so you can get some really cheap stuff on aliexpress
monitor appears like this monitor so we ordered this what like a month ago or
something like that it was cheap it was only 200 bucks and the reviews for it
are fantastic oh wait if you look closely here those reviews are from
amazon and they're not even for a monitor for a monitor stand so wait a
minute what even is this thing is it any good
and can you trust aliexpress at all it
doesn't look promising but what we can promise you is that this video is
brought to you by thermaltake's a500 has a modern
minimalistic design brushed aluminum panels and dual hinge swing tempered
glass doors check it out today at the link in the video description
so we already did the very cheap feeling
um external power brick uh made by dodging HDMI cable that is actually
really nice to see included metal stand
oh uh sheet metal stand this is really
oh this is you know what
functional i like it having the screws already
installed where they go is handy i do wish that they weren't quite all the way
in oh it's curved it's curved baby 3000 r that's interesting so it's got
actually yeah quite a tight curve on it another thing you can notice is uh this
is not the brand name that was on the product page
and this appears to be just spray painted
at least it's straight yeah but is it
okay so that's about no that's clearly four no it is not in
fact level it goes it goes down this way
so you got your stereo speakers HDMI vga
that's it baby power in no DisplayPort
literally the very worst kind of on-screen display controls the kind
that's on the back you're supposed to have one tactile bump and the stupid
part is it's not even a cost saving measure because it's not like they took
one button and then just reused the molding for it there's one molding for
the entire back panel of the monitor so it was just a stupid decision it's like
this is what happens when you clone a product without understanding why they
did it on the original product so they probably saw a button that had a tactile
bump read a review somewhere that was like yeah helpful tactile bump on the
button and we're like oh well they cheaped out they only put one
tactile bump we're gonna do five so you reach around behind the monitor
and you don't know what button that is you know what though
major kudos for them having a vase amount
even though i have absolutely no idea how exactly you would put a back plate
on it there's your screw again okay now watch how this works
well the table you got to lift it lift it there you go here i'll hold that for
you all right incredibly light this is
scarily light okay in fairness to it in spite of the cheap stand the tilt adjust
that it does have actually feels really solid like it's
it's really firm first impressions
not very strong it's only 1080p
yeah it's fine is the whole thing crooked
um yeah that's like 83. like this is way off it actually has a
bit of like a screen door effect i'm just looking at how there's like there's
a a mesh there's a grid that you can see just on a gray background but like text
looks like hot garbage oh wow this menu
these graphics which one are we on right now and what
do the buttons do oh no
so it changes part of the frame
according to the parameters you set here
to look different from the rest of the frame
what even is this why what is this feature
who could want this when i click the right side
it goes to the left like this it goes
this way through them and when i click the left side it goes this way warm
use oh green is what i think they should call that one that's custom though srgb
okay that seems fine cool normal
enhance full full sail here
on what the hell
it must be maybe you don't see it when you have s
no no i can see it phone hands off
full enhance on it's like saturating it yeah it's saturating it ever so slightly
what the hell what is this demoing
for a second i thought maybe it was demoing like
on or off for your color boost but it's not it's demoing if your monitor was
actually broken versus if it wasn't
maybe it's meant to be you put like a before and after thing so it's like this
is a inferior monitors look like this and our monitor looks like that that's
not even remotely close though like you can't even look at this exactly the
competition pales in comparison like this is this is like
what three bit color like like you know what
i mean like when you because you can see a big difference in like banding and in
being able to see the discrepancies between shades of gray if you go from
like a six bit to an 8-bit panel or a 10-bit panel right
so this what what monitor are they simulating here
where you can't tell the difference between these colors
input select is actually that just that was it fell by the wayside that was a
low priority i mean there's only two inputs
so by this point it's pretty clear this monitor is
terrible but you guys can keep watching
for just more pain train here i think so cs go demo mode yeah yeah yeah what even
it is it's all up here no it can't be
i think it's all in here oh my god it is
we can't even see the menu
oh my god it's like dishonest sales tactic mode
it's like do you want to lie to your customers press this button oh that's a
bad guy can we turn demo mode off now and give this thing a fair shake
all right let's do it let's do it you know i don't actually feel
a discernibly large amount of input leg like i you
know if we whip out the makey makey or something and measure it it might not be
perfect which is what i did it's not terrible are we going to be
able to show these side by side because this one's 4k and that one's
super definitely not i don't actually know if we can clone display a game like
that we might have to run this one at 1080.
okay so they're both 1920x1080 they're both 100
okay is it gonna clone i actually i don't remember ever trying to do this
cool uh it's not working
it's dull and lifeless let's be more fair let's be even more fair
let's be as fair as we can let's try some different um
modes or something okay because we're in srgb mode which is
not like the most vibrant mode or anything oh my god they're all awful
that's just pink go to normal
very green okay so we're resetting this to factory
defaults i'm getting pro
so yeah it's pink it's a pink monitor you can really see
it's not bright at all like the contrast
is so low like this is brighter than this this is
darker here which is what you want and then this like these bright spots
where it's supposed to be bright white it's just dull it has no
punch to it so to be clear we're comparing two
monitors that would both have obvious differences
between the image on their screen and a known subject like someone you've seen
in person many times well you can see the actual and the
drawn or rendered color right there right but we're looking at it on these
monitors but we're talking an average delta e of 5.54 and 7.16 so it's
considered indiscernible to the human eye when it's sub 2. so that's fascinating so you
wouldn't use either of these for color critical work but
i think if you're just a regular gamer movie watcher normal stuff
you're not gonna really care about either of those values
but meanwhile actually using it
you hated this it's so damn
and it looked so green yeah i hate it
here's the thing just because the panel is made by a reputable manufacturer
doesn't necessarily mean that they are to blame for a crappy image on it
because the electronics that drive the panel the
tuning of the panel the calibration of the panel all of these things affect the
final image the quality of the backlight the quality of the intermediate layers
there's really not much benefit to finding out who's responsible for the
actual panel itself i guess there's just
an additional appreciation for that most monitors aren't this bad okay there's
one more thing we can test though sure if you remember
we hated the speakers on that thing yeah we were happy that it came with them
i guess they were really bad though yeah could these speakers be worse
all right let's find out do i really need any more than the
Windows test tone to know that this sounds horrible here just not a good
test bear with me bear with me no just come over here just come over here and listen to it
it's obviously bad already that's pretty bad
okay let's try the other one uh
hold on it's not picking it up i think the
NVIDIA audio stream output thing can only do one at a time so
let's see if it picks up this one are you are you just messing with me no
you think they're just grills and there's no real speakers in there
they're not picking up i don't
know if i ever heard them
are you messing with me right now no no i'm not are you sure
could they be fake i'm pretty sure the product page also says it has speakers
though all right so we're giving it another
shot oh my god there aren't speakers in it
well speaking of good ideas
ending this video now because realistically you guys are no more
likely to uh check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video
description than you were three or four minutes ago
and this video is brought to you by massdrop and sennheiser of teamed up to
bring us the pc37x gaming headset it
features angled drivers and an open back design for a nice natural sound and
better stereo imaging and those drivers actually come from the same family as
the ht598s and hd 600 series headphones
they come with a noise cancelling microphone and they're available on massdrop at the link below for just
119.99 for a limited time go check them out
so thanks for watching if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed
or maybe consider checking out where to buy the other stuff we featured at the
link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool
shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join seriously i'd recommend anything in this
video more than that except with the exception of maybe the amazon basics gaming keyboard that's not very good
toss up there no no it's better than this it's just
i'm not really recommending it this is cheaper