New Backlight Strobing Monitors Questions?

[Hawke]

Mark,

I just wanted to say thank you for work in educating people and making manufacturers sit up and take notice, like a lot of other people I'm looking forward to your reviews of the new Benq, Ezio and GSync enabled monitors running in strobe mode.

My trusty old CRT (19 inch Philips flat screen) died about six months ago, a sad day for me . Since then I've used the Samsung S27A950D and currently have the ASUS VG248QE.

The current Lightboost hack works pretty good for playing games but darkens the screen too much to be able to read anything without straining your eyes. Are the newer models bright enough that you can run them in strobe mode all the time?

Also are the TN models matte or glossy? My fingers are crossed for a glossy screen.


Cheers.

[Chief Blur Buster]

I just wanted to say thank you for work in educating people and making manufacturers sit up and take notice, like a lot of other people I'm looking forward to your reviews of the new Benq, Ezio and GSync enabled monitors running in strobe mode.

Thanks for the compliment!

The current Lightboost hack works pretty good for playing games but darkens the screen too much to be able to read anything without straining your eyes. Are the newer models bright enough that you can run them in strobe mode all the time?

If strobe brightness with good color is what you want, you'll want the Eizo FG2421. It has the brightest and most colorful strobe mode I've seen. It's not as clear-motion as LightBoost, and needs a 30-minute warmup to make most of the VA ghosting artifacts disappear, but this is the one you want if you don't need/want GSYNC (which does wonders to stutter reduction in modern games such as Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4, etc).

Also are the TN models matte or glossy? My fingers are crossed for a glossy screen.

All of the monitors mentioned are all matte.

[Hawke]

Thanks for the reply,

Its disappointing to hear that all the screens are matte, to me all LCD's look blurry without adding another layer on top to make things worse. A glossy panel would help offset the darkening of the image in strobe mode enough to make it worthwhile, maybe you can pass along this feedback to all of the manufacturers if you have the time.

I've been reading up on the Ezio FG2421, mostly the thread at Hardocp's forums and a few other places, there seems to be some pretty bad quality control problems with this monitor. A combination of the various problems and the VA panel gamma shift has put me off this one for the moment, maybe just a bad batch but I'm still looking forward to your take on it though.

Overall I'm happy with the VG248QE, for a TN panel it's not bad, good uniformity, minimal backlight bleed and no dead pixels. The colours where only washed out at 144Hz and needed adjusting, I only switch between 120Hz strobed for games and 121Hz non strobed for everything else.

For me it comes down to weather ULMB or the Benq are bright enough to be used in strobe mode full time, being able to read text without eyestrain.

Cheers

[Q83Ia7ta]

google: glossy vg248qe vega