Monitor Buying Guide 2018

jasonpicard Not much of a gamer myself.

I like some of the work he does, but I care more about accurate colors and having a static screen (no dithering) over gamer enhancements.

Slacor Sure is. I try to stagger purchases and use as many retailers as possible so I don't end up flagged and on some blacklist lol. On my 3rd laptop from Dell, I did find one that was usable though, so I it was worth it to experiment. Returned one and sold the other.

JTL Yeah. First was XPS 13 9380 with the 1080p matte non-touch display. That was moderately painful to look at. Next I tried XPS 15 7590 also with the 1080p matte non-touch display. That was even more painful, possibly because I had to keep it at 26% to avoid PWM, while the XPS 13 did not use PWM.

Was pretty bummed about laptops, but my school was buying me one to use with assistive technology, and they buy Inspirons for students. We decided on Inspiron 7391 (non Black Edition), which comes with 1080p glossy touch display... and it's been good! Interestingly, it's painful driving any external monitor, but on the internal display I can use it. Has Chi Mei panel CMN1384. I inferred it is probably using 26KHz PWM based on this, from my notes:

• Chi Mei 1385 uses PWM of 26000 Hz. This is only one number difference and is the 4K panel used in the Black Edition of the 13 7000 2-in-1. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Inspiron-13-7386-2-in-1-Black-Edition-i7-8565U-16-GB-RAM-512-GB-SSD-Convertible-Review.397461.0.html#toc-display
• Chi Mei 1367, a 1080p panel from 2016 and probably a predecessor of the 1384, has a PWM of 25000 Hz as reported by laptopmedia.com.
• In both cases Chi Mei uses high frequency PWM. In the case of the 1385, the PWM is engaged only below 21%. https://laptopmedia.com/screen/chi-mei-cmn1367-2/

Innolux bought Chi Mei and the panel has a different designation now, N133HCE-EPA. I got the spec sheet for it from panelook, but I don't know if it has any useful information or how to interpret most of it.

As an aside, I really like glossy now. I don't like the matte coatings at all anymore. Everything has much better clarity this way and the reflections don't bother me. I don't think this has anything to do with the pain though, as a glossy Macbook would cause instant pain.

I have set up side by side Dell S2719DGF (TN), and Dell U2518D (IPS), both are 1440p and running at 60 Hz. Dell S2719DGF can run at 144 Hz but not on my setup.

Very obviously the Dell U2518D is painful to look at, making the muscles around my eyes tense and my face hurt. Very immediate effect. The Dell S2719DGF is comparatively much easier to look at. I'm not sold 100% on it yet but it's not immediately painful and it doesn't have the text legibility issues of the Samsung 24CFG73.

Main differences between the panels is size (25 vs 27 inch on the S2719DGF), which I think is making no difference in this case, panel type (IPS vs TN, I'm currently on the fence about panel type and eye strain, but there is a general trend towards IPS panel being more painful for me, but there are confounding factors. My laptop panel is IPS and not so painful), and FRC (S2719DGF is true 8 bit with no dithering, and U2518D is 8 bit + 2 bit FRC).

As is often the case, my initial impressions were wrong. The Dell 2719DGF is not good. It's worse than the Dell U2518D. I now enjoy the Dell U2518D and it is my primary display.

EDIT: Neither is good.

During the holidays, as you can see from all my posts, I tried many different monitors. I returned all of them and settled on the Dell U2518D. On my known good set-up with Windows 7 and an old Quadro card, it was enough to get me to switch over from my BenQ EW2440L. Despite my ramblings about IPS being rubbish, I continued to find it superior to the Dell S2719DGF. I tried the Samsung C24FG70. I did enjoy the Quantum Dot backlight (less sensation of wanting to turn the brightness down), but the subpixel arrangement is compromised for viewing text (and essentially everything actually), and if you spend long enough reading on it, I'm convinced even non-tech sensitive people with good vision will eventually experience "regular" eyestrain trying to decipher the text. I look forward to trying a Qauntum Dot backlit monitor on a regular subpixel arrangement. I understand LG has such a thing with their NanoIPS technology, but I noticed several people have reported eyestrain with the LG 27GL850. However, this could just be due to the popularity of the monitor.

The Dell U2518D does have 8 + 2 bit FRC.

EDIT: It is not good.

https://www.asus.com/us/Monitors/MB16AC/ this works fine with no eyestrain. why might this be the case? i use 125% scaling