42" OLED MASTER THREAD

Why, you don't like it?
I like discussing the 42” OLED market segment, but why are we comparing what’s arguably the pinnacle of image quality for the masses with shitbox TN panels? I would just think that someone in the market for one would not be in the market for the other… OLED is more than fast enough if you aren’t getting paid to play IMO.
 
I find it odd and amusing that you say it's "almost as responsive" as a fast TN panel. Uh, OLED should have LESS input lag than any TN panel. What the fuck is going on? OLED seems to be absurdly underperforming given what it's supposedly capable of. Aren't OLED panels supposed to be WAY faster than any TN/IPS/VA panel?
OLED has incredibly low pixel response times but a good chunk higher input lag than the fastest "gaming" monitors these days, which have almost negligible input lag. While the TN would have more motion blur it might "feel" more responsive.

But OLED input lag is still less than 1 frame at both 60 and 120 Hz so to me it's a non-issue. When I had the Samsung KS8000 which had about 20ms input lag in SDR and about 35ms in HDR I found that I could notice the input lag when in HDR mode but could not tell a difference in SDR to my very low input lag ASUS PG278Q I had the time connected to my PC. I don't play twitch shooters etc so that might be a different ballgame and each person might perceive this differently.
 
I have had my OLED 42" for about a month now. It is amazing in most respects. The one issue I am having is power draw. In our gaming den, if both my partner and I are gaming, we end up tripping the circuit breaker. If I use my Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX, we do not have power issues. The house is only 6 years old, and we have had two electricians state that due to the mandatory installation of 'smart breakers' in new construction, these kinds of issues will happen. Electrician believes there is a sudden power draw spike from the monitor that is making the breaker think there is a circuit issue and tripping. We ended up moving the OLED to be a tv for the spare bedroom, and the PG32UQX is a great monitor (brighter and noticeably better text clarity), but the OLED was simply amazing for gaming and videos. The LG 42" HDR implementation is much better than the PG32UQX, particularly when paired with Windows 11. The 42" OLED has better HDR color control and the ability to tone map.

The PG32UX draws ~60 watts
The LG OLED 42" draw is still TBD on their website, though I read it is estimated ~75 watts
 
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I have a killawat and will measure the C2 when I have a chance. FYI PG32UQX measures 60w @ 200nits. It comes with a 280w power brick and draws quite a bit more than a C2 under high APL HDR. I wouldn't be surprised if its north of 180w.

EDIT: Rtings measured 179w max from their 55" C2 which gets quite a bit brighter than the 42". There is no way IMO the 42" draws more power than a PG32UQX nor do I think its transients or "spiking" are more severe than a monitor that does 1200nits full field and has a power hungry Gsync SoC but what do I know.
 
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I have had my OLED 42" for about a month now. It is amazing in most respects. The one issue I am having is power draw. In our gaming den, if both my partner and I are gaming, we end up tripping the circuit breaker. If I use my Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX, we do not have power issues. The house is only 6 years old, and we have had two electricians state that due to the mandatory installation of 'smart breakers' in new construction, these kinds of issues will happen. Electrician believes there is a sudden power draw spike from the monitor that is making the breaker think there is a circuit issue and tripping. We ended up moving the OLED to be a tv for the spare bedroom, and the PG32UQX is a great monitor (brighter and noticeably better text clarity), but the OLED was simply amazing for gaming and videos. The LG 42" HDR implementation is much better than the PG32UQX, particularly when paired with Windows 11. The 42" OLED has better HDR color control and the ability to tone map.

The PG32UX draws ~60 watts
The LG OLED 42" draw is still TBD on their website, though I read it is estimated ~75 watts

I wonder if using uninterruptible power supplies would help that.
 
I have had my OLED 42" for about a month now. It is amazing in most respects. The one issue I am having is power draw. In our gaming den, if both my partner and I are gaming, we end up tripping the circuit breaker. If I use my Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX, we do not have power issues. The house is only 6 years old, and we have had two electricians state that due to the mandatory installation of 'smart breakers' in new construction, these kinds of issues will happen. Electrician believes there is a sudden power draw spike from the monitor that is making the breaker think there is a circuit issue and tripping. We ended up moving the OLED to be a tv for the spare bedroom, and the PG32UQX is a great monitor (brighter and noticeably better text clarity), but the OLED was simply amazing for gaming and videos. The LG 42" HDR implementation is much better than the PG32UQX, particularly when paired with Windows 11. The 42" OLED has better HDR color control and the ability to tone map.

The PG32UX draws ~60 watts
The LG OLED 42" draw is still TBD on their website, though I read it is estimated ~75 watts
At your breaker box how many amps is the breaker feeding that electrical run that feeds the gaming den?
 
42C2 working great on my setup. 42" is a nice spot for distance from eyes, desk space and immersion. Now I just have to do some tiding up of cables etc. The poor G8 hanging out in the back. :(
 

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I wonder if using uninterruptible power supplies would help that.
For what it's worth, I've had my 48CX plugged into a 1,500 VA CyberPower UPS and have had no such issues with either it or my previous 55B7.

42C2 working great on my setup. 42" is a nice spot for distance from eyes, desk space and immersion. Now I just have to do some tiding up of cables etc. The poor G8 hanging out in the back. :(
Looks great! Is there anything on the horizon that could replace it? Seems like you switch displays several times per year. I'm not sure if you're constantly searching for the best or if you just like variety. :) Your experience helps when you drop into these threads, though.
 
For what it's worth, I've had my 48CX plugged into a 1,500 VA CyberPower UPS and have had no such issues with either it or my previous 55B7.


Looks great! Is there anything on the horizon that could replace it? Seems like you switch displays several times per year. I'm not sure if you're constantly searching for the best or if you just like variety. :) Your experience helps when you drop into these threads, though.

Constantly searching for the best lol. The 42C2 should last me a while... until they come out with a higher refresh version. The 48" panel will get 138 Hz overclock models, but I don't like that size. 42" is my Mojo.
 
At your breaker box how many amps is the breaker feeding that electrical run that feeds the gaming den?
If I remember correctly, the electrician said 15 amps. Note that I do have a 32 core threadripper with an nvidia 3090 in it. Roughly the same specs I use for work. The other machine is an AMD 5800 with a 2080. We each have two 32" monitors (total of 4).
 
All OLED panels tend to consume a lot of energy due to their per pixel self emitting light nature. LEDs in LCD displays are a lot less power hungry - because there's usually a lot less of them mostly.
then for laptop or tablet running OLED screen, how many hr. of usage do we lost vs. the current laop / tablet of the same size
 
If I remember correctly, the electrician said 15 amps. Note that I do have a 32 core threadripper with an nvidia 3090 in it. Roughly the same specs I use for work. The other machine is an AMD 5800 with a 2080. We each have two 32" monitors (total of 4).
Anything over 1800 watts is going to trip that breaker, and that is 1800 watts on the whole run, so whenever the breaker flips and power is lost, whatever is down at that time is on that same run and cannot go over 1800 watts at any time or it will trip that breaker.

BTW I am not an electrician so if anyone wants to correct any incorrect information please feel free to do so.
 
One thing I just realized with the C2 being able to pass Dolby Atmos through eARC; I can now only run one display and have not have that dual monitor wonkiness to get sound out of my GPU. With a regular monitor, I had it hooked up via DP. But to get Dolby Atmos to the receiver, I had to use HDMI out on the NVIDIA GPU but the caveat was that it showed up as a second monitor, which was super annoying in Windows. So now that problem is eliminated and looks like I will be keeping the 42C2 over the AW34 OLED and the G8.
 
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Well Rtings at least confirmed what I've been saying in here since the 42" launched in North America. Most of the time it's actually brighter than the AW. The Dell is a brighter SDR monitor but in HDR the C2 looks more impactful 75% of the time. Check out their real scene brightness where 100nits separate the two.

Screenshot 2022-06-28 072820.png


Too bad the 42" is so gimped compared to last years 48" and yes these are their measurements of it using their monitor test suite:

c1 48.png


If the 42" managed the 48's brightness it would be a unanimous win IMO to 90% of peoples eyes but as is I think the difference is hard for most to notice and its just a matter of form factor.
 
One thing I just realized with the C2 being able to pass Dolby Atmos through eARC; I can now only run one display and have not have that dual monitor wonkiness to get sound out of my GPU. With a regular monitor, I had it hooked up via DP. But to get Dolby Atmos to the receiver, I had to use HDMI out on the NVIDIA GPU but the caveat was that it showed up as a second monitor, which was super annoying in Windows. So now that problem is eliminated and looks like I will be keeping the 42C2 over the AW34 OLED and the G8.

Does it add any delay to the audio though? I was using ARC with my CX but it actually added just a tiny bit of lag to the audio which was annoying enough that I went back to using a phantom monitor.
 
When the Samsung QD-OLED comes down to 42", that will be the one to get for a desktop gaming monitor. Maybe next year?
 
Does it add any delay to the audio though? I was using ARC with my CX but it actually added just a tiny bit of lag to the audio which was annoying enough that I went back to using a phantom monitor.

Ya, in order to get Dolby Atmos I have to run "Bitstream" instead of PCM which adds like 100ms of audio lag. I found an even larger problem though. While randomly opening Youtube etc in Chrome, an extremely loud and sharp glitch/buzzing sound occurs which scares the shit out of me. So looks like I will have to go back to PCM and lose Dolby Atmos.

Another thing I forgot with these dang OLED TV's is it precludes me from being able to see my BIOS POST screen. That is super frustrating and basically means I need to keep some sort of backup monitor around. Has anyone found a way around these LG TV's not displaying BIOS screens?
 
Ya, in order to get Dolby Atmos I have to run "Bitstream" instead of PCM which adds like 100ms of audio lag. I found an even larger problem though. While randomly opening Youtube etc in Chrome, an extremely loud and sharp glitch/buzzing sound occurs which scares the shit out of me. So looks like I will have to go back to PCM and lose Dolby Atmos.

Another thing I forgot with these dang OLED TV's is it precludes me from being able to see my BIOS POST screen. That is super frustrating and basically means I need to keep some sort of backup monitor around. Has anyone found a way around these LG TV's not displaying BIOS screens?
I think it was hit and miss on the 48 CX I tried 2 years ago. What helps is if it's the only display connected and you do a bios reset after., not sure why.
 
Another thing I forgot with these dang OLED TV's is it precludes me from being able to see my BIOS POST screen. That is super frustrating and basically means I need to keep some sort of backup monitor around. Has anyone found a way around these LG TV's not displaying BIOS screens?
Never had that issue with my CX 48". BIOS showed up just fine even if its resolution was wonky. If you mean it takes longer to start up and gets past the BIOS screen then just keep hitting whatever key gets you to BIOS (F2 or Del usually) and it should work. I'm using a Gigabyte X570 mITX board with a 2080 Ti.
 
No for whatever reasons multiple of my OLED's have had issues displaying POST/BIOS, even trying all the methods above.
 
No for whatever reasons multiple of my OLED's have had issues displaying POST/BIOS, even trying all the methods above.
Most BIOS will pick integrated GPU outputs -> discrete GPU HDMI -> discrete GPU DisplayPort as the input order to use but this might be selectable on some boards. So if you have other displays connected it might try to display it on one of those.
 
Most BIOS will pick integrated GPU outputs -> discrete GPU HDMI -> discrete GPU DisplayPort as the input order to use but this might be selectable on some boards. So if you have other displays connected it might try to display it on one of those.
Yeah for me it always shows up on one of my other screens. I'm pretty sure I have seen it when I only had my OLED connected though.
 
Tested the G8 vs the 42C2 and there is no comparison across the board. G8 returning to Samsung.
How do you feel about the size difference and the effect on PPI for desktop use? Did you use different scaling levels on them? What about text quality?
 
How do you feel about the size difference and the effect on PPI for desktop use? Did you use different scaling levels on them? What about text quality?

I push back the 42C2 so it's relatively the same clarity perception as the closer G8. I use 150% Windows scaling on all my 4K displays. I don't do work/text/documents on my home PC so not too worried about that. Some of the benefits of the G8's traditional RGB pixel structure are reduced by the G8's sparkly AR film and the scan lines IMO.
 
How do you feel about the size difference and the effect on PPI for desktop use? Did you use different scaling levels on them? What about text quality?
Tbh I don't see many issues with WRGB subpixels even on a 65" OLED when looking at it from a really close distance. So I wouldn't worry about text quality on a 42" one.
 
When the Samsung QD-OLED comes down to 42", that will be the one to get for a desktop gaming monitor. Maybe next year?
They have already announced 49 and 77 inch models for 2023 so I would think they would have announced 42 as well if it was coming in 2023.

There are some concerns around text color fringing with the current pixel structure of QD-OLED.
 
Tbh I don't see many issues with WRGB subpixels even on a 65" OLED when looking at it from a really close distance. So I wouldn't worry about text quality on a 42" one.
I have a CX 48" and it's definitely there for 100% scaling on Windows. MacOS text rendering is different and has no real problems in this regard. On Windows using DPI scaling and adjusting RGB contrast with Better Cleartype Tuner does a good job for mitigating it.
 
Tested the G8 vs the 42C2 and there is no comparison across the board. G8 returning to Samsung.
Exactly. Nothing stands near a self emissive OLED in scenes like that, in games I notice this advantage quite often, and when I do - I know, it looks really special 😁 No bloom, only the lit object precisely. 🙂

No problem with entering or displaying BIOS on my side, just like on the C7:

IMG_20220703_003036.jpg

Something up with your motherboard or connection, apparently.
 
I used a ColorChecker Display Plus and measured some highlights in FF7R. I would equate these to 5% & 10% but in a actual game scene with multiple highlights present so ABL has influence.

C2:

-Medium = 290 nits
-Small = 550 nits

AW3423DW (HDR1000):

-Medium = 200nits
-Small = 680nits

The AW uses it's entire ABL budget for smaller stuff while anything under like 20% the C2 pushes ahead. The more stuff demanding 1000nits on screen at once the brighter the C2 was able to keep them all as a whole while the AW seemed to really blast whatever is most prominent. The AW in HDR400 mode I could not get to measure higher than 390nits or so on any highlight.

I've decided that if I keep one over the other, I'll have some form of remorse so just placed an order for the C2 and convinced my friend to keep this C2 he lent me. I'll just use both. AW primarily for PC gaming and desktop use and the LG for movies/PS5 and whatever PC game I feel suits it better.
Haha, I'm in the same boat...love both panels. Aw34 is liquid butter smooth and C2 is so immersive....hard to choose!
 
I’m just holding out on hopium crack that better BFI implementations are available at this size. The removal of 120hz BFI is ugh…

Yeah this ruins the display for me. I don't know why they removed it, but it's no longer something I'm willing to buy because they removed 120hz. The 48" C1 has it, and is half the price.. like, what the fuck are they thinking?
 
Yeah this ruins the display for me. I don't know why they removed it, but it's no longer something I'm willing to buy because they removed 120hz. The 48" C1 has it, and is half the price.. like, what the fuck are they thinking?
You're one of 8 people interested in BFI along with the 12 that used it on the CX/C1.
 
I would much, much, MUCH rather LG gave us 138hz or really juiced the electronics to 240hz than BFI.

BFI goes unused on my C955 and C177 because the tinge of input lag drives me nuts, and oleds not bright enough to cover BFI imho

LG oleds have had 120hz since C9...the C2 is still Epic, but 4k240hz would have been endgame for me.

They should really offer a premium C3 version next year that gives 4k240. I'd pay extra over the standard model for it. Also they need to ditch matte AG coating on their gamery version. Matte AG has no place on oled.
 
BFI literally cuts brightness of an already pretty dim display to half. I understand its use case like emulators/retro or edge case competitive stuff but its such a small demographic. Not to mention the chore it is to dig into the menu and toggle BFI on/off as necessary. I enabled it once to play through Streets of Rage 4 and never touched it again because of the hassle.
 
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