My thoughts and experiences with budget-level OLED vs IPS Mini-LED vs VA Mini-LED

I finally upgraded from older 2K IPS monitors to OLED and mini-IPS. They're budget level, and often have sales, and are now costing about the same as the older IPS monitors I bought years ago.

OLED: Gigabyte GO27Q24A 27" 2K 240Hz (True 10-bit with HDR10) - bought on sale for $299.99
IPS Mini-LED: KTC M27T6S 27" 2K 200Hz (8-bit + FRC with HDR1000) - bought on sale for $269.99
VA Mini-LED: AOC Q27G40XMN 27" 2K 180Hz (8-bit + FRC, no HDR) - bought on sale for $199.99

First, the VA Mini-LED is great for gaming. Visually better than the older IPS monitors I had, even though it lacks true 10-bit and HDR. Gaming with HDR is still a bit of a mess, and it really depends on the game, OS, and monitor, so for most games, it's still better than standard IPS monitors for gaming.

The IPS Mini-LED is the overall winner, it's great for everything. Still no true 10-bit, but it's still visually stunning even without HDR1000 enabled and no true blacks. I also don't worry about burn-in like I do with the OLED monitor.

The OLED monitor has great true blacks and true 10-bit, but only has HDR10 with 400 nits max. It's great for gaming, watching dark movies, and photo editing for darker photos, but I found for day-to-day work, video editing, and watching colorful movies to be better on the IPS Mini-LED. Plus, I constantly worry about OLED burn-in, so when I'm taking a break, so I make sure to set the setting to turn off the display when idle to 1 minute. Having higher brightness for OLED is also a clicking time bomb, as higher brightness likely increases the chance for OLED burn-in.

I think higher-end OLED monitors with HDR1000 might best the IPS Mini-LED I have, but that might cost up to $599.99 or more. Plus, I'd still worry about OLED burn-in, and I think day-to-day work and video editing, I'd still prefer the IPS Mini-LED.

No mention of OLED motion clarity? VAs and even IPS are a ghosting smear fest.

NzA0 said:

No mention of OLED motion clarity? VAs and even IPS are a ghosting smear fest.

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I'll take a closer look at that. I typically turn motion blur off in games, but will look at some games and movies.

I'm in a similar boat with my experience currently have an Acer ips monitor from Costco, that alone says budget, but out of curiosity and the dropping prices of "last years model" I got an LG oled, and well I was definitely whelmed. Now there could be problems with windows here being meh... and Firefox really doesnt handle the hdr stuff either but I most definitely wasnt blown away with the OLED unless I ran demos that are specifically geared towards highlighting OLED features, and again Firefox via YouTube wasnt doing it for me. And I have to say while the OLED was better than my IPS I don't feel like it was a "let me we spend money for an upgrade" better. Perhaps I'm too damn old to appreciate/notice the differences, yeah 72hz doesnt bug me, or perhaps how I was using it e.g. Firefox sucks ass for her, and a limited game library to take advantage of it just left me... like I said whelmed

NzA0 said:

No mention of OLED motion clarity? VAs and even IPS are a ghosting smear fest.

Click to expand...

Comparing the three, I found no real difference with motion clarity. I had to record, then slow down the frames during playback, to really tell a difference. Maybe with lower FPS, it's more noticeable? OLED has faster input latency, but both mini-LED's were also pretty quick. Again, maybe it's more noticeable with lower FPS?

sfsuphysics said:

I'm in a similar boat with my experience currently have an Acer ips monitor from Costco, that alone says budget, but out of curiosity and the dropping prices of "last years model" I got an LG oled, and well I was definitely whelmed. Now there could be problems with windows here being meh... and Firefox really doesnt handle the hdr stuff either but I most definitely wasnt blown away with the OLED unless I ran demos that are specifically geared towards highlighting OLED features, and again Firefox via YouTube wasnt doing it for me. And I have to say while the OLED was better than my IPS I don't feel like it was a "let me we spend money for an upgrade" better. Perhaps I'm too damn old to appreciate/notice the differences, yeah 72hz doesnt bug me, or perhaps how I was using it e.g. Firefox sucks ass for her, and a limited game library to take advantage of it just left me... like I said whelmed

Click to expand...

Yeah, what doesn't help is that HDCP prevents HDR streaming on most streaming sites (like Netflix) on PC's. At best, you'd have to watch via YouTube and adjust your settings (like 4K + HDR). You could find drivers that disable HDCP, but that doesn't always work. Streaming with the 4K Fire Stick Max, or getting 4K Blu-ray is the only way to go for watching proper high resolution movies with or without HDR.

El_Capitan said:

Yeah, what doesn't help is that HDCP prevents HDR streaming on most streaming sites (like Netflix) on PC's. At best, you'd have to watch via YouTube and adjust your settings (like 4K + HDR). You could find drivers that disable HDCP, but that doesn't always work. Streaming with the 4K Fire Stick Max, or getting 4K Blu-ray is the only way to go for watching proper high resolution movies with or without HDR.

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Unfortunately, I enjoy never seeing ads on YouTube way more than I care about contrast pop

I did a similar test last year and ended up with a pled gigabyte 360hz 1440p oled. If I’m doing any production work it’s on a Mac on another monitor. My rig is strickly for gaming. That said oled was the absolutely the best for gaming out of the three for me and I had them all to compare at the same time. Granted the monitor was around $500? Last year maybe a little more. But man, oled and gaming were a match made in heaven.