Cheap AliExpress Monitor – Good Idea??
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,097 words · ~10 min read
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so you can get some really cheap stuff on aliexpress
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monitor appears like this monitor so we ordered this what like a month ago or
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something like that it was cheap it was only 200 bucks and the reviews for it
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are fantastic oh wait if you look closely here those reviews are from
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amazon and they're not even for a monitor for a monitor stand so wait a
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minute what even is this thing is it any good
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and can you trust aliexpress at all it
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doesn't look promising but what we can promise you is that this video is
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brought to you by thermaltake's a500 has a modern
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minimalistic design brushed aluminum panels and dual hinge swing tempered
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glass doors check it out today at the link in the video description
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so we already did the very cheap feeling
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um external power brick uh made by dodging HDMI cable that is actually
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really nice to see included metal stand
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oh uh sheet metal stand this is really
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oh this is you know what
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functional i like it having the screws already
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installed where they go is handy i do wish that they weren't quite all the way
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in oh it's curved it's curved baby 3000 r that's interesting so it's got
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actually yeah quite a tight curve on it another thing you can notice is uh this
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is not the brand name that was on the product page
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and this appears to be just spray painted
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at least it's straight yeah but is it
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okay so that's about no that's clearly four no it is not in
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fact level it goes it goes down this way
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so you got your stereo speakers HDMI vga
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that's it baby power in no DisplayPort
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literally the very worst kind of on-screen display controls the kind
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that's on the back you're supposed to have one tactile bump and the stupid
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part is it's not even a cost saving measure because it's not like they took
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one button and then just reused the molding for it there's one molding for
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the entire back panel of the monitor so it was just a stupid decision it's like
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this is what happens when you clone a product without understanding why they
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did it on the original product so they probably saw a button that had a tactile
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bump read a review somewhere that was like yeah helpful tactile bump on the
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button and we're like oh well they cheaped out they only put one
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tactile bump we're gonna do five so you reach around behind the monitor
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and you don't know what button that is you know what though
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major kudos for them having a vase amount
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even though i have absolutely no idea how exactly you would put a back plate
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on it there's your screw again okay now watch how this works
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well the table you got to lift it lift it there you go here i'll hold that for
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you all right incredibly light this is
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scarily light okay in fairness to it in spite of the cheap stand the tilt adjust
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that it does have actually feels really solid like it's
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it's really firm first impressions
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not very strong it's only 1080p
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yeah it's fine is the whole thing crooked
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um yeah that's like 83. like this is way off it actually has a
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bit of like a screen door effect i'm just looking at how there's like there's
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a a mesh there's a grid that you can see just on a gray background but like text
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looks like hot garbage oh wow this menu
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these graphics which one are we on right now and what
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do the buttons do oh no
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so it changes part of the frame
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according to the parameters you set here
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to look different from the rest of the frame
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what even is this why what is this feature
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who could want this when i click the right side
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it goes to the left like this it goes
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this way through them and when i click the left side it goes this way warm
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use oh green is what i think they should call that one that's custom though srgb
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okay that seems fine cool normal
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enhance full full sail here
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on what the hell
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it must be maybe you don't see it when you have s
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no no i can see it phone hands off
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full enhance on it's like saturating it yeah it's saturating it ever so slightly
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what the hell what is this demoing
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for a second i thought maybe it was demoing like
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on or off for your color boost but it's not it's demoing if your monitor was
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actually broken versus if it wasn't
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maybe it's meant to be you put like a before and after thing so it's like this
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is a inferior monitors look like this and our monitor looks like that that's
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not even remotely close though like you can't even look at this exactly the
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competition pales in comparison like this is this is like
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what three bit color like like you know what
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i mean like when you because you can see a big difference in like banding and in
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being able to see the discrepancies between shades of gray if you go from
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like a six bit to an 8-bit panel or a 10-bit panel right
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so this what what monitor are they simulating here
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where you can't tell the difference between these colors
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input select is actually that just that was it fell by the wayside that was a
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low priority i mean there's only two inputs
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so by this point it's pretty clear this monitor is
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terrible but you guys can keep watching
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for just more pain train here i think so cs go demo mode yeah yeah yeah what even
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it is it's all up here no it can't be
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i think it's all in here oh my god it is
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we can't even see the menu
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oh my god it's like dishonest sales tactic mode
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it's like do you want to lie to your customers press this button oh that's a
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bad guy can we turn demo mode off now and give this thing a fair shake
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all right let's do it let's do it you know i don't actually feel
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a discernibly large amount of input leg like i you
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know if we whip out the makey makey or something and measure it it might not be
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perfect which is what i did it's not terrible are we going to be
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able to show these side by side because this one's 4k and that one's
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super definitely not i don't actually know if we can clone display a game like
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that we might have to run this one at 1080.
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okay so they're both 1920x1080 they're both 100
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okay is it gonna clone i actually i don't remember ever trying to do this
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cool uh it's not working
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it's dull and lifeless let's be more fair let's be even more fair
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let's be as fair as we can let's try some different um
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modes or something okay because we're in srgb mode which is
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not like the most vibrant mode or anything oh my god they're all awful
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that's just pink go to normal
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very green okay so we're resetting this to factory
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defaults i'm getting pro
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so yeah it's pink it's a pink monitor you can really see
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it's not bright at all like the contrast
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is so low like this is brighter than this this is
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darker here which is what you want and then this like these bright spots
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where it's supposed to be bright white it's just dull it has no
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punch to it so to be clear we're comparing two
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monitors that would both have obvious differences
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between the image on their screen and a known subject like someone you've seen
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in person many times well you can see the actual and the
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drawn or rendered color right there right but we're looking at it on these
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monitors but we're talking an average delta e of 5.54 and 7.16 so it's
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considered indiscernible to the human eye when it's sub 2. so that's fascinating so you
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wouldn't use either of these for color critical work but
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i think if you're just a regular gamer movie watcher normal stuff
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you're not gonna really care about either of those values
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but meanwhile actually using it
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you hated this it's so damn
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and it looked so green yeah i hate it
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here's the thing just because the panel is made by a reputable manufacturer
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doesn't necessarily mean that they are to blame for a crappy image on it
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because the electronics that drive the panel the
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tuning of the panel the calibration of the panel all of these things affect the
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final image the quality of the backlight the quality of the intermediate layers
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there's really not much benefit to finding out who's responsible for the
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actual panel itself i guess there's just
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an additional appreciation for that most monitors aren't this bad okay there's
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one more thing we can test though sure if you remember
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we hated the speakers on that thing yeah we were happy that it came with them
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i guess they were really bad though yeah could these speakers be worse
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all right let's find out do i really need any more than the
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Windows test tone to know that this sounds horrible here just not a good
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test bear with me bear with me no just come over here just come over here and listen to it
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it's obviously bad already that's pretty bad
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okay let's try the other one uh
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hold on it's not picking it up i think the
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NVIDIA audio stream output thing can only do one at a time so
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let's see if it picks up this one are you are you just messing with me no
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you think they're just grills and there's no real speakers in there
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they're not picking up i don't
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know if i ever heard them
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are you messing with me right now no no i'm not are you sure
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could they be fake i'm pretty sure the product page also says it has speakers
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though all right so we're giving it another
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shot oh my god there aren't speakers in it
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well speaking of good ideas
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ending this video now because realistically you guys are no more
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likely to uh check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video
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description than you were three or four minutes ago
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and this video is brought to you by massdrop and sennheiser of teamed up to
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bring us the pc37x gaming headset it
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features angled drivers and an open back design for a nice natural sound and
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better stereo imaging and those drivers actually come from the same family as
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the ht598s and hd 600 series headphones
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they come with a noise cancelling microphone and they're available on massdrop at the link below for just
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119.99 for a limited time go check them out
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so thanks for watching if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed
11:44
or maybe consider checking out where to buy the other stuff we featured at the
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link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool
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shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join seriously i'd recommend anything in this
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video more than that except with the exception of maybe the amazon basics gaming keyboard that's not very good
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toss up there no no it's better than this it's just
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i'm not really recommending it this is cheaper