Monitor manufacturers have been lying to us about something really important.
You know when you look at a spec sheet, you'll see a field that says response time?
Yeah, that number is a lie probably. To put it simply, response times tell you
how quickly the pixels on your screen transition
from showing you one color value to another. And it matters because if your response time
is too slow, moving images on your screen could look blurry.
Not exactly what you want after dropping all that money on a new display.
So let's say you found a monitor that's a nice low response time. Maybe as low as a single millisecond listed on the box.
It sounds good at first, but how exactly did this display manufacturer arrive at that number?
Well, they tested it, but not in a way
that reflects how anyone is realistically using a monitor
or even in a way that reflects how the monitor next to it on the shelf was tested by its manufacturer.
What kinds of things could be wrong with their tests? Well, for starters, they're often conducted in hot rooms
which decreases the viscosity of the liquid crystals inside the display, allowing them to respond more quickly.
And when we say hot, we mean significantly
above normal room temperature. In fact, the Video Electronics Standards Association,
or BESA, calls the temperature at which many of these tests are carried out as abnormally high.
And that's not the only way that these results get manipulated.
Lots of monitors have an overdrive setting, but that doesn't mean they include an automatic transmission.
What a monitor overdrive does is artificially force a faster response time by applying a higher voltage
to each pixel. And while it can be a useful feature,
it's also quite common for overdrive to produce artifacts like inverse ghosting or coronas.
And as you may have guessed, monitor companies are also often guilty of applying very aggressive
overdrive settings when they do their response time tests
so that they can put the lowest number possible on the spec sheet, even though those overdrive settings
make the picture look like hot garbage a lot of the time.
Combine that with the fact that results can be cherry picked from the very best units instead of reflecting an average.
And it's not surprising that fudged response time numbers have been identified as a major issue
among display enthusiasts. BESA has recently come and saved the day
with a new certification called ClearMR, which defines a strict set of standards for testing.
First off, tests have to be conducted within a narrow temperature range
reflective of typical room temperatures. That's between 72 and a half and 76 degrees Fahrenheit
or 22 and a half to 24 and a half degrees Celsius.
Additionally, monitors have to be tested at their native resolution,
only after a warm-up period and at default settings.
Although critics have pointed out this might unfairly exclude monitor features such as backlight strobing
that could mitigate the effects of slow response times, BESA seems to be mostly concerned
about the inherent properties of the display panel itself unless about the features that you add on later.
And BESA has also shown willingness to tweak standards over time as they did with display HDR.
So maybe these critics' concerns will be assuaged eventually anyway.
For the moment though, ClearMR sets acceptable limits
for overshoot and undershoot as well. This is when a pixel misses its color target
because an overdrive setting has forced it to transition abnormally quickly.
To earn certification, BESA says that overshoot can't be more than 20% and undershoot
can't be more than 10%. Similar to BESA's display HDR program,
monitors that pass the test will be given an official ClearMR logo along with a number
ranging between 3000 and 9000. These numbers represent approximate ratios
of clear pixels to blurry pixels on your screen. So a display rated as ClearMR 3000,
the lowest certification level, will have around 3000 clear pixels
for every blurry pixel on the screen. Since the ClearMR standard is quite new,
there aren't many displays out there yet sporting the badge, but seeing as most major display manufacturers
are BESA members, we're hoping to see it become super common,
similar to the display HDR certification, especially on gaming monitors.
As I know, you didn't just spend all that money on your latest GPU just to have your games
look like a poop smear, did ya? Thanks for watching guys.
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