"16 local dimming zones" - IPS monitor with this currently?

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DarkSideA8

Gawd
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Apr 13, 2005
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The UQnotX is expected later this summer with 16 local dimming zones.

I've seen videos of some of the white square /circle on black background which shows the glow and lack of speed in switching - but I'm interested in seeing a more 'real world' look at how these types of monitors work.

Anyone know of a good 27 that has this feature so I can check out the performance in anticipation of what the UQnotX might look like?
 
Acre x27 and Asus model using the same panel, have 384 dimming zones, and you can still quite easily see it, although it’s not horrible.
16 zones? That’s a joke. Don’t bother. Not even sure why a company would even do that.
 
Yeah 16 zones is beyond pointless. Local dimming can get away with using a fraction of the total image resolution, but 16 "pixels" is just way too small a fraction. I bet they can make it look ok with landscape images with a flat horizon and open sky but that's about it. I wouldn't consider anything less than a couple thousand zones for local dimming or else it's going to make the image quality worse in many situations.
 
Yeah, that's awful. It really doesn't even seem to be accomplishing anything, and you'd be better off just turning it off. The 384 zones on the Acer X27 is barely tolerable, but works to give proper 1000 nits support. I can't fathom doing it with less. To that point, it's even more useless if the HDR panel isn't at least 1000 nits as well.
 
I think these 'white on black' demos are showcasing the worst case scenario.

I suspect (and cannot check in person b/c no stores) that an ips with local dimming will look pretty damn good compared to older standard back-lit monitors - even if they suck next to an OLED or FALD.
 
They all look okay until local dimming turns into local deading...
 
DarkSideA8 said:
I think these 'white on black' demos are showcasing the worst case scenario.

I suspect (and cannot check in person b/c no stores) that an ips with local dimming will look pretty damn good compared to older standard back-lit monitors - even if they suck next to an OLED or FALD.
Click to expand...

Worst case but not outside if real life use. Scifi movies are an obvious one but any night scene with high brightness highlights like a campfire (or just subtitles if you use them, my KS7500 flashlights like mofo in HDR with them) suffer from haloing too.
 
DarkSideA8 said:
I think these 'white on black' demos are showcasing the worst case scenario.

I suspect (and cannot check in person b/c no stores) that an ips with local dimming will look pretty damn good compared to older standard back-lit monitors - even if they suck next to an OLED or FALD.
Click to expand...
Yes they are a worst case scenario but 16 zones is firmly in that "usable but rubbish" zone. Most games, movies etc have high contrast scenes with dark and light and the more dark content there is the worse it's going to perform. If you have a display with 16 zones then that can be decent tradeoff to have some kind of usable HDR while not paying an arm and a leg for it.

I would not buy a display like that for HDR gaming/movies specifically but would probably happily use it otherwise. I would then decide on a case by case basis if HDR in a particular game looks better or not for my preferences and if the black level sacrifices are worth it. For example I found that Hitman 2 worked acceptably on a display with poor local dimming because it has a good number of bright outdoor settings but I would not play Metro Exodus like that because it has a lot of dark areas with small light sources.
 
The more I look into this, the more I become aware of how nascent the implementation of HDR is in Monitor space.

Am I correct in assuming that local dimming zones are purely for the HDR?
 
DarkSideA8 said:
The more I look into this, the more I become aware of how nascent the implementation of HDR is in Monitor space.

Am I correct in assuming that local dimming zones are purely for the HDR?
Click to expand...
It helps the most with HDR (or I should say, it's pretty much a requirement for HDR content), but most monitors have the option to leave it enabled for SDR mode as well, and it does help with the dynamic range a little with SDR content.

But again, 16 zones ain't going to cut it.
 
DarkSideA8 said:
The more I look into this, the more I become aware of how nascent the implementation of HDR is in Monitor space.

Am I correct in assuming that local dimming zones are purely for the HDR?
Click to expand...
It is for HDR, yes, but the dimming zones replace the standard backlight. If you turn the brightness up on a FALD enough in SDR you'll be able to see the distinct zones on certain background colors. But this has an advantage in SDR as Mchart says, as you can enable the dynamic backlighting to increase contrast.
 
Mchart said:
Yeah, that's awful. It really doesn't even seem to be accomplishing anything, and you'd be better off just turning it off. The 384 zones on the Acer X27 is barely tolerable, but works to give proper 1000 nits support. I can't fathom doing it with less. To that point, it's even more useless if the HDR panel isn't at least 1000 nits as well.
Click to expand...

The purpose is to let them claim more Bungholiomarks in the HDR section of the specsheet. FakeHDR scores lots of Bungholiomarks which the marketing department loves.
 
Long term, we're looking for minimum 10,000 controllable FALD zones in a 24"-27" panel at a 3-figure MSRP.

Previously, FALD matrix backlights used to be hand-built, with complex parabolic reflectors surrounding the LEDs because there were so few zones to cover a wide TV panel surface. Essentially a "Luxury Television" feature many of us never see.

Fortunately, with a sufficiently dense LED matrix, you simply use cheap plastic diffuser sheets instead (translucent types and fresnel types), barely modified from existing sheets that diffuse an edgelight evenly throughout the panel.

There is now a commoditization path later this decade to achieve that with just a 3-figure price. Basically 2025-ish, probably be 2027-ish due to fab shortages and the economy pause caused by COVID. But the path is established to get parts of the gaming monitor industry there. It is the magic recipe of sufficient LED matrix density for cheap optics + automated LED matrix assembly = 3 figure FALD MSRPs for whole desktop monitors.

Although 4-figure prices will probably still happen initially with the first 10K-count LED matrixes, the intent is to aggressively push it to 3-figures well before the end of the decade. The goal is to push FALD gaming monitors to the multithousand-zone leagues at the high-3-figure cost leagues.

There are other LED matrixes that have fallen cheap enough (Alibaba sells 32x32 RGB LED modules -- that's 3072 LED chips -- for a mere ~$10 per module); the commoditization of monochrome.

MiniLED backlight manufacturing is barely different from the ultra-commoditization of "JumboTron Lego" (the cheap square building blocks of a stadium scoreboard or video billboard) -- the same automated LED matrix factory assembly robots can also churn out cheap FALD sheets en masse, given a sufficiently large quantity order to appropriate specs.
 
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