When people say viewing angles I just facepalm

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SpongeBob

The Contraceptive Under the Sea
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Am I the only one who thinks people who talk about viewing angles sound like idiots? Here's an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwDMhXUyGQ0 To sum it up the guy shows how "bad" the viewing angles are on a TN monitor. But seriously who the hell looks at their monitor from sitting under a desk, above the monitor, or has their chair seated beside their monitor? "Looking at it straight on it looks good" he says. NO SHIT. This is how I think 99% of people will look at a monitor. I could see if you had like 4 monitors lined up maybe the end ones might not look as amazing but seriously it's not drastic I set up my Dads rig like that years ago and did not see any noticeable difference. It's a pet peeve but seriously drives me crazy. I forget the review I read earlier this week but in one review one of the cons a reviewer mentioned about viewing angles is not being able to see your opponents monitor when sitting next to them. I thought who the hell is this dick, he wants to cheat? Maybe those are the type of people who complain about viewing angles. Anyone else?
 
They're just emphasizing the difference viewing angle makes when they do that.

Personally when I last used a TN panel back in 2009 or so I could see the color shift just by leaning back in my chair. And that was just a 22" LCD too. With a 27" panel the difference can easily be bigger and I could see how it would annoy people.

That being said there are a few higher quality TN panels out now where the color shift is relatively minor so if you're on a tight budget they can still be worthwhile. If you're not though IPS of some sort has come down massively in price and is definitely the way to go even if you have to deal with the glow.
 
so, I guess you never watch media with other people but just sit directly in front of your monitor by yourself all the time?
 
My Samsung TN isn't all that big (21.5 inches) and I can see the color shifting on it now - just lounging here in my chair reading this thread. I could give two fucks though because I don't use it for gaming or graphical work - just audio editing.

My CRT has some of the best viewing angles around. :D

So OP - to answer your question. It's not stupid. It's very noticeable. Some people are bothered by it - others are not.
 
jojo69 said:
so, I guess you never watch media with other people but just sit directly in front of your monitor by yourself all the time?
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The wifey all the time, but I can still sit way off to the side and still see my monitor with out drastic changes. It's not like I have a high end monitor here. Even so do you sit around with someone sitting next to you constantly at your pc?
 
jojo69 said:
so, I guess you never watch media with other people but just sit directly in front of your monitor by yourself all the time?
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that's what the television is for? what are you even saying? you actually watch shit on a tiny monitor with other people?

@op tn color shift is visible even when viewing head on. look at the top and bottom of your screen on this website, for example. extremely obvious. i agree it's blown out of proportion when you account for the fact that we're talking about fucking monitors, displays intended for one-person usage, but it's not as nonexistent as you make it out to be.
 
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Someone obviously hasn't used a hioun 1901 gt. Your viewing has to be so straight on that thing there's little to no questioning it's sexual orientation.
 
TNs, even high end TNs like the $600 28" 4K Samsung U28D590D have not just color shift, but terrible color consistency and contrast outside of very specific circumstances, even when viewed head-on. What looks ok in store with carefully chosen demo content and overblown lighting often turns out to look terrible when you bring it home and get it under "real" conditions. Are they good for gaming if all you care about is refresh rate and response time? Yes, they can't be beat. If you want the game to look good, however, or be able to read on the monitor for more than a few minutes at a time without a headache, look elsewhere.

Thankfully, IPS tech keeps getting better, with higher refresh rates and response times possible, and OLED keeps getting cheaper. With any luck there won't be any TNs outside of bottom-of-the-barrel office machine bundles in a few years.
 
The trouble with TN monitors (and VA) is that the whole "I sit in front of my monitor, therefore the viewing angles are perfect and a non-issue" argument falls flat. There's color and gamma shifts visible at the edges of the screen if you're viewing dead on. Unless you're still rocking an old 17" display, in which case enjoy. ;)
 
I have three monitors at work, and the color shifting on the side monitors is horrid even though they're turned to face me. Even on the center monitor, trying distinguish a light green colored cell at the top of the monitor from a dark green colored cell in the bottom is difficult at times. I've gotten used to it though. If I was working with photos or graphics, there's no way I could tolerate such poor viewing angles on these panels.
 
Due to severe gamma shift, TN monitors are impossible to calibrate. You can adjust a small point on the screen where you place the meter or a visual gamma pattern, but at the top and bottom, gamma will still be 2.5 and 1.6 when you look straight at the screen, even if the small spot you have calibrated is 2.2. You can try to view it from really long distances to alleviate this somewhat, but might as well just get an IPS display. The problem is that, even if you view it straight, the gamma shift sucks, you just don't notice it normally since your vision is concentrated at the center of the screen.
 
IPS have the advantage that you don't need to sit at the same time place all the time to enjoy the viewing quality of the panel, unlike even the best TN (including the 8bit ones) where, as people have pointed out, it can only be alleviated by reducing the apparent size of the monitor (done by getting a smaller screen or sitting further away). However, whether IPS is all around better in general is open to debate, but a good quality IPS with minimal glow should out perform TN in all but twitchiest of games.

My personal take is this:

1. Looking at a PG279Q demonstration of a racing game (as in people actually gaming on it), IPS doesn't look noticeably blurrier than TN of the same class (EG PG278Q). So IPS is a plus here given the huge convenience of sitting however you feel like.
2. PG279Q has nasty IPS glow, but the acer's newest Predator XB271HU is lot less noticeable, it's pretty comparable to my Swift in that regard, where PG279Q is comparable to my older VX2770-SMH, whose glow looks disastrous.

My BL3201PT should arrive tomorrow, but the unit on display have even less IPS glow than XB271HU (which I already found to be acceptable), so if IPS can consistently be improved to at least XB271HU, then I'd agree, IPS is better.

Whether or not IPS glow distracts you enough to deter you from it is a different story, I just have a lower level of tolerance than most, but I fully agree that, unless you are CS competitive player who can actually notice the increased blur of IPS (I don't notice it, at all), IPS with minimalised glow would be superior to TN in literally every other metric. Most people prefer IPS regardless of glow, I am far pickier.
 
Viewing angles are a problem but it can be somewhat mitigated with proper viewing position/distance. Of course you can't completely eliminate it but many people (myself included) have been able to manage. Likewise IPS panels suffer from IPS glow, which can also be mitigated with room lighting but there are still others who absolutely cannot stand it, even just a little bit of it and would rather take TN panels instead. That's just how it is with LCD screens, pick your poison.
 
I prefer color quality. I do a lot of graphics editing in my spare time, albeit I have a Wacom 27" Cintiq.

But I also have a multi-monitor setup, so I don't stare at monitors directly. At least one is always at an angle, and TN just doesn't cut it.
 
When you are gaming, you move your head around, you adjust your position when your butt gets tired, you arent a statue. Viewing angles matter more than you thing, not as much as some say.

Also, if you are gaming on a large monitor, it becomes more and more important.
 
KazeoHin said:
When you are gaming, you move your head around, you adjust your position when your butt gets tired, you arent a statue. Viewing angles matter more than you thing, not as much as some say.

Also, if you are gaming on a large monitor, it becomes more and more important.
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do you slide from one end of the desk to another? How would simply moving your head make a difference when you are directly in front of something?
 
Viewing angles are a pretty big deal in multi-monitor configurations.
 
SpongeBob said:
do you slide from one end of the desk to another? How would simply moving your head make a difference when you are directly in front of something?
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rotating your head without it translating in space won't make a difference, but shifting your head will. Also, even if your head is stationary, the image projected onto your eyes doesn't come from a single angle - the screen is extended in space, so the edges are going to have different viewing angles compared to the center.

Depending on how viewing angle dependent the display is, and how large it is, this is going to have an impact. The VIEWPixx model I work with (which cost several thousand dollars) has awful viewing angles. Even a small head movement causes dramatic shifts in the image. That's one of the reasons using a chinrest/headrest is important when doing experiments with it. That said, the model we use it the TN panel version, which is built for temporal precision. There are other models using different panel technologies that provide much better viewing angles.
 
Viewing angle's most important metric is the position of the pixel relative to your eyes, not nearly as much as where your head is relative to your screen.

Large screens will have larger variation in the angle which its light hits your eyes, so there would a larger variation in Viewing angle range, even if your head is totally fixed like a statue, so the larger the screen, the more important the viewing angle metric become, be it colour, gamma or some other shifts.

As much as I prefer TN's BLB over IPS glow, I would never consider TN for anything larger than 27", the black crush becomes too noticeable to ignore, regardless of sitting position.
 
27" is definitely approaching the limit for TN vs shift, and like a previous reply on here said - some TNs have horrible shift compared to others.
On a higher end 27" TN for gaming , the shift is negligible. Color uniformity can be important but a slight narrow shade/shadow's worth of dimming is pretty negligible on the top horizon of a 27" in games imo. Extreme color gamut is also not important for games since most (if not all) do not utilize an extreme color pallet.

elvn said:
Make sure when "testing" that you are looking directly at the TN panel and not even slightly off center. Comparing my ips to my swift while looking over at the swift from the ips side of my desk looks different than looking head on. Also make sure you tweak the vibrancy up a few %, that your gamma is good, and adjust the OSD contrast and brightness. All of this to your room lighting conditions of course since the way you perceive the settings will change if your room lighting changes.

I've found the swift to be very lush and colorful for games, and after tweaking the blacks are even on the darker side at least compared to the rather slate grey in dungeon game's dark corridors I'd see before I tweaked the settings more adequately. (Still nothing like the detail in blacks a VA or plasma is capable of at darker black levels, or their increased depth, but "black").

The swift holds up well even running a bunch of 2560x1440 wallpapers (digital art, high rez photos) I've collected when I was repeatedly comparing them on my cinema display and the swift side by side more or less (again, viewing the swift head on though). It looks really good in my opinion, especially for games. I'd have it glossy for a little more "wet" look (and no micro crystal texture on very bright flat planes of color) but it looks very good in my opinion. Of course it has a narrow "gradient of shadow" at the top, mostly dimming the top two corners how I have it set up. It's much like a tiny ledge in each corner shading/dimming (not blackening) the top two corners.. but even so it's not really noticeable unless you are moving your head around looking for it, or of course not looking at the monitor head on.

One of my main worries was that the swift would be pale and not capable of lush/saturated color. It is absolutely not pale at all and is capable of being oversaturated even. The color and brightness really pops after tweaking it for multimedia/gaming use.

My 60hz ips on the other hand looks great for static imagery and desktop apps/text based apps, and is more uniform vs shift/shadow.

The cinema display has 83.2% adobe 1998 color gamut, the swift has 71.37%.

". Adobe RGB 1998 occupies roughly 40% more volume than sRGB, so you are only utilizing 70% of your bit depth if the colors in Adobe RGB 1998 are unnecessary"

"Adobe 1998 was designed to encompass most of the colors achievable on CMYK color printers, but by using RGB primary colors on a device such as a computer display. The Adobe RGB (1998) color space encompasses roughly 50% of the visible colors specified by the Lab color space."
So according to that, my displays are theoretically capable of 41.6% and 35.65% of the visible color spectrum defined by Lab color space - a 5.95% difference in the millions of colors "box of crayons" they have to work with, a difference spread across the already much sliced/defined tones of each color "band". If anything, a very subtle difference and to perfect eyesight and conditions, and only on media that actually fills out those color variances noticeably.

Even with a 100% or 110% adobe 1998 monitor you'd still be at 50% or 55% of the visible spectrum defined by Lab color space, a gain of 14.35% or 19.35% in further dividing already very variegated/abundantly hued color bands.. And that is using adobe 1998 as a reference which has a larger gamut than any sRGB content you might be viewing.


I think the claims of this monitor not having pleasing color saturation are false. I'll say especially for games, but as I said I've also compared a lot of high quality 2560x1440 photos and digital art (a collection I've been adding to since testing out the swift) and am very pleased.

Never-mind "twitch gaming",scoring/ladder stuff - the fact is, in 1st/3rd person gaming an ips is so slow that it is aesthetically a mess. A non-resolution smear during continual FoV~world viewport movement.. and if at 60hz, inferior motion definition and motion articulation.

http://www.web-cyb.org/images/lcds/cinema-display_adobe1998.png


http://www.web-cyb.org/images/lcds/pg278q/pg278q_color-gamut_toms-hardware.png


edit: my links are working again. My apologies, my web service was borked for a day.
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It's good to see that they are getting more speed out of ips panels now but personally, considering what I'm already running, I'm trying to hold out on upgrading my monitor for a 1440p or higher 21:9 running 120hz-144hz off of dp 1.3 - 1.4 inputs and off of dp 1.3 - 1.4 output gpus in the future.
 
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If you rotate your monitor (portrait mode), TN is basically unusable. The color shift is SO bad when the monitor's rotated.

It's a big deal, and you come off as pretty ignorant by looking down on others who recognize its importance.
 
I refuse to use TN panels. Horrible to look at for me.
VA isn't perfect and IPS isn't perfect. VA panels, if they're fast enough, are usually the best compromise for me. The colors and response times are much better on my IPS Z30i, but the glow is just horrendous. I'll deal with VA's slightly worse color reproduction and color washout off-angle as a trade off. But that's just me. Each panel type has it's strengths and weaknesses and to make blanket statements about everybody and every panel is ignorant. If a TN panel fits your needs, go for it.
 
Viewing angles are quite relevant with large format and portrait screens.
From sitting a normal distance I perceive, and am annoyed by, color shift.
 
The Samsung LS34E790CNS/ZA has been great for a VA screen. The curve really helps reduce the VA screen effect. I had the curved LG 34" screen prior but the IPS glow and 'screen door' effect was really noticeable to me and very distracting.
 
valkrien said:
The Samsung LS34E790CNS/ZA has been great for a VA screen. The curve really helps reduce the VA screen effect. I had the curved LG 34" screen prior but the IPS glow and 'screen door' effect was really noticeable to me and very distracting.
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I agree, VA panels benefit the most from having the screen curved which reduces horizontal gamma shift. I think curved screens are a gimmick if you sit further away from them, but up close they are fantastic.
 
It's not a big issue while gaming, but doing any kind of productivity or movie viewing it is. The viewing angles on TN don't bother me while gaming, as in that application I am vastly more concerned with input lag and image ghosting than I am with the color being slightly inaccurate out of the corners of my eyes.
 
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