48" LG C3 OLED vs the best IPS

[jyi786]

Let me preface this by saying I've been waiting for OLED as a monitor ever since I first got my Samsung Captivate way back in 2010. This finally became a reality last year, when I got the LG C3 to use as my main display, and switched from using 4 screens to just two.

While OLED is certainly great, there are drawbacks which have made my experience highly annoying at times. Here they are:

1. Backlight dimming. Only so much you can do to mitigate this.
2. Random corrupted color flashing. This can be mitigated by powering on/off either the screen or your computer, has to do with the cable, which I've replaced twice and still have the issue.
3. VRR flicker. This is BY FAR the most annoying of all. Nothing you can do about this because it's inherent to OLED. I found about this nasty drawback when it was too late.
4. Black crush. Not really an issue most of the time, but in dark games, it's a pain in the rear to try to mitigate.
5. No native standby/power management sync with computer. This is mitigated by using LGTV Companion, but the implementation, while good, is far from perfect. My screen still manages to get out of sync randomly with the daemon.

Because of all this, I can't believe I'm considering going back to IPS. What I'm after is something that has perfect response times (i.e. Gsync Ultimate) and with NONE of the drawbacks above. I use my display for gaming and productivity. Is the ViewSonic XG321UG any good?

Thanks so much for any suggestions.

 

[SH1]

Let me preface this by saying I've been waiting for OLED as a monitor ever since I first got my Samsung Captivate way back in 2010. This finally became a reality last year, when I got the LG C3 to use as my main display, and switched from using 4 screens to just two.

While OLED is certainly great, there are drawbacks which have made my experience highly annoying at times. Here they are:

1. Backlight dimming. Only so much you can do to mitigate this.

@thedisplayguy responded.

Q: "Some people are saying that dimming cannot be defeated on the C3 nor the C4 with the service menu. Or that it doesn't stick going right back to dimming when you cycle the power on these screens. Can you please confirm one way or the other?"

A: "I disabled it with a Windows program."

(Which hhkb here believes is referring to an application called ColorControl.)

2. Random corrupted color flashing. This can be mitigated by powering on/off either the screen or your computer, has to do with the cable, which I've replaced twice and still have the issue.

Have not experienced. Closest was the whole screen flashing, which was a cable issue. I'd been using some angled adapters, which I switched out for cables with their own angled connectors.

3. VRR flicker. This is BY FAR the most annoying of all. Nothing you can do about this because it's inherent to OLED. I found about this nasty drawback when it was too late.

Somewhat limiting in choice of games, but I'm all in on black frame insertion (or rolling scan) which the CX/C1 feature. So VRR isn't an option for me. Not much I can advise, except to get the fastest graphics card you can to minimize the use of VRR.

4. Black crush. Not really an issue most of the time, but in dark games, it's a pain in the rear to try to mitigate.

I adjust game settings if it's bothering me, but I like things darker in general.

5. No native standby/power management sync with computer. This is mitigated by using LGTV Companion, but the implementation, while good, is far from perfect. My screen still manages to get out of sync randomly with the daemon.

I just use the remote for on/off when I walk away for lunch or such. Or to shut down for the day. I have Ctrl+Shift to trigger a screen saver when I walk away. Along with screen saver on timer.

Because of all this, I can't believe I'm considering going back to IPS. What I'm after is something that has perfect response times (i.e. Gsync Ultimate) and with NONE of the drawbacks above. I use my display for gaming and productivity. Is the ViewSonic XG321UG any good?

Perfect response times or nearly so is an OLED exclusive among modern displays. As I understand it anyway...

Thanks so much for any suggestions.

Good luck!

 

[jyi786]

@thedisplayguy responded.

Q: "Some people are saying that dimming cannot be defeated on the C3 nor the C4 with the service menu. Or that it doesn't stick going right back to dimming when you cycle the power on these screens. Can you please confirm one way or the other?"

A: "I disabled it with a Windows program."

(Which hhkb here believes is referring to an application called ColorControl.)


Have not experienced. Closest was the whole screen flashing, which was a cable issue. I'd been using some angled adapters, which I switched out for cables with their own angled connectors.



Somewhat limiting in choice of games, but I'm all in on black frame insertion (or rolling scan) which the CX/C1 feature. So VRR isn't an option for me. Not much I can advise, except to get the fastest graphics card you can to minimize the use of VRR.



I adjust game settings if it's bothering me, but I like things darker in general.



I just use the remote for on/off when I walk away for lunch or such. Or to shut down for the day. I have Ctrl+Shift to trigger a screen saver when I walk away. Along with screen saver on timer.



Perfect response times or nearly so is an OLED exclusive among modern displays. As I understand it anyway...



Good luck!

ColorControl. I had forgotten about that, let me give it a shot.

The color flickering is a big problem for me, it happens way more often than it should. Here's a perfect video of what it looks like:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/1dq6evt/lg_c3_issues_please_help/

Already bought 2 extremely expensive, certified cables, same issue on both.

I already have an RTX 4090.

Thanks again!

 

[johnnysd]

ColorControl. I had forgotten about that, let me give it a shot.

The color flickering is a big problem for me, it happens way more often than it should. Here's a perfect video of what it looks like:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/1dq6evt/lg_c3_issues_please_help/

Already bought 2 extremely expensive, certified cables, same issue on both.

I already have an RTX 4090.

Thanks again!

That is just not endemic to OLED TVs. I have the LG C1 and have never ever seen that. Auto dimming is a pain sometimes on the desktop but it doesn't really happen in games and the overall experience is amazing. I think you have a faulty display bad cabling or both.

 

[jarablue]

I have a C2 48in and this thing ain't goin nowhere until something massive drops that is worth it. I won't go back to anything under 48in now.

I have 0 issues with my tv. Gaming is a blast on it. Worth every penny I paid for it.

 

[XoR_]

Have you tried using frame rate limiter like RTSS to limit frame rate?
If game frequently dips to e.g. 80fps you can limit frame rate to 80fps or even something like 78fps and then mostly avoid VRR flicker caused by frame rate fluctuating and only get occasional flicker when it goes below set refresh rate.

Of course it is not bullet proof solution as VRR flicker is caused by frame delivery not being evenly spaced and frame rate limiters cannot really guarantee perfect frame delivery 'rhythm'. RTSS is however good enough to pull off the so called "scanline sync" which is quite a feat.

Alternative to frame rate limiter is just using refresh rate + v-sync to limit frame rate. If you make intermediate video modes with e.g. 70, 80, 90, 100, 110Hz you can then select such video mode if game doesn't quite run 120fps constant but runs well above 60fps to playing it at 60Hz being too detrimental to the experience.

Personally I just tested RTSS on game Overload which ran like ~70fps and showed rhythmic flickering of shadow details and flickering was mitigated. Easier and better solution was to just drop resolution to 1440p which made motion much better at expense of sharpness.

---------
I recently got MSI MAG 271QPX which is 3rd generation 360Hz 1440p QD-OLED.
I realized when reading your post that I have not seen any VRR flicker on this monitor yet.
I went and did test it with the same games with the same settings (including running these games at 2160p) which gave very noticeable VRR flicker on that LG WOLED monitor and except what looked like VRR flicker on loading screens I cannot say I see any VRR flicker at all on this MSI monitor.

There are reports of VRR flicker on QD-OLEDs so its not like this tech is free from the issue but i might be that some monitors are much less affected by this issue so there might be no need to drop back to to IPS. I would recommend checking what users say about 3rd gen QD-OLEDs. I didn't do any investigations... actually I jsut checked what is the cheapest 27 inch QD-OLED, saw its 1440p with whooping 360Hz and ordered it in 5 minutes. I then could after seeing sRGB emulation is pretty terrible check reviews to confirm I would be no wiser having read/watched them before hand. I use HDR mode with these profiles https://github.com/dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm which fix Microsoft's blunder called SDR/sRGB emulation on HDR screens.

--------
You forgot about "near-black chrominance overshoot" which is something that plagues all WOLED panels. It is usually not an issue but where it can be seen this effect is quite ugly and distracting.

-----
It should be possible to calibrate near black on your TV in both SDR and HDR
On my gaming monitor I have no such settings but I can use "brightness" in Radeon control panel to offset black level and eliminate black crush that way. At least in HDR as SDR is solid as it is and even have hardware calibration so doesn't exhibit any black crush.

 

[jyi786]

Have you tried using frame rate limiter like RTSS to limit frame rate?
If game frequently dips to e.g. 80fps you can limit frame rate to 80fps or even something like 78fps and then mostly avoid VRR flicker caused by frame rate fluctuating and only get occasional flicker when it goes below set refresh rate.

Of course it is not bullet proof solution as VRR flicker is caused by frame delivery not being evenly spaced and frame rate limiters cannot really guarantee perfect frame delivery 'rhythm'. RTSS is however good enough to pull off the so called "scanline sync" which is quite a feat.

Alternative to frame rate limiter is just using refresh rate + v-sync to limit frame rate. If you make intermediate video modes with e.g. 70, 80, 90, 100, 110Hz you can then select such video mode if game doesn't quite run 120fps constant but runs well above 60fps to playing it at 60Hz being too detrimental to the experience.

Personally I just tested RTSS on game Overload which ran like ~70fps and showed rhythmic flickering of shadow details and flickering was mitigated. Easier and better solution was to just drop resolution to 1440p which made motion much better at expense of sharpness.

---------
I recently got MSI MAG 271QPX which is 3rd generation 360Hz 1440p QD-OLED.
I realized when reading your post that I have not seen any VRR flicker on this monitor yet.
I went and did test it with the same games with the same settings (including running these games at 2160p) which gave very noticeable VRR flicker on that LG WOLED monitor and except what looked like VRR flicker on loading screens I cannot say I see any VRR flicker at all on this MSI monitor.

There are reports of VRR flicker on QD-OLEDs so its not like this tech is free from the issue but i might be that some monitors are much less affected by this issue so there might be no need to drop back to to IPS. I would recommend checking what users say about 3rd gen QD-OLEDs. I didn't do any investigations... actually I jsut checked what is the cheapest 27 inch QD-OLED, saw its 1440p with whooping 360Hz and ordered it in 5 minutes. I then could after seeing sRGB emulation is pretty terrible check reviews to confirm I would be no wiser having read/watched them before hand. I use HDR mode with these profiles https://github.com/dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm which fix Microsoft's blunder called SDR/sRGB emulation on HDR screens.

--------
You forgot about "near-black chrominance overshoot" which is something that plagues all WOLED panels. It is usually not an issue but where it can be seen this effect is quite ugly and distracting.

-----
It should be possible to calibrate near black on your TV in both SDR and HDR
On my gaming monitor I have no such settings but I can use "brightness" in Radeon control panel to offset black level and eliminate black crush that way. At least in HDR as SDR is solid as it is and even have hardware calibration so doesn't exhibit any black crush.

Lots of stuff to respond to, so let me try.

Yes, I use extensive frame limiter where I can, so that's not the issue. Just sitting at the Windows login screen I get corruption like insane.

Regarding QD-OLED, I've read the exact opposite of what you state; that QD-OLED is WORSE with flicker. See here.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTLDrVMgzzQ

Yes, you are correct about black overshoot. It's ugly as hell when I can see it. And don't get me started on gradients...

 

[XoR_]

Regarding QD-OLED, I've read the exact opposite of what you state; that QD-OLED is WORSE with flicker. See here.

I do remember reading about QD-OLED's terrible VRR performance and seeing videos like this. At the time it did put dampers on my #getqdoled plans... if very high prices didn't already do it.

To be honest I ordered MSI MAG 271QPX without much deliberations or reading about it. I saw "cheap" 360Hz monitor and pulled the trigger Han Solo style and then didn't think about VR flickering it until I read about VRR flicker in some post on this site in regards to some other monitor. I was like "oh wait..." and tested games which I remembered flickered on my WOLED monitor to be pleasantly surprised.

Extensive testing showed it depends on which frame rate changes to which frame rate... or specifically it has to do with frame times... and here I saw issues when switching from like 300 to 90 fps and some other combinations. In these tests I didn't notice issues on relatively small expected in normal gaming differences. It might however happen that within some frame rate range this issue will happen causing effects not dissimilar to this video... so I intend to just tweak in-game settings to move frame rate outside this affected range - either up or down.

There is also change of gamma and at 300fps it is visibly lower than 200fps and then 100fps it is even higher. Not a big difference here but it does mean that if I was running 300fps and there was stutter then even if it didn't show VRR flicker it could cause momentary difference in gamma. This particular effect I don't worry about.

Yes, you are correct about black overshoot. It's ugly as hell when I can see it. And don't get me started on gradients...

Ah yeah, gradients...
I wonder why there is no dithering. On one hand this near-black overshoot would make it problematic to add proper temporal A-FRC but on the other hand if I e.g. use 6-bit mode then my Radeon it will not show temporal dithering and rather static dithering and at 6-bit it will be fairly visible and... it doesn't in any way to my eyes make image look anywhere "bad". Heck, I would say it looks kinda nice. So I can only imagine LG could just use static dithering on their 10-bit panels to nail down gradients to make them bloody perfect even without any special considerations for this near-black overshoot and at 10-bits I doubt anyone would notice there being any static dithering.

As for near-black chrominance overshoot the funny thing is that if LG was to use all thee RGB subpixels together to get white - or in this case very dark near-black grays - then combined light output from these three subpixels would be much less than light output from single flashing W subpixel - and with it this flashing of light would be much darker and much less visible. In other words LG could mitigate this whole issue - not eliminate it as it but at least push it where its much less visible - by such rather simple trick. There might be some possible issues with such solution related to color calibration and such but with clever implementation they could be mitigated and certainly would be less irritating than having this flashing being so visible as it can at times be.

Certainly there is a lot which can and should be improved on these panels. Also why I am not too eager to replace my WOLED for QD-OLED. I could after all find myself with more VRR flickering while loosing ability to not think about amount of light in the room which WOLED with its inky black screens provide

Yes, I use extensive frame limiter where I can, so that's not the issue. Just sitting at the Windows login screen I get corruption like insane.

This does sounds like a hardware issue. Maybe you need to RMA your TV? Or GPU?

 

[jyi786]

A few updates.

1. I did get a brand new cable and ditched all the Chinese garbage cables. Funny enough, both cables I bought in the past are no longer showing as Certified for HDMI 2.1b, although they definitely were when I bought them. I replaced with a much shorter (6ft) Monoprice cable that wasn't made in China, so we'll see where this goes. So far, so good, it's resolved the random color corrupted flashing...for now.
2. I've installed ColorControl and disabled TPC and GSR. No more random dimming at the desktop or otherwise. ABL still dims the backlight on an all-white screen, nothing I can do about that, but this is 90% better now.
3. VRR flicker, I've found different ways to mitigate, including using the nVidia Control Panel to create profiles for specific games to simply disable Gsync and fall back to regular Vsync.

I also created an RMA request, but if that doesn't work, I might consider "retiring" this to just be a TV, and switch back to an IPS screen like the LG 34GP950G-B, which I've been eyeing.

We'll see how it goes.

 

[jarablue]

I've had certified HDMI 2.1 cables that worked in the beginning and then slowly degraded to not working. It's a thing that does happen with those cables.

 

[jyi786]

I've had certified HDMI 2.1 cables that worked in the beginning and then slowly degraded to not working. It's a thing that does happen with those cables.

I think you might be right. The second one I bought, worked perfectly and then slowly degraded to corruption-fest.

 

[criccio]

Shame to hear you having issues. I got my C2 for desktop use in early 2023 and now with 7000 hours on it, still couldn't be happier. Also paired with a 4090 and its just sublime.

 

[DooLocsta]

Shame to hear you having issues. I got my C2 for desktop use in early 2023 and now with 7000 hours on it, still couldn't be happier. Also paired with a 4090 and its just sublime.

Agreed, I hate to hear it. I have the C2 with about 4K hours I use for daily work. Zero issues and would buy another if I could.

 

[jyi786]

Update: switched back to an IPS screen: an actual computer monitor this time. Going to post another thread.

Edit: thread here.
https://hardforum.com/threads/rant-switched-back-to-ips-after-being-on-oled-for-a-year.2037319/