Blur Busters Forums

I recently bought an LG 27GL850 on a Black Friday sale on Amazon. I had read good things about LG's quality control but when the monitor arrived I started testing it and noticed a considerable ammount of backlight bleed. Here are some photos taken in a dark room at maximum brightness on a Xiaomi Mi 9T at 1/8 shutter speed:

https://imgur.com/a/lNNc6vP

Notice the backlight bleed on the top and low edges. I use the monitor with the sRGB mode and the brightness setting at 40 and some ambient light in my room but it's still very noticeable, specially on the black bars when watching movies.

I've already contacted Amazon to get a replacement but the model is out of stock and they told me to wait an indefinite ammount of time. I honestly can wait, but I wanted to ask what experience have other people had with this monitor in order to know if it's worth going through the hassle of a replacement, or if I'm better off getting a refund and looking for another model.

I was considering the models with the Innolux panel but apparently those suffer from quality control issues too. My 2013 BenQ GW2765HT also have a lot of IPS glow but doesn't suffer from backlight bleed at all, so it's really disappointing to see the current state of 1440p 144Hz IPS monitors.

UPDATE: I received a replacement from Amazon. This unit suffers from backlight bleed in the same spots as the previous one, so this makes me think it's a problem with LG applying too much pressure on the bezels during manufacturing.

Curiosly, this new unit I received seems to be a revision with a different logo (UltraGear logo instead of LG's one) and different firmware with some settings on the OSD a little bit changed.

However, the issue with the response time setting locked to "Fast" in the sRGB mode still remains, which is a pity since it causes overshoot/inverse ghosting. sRGB emulation is a very important feature for some of us and I would like to use it with reduced overdrive.

I'm thinking about returning it and get an Acer XV272UP instead, but I'm not sure how reliable its sRGB mode is and considering I got this LG for a very good price maybe I will have to settle for its imperfections.

Do you play games with maximum brightness where blacks look like grey like in your photos? if not then do you notice the blacklight bleed when normally using the PC/playing games? if not then keep it. If it bothers you then return it.

It's panel lottery: you might get a better unit, you might get even worse unit, so it's really up to you. The top right corner bleed is pretty extensive, indeed. Also, note that this monitor has a pretty bad contrast ratio as for an IPS panel, way below 1000:1 advertised value. RTINGS tested the contrast ratio to be only 735:1 on their unit (they also reported very poor black uniformity on their unit), TFT Central measured 836:1, and Hardware Unboxed measured 762:1, so all these results are quite bad. As far as I know, it's the downside of nanoIPS panels, so due to low contrast ratio, LG 27GL850 is not the best choice if you use your monitor often in dark environment. Just to give you any comparison, fastIPS panel in ASUS VG259QM achieves contrast ratio of 1364:1, according to RTINGS measurements.

I was aware of the low contrast ratio when I bought the monitor. Personally, it doesn't bother me, what I didn't expect was the terrible black uniformity and backlight bleed. As I said, I lowered the brightness of the monitor and I use it with ambient light in my room, but it's still very noticeable. I think it's an unacceptable factory defect and I expected better quality control from LG. I guess I'll wait for a replacement but it will be the last chance I give them.

Aldagar wrote: ↑

27 Nov 2020, 19:34

I was aware of the low contrast ratio when I bought the monitor. Personally, it doesn't bother me, what I didn't expect was the terrible black uniformity and backlight bleed. As I said, I lowered the brightness of the monitor and I use it with ambient light in my room, but it's still very noticeable. I think it's an unacceptable factory defect and I expected better quality control from LG. I guess I'll wait for a replacement but it will be the last chance I give them.

I've had some bad experiences with IPS monitor replacements. If I recall correctly, the first one had pretty good backlight uniformity, but backlight bleed was too much for my liking. Another two units of this monitor had backlight uniformity unacceptable to me (yellowish stains visible on brighter content on some parts of the display). I ended up completely giving it up. Test your luck

UPDATE: I received a replacement from Amazon. This unit suffers from backlight bleed in the same spots as the previous one, so this makes me think it's a problem with LG applying too much pressure on the bezels during manufacturing.

Curiosly, this new unit I received seems to be a revision with a different logo (UltraGear logo instead of LG's one) and different firmware with some settings on the OSD a little bit changed.

However, the issue with the response time setting locked to "Fast" in the sRGB mode still remains, which is a pity since it causes overshoot/inverse ghosting. sRGB emulation is a very important feature for some of us and I would like to use it with reduced overdrive.

I'm thinking about returning it and get an Acer XV272UP instead, but I'm not sure how reliable its sRGB mode is and considering I got this LG for a very good price maybe I will have to settle for its imperfections.