Why are IPS monitors popular? The IPS glow ruins a third of the screen along with any color advantage it may have.

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MaximilianKohler

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I looked at the recommended monitors for gaming and movies on a major site and they list many IPS monitors.

Before I bought my current VA monitor (AOC C27G1: 27", curved, 144hz, 1080p) I tried an IPS (Acer Nitro XV273, 240hz, 27") since I frequently saw them recommended, and I saw that particular monitor ranked as #1 at the time, and the IPS glow was awful, and so were the viewing angles. And it wasn't just a bad monitor because I tested two of them. IPS monitors have better colors than TN and VA but that's one of the more useless factors for most casual and gaming use since we are not doing color-critical work (and even if we were, the IPS glow makes colors inaccurate...), so it puzzled and annoyed me that people were recommending IPS monitors so much, and I felt I was "tricked" into buying one.

After lots more testing and research I found this article https://www.howtogeek.com/658701/tn...technology/#which-panel-type-is-right-for-you to be the most accurate (recommends VA for most people), except their claim that IPS has the best viewing angles -- my VA has MUCH better viewing angles than that 240hz IPS.

This is coming from someone who was a competitive gamer for many years and thus mostly used a BenQ Zowie TN panel. I think my VA is fine for competitive gaming. The issues are backlight bleed and high contrast smearing; but they're nowhere near as bad as the IPS glow that ruined 1/3rd of the screen space.
 
I am so glad I found OLED. I am never going back to that crappy monitor tech again. Good luck with your endeavors in monitorland.
 
I bought a Dell 34" gaming monitor years ago and it had horrible BLB over 35% of the panel - I got it for a killer deal (employee purchase plus sale) and they sent me a replacement with even worse BLB and wouldn't do any more exchanges - they said I had to return it and buy a new one (and lose my deal)

Later I went on to have a number of really nice ASUS 27" monitors with virtually no BLB and my LG 38 has only the smallest bit (maybe 1 square inch) in one corner.

Not everyone wants the same thing in a monitor, for example, some of us like to read text.
 
VA typically has color shift vertically. It's not particularly noticeable for casual use but is a factor for color accurate use. My experience is that VA tends to do poorly for viewing angles as well but this will vary monitor by monitor. In a similar manner, IPS panels are not going to be built equal.

I'm currently using two Samsung G70A 4K 144 Hz IPS panels for work and have no complaints about them for that. They are good for SDR gaming as well with solid pixel response times and input lag. They are terrible for HDR gaming due to having no local dimming worth mentioning. IPS glow has never bothered me compared to e.g TN viewing angles (which can still be decent on the better TN panels).

IPS is still a good compromise for a do-it-all display that works well for anything. You just pay through the nose for HDR capabilities.

Only this year we finally get 32" 4K OLEDs so that should make those a better option going forward.
 
IPS was a nice upgrade when the only other option was those old god awful older generarion TN panels and VA was still in its infancy. Now, for media consumption and gaming I would never buy anything other than VA panel with local dimming, if OLED is out of question that is.

MaximilianKohler said:
Not sure what you mean with this. I use my monitor to read text most of the day. VA has clear text; possibly even more so than OLED?
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Definetly. Provided you set up ClearType correctly (RGB vs BGR pixel format) a VA panel has just as clear text as any other panel. Normal oldschool RGB OLED is also fine but most bigger OLEDs are usually WOLED and they use WRGB pixel format with an extra white subpixel and Windows is not optimised for it (at least not yet) and therefore Cleartype cannot fix it properly. Not a problem at a distance but definetly noticeable close up.
 
MaZa said:
Definetly. Provided you set up ClearType correctly (RGB vs BGR pixel format) a VA panel has just as clear text as any other panel. Normal oldschool RGB OLED is also fine but most bigger OLEDs are usually WOLED and they use WRGB pixel format with an extra white subpixel and Windows is not optimised for it (at least not yet) and therefore Cleartype cannot fix it properly. Not a problem at a distance but definetly noticeable close up.
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There are no standard RGB OLED panels on the consumer market that I am aware of. Both RGBW and RWGB WOLEDs have text fringing issues. QD-OLED have their own issue of yellow/green halos around text due to their triangle arrangement and differing subpixel size based on the color. I don't notice it on my WOLEDs unless I press my nose up against the screen.
 
Armenius said:
There are no standard RGB OLED panels on the consumer market that I am aware of. Both RGBW and RWGB WOLEDs have text fringing issues. QD-OLED have their own issue of yellow/green halos around text due to their triangle arrangement and differing subpixel size based on the color. I don't notice it on my WOLEDs unless I press my nose up against the screen.
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True, but there are some laptops that do have OLEDs and AFAIK they are not WOLED panels.
 
First, WOLED sucks. Second no oled can hit the eye watering color pop brightness of a nice fald.
Oleds nice, but I find that I need both on my desk lol
 
IPS isn’t that bad. I prefer my QD-OLED for gaming but claiming glow “ruins” IPS is just kind of flamebait at this point. Different technologies have different trade-offs, so it’s cool if you don’t prefer a certain set of trade-offs but it’s pretty self-explanatory why the technology is popular (because people like it).
 
l88bastard said:
First, WOLED sucks. Second no oled can hit the eye watering color pop brightness of a nice fald.
Oleds nice, but I find that I need both on my desk lol
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Forced to move on from our beloved FW900 as a daily driver, because I needed a 4K for work, I've found the LG CX to be a remarkable display. Pesky extra subpixel notwithstanding. (Coming from CRT, the display's advanced BFI is on always.)

On the LCD front, I always thought IPS with its viewing angles plus FALD would be the ultimate solution for LCD blacks and contrast. However, when the first such displays came out, I guess the manufacturers realized they had to raise the black levels to reduce blooming, which spoiled it for me. Sounds like such displays are better now though?
 
IPS is cheap. It "pops". It's fast. Wide viewing angles. I don't think it's horrible. My computer uses an ancient IPS panel (Dell U2410).

I have some ancient IPS 720p TVs with horrible light bleed, but because they get so bright, you just don't notice it much at all. YMMV of course.

(my main TV is an OLED btw, yes LG, yes WOLED, an yes, it is excellent, and yes it's on 14+ hours everyday and yes it's 1080p close to 1st gen, and zero burn in)
 
MaximilianKohler said:
I looked at the recommended monitors for gaming and movies on a major site and they list many IPS monitors.

Before I bought my current VA monitor (AOC C27G1: 27", curved, 144hz, 1080p) I tried an IPS (Acer Nitro XV273, 240hz, 27") since I frequently saw them recommended, and I saw that particular monitor ranked as #1 at the time, and the IPS glow was awful, and so were the viewing angles. And it wasn't just a bad monitor because I tested two of them. IPS monitors have better colors than TN and VA but that's one of the more useless factors for most casual and gaming use since we are not doing color-critical work (and even if we were, the IPS glow makes colors inaccurate...), so it puzzled and annoyed me that people were recommending IPS monitors so much, and I felt I was "tricked" into buying one.

After lots more testing and research I found this article https://www.howtogeek.com/658701/tn...technology/#which-panel-type-is-right-for-you to be the most accurate (recommends VA for most people), except their claim that IPS has the best viewing angles -- my VA has MUCH better viewing angles than that 240hz IPS.

This is coming from someone who was a competitive gamer for many years and thus mostly used a BenQ Zowie TN panel. I think my VA is fine for competitive gaming. The issues are backlight bleed and high contrast smearing; but they're nowhere near as bad as the IPS glow that ruined 1/3rd of the screen space.
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I won't dive into all the info I could about this, I'll try and keep it short. I realized too, in another discussion about Mini-LED vs OLED that a huge chunk comes down to priorities and use case, and for you've picked a certain use case and that's why you prefer what you prefer.

IPS glow isn't really a thing when viewing content as it's designed. Rec709 and sRGB are both designed at a 120cd/m2 spec (well really 100cd/m2, but people still accept 120).
If you're the sort that arbitrarily sets the brightness values on monitors then you're already way outside the optimal range where IPS color accuracy is maximized. A lot of IPS monitors can go up to 350 or 400 cd/m2, and yeah, at any of those levels you will experience glow and usually backlight uniformity issues. And to be clear here, this is why color critical work also needs to be done in light controlled rooms, because if you're trying to "know" what color and brightness levels look like in an ultra bright office space with florescent lights everywhere, then of course you may be cranking brightness on your monitor to compensate... but that is also out of Rec709 spec.

Your tradeoff is that VA doesn't suffer in this way when pushed out of spec. And for you, you are apparently way less sensitive to color shift and off angle viewing (which happens on VA regardless of if you're head on the display or not). And you also likely don't care whether your color is accurate or not. Things like "vibrancy" or "saturation" probably matter more to you. And you probably also notice the much higher contrast ratio (and don't mind that said contrast ratio is also out of bounds in terms of accuracy).

If your primary purpose was doing photo/video editing and you actually calibrated the displays to Rec709 (including 100cd/m2 obviously), there is a world of difference between the accuracy of a 10-bit 1000:1 contrast IPS display and a VA 10-bit 3000:1 contrast display. You generally will not see any glow or panel uniformity issues either when calibrated to those levels on IPS (unless it's simply a garbage monitor).

HDR is a totally different "mess", that I won't get into, but suffice to say a huge chunk of "how good" HDR looks on non-compliant monitors is how they deal with luminance overshoot. That is to say, luminance values that are outside of the display range.
 
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Zinn said:
it’s pretty self-explanatory why the technology is popular (because people like it).
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No, that's not valid at all. I'm very familiar with the mouse-world for example, and tons of really garbage mice were the most popular, largely due to:
1. Ignorant consumers.
2. Heavy & deceptive marketing.

This phenomenon occurs in many consumer markets.

UnknownSouljer said:
IPS glow isn't really a thing when viewing content as it's designed.
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I don't want to be rude, but I think that most of your comment was complete nonsense. A comment that biased has to be made by someone who benefits from IPS monitors being sold. Which is something I suspect much of the "pro-IPS" hype comes from.

IPS glow is a recognized problem by all the experts, and there are tons of complaints about it if you look at people's experiences.

UnknownSouljer said:
And for you, you are apparently way less sensitive to color shift and off angle viewing (which happens on VA regardless of if you're head on the display or not).
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This seems to demonstrate that you didn't even read my OP, which clearly details that my VA has much better viewing angles than my twice-as-expensive IPS.

UnknownSouljer said:
If you're the sort that arbitrarily sets the brightness values on monitors then you're already way outside the optimal range where IPS color accuracy is maximized. A lot of IPS monitors can go up to 350 or 400 cd/m2, and yeah, at any of those levels you will experience glow and usually backlight uniformity issues. And to be clear here, this is why color critical work also needs to be done in light controlled rooms, because if you're trying to "know" what color and brightness levels look like in an ultra bright office space with florescent lights everywhere, then of course you may be cranking brightness on your monitor to compensate... but that is also out of Rec709 spec.
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I am definitely not cranking up the brightness on my monitors. And I certainly calibrated them and tested various brightness levels. I am in a dimly lit room.

UnknownSouljer said:
Your tradeoff is that VA doesn't suffer in this way when pushed out of spec.
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I was told that my VA monitor has low max brightness, and I'm using it on the lowest setting (text).
 
MaximilianKohler said:
I don't want to be rude, but I think that most of your comment was complete nonsense. A comment that biased has to be made by someone who benefits from IPS monitors being sold. Which is something I suspect much of the "pro-IPS" hype comes from.
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That makes zero logical sense. Every panel manufacture that is out there has the option and has always had the option to make any panel type.

IPS has always been the most expensive. If VA was "better" in all aspects and cheaper (which it is), then there would be every incentive for monitor manufacturers to use that technology. Because then they can talk about the tangible advantages vs competitors.

RTINGS as an example has zero skin in the game regarding your monitor:
https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/acer/nitro-xv273-xbmiiprzx

I don't have any interest in being dismissive of your particular experiences. But yours don't invalidate mine. Or any of the people using IPS from 2010-present which regards to working on professional industry displays.

There are zero professional industry displays that are VA. And we're talking about a market that was spending $5000+ on IPS displays (Eizo ColorEdge, NEC Multisync, etc) by industry professionals that are not interested in anything other than results, as in, not hype (eg: Technicolor, who is literally just constructed from engineers and colorists). Every film you watched during the major heyday of IPS, was color graded on an IPS display. It's changed now, it's all IPS+Mini LED/Dual-Layer LCD and OLED, for obvious reasons.

Though consumer displays combine VA+Mini-LED, the pro display world is still all IPS+Mini-LED or IPS+Dual-Layer LCD. Flanders Scientific which is selling $40k Mini-LED monitors is using this tech. And it's basically either them or Sony in terms of top end displays for colorists. So I suppose you're saying you know better than every display engineer and color engineer? You already aren't taking me seriously, but we can ignore me and look at literally every industry professional at this point. Is all of Technicolor and Dolby shills?

Here is Vincent Teoh on Sony's previous top grading monitor from 2019. I suppose he's an IPS shill too?

MaximilianKohler said:
IPS glow is a recognized problem by all the experts, and there are tons of complaints about it if you look at people's experiences.
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It's all relative. It's quite possible that I've never had an issue with it mostly because I've never used non-professional displays.

I don't use or own any "gaming monitors".

MaximilianKohler said:
This seems to demonstrate that you didn't even read my OP, which clearly details that my VA has much better viewing angles than my twice-as-expensive IPS.
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If I could post the RTINGS review movie clips of this IPS display directly demonstrating viewing angles, I would (scroll down). But it's not on YouTube, but you can scroll down and see their results for yourself. Viewing angles on this monitor seem pretty good to me.

The major difference between a VA display and an IPS one is that IPS doesn't color shift. Which is very different than luminance shift. Though depending on the quality of the IPS display, luminance shift can also be fairly minimal.

MaximilianKohler said:
I am definitely not cranking up the brightness on my monitors. And I certainly calibrated them and tested various brightness levels. I am in a dimly lit room.
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What tools are you using?

MaximilianKohler said:
I was told that my VA monitor has low max brightness, and I'm using it on the lowest setting (text).
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Okay.


Bottom line, not sure the point of your inquiry. Sounds to me like you've made up your mind. You asked "why", I answered why. If you don't care to listen to other people's perspectives or positions on the matter, than what was the point? I suppose there's nothing left to say here.
 
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The new 2024 rgbw woleds text on the 32” looked really sharp in closeups - I am waiting for an in-depth review to see what it looks like compared to an IPS.
Regarding IpS glow, Inthought there was at least 1 new 2023 IPS monitor that brought back something like the old ips-tw polarizing layer to eliminate glow. Pity that’s not more common on consumer IPS monitors.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
If I could post the RTINGS review movie clips of this IPS display directly demonstrating viewing angles, I would (scroll down). But it's not on YouTube, but you can scroll down and see their results for yourself. Viewing angles on this monitor seem pretty good to me.
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True. Compare that to the pictures I took where a pure black screen looks white due to IPS glow: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZA3N3Q7C10TT/

So the two monitors I purchased myself had completely different results from the monitor RTINGS showed. What does that say? RTINGS is totally unreliable? I got ridiculously unlucky?
 
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From what I noticed some people are completely oblivious to effect called gamma shift. Personally I see even the most miniscule amount of it and it ruins image. Especially the only aspect of VA panels where they are supposed to be better - black and near black.

Even worse with VA panels I cannot just use ambient light to make this effect go away. With IPS as long as I have some ambient light (totally non-issue during the day) the black look inky black.

Other VA issue is that some transitions are very very slow and generally VA has worse pixel transition characteristic for overdrive to not cause false posterization. I am not even talking fast paced games but in normal videos VA will exhibit false posterization on skin tones with far less overdrive than you would need for typical IPS panel. In fact on good IPS with fast panel if manufacturer puts 1ms g2g mode that is completely unusable and causes at 144Hz rainbow edges to appear it still won't cause noticeable issues with how skin tones look and only edges will look like they are too sharp.

Of course different panels are different and there are some VA panels with better pixel transition characteristics and better overdrive and there are utter garbage panels without any consideration to anything other than manufacturing panel without defects. Same is true for IPS panels but here average quality is still much better.

With IPS and especially cheap ones the biggest issue is the so called backlight bleed on edges. It can be pretty ridiculous at times. Some times it can be massaged out but not always. It would help if monitors werent made to be so thin. VA panels typically don't have such issues.

Still imho IPS is far superior. Especially for brightly lit room they look pretty amazing. Even my first IPS Dell P2410 which I measured at 500:1 I didn't have much issues with where it came to movies or games. All VA panels I had I did have issues with and their issues I could not mitigate with lamp behind the monitor or just by opening curtains.
 
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