more, I've been saying to myself: I can't wait for the next year or two, when OLEDs finally become superior to all the other options. But it hasn't materialized and it seems like it never will.

But they already are superior to all other options?
Even more so with the arrival of the ASUS PG27UCWM, which will finally solve the biggest issue we've had the past 4 years of OLED monitors, the subpixel layout.
The issue is that most people forget that, in principle, S&H simply requires FPS>Hz, which falls apart in the vast majority of games and/or workloads that people do every day.
In fact, only ~390 / +10k games I went through by hand are playable at +500FPS natively...

In terms of their biggest deficiencies (burn-in, color drift) they are a little better than they used to be, but it's still a big factor for anyone using an OLED as a daily main monitor.

Burn-in is a over-exaggerated complaint.

But in terms of what used to be marketed as their biggest upside (refresh rate, motion clarity) they are still inferior to strobed TN panels.
As anyone who's seem both side-by-side, or looked at motiontracked comparisons online can tell you, strobed TN still beats OLED badly.

See, this is the 'problem' with the thread.
You've cherrypicked a single characteristic of dynamic image quality, which is eye-tracked motion performance and come to the conclusion that OLED is disappointing.
See:

S&H was never meant to compete with impulsed displays at these, relatively speaking, low refresh rates.
With "low refresh rates", I mean anything 4000 FPS @ <4000 Hz.
Another thing which isn't mentioned in your write-up is the eye-strain concern of strobed solutions, which isn't a miniscule thing in the slightest.

And OLEDs cannot strobe at refresh rates remotely close to what TN is capable of.

OLEDs don't strobe. They don't have a backlight, they insert a black frame.
Brightness is the limitation at hand here. Which means pushing voltage through the OLED driving and/or switching circuitry is going to introduce some form of issues.
I do think it's a artificial limitation though, as seen with the LG C1 & a few other OLED displays, which were able to use achieve a effective refresh rate which is noticably above their actual refresh rate (aka ~2,7778ms 'on' period @ 120Hz)

How can this be? Nothing prevents OLED panels from running at arbitrarily high refresh rates except the manufacturer's willingness to write faster / more optimized firmware and implement it on sufficiently strong controller chips.
In terms of the physical hardware, OLED should be able to do any refresh rate (just like how LEDs can effortlessly run at a duty cycle of 40,000hz.)

OLEDs will have the same visual artifact (ghosting) as LCDs have right now once we go past 2000 Hz.
The biggest limitation is the workloads (games) which can fully take advantage of such (relatively large) refresh rate numbers.
It's why I understand why people complain of not having good BFI on OLED, which would make it the "king of display solutions" due to not having the G2G RT limitation of LCD, having proper contrast ratio.
It would render any other strobed/impulsed solution on the market irrelevant.
A reminder that CRTs can get 0,1 ms – 0,5ms strobe 'on' period, which means that its clear on the TestUFO ghosting test above 3840 px/s
Current OLEDs are far below that.

So why don't we at least have OLEDs which have strobe + refresh at frequency parity with TNs?
Are OLED manufacturers fundamentally incompetent or lazy in some way that TN manufacturers are not, and so they are unable or unwilling to produce high-refresh-rate display controllers?
Is this because OLED has historically been a luxury home theater product, where product engineering quality is not emphasized as much as marketing? I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts.

Cost-cutting is likely one of the biggest factors, a actual good product would likely cost much more and thus not generate a large enough revenue to make it profitable for manifacturers.
Gaming monitors are already a niche thing, with <50k sales AFAIK.

720Hz OLED strobed at 1 visible frame vs many black frames = 1/720sec MPRT = 1.4ms = fairly competitive to most strobe backlights, albiet very dark. While a lot of strobe backlights can go briefer than that, a lot are roughly in that territory, so we're already getting there.

...except that the 27" HD@720Hz mode on the model you're referring to (PG27AQWP) has bilinear scaling applied, completely rendering it useless from a static image quality perspective.
The best MPRT / 'on' period we have is QHD@500–540 Hz, which is around 2ms – ~1,852 ms
The "CRT beam simulator" also isn't a viable solution due to it being software based (computational overhead) & being finnicky with other parts of the Windows stack (MPOs, DSC, erratic frametimes of games introducing worse flicker etc.)

LCD is sadly the sole leader in terms of pushing the impulsed display market... and only select implementations (<10) are close to CRTs.

But that's only true at lower refresh rates like 60hz, which is cool for retro gaming I guess, but
1) probably still inferior to CRTs for that, and

Yep, grossly inferior, especially since most digital objects move at speeds much faster than 480px/s

2) hugely inferior to strobed 540hz TNs for high framerate games.

When comparing 540Hz TN w/ strobing & 540Hz WOLED in purely a eye-tracked motion performance perspective, yes.
The TN's usually reach "effective +2000Hz refresh rate", which would require 2K FPS @ 2KHz for OLED to match (and beat easily due to great G2G RT and no artifacts such as crosstalk and/or overshoot)

This should be embarrassing to OLED companies when a huge chunk of performance is basically being left on the table, only gated behind firmware / controller design effort.
It's also a sort of performance which would be immutable: OLEDs inevitably lose their color accuracy, but they never lose their refresh rate.

I'm very certain that it isn't solely a firmware / controller design effort limitation.
There's also a material science / engineering design limitation at play here, but I cannot claim any absolutes.

I just find it insanely disappointing that OLED manufacturers have been fiddling with their thumbs for ten years when, if they put in effort, and didn't want to sell incremental upgrades, we could've had a 1000hz strobing OLED ten years ago, let alone today. It's not like it's so inconceivable to make a 2000hz display controller, the energy dissipation permitted in a monitor allows a lot of computation. Nvidia has been selling monitors with a coprocessor that drinks an extra 20 watts of energy for a long time and it works fine.

+500FPS gaming and strobing are niches within a niche (gaming monitors).
+240Hz OLED monitors are only 4 years old now.
What you're actually searching for is a BFI implementation which exceeds the native refresh rate by large enough margin (which Nvidia calls "effective refresh rate") to encapsulate your specific use-case (fast-paced games of X max speed)
I doubt we'll ever get that with OLED or MicroLED.

[Watchdog]

Does the dual mode 1080p 480hz on PG27UCWM have like integer scaling on it? Like no blur even in 27 inches?

I hope it has a good motion clarity at least.

[kyube]

Does the dual mode 1080p 480hz on PG27UCWM have like integer scaling on it? Like no blur even in 27 inches?

You don't want Nearest neighbour scaling with a integer value (also referred to as "integer scaling").
All it does it nerf the perceived display resolution (pixel density) to 27"@FHD, which is dreadful.

You want no scaling between display (native) resolution & frame/image resolution, which will lead to a 13.5" @ FHD image.

I hope it has a good motion clarity at least.

It's akin to any other OLED on the market minus the dreadful subpixel issue.
You're still bound by sample & hold.

[Watchdog]

Does the dual mode 1080p 480hz on PG27UCWM have like integer scaling on it? Like no blur even in 27 inches?

You don't want Nearest neighbour scaling with a integer value (also referred to as "integer scaling").
All it does it nerf the perceived display resolution (pixel density) to 27"@FHD, which is dreadful.

You want no scaling between display (native) resolution & frame/image resolution, which will lead to a 13.5" @ FHD image.

I hope it has a good motion clarity at least.

It's akin to any other OLED on the market minus the dreadful subpixel issue.
You're still bound by sample & hold.

Would it have blur if I were to use 1280x960 4:3 on the dual mode 1080p 27 inches ASUS OLED? For CS2 example?

I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of motion clarity for a clearer image so I can track my targets easier.

As you see I put my monitor a little farther back so I can react faster like flicking on targets. If I were to put it so close to me, it is easier to see the targets but I get this headache that makes me react less faster. Maybe it's just because of the ZOWIE since I've always used the DyAc technology like XL2411P and now XL2411K.

I was gonna pull the trigger on getting the 610hz ASUS one but why not wait for the dual mode for my endgame comp/work setup.

Am I making a good choice for waiting?

You've been a really great help Kyube and I always read your insights.

[NDUS]

In terms of their biggest deficiencies (burn-in, color drift) they are a little better than they used to be, but it's still a big factor for anyone using an OLED as a daily main monitor.

Burn-in is a over-exaggerated complaint.

But OLEDs do burn in. Proponents of OLED will tell you to just hide the task bar, avoid playing games or using software with static UI elements (ie. all of them), and basically totally change how you use your computer to avoid the glaring downside of OLEDs that manufacturers still haven't fixed.

But in terms of what used to be marketed as their biggest upside (refresh rate, motion clarity) they are still inferior to strobed TN panels.
As anyone who's seem both side-by-side, or looked at motiontracked comparisons online can tell you, strobed TN still beats OLED badly.

See, this is the 'problem' with the thread.
You've cherrypicked a single characteristic of dynamic image quality, which is eye-tracked motion performance and come to the conclusion that OLED is disappointing.

But OLEDs do have inferior motion clarity to strobed TN. I notice that fans of OLED are prone to hand-waving huge material downsides to the technology, or just denying them outright. It's probably a sunk costs thing.

[kyube]

But OLEDs do burn in. Proponents of OLED will tell you to just hide the task bar, avoid playing games or using software with static UI elements (ie. all of them), and basically totally change how you use your computer to avoid the glaring downside of OLEDs that manufacturers still haven't fixed.

And I've never denied that they don't. I just claim it's overexaggerated.
I can give you a anecdotal example:

left bottom corner of my qd-oled (qmc265fa01-d01 panel) after 4.72k hours and 56 times of pixel refresh (this monitor lets me skip pixel refresh completely so i dont do it at all xd)

cfg:
brightness: 100
brightness mode: highlight (so basically 110-120 brightness kinda)
most of oled care shits are turned off (except pixel shift, taskbar detection)
so almost the worst cfg for oled

and i dont use automatically hide taskbar

usage:
browsing (twitter+youtube+discord+vk which looks like discord/twitter basically, only dark themes)/anydesk mostly
gaming rarely
other than this taskbar icons burn-in i cant see anything else



Taskbar in question


Edited image example (sepia+way more contrast)

Make of that what you will.
It's in it's name, organic implies eventual degradation.
I'm saying it's overexaggerated, we don't have enough of a large sample size to form a conclusion yet.

But OLEDs do have inferior motion clarity to strobed TN.
I notice that fans of OLED are prone to hand-waving huge material downsides to the technology, or just denying them outright.
It's probably a sunk costs thing.

I never denied that the gap doesn't exist.
All you're doing, when toggling backlight strobing, is trading one visual artifact for another.
Namely: The aliasing-like effect of FPS/Hz mismatch for sample & hold blur and vice-versa.
Which looks like this (left - strobed; right - sample & hold)

assumes 960px/s, which is relatively slow panning in the first place

The most important part is the X max speed (px/s) you use in the game. You can eye-ball the numbers by visiting:
https://testufo.com/ghosting#pps=1920
https://testufo.com/ghosting#pps=2880
https://testufo.com/ghosting#pps=3840

Another variable — the games in which +500FPS is possible (for the least compromised strobing experience) is also a extremely small sample size.

I'm saying that it's a niche within a niche.

A strobed TN (that isn't KSF-based, which leaves you with XL2586X & XL2586X+ only for EU/NA market) isn't a outright positive like you're trying to purport it as.
This also doesn't go into aspects such as:
• The contrast ratio difference,
• Lower display resolution (pixel density),
• Abhorrent TN coating (which is 'fixable' to some extent)
which are also part of the overall experience a electronic visual display offers.

I do agree that, 500-540Hz S&H is simply not enough for competitive / faster-paced games. It's why I'm still on team LCD.
However:
OLEDs are, objectively, the best eye comfort experience you can achieve due to the flickerless, high refresh rate experience & great color reproduction they provide. (I'm ignoring the scanout dip, as I hope they'll fix it at some point)
RGB stripe models will only cement that even further.
In fact, we haven't had digital displays this good in the entirety of human history.

[NDUS]

usage:
browsing (twitter+youtube+discord+vk which looks like discord/twitter basically, only dark themes)/anydesk mostly
gaming rarely
other than this taskbar icons burn-in i cant see anything else

You can't see anything else because in your words you mainly browse on your computer. If you played a game regularly the HUD would also be burnt in. What you can't see, because it's global, is the color shift / decalibration across the entire panel. Unavoidable, and does away with the biggest marketed upside of OLED (color accuracy)

All you're doing, when toggling backlight strobing, is trading one visual artifact for another.
Namely: The aliasing-like effect of FPS/Hz mismatch for sample & hold blur and vice-versa.
Which looks like this (left - strobed; right - sample & hold)
assumes 960px/s, which is relatively slow panning in the first place

No idea what this is about - are you talking about tearing? Personally I've never even noticed tearing above 200fps or so. And there are Pulsar displays with gsync + ULMB2 now. The bottom line is that strobing just looks better for basically 99% of people - less blurry than anything else bar CRTs. Any comparison of strobing vs adaptive sync will show strobing is less blurry, regardless of whatever edge effects we nitpick over.

Another variable — the games in which +500FPS is possible (for the least compromised strobing experience) is also a extremely small sample size.

The majority of popular multiplayer games (with some exceptions here and there: tarkov, rust, etc.) will happily run at 500+ fps on a good CPU. Just by the ones I play, I can name Overwatch, Warthunder, TF2, CS2, Valorant... I'm guessing of the top 25 Steam games, probably 10-15 can hit those framerates. This goes without saying that most old games can run that fast as long as you disable the FPS limiter.

Even modern singleplayer games will hit those frames sometimes, especially with frame generation or reprojection. I recently played RE9 and even with everything maxed I could hit 500+ fps with framegen 4x.

OLEDs are, objectively, the best eye comfort experience you can achieve due to the flickerless, high refresh rate experience & great color reproduction they provide. (I'm ignoring the scanout dip, as I hope they'll fix it at some point)
RGB stripe models will only cement that even further.
In fact, we haven't had digital displays this good in the entirety of human history.

I disagree totally, high end CRT monitors were objectively superior to OLEDs in every way except size and power requirements.
Even a fresh OLED doesn't have the perfect color reproduction that people say they do, btw (see grays)