The First OLED Monitor! - ASUS PQ22U
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,105 words · ~10 min read
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I thought one of the most fair comparisons to help us assess just how
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next-gen the ASUS PQ22U OLED monitor is, would be to take it and put it right beside
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another conventional high-end ASUS display, the PQ27UQ.
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And the first thing you guys will notice,
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especially if you're one of those dark mode all the things types, is how much deeper and
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richer the blacks are.
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This shouldn't really come as a surprise though, since it's the main claim to fame of OLED.
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You get much higher contrast because when the pixels are ordered to display black,
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they really give you black rather than that glowy dark gray that you're used to on an LCD.
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But surely then there's got to be a downside, right?
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Yeah, there is. So let's talk about that.
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In a nutshell, the reason that LCDs can't display true black is that they work by
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shining a backlight through a membrane of liquid crystals that twist or
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untwist to let the appropriate amount of light through. But displaying black doesn't make the backlight turn off. It just makes the liquid crystals
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reorganized to try and block the light. As you can see, some light always makes it through, either the crystal,
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membrane, or through the cracks between the pixels.
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OLED technology, by contrast,
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uses no backlight.
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Instead, applying electricity causes special organic phosphors to glow.
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So if you want black or the absence of light, you just turn off the electricity. And the results are, I mean,
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they're just incredible.
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I'm a huge fan of OLED technology, and the 3840 by 2160 resolution and inky blacks on this display make it
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just look so visceral.
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Much like the OLED screens that high-end phone buyers have been appreciating for the last few years.
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Also of note, and this is actually one of the things that I've been personally most excited about with this technology, is this displays
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incredible 0.1 millisecond pixel response time. Now, this demo here will be a familiar one for display nerds, and
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this is cool. Even through the camera, if you get close, you can really see the way that an
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OLED display can cut down on motion blur by the extra detail that you can make out on the alien's ship and face.
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Freakin' awesome. And,
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speaking of getting close, you shall. At just 21 and a half inches.
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This is about as small as modern monitors get, so I guess it was a smart move for ASUS to market this thing as a
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portable display for creators on the go. You see, the stand here is actually only held on by magnets,
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and the monitor can be easily folded and slipped into a bag, leaving you with a display that feels
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like, when you're holding it, kind of like an oversized tablet.
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It's only one and a half kilograms and eight and a half millimeters thick. It also comes with this magnetic screen protector
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slash stand that enables multiple configurations,
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including a vertical mount, but
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honestly, it was a little hard to set up and too unstable to really inspire confidence.
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So, if I were you, I'd probably stick with the metal stand, which does still offer about 20 degrees of tilt adjustment.
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Oh, and one more thing. I'm sure many of you will appreciate the included stylish leather carry bag.
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Although, for me, it mainly served as a reminder that 21 and a half inches is too small for my main workstation,
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but too big for me to just slip it into my backpack. And,
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actually, the portable design also affects it in other ways.
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Like the ports. All we get is a single micro HDMI and two USB-C ports,
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which carry both DisplayPort and power.
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I'll get back to those in a bit though, because right now, I have some burn-in questions to answer about the elephant in the room.
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Image retention.
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Commonly called burn-in, image retention is one of the two main reasons why OLED monitors haven't already become mainstream,
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with the other one being their overall shorter lifespan.
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Basically,
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burn-in is caused by pixels displaying the same thing for long periods of time.
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So, news station logos, sports scoreboards, video game HUDs,
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I mean, really anything that stays on the screen without changing or moving.
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It was the bane of plasma TVs, and it's the worst nightmare of any OLED owner.
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I mean, I personally go to great lengths to ensure that my OLED TV
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never gets used for long gaming sessions or streaming music, for example.
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The issue,
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is that on a PC, there are a lot of things that always stay in the same spot, like taskbars,
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buttons, and toolbars, and
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there's no real way to avoid them all together.
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So, how then does the PQ22U overcome these challenges? Has there been a
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technological advancement that's allowed us to finally have OLED monitors without worrying about burn-in?
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No.
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No.
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The PQ22U actually uses
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fundamentally the same countermeasures that OLED TVs have been using for years,
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like shifting the whole image over by a few pixels when it detects static content, or
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simply dimming the screen, which this one does with the help of a human sensor right over there.
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Now, that is supposed to detect whether the monitor is actively being used by looking for someone sitting in front of it, but
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honestly, I ended up turning it off completely because I guess it was registering me as a lizard person,
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or something, and turning the screen off when I was in the middle of doing something
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extremely annoying. With all of that said,
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even if they didn't help with burn-in,
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technological advancements did still play a role in bringing this monitor to market.
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So the PQ22U uses an OLED panel made by a relatively new company,
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Joled, a joint venture between Sony, Panasonic, and Japan Display established in 2014. And while their OLED panels use full
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RGB subpixels,
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like the AMOLED screens made by Samsung, Joled is using an inkjet printing
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manufacturing process to make their panels 30 to 50% cheaper than those produced with the conventional evaporation method.
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So then that's pretty great.
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Affordability at last! And, I mean, big-screen OLED TVs are popular, handheld devices with OLED screens are popular,
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why not then go after the market in the middle?
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Well, this is where we get into the problems.
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For one thing, 21 and a half inches is what I refer to as a tweener size.
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It's too big for tablets and laptops,
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but smaller than the 23 to 24 inch size that has become really entry-level for the desktop. And then for two, if
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their inkjet process has contributed to making this thing a lot cheaper,
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I don't even want to know how much it was gonna cost if they made it the conventional way, because ASUS is charging
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4,000 for this thing.
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And no, not ringgit or yen or rupees. I'm talking four thousand freedom dollars!
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So to put that in perspective, at that price, I could buy a
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55-inch
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LGB8 4K OLED TV,
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burn it into oblivion and then buy a new one.
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Whew!
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So okay, but like hold on a second then. I mean, lots of products are expensive.
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That doesn't necessarily mean that they're a terrible value.
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So let's imagine for a moment. Let's play a little game
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Money's no object and then while we're at it you you love the the totable
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21 and a half inch size if those things are true. Are you getting the premium performance that the price tag implies?
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Okay, so
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ASUS is marketing this display towards creators and they include a factory calibration report boasting of its
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fantastic color accuracy
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Thanks, and indeed it has great coverage of the sRGB
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Adobe RGB and DCI p3 color spaces, which is great
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The problem is that when it comes to actually reproducing these billions of colors
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It fails and I mean like really fails like harder than the cheapest Walmart monitor that we checked out recently
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But how can that be possible?
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So here's what we discovered
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We could get much
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Improved color accuracy and act like really accurate if we measured just a small part of the screen
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Rather than the entire thing we're talking Delta ease under one. That's basically perfect
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the problem is that we can't get this kind of performance across the entire screen and it's because the screen just
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Isn't bright enough suggesting that there's a power issue when it just isn't getting enough juice through its USB type-c port
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so in sRGB mode the bright
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Brightest white is under 80 nits, and they locked the brightness, so you can't even turn it up like you can in their
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Best buy showroom standard mode which makes me wonder then about the HDR experience now this monitor
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supports HDR 10
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HLG and Dolby vision it's actually one of the world's first displays to do so it's just that it only has a peak brightness of
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335 nits and a sustained brightness of 140 nits
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Now that is a far cry from the brightness levels that are required for good HDR
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Thing is it's an inherent characteristic of OLED technology that increased brightness
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Means increased risk of burn-in so bottom line then should you buy this monitor remember?
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We're playing a little game you like the portability and money is no object
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Honestly the answer is still no the price would be absurd even if the product wasn't
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As rough around the edges as this one is and the portability
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Even though we're playing this game where you like it
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Just feels like kind of a tacked-on gimmick to make up for the fact that the screen is too small
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Making matters worse it doesn't even have its own internal battery like other
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Cheaper portable monitors with all of that said though as a tech demo for the concept of OLED monitors in general
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I'm still excited
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but also
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kind of getting worried about whether this is ever going to
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Take off I mean the price is gonna have to drop by a factor of four or five which is possible over time
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But it's really clear to me that manufacturing volume has to ramp up
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significantly to make that happen and the risk then is that by the time that happens OLED could be replaced by
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Emerging technologies like micro LED which if all goes according to plan is gonna have all the benefits of OLED
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So those fast response times and perfect black
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But with none of the drawbacks and that is the degradation that comes from using
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