What kind of display minimizes input lag for 720p/60Hz sources?

It's looking like I'm going to need a small computer monitor to play my game consoles, because those have lower input lag than HDTVs according to my research so far.

I may also find myself playing Virtual Console games on the Wii U, and/or PC emulators. That means I'm likely to be playing old platformers like Super Mario World which require fairly good timing and can't be sped up to 120 FPS without doubling the speed of the game as well.

So, it's been a while since I looked at monitors. I'm confused by a lot of stuff I'm reading... I thought OLED was supposed to have lower input lag than LCDs, but people are saying it's actually worse? And I thought IPS panels were the slowest, but then it seems like people switched at some point and started claiming VA panels were slowest, and now I'm seeing panels of all three types (TN, IPS, VA) claiming a 1ms response time (I know that's not the same thing as input lag, but I only used to see TN panels claiming that).

Is there basically no difference between the three LCD panel types now in terms of input lag? Or are TN panels still faster?

Also, I'm planning to deal primarily with 720p sources like the Wii U, Xbox 360, and possibly the OSSC line tripler that triples 240p input to 720p. I won't be able to use anything at a panel's native resolution whether it's 1080p or 4K, and fast scaling is a must have.

Input lag is the delay between the moment the gpu outputs the signal and the time it's displayed on screen. Tv have high input lag while monitors are better. You have to look at reviews or test yourself to know how big is the input lag because some monitors are terrible.

The panel type influences "pixel response time", which is the time it takes to change the color of pixels. If pixels are slow at changing colors you will see a blurry trail behind moving objects.

here's some material

TN is faster and reaches 1ms but it's not necessary at all if you use 60hz.

leadays said:

Input lag is the delay between the moment the gpu outputs the signal and the time it's displayed on screen. Tv have high input lag while monitors are better. You have to look at reviews or test yourself to know how big is the input lag because some monitors are terrible.

The panel type influences "pixel response time", which is the time it takes to change the color of pixels. If pixels are slow at changing colors you will see a blurry trail behind moving objects.

here's some material

TN is faster and reaches 1ms but it's not necessary at all if you use 60hz.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the thing that really worries me is that most monitors are only tested at their native resolution and refresh rate. So if I were to end up getting a 120Hz 1080p monitor, a review more than likely wouldn't give me any idea how much input lag it would have at 720p 60Hz. And most of the monitors that are 60Hz natively these days look like they aren't the highest quality to begin with, which makes it seem more likely they'll have lag issues.

I'm mostly asking here because I'm hoping to reduce the number of displays I have to test. Once you buy a monitor in order to test it, you're stuck with it and become responsible for selling it used if it's not what you're looking for. I'd rather not buy 20 displays, test them all, and then have to sell off 19 of them for less than I paid. I'm hoping that I can get that number down to something more reasonable, like 3 or 4 displays. It seems like the quality is essentially random.

It's actually kind of surprising how much lag I can notice in something as simple as Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. They say FPS games are the most sensitive to input lag, but apparently some Nintendo and Super Nintendo games also have tight enough timing to run into issues.

I've found two monitors that look promising.

There's this BenQ ZOWIE Gaming monitor:
https://www.amazon.com/BenQ-Console-eSports-Gaming-Monitor/dp/B01H5KKRLO/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

And this Samsung 24" Curved Gaming monitor:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-24-I...=UTF8&qid=1484111725&sr=1-1&keywords=cfg70+24

The BenQ seems to be the safest choice, since it's apparently designed for what I want to do, hooking up consoles to a computer monitor to reduce input lag. And it's a somewhat high-end TN targeted to gamers and people in tournaments, meaning this will likely be the best I can get.

The Samsung is a riskier choice, though. I've always wanted a fast gaming VA panel... in fact, I got caught in a really upsetting panel lottery with Samsung in the past trying to get a fast VA panel, and got unlucky with the slower version of the VA panel that had so much lag you could feel it just typing in Windows, let alone with games. If this works out, it might be an ideal choice. The thing is, I have to wonder how many of the features this thing has will work without being hooked up to a computer. Will the features that make it faster (like backlight strobing or whatever) work if it's hooked up to anything but a computer, or does the computer have to have special drivers to make it work? I know the extra Hz will probably go to waste, but this is the fastest non-TN panel I could find, and that seems to be worth a premium if there's finally something out there with imperceptible lag other than TN.

I'm honestly kind of surprised I'm noticing the lag on the IPS monitor I currently own, because in many games it wasn't noticeable, but on a few it's suddenly a problem. It's an LG 23ET83V. I got it for Windows 8 just a few years ago, and got stuck using it for gaming when I lost in the panel lottery with that unusably slow Samsung panel because it was all I had. According to this website (https://displaylag.com/display-database/), it only has 10ms of lag, which shouldn't be perceptible at all (you're not really supposed to be able to see anything below 16ms). I don't know why I'm seeing it, but that's the baseline and I apparently need something better than that. Unfortunately, it's near the top of DisplayLag's list, which makes me concerned that there might not be anything significantly better on input lag. Although I also notice they haven't reviewed a lot of late-model TN panels, so perhaps they're just assuming you "know" TN is fast, and they give you the good or bad news about other types of panels.