hamza_tm wrote: ↑09 Feb 2026, 12:03
kyube wrote: ↑07 Feb 2026, 10:53
I haven't tried one of the Pulsar models on-hand, my opinion is based on purely reading reviews & manuals.
The Pulsar portion (VRR+strobe; multi-strobe PWM) wasn't interesting to me in the slightest due to the potential eye-strain concerns it may harbour.
The fixed refresh rate portion without red fringing (due to QD backlight) was the most appealing part to me, especially after Chief confirmed the use of QD... until I've watched the reviews & read the manuals.
A HDMI 2.0 display, without the abilty to adjust PW in it's fixed refresh rate mode (ULMB2), which forces you to use DP1.4 (mandatory DSC) at a price point of 700€ killed any enthusiasm I had for these models.
I'm personally waiting on the new 24.5" QHD 360Hz IPS LCDs releasing this year (e.g.:
Titan Army P245MS Pro or AOC's implementation of the panel)
They're very likely going to be <350€, akin to the Q25G4SR.
Thank you for your continued insights. I am struggling to place your analysis of Pulsar and want to understand your conclusions.
these models don't have a clear-cut use-case they solve
OLED exists within the same price range, making it's sample & hold performance irrelevant.
Better backlight strobing exists within the same price range, making it's impulsed performance irrelevant.
What use-case does it have?
Isn't the use case VRR + strobe? Are you dismissing that because of "potential eye-strain concerns" and instead judging it on everything else?
Why are these "potential eye-strain concerns" important enough to ignore VRR + strobing? Doesn't VRR + strobing have a clear use case in that it's plug+play motion clarity for any game you run (at a minimum FPS) with no faffing around to attempt to hit a given fixed FPS at all times that you play a given game, and to have to update your settings/system for any new game to attempt hit a potentially different fixed FPS?
For the gamer who wants great motion clarity with less faff, Pulsar seems to be uniquely positioned to provide that over all other options on the market, or am I missing something.
To be honest, even though Gsync pulsar does indeed work with VRR the motion clarity isn't there unless your FPS is stable (like a straight line in riva tuner overlay FPS graph) and by default 99% of people probably won't think to cap their FPS using riva or some other tool to correctly get those perfect frame times in order to get the motion clarity show in these reviews. I think the absolute best test is using smooth frog since it natively was optimized to support VRR and doesn't have anything that would cause hitches or large spikes in FPS but in my PERSONAL experience owning this monitor VRR + Strobe still requires that you FPS cap to 1% lows in order to get best results, if you just "set it and forget it" and rely on reflex to cap your FPS, the frame rate isn't stable enough for you to get the motion clarity bonus that's shown off in reviews for most games sadly. I think out of all the games I've played on a few have stable fps even with reflex enabled that I got the benefit of gsync pulsar, for the rest I had to tweak settings for days before I got the motion clarity perfect.
To me what Gsync pulsar solves:
1. I don't have crosstalk (even if there is, it's VERY minor)
2. I can set an FPS cap and it'll automatically strobe at that FPS cap (vs ULMB where you have to go through nvcp and change your monitor's native refresh rate to say 120, 240, 360, etc in order to get no motion blur but now you HAVE to it that FPS in all those games while the mode is on otherwise it'll look bad)
3. No flicker (been using this monitor since it came out and I haven't noticed flicker not ONCE which is amazing)
What Gsync pulsar doesn't solve:
1. Really bad frame pacing (if you have bad frame pacing, the Gsync pulsar algorithm will be in constant "compensation pulse" mode and it will blur the image out or introduce what looks like crosstalk) (can be in theory overcome with lossless scaling adaptive frame gen but you'll get image artifacts in exchange and more GPU usage)
2. Nvidia reflex frame pacing (some games I just enable reflex and it works perfectly with gsync pulsar, in others I have to use and FPS cap with riva with different sync mode like async, front edge or back edge in order to get the timing perfect)
3. Currently unusable below 95 fps (nvidia leaves compensation pulse mode on until your FPS stabilizes to minimum strobe FPS + 20 which is 75 + 20 = 95 or 95 + 20 = 115 by default)
Most people won't read into how gsync pulsar works, won't test it and won't experiment around so they'll just get a mediocre experience, return it and say OLED is better and then get surprised when they get VRR Flicker and decide "I guess now I'll give up gsync and use vsync".
I think Gsync pulsar is great but it's not as "set it and forget it" as they advertise and many people won't know how to really utilize it AND most games aren't optimized well or implement reflex or framegen well in their graphic pipeline to implement it.
Bro I had ARTIFACTING that I thought was pulsar and it turns out it was both a windows update AND nvidia driver that was messing everything up!
1. Windows security update KB5074109 causing fps dips and issues
2. Nvidia drivers past 591.67 cause fps issues with vsync ON + frame gen artifacts when both enabled (driver 591.67 doesn't officially support gsync pulsar but I've been using it and it still seems to be working for me but now I can enable vsync + framegen + reflex and it seems to be working, some games prefer Vsync off + framegen + fps cap for perfect frame times).