240 Hz monitors like this one didn't even exist just a few short years ago,
but now there's a ton of them on the market, including for the first time
ever, ones that feature IPS panels rather than the conventional TN. So
today, we're going to see if Lionus and a couple of other hardcore gamers around
here can tell the difference between the esports gold standard, a cheaper
alternative, and two IPS type newcomers,
and how their opinions stack up against more objective measures. Right after
this message from our sponsor, Smart Deploy. Smart Deploy allows IT
departments to reimage unlimited computer models from one golden image.
Search their library for your models and grab your exclusive offer at
smarteploy.com/inus.
It is amazing how different the colors
can look from one display where presumably they're all after the same
result and another. This is kind of trippy actually.
Whoa. I'm going to start with viewing angles.
You know, TN's have gotten a lot better
from the side. This is definitely a TN,
but the viewing angles are actually not bad.
Even from top down, like if I was standing behind someone gaming at their
chair, like that's fine. It's not until you get low and look up at it that you
go, "Oh, yeah, there's the color inversion. That's a TN panel." So, at home, I have the Zei 2546
240 Hz monitor, and I love it. If I was anywhere but staring directly straight
at it, it's a piece of garbage. I can't tell if it's just the coating that's
hurting this one. The darker colors are just kind of disappearing and kind of
approaching a mid gray. Kind of feel like as a gamer, I don't
really care about viewing angles too much. I'm gonna be playing a game
hardcore on this, right? So, I'm going to be centering off
again. No contest. Number two is clearly the TN panel.
I'm going to be very disappointed if this is like mine.
I'm going to give worst viewing angles to this one, mostly because it's just so
dim in the first place. I don't think it actually shifts that much more compared
to this one. But this is a lot brighter, a lot easier to look at. I'm pretty impressed with three and
four. I think they have pretty exceptional
viewing angles where the the quality of the color and the light isn't
drastically changing the further over I get.
That's not a TN panel. And that's not a TN panel. To my eyes, monitor number
three here, even though it has the best colors facing it dead on, has a greater
color shift and a greater brightness reduction compared to our other nonTN
panel here. So, I uh rated that one number two for viewing angles.
I'm going to choose four as my first,
three as my second, then one, and then two. Best color reproduction I feel is kind
of obvious. I hope it's obvious. Number four just seems truer to life, which is
a bit weird because it's a game, but if life were a game, I I imagine it would
look more like that. I like the na more natural look, but
that might just be the choice of color temperature on number three. Four looks
a little overwormed to me. So, I'm going to rank the colors. Uh, one, three,
four, two. Best color reproduction has got to be number three. One thing that you can see
on both of the TN panels, though, is the sleeves and the gloves are both green on
this one. They're both yellow on this one. And then we look at one of the
IPS's, and lo and behold, they're supposed to be green and brown. Oops.
There's just something about number two that makes it look really cheap. If life
were a game, I feel like I'm a bit blind. I have cataracts.
You can really tell in the green in the barrel. This one is just like has blue
in it as well. This just seems like grayish with a tinge of green. The third
one is is definitely calibrated to a colder temperature than the one on the
right. The one on the right, I find the
green looks a bit better, but it's
close. Brightness and dynamic range. I'm
have to going to have to go somewhere where I have both shadows and highlights
in view. This one definitely loses some detail down here in the shadows compared
to our TN. The problem though is that some of these gaming monitors go out of
their way actually to boost detail in the shadows. So that it's not
necessarily a strong indication of their dynamic range. What I can do that's not
dependent on that, however, is look at black portions of the mini map compared
to the brightest areas of the sphere. hard. Counter-strike is designed to not
really have really dark areas so that it's more competitive. There's no areas
you can go and just hide. So, it's not immediately apparent which one has
crazier dynamic range. I feel like
number four is doing a little bit better job resolving the detail uh inside of
this window. I can see that a little bit more. Whereas here, it just kind of looks dark. So, I'm going to give the
edge to four on this one. Then three, and then two. Deepest blacks but dimst.
It's a lot of points off for that. This surprises me, but I think this TN
is actually better than that IPS in terms of
the difference between the brightest brights and the darkest darks range. I'm
giving it to number four. The reason I bought a 240 Hz monitor is not for
color, not for uh brightness. It's for
information getting inside my my eyeholes. I mean, even when I was gaming
at with a 120 Hz monitor, never felt
like the input lag was what I was missing. It was the clarity.
Kind of feel like lowest motion blur and lowest input lag kind of too similar for
me to tell. I don't know. They're all so close. If I
had to guess, I'd say one one like both tied and maybe these two are a little
bit behind, but it would it wouldn't be by much. You know, one thing that might
make this a little easier. Is this cheating?
This one somehow feels more responsive. I'm surprised. I thought I wouldn't be
able to tell. Maybe it's just it's bigger, so it feels like things are
moving faster. Wow. I can't believe I didn't even notice two. I was so busy just
completely focusing on like what the pixels looked like. I missed that these
two are 27 in and these two are 24 in displays.
Oh yeah, I felt three was faster or something. It might just be some motion
smoothing or or some kind of interpolation that I don't know what it
was, but I'm going to give it the edge. Uh, it's not my job to explain these
things. It's everyone else's. And now, lowest motion blur. I don't know if it's
just the brightness being so different, but that one feels smoother. I'm going
to have to rank this one, that one, and
then this one so far. So, 312 for lowest
motion blur. For motion blur, number three is definitely the worst, but it
surprises me how close my one IPS over
here is to my two TN's over here. This
first one's so much more contrasty that I feel like because of the high
contrast, I'm able to kind of tell the information even in motion a little bit
better. And so, I don't know if it's actually clear or if it just has the
perception of being clearer uh thanks to its higher contrast. But I think I'm
going to give the edge to the first one. I'm going to go in order. 1 2 3 4. So,
which monitor would I buy? That is a
really hard one for me to choose. I feel
like performance-wise, like in game, I
would be better off with number one, maybe number two. But number
four, number four just looks a lot better in
almost every aspect. That it's bigger, the color is better. It's still pretty
fast feeling, but
I feel like if I want to win at games again, I kind of want to go with number
one. I take number three. It keeps more detail in the actual concentric circles
that exist in this little mini map here compared to this one. and it doesn't
lose any of the highlights. It's got more true-to-life looking colors right
out of the box, but its motion blur is
not the best, but I'm not the most competitive gamer, so that's why I would
take this one. Bigger, looks better.
If the colors on this one weren't so bad, I would give it number two, but
it's going to sit in three. I'm going to give two to the other IPS display. I do
like the size. Size matters to me. And number four is going to be this one. My
overall preference is definitely the first one. It's the brightest. It's got
the best color. Um the viewing angles
weren't great, but as someone who's playing shooters competitively online,
like I don't need someone to be able to see from far angles. I'm looking
straight on. I prefer 24 in. Uh for
competitive gaming, you want to be like right up in there. And 27 is actually a
little bit big. Like most competitive shooters use 24-in monitors as
preference. I'm going to price them by my preference. I'm going to say the two 27
in are 500 and 550. And I'm going to say I like this one better. I think that's
the more premium one. And then these two, this is easily a better gaming
experience. It's just so much brighter. I'm going to go 400 345.
Final answer. Okay, pencils down. I'd be surprised if the 27in ones were
cheaper than the 24in ones. So, I guess might as well start at the highest ones.
I would price the third monitor at 550.
I think this is probably the cheapest.
And then this one a bit more than number two.
Yeah, that one's the most expensive. This one? Yeah, that one's the cheapest.
What? This one? This one?
Most expensive? This one? This one? I guess I'm just surprised that this is uh more expensive
because it's a TN panel. How much is it?
550. Sometimes 500.
It's also the oldest one. Oh, this is a cascading domino effect of wrongness.
Now, the Zawi is this one. Oh, yay. I bought the right monitor.
Yay. I'm not an idiot. Well, you're kind of an idiot.
I'm happy. I thought I was going to be revealed to be a And I kind of
am, but to the level that I thought I was. Even though I got the pricing wrong
based on what has the most value to me, I can definitely see the value of this
one for a certain type of customer. And now that I know the difference between
these is a h 100red rather than $50, it
becomes a much less clear-cut decision. Even though I still do give the nod to
this one, both empirically and in terms of my my overall feel. And we're back.
Okay, so the guys didn't exactly agree on everything, but there were some
common trends. Basically, everyone agreed that the TN panels had the least
motion blur and input delay, with the LG coming in third. To validate their
experiences, we set up a pursuit camera, which helps visualize motion blur, but
with the element of human perception taken out of the equation. You can see
that the ASUS and the BenQ are way more clear. Just look at the alien's eyes and
the white dots on the ship. However, both of these monitors are using
backlight strobing to get that result. Here's what the ASUS looks like with Elm
turned off. While the LG apparently
doesn't have such a feature at all. The participants also generally agreed that
the IPS panels, the LG and the Acer had
superior viewing angles, color accuracy, and brightness, although the BenQ did
pretty well here too, according to David. And again, our test this time
with Calman color checker agreed. Except
the Ben Q is actually the least accurate. Sorry, David. Which basically
gives us two competing recommendations depending on you and your priorities. If
you're buying a 240Hz monitor purely for motion performance just to click heads,
then the BenQ Zawi XL 2546 is still the
reigning champ. But if you also use your monitor for watching videos and movies
or playing sightseeing games, then the bigger, more color accurate IPS models
are more well-rounded. But then there's price. At 20% cheaper
than the BenQ or the Acer, the LG really starts to emerge as kind of a
no-brainer. Unless, of course, you're strapped for cash and you're really
impressed by the ASUS's full range ELMB
for another $55 off. Wow, it sure is a
great time to be a high refresh rate gamer. and it's a great time to check
out the drop control keyboard featured heavily in our recent blind key switch
challenge video. It's got a solid CNC aluminum frame, built-in switch plate,
RGB lighting, and QMK firmware for customizability. It has hot swappable
key switches and comes with Cherry MX, Kale, or Halo switches. And it weighs in
at a pretty hefty 964 grams. Buy it
today at drop.com. Ah, and you can buy a hoodie like this
at ltstore.com. Haka. If you like this
video, give it a thumbs up, get subscribed, and hit us up in the comments with all those commenty things
you'd like to say, including suggestions for products that you want to see us
cover in the future. And if you're looking for something to watch right now, how about the investigation we did
on whether or not 240 Hz actually matters compared to 144 or 60 Hz. We did
an awesome collaboration with Shroud and other pro gamers. So, check it out right
here in the middle of the screen, wherever it's I don't know, over here.
Bye-bye.