Torn between an IPS and a VA 4k TV for a monitor.

[serowoon]

I've been looking at Samsung's 40" (un40mu6300) with a VA panel and their 43" (un43mu6300) model that has an IPS panel. My usage is mostly browsing on sites with black text on white background with media consumption (YouTube & movies) but very little gaming (so response time and such are not as important).

I have both an IPS (Samsung PLS in a 27") and a VA (Omen 32") monitor at home and I find the white background on VA is just not as clean as it is in IPS.

I do however find the >5800:1 static contrast ratio stat on Samsung's VA panel appealing since that's nearly double the Omen's VA (or most monitors' VA) contrast of 3000:1.

I've also read that VA panels used in TVs are generally superior to monitor's VA panels not only in contrast but in colors and other aspects as well.

Is the difference of 5800:1 vs 3000:1 (or even 1000:1) immediately noticeable in an environment that isn't completely shut out from light (my environment is mixed)?

I've read countless reviews on these two Samsung models and almost none go into any detail on the comparison between the two panels.

Are VA panels generally superior to IPS in TVs (whereas the opposite is considered true in monitors)?

 

[Armenius]

The advantages and disadvantages between panel types are generally the same with televisions as they are with monitors. With VA panels you have to consider that the contrast shift becomes more obvious when used as a PC monitor at larger sizes, just like gamma shift on TN panels. It's generally not an issue when consuming movies or games, but may be when viewing static content such as on web pages.

Samsung offers robust image control, so you can fine tune the white point if you have the calibration tools. But white will always appear more bright on an IPS display simply because they allow more light to pass through the pixel matrix than a VA.

The contrast ratio on the Sammy is very good and would be a boon for consuming movies. To take advantage of the deep contrast, however, you'll need to have control over your light sources. With proper lighting the difference between an 3000:1 and 5800:1 should be easily identified. Between IPS and VA the difference will be obvious.

I've used a 55" FHD LG IPS, 40" Samsung FHD VA, 40" Sony FHD IPS, and now a 49" Samsung UHD VA. Nothing I've used matches the color reproduction on the Sony IPS as far as televisions go, but overall I prefer the Samsung VA for games and movies (which is my primary use for the TV). If you want to check out Sony's offerings, the X720E series, which uses an IPS panel, comes highly recommended as a PC monitor.

You may want to have a look through this thread:
https://hardforum.com/threads/current-43-4k-options.1940299/

 

[Tup3x]

I hate our VA Sony TV with passion. The only thing that looks good on it is pure black. Everything else sucks. Viewing angle is surprisingly bad. It looks washed out unless you sit in front of it. No matter what I can't get the colours look right and some dark tones just look disgusting.

 

[Kdawg]

I have both 40 and 43 mu6300 on my desk right now. I've been on a shopping spree lately because of super lax holiday return policies.

The struggle is real.

the 43" is edge lit, the 40" is backlit.

The 40" is noticeably brighter, like 40% brighter, than the 43" at max brightness, on a fully white screen. It's bright, but not too bright, closer to 400nits.
Whites are pretty equal on both, with only slight uniformity issues you'll see on a lot of big panels.

If I had to estimate, considering that my laptop screen is 300nit LG panel, the 43" mu6300 is ~280nit. But you get used to it. I think most people would find this brightness very comfortable.

Now the colors.... pick your poison.
The 43" keeps strong colors and contrast at all viewing angles. But due to low contrast, dim scenes in videos look like a smeared mess. This is not helped by the dimmer backlight or edge light, I should say.
You can manually increase the contrast in video players, and it will help a little, but you also fuck with the colors that way.

Due to the higher brightness level of the 40" VA, when looking straight at the screen, colors pop and dark scenes look good, EXCEPT when the video uses a lot of compression. Then you see nasty black/dark blockiness/noise from compression artifacts.
The 43" IPS panel is not good enough to show super dark colors, so you don't really notice the dark compression blocks.

Looking straight at the screen, the 40" and 43" have pretty much equal color reproduction on everything except gray tones, due to the nature of VA panels. Dark grays will have gamma shift.
The IPS panel has faster pixel response time than the VA 40"


So you have to decide what your priority is......
Great viewing angles with washed out shadows, dimmer backlight
or,
Bad side-view angles, with punchy darks.

 

[serowoon]

I have both 40 and 43 mu6300 on my desk right now. I've been on a shopping spree lately because of super lax holiday return policies.

The struggle is real.

the 43" is edge lit, the 40" is backlit.

The 40" is noticeably brighter, like 40% brighter, than the 43" at max brightness, on a fully white screen. It's bright, but not too bright, closer to 400nits.
Whites are clean on both.

If I had to estimate, considering that my laptop screen is 300nit LG panel, the 43" mu6300 is ~280nit. But you get used to it. I think most people would find this brightness very comfortable.

Now the colors.... pick your poison.
The 43" keeps strong colors and contrast at all viewing angles. But due to low contrast, dim scenes in videos look like a smeared mess. This is not helped by the dimmer backlight or edge light, I should say.
You can manually increase the contrast in video players, and it will help a little, but you also fuck with the colors that way.

Due to the higher brightness level of the 40" VA, when looking straight at the screen, colors pop and dark scenes look good, EXCEPT when the video uses a lot of compression. Then you see nasty black/dark blockiness/noise from compression artifacts.
The 43" IPS panel is not good enough to show super dark colors, so you don't really notice the dark compression blocks.

Looking straight at the screen, the 40" and 43" have pretty much equal color reproduction on everything except gray tones, due to the nature of VA panels. Dark grays will have gamma shift.
The IPS panel has faster pixel response time than the VA 40"


So you have to decide what your priority is......
Great viewing angles with washed out shadows, dimmer backlight
or,
Bad side-view angles, with punchy darks.

Thanks. This direct comparison of the two panels is exactly what I was looking for for MU6300.

So as someone who isn't putting much importance on how the panel performs when gaming, I mainly wanted to know if the colors on the 40" VA panel would look washed out or otherwise look different when compared to the 43" IPS (especially on white backgrounds of most websites/programs).

If the colors seemed pretty even between the two (which is surprising given the common knowledge that color reproduction is one area where IPS is generally considered superior), even on a side-to-side comparison, I think I can cross off another big factor that was holding me back from going VA over IPS on this model.

 

[Kdawg]

I'll take some photo comparisons later with sample pics and a couple websites.

in the past, I was also fooled by everyone saying IPS has better color reproduction. But in real experience, if you look dead on straight, IPS and VA look the same.
So then I understood it as "better color reproduction = colors don't shft at off angles "

Also, any color differences can be corrected with calibration.

 

[serowoon]

I'll take some photo comparisons later with sample pics and a couple websites.

in the past, I was also fooled by everyone saying IPS has better color reproduction. But in real experience, if you look dead on straight, IPS and VA look the same.
So then I understood it as "better color reproduction = colors don't shft at off angles "

Also, any color differences can be corrected with calibration.

Really would appreciate the effort.

With the difference in contrast ratio being 1000:1 VS 5800:1, that has to show even in a well-lit environment. I know I definitely noticed a big difference in contrast looking at an OLED TV (granted, there are a number of things a $3000 OLED set will excel on other than contrast) even under my local Best Buy store's bright lights.

I was convinced on going with IPS for my next monitor/4k TV until I noticed that there are hardly any offerings especially for the higher end models for TVs.

 

[Kdawg]

i took some pictures locked at the same camera settings, and due to the brightness difference between the 2 tv's, the camera makes the dimmer 43" look more contrasty, but that's not how it is in person.

But these pics do give an idea of the color.


Washed out IPS hides dark artifacts better....

VA color washes out at an angle, and dark grays become lighter.
IPS color gets a little dimmer, but holds color and contrast.

 

[serowoon]

Wow, thank you for the time and effort doing this. Hopefully this can help people like me who want to see for themselves the actual difference between the VA and IPS panels for a same line of model.

Yeah, I think the biggest difference I see from these pics is the brightness difference you mentioned.

This might be related to the brightness difference but I'm also noticing that the green is noticeably either lighter or more saturated on the VA which is opposite of what I'd have expected.

I think the VA showing more compression artifacts is actually a good thing as it demonstrates that the VA is capable of showing more shades of black.

I'm also relieved that there doesn't seem to be any white temperature difference between the two panels. If anything, the white background looks a lot cleaner on the VA due to the clouding issue on the IPS (which really shows on the John Goodman pic).

Really the only spot I see where the IPS looks better is the brown leather belt on the balloon girl where the VA looks a bit washed out for some reason.

Thanks again for doing this. Happy holidays and merry shopping spree for us all.

 

[Armenius]

I think the edge lighting on the 43" is really hurting it in comparison to the 40". I have read that it was a lot dimmer than similar televisions, and those pictures are actually a little shocking to see for an IPS panel.

Looks like the IPS is handling green much better than the VA, but you did say that the pictures make it look like it has more contrast than in person.

The "clouding" issue is panel uniformity, which I also heard is an issue with this particular IPS panel.

 

[nameBrandon]

I've got the 43 MU600 on my desk now, and using it as a monitor with OS X (High Sierra, GTX 980 with Nvidia web driver). Probably not your case, but I mention it as I can't get 60hz over HDMI, and I also can't seem to use it as a single display @ 30hz. No source is found until I plug in my second DVI monitor then it works fine at 30hz. Going to order an active DP/HDMI adapter and run it through that and see what happens.

As far as color, not sure if it's IPS glow or what, but really struggling with black levels on this thing (I do have it in PC Mode). Dark grey just seems bright, and I've got backlight set down to 13/20, brightness at 0, standard picture mode and eco is off. I've calibrated it with my Spyder4Pro and that worked well (quite a difference), overall it just feels too back-lit for me. I do have the 49MU6500 coming in as well, going to give that a shot and see if VA makes a difference.

FWIW, it works fine on Windows 10, 60hz via HDMI was a peice of cake. Still same issue with black-levels, but we'll see what happens with the VA monitor.

 

[Kdawg]

This might be related to the brightness difference but I'm also noticing that the green is noticeably either lighter or more saturated on the VA which is opposite of what I'd have expected.

I think the VA showing more compression artifacts is actually a good thing as it demonstrates that the VA is capable of showing more shades of black.

I'm also relieved that there doesn't seem to be any white temperature difference between the two panels. If anything, the white background looks a lot cleaner on the VA due to the clouding issue on the IPS (which really shows on the John Goodman pic).

Really the only spot I see where the IPS looks better is the brown leather belt on the balloon girl where the VA looks a bit washed out for some reason.

.

1. The greens actually look about the same in person. It's a toss up.

2. yeah, being able to show more shades of black is a good thing. It just makes some movies look ugly, as someone else said, because it shows all the blockiness.

3. From the factory the 43" is calibrated just slightly warmer. So grays have a slightly brown overcast. That would explain the leather belt.

But my point was to show that VA panels are perfectly capable of displaying colors well. I compared a ton of photos side by side. Can't tell a difference when it comes to colors.

 

[Kdawg]

I've got the 43 MU600 on my desk now, and using it as a monitor with OS X (High Sierra, GTX 980 with Nvidia web driver). Probably not your case, but I mention it as I can't get 60hz over HDMI, and I also can't seem to use it as a single display @ 30hz. No source is found until I plug in my second DVI monitor then it works fine at 30hz. Going to order an active DP/HDMI adapter and run it through that and see what happens.

As far as color, not sure if it's IPS glow or what, but really struggling with black levels on this thing (I do have it in PC Mode). Dark grey just seems bright, and I've got backlight set down to 13/20, brightness at 0, standard picture mode and eco is off. I've calibrated it with my Spyder4Pro and that worked well (quite a difference), overall it just feels too back-lit for me. I do have the 49MU6500 coming in as well, going to give that a shot and see if VA makes a difference.

FWIW, it works fine on Windows 10, 60hz via HDMI was a peice of cake. Still same issue with black-levels, but we'll see what happens with the VA monitor.

there's an HDMI black level setting in the TV settings. It helps a little, but in general, I would say washed out grays are inline with other IPS panels. If you watch Batman movies all day, it would be insufferable. But for day to day usage, it's ok.

I'm surprised you turned down the backlight to 13. That's really dim.


Interesting that the MAC didn't work out of the box.

 

[nameBrandon]

Thanks, will check with the HDMI specific black-levels and see what happens. I do a lot of photo editing, and the tools I use (Photoshop and Capture One, in particular) have dark grey backgrounds, and the best way to describe it is like a 'shiny' grey.. it's not like the flat grey color I expect.. I guess washed out would be a good description as well.

Agreed that this panel is pretty dim, I think I'm just having to get used to so much light in my face with a panel this size.. it's not the intensity of the brightness really, just the amount of light from a 43" vs my previous 34" 21:9. I've already turned it up to 15, and I do have my old PB278Q next to it for now and it's muuuuch brighter. I think it's me really, not so much the panel, at least for the brightness.

From my research, the OS X issue is because Apple has never released a computer or monitor where HDMI 4k/60hz was used. They've always intended that to go over DP 1.2. As such the support for 4k/60hz over HDMI just isn't built into the OS. After reading quite a bit, I'm confident the active DisplayPort to HDMI (2.0) adapter should do the trick. It did surprise me as well, I thought of the 2 boxes (OS X / Win 10) I have plugged in, that Win 10 would give me the most trouble. To be fair, I am using a 7 year old Mac Pro with a GTX 980 with Nvidia drivers, since Apple themselves never released a model with a GTX 980.. so I'm pushing the boundaries of the mac ecosystem in the first place.

Anyways, really like panel for the most part, but will be curious to see how the 49" MU6500 stacks up when it arrives next week. Picked it up for ~$425 on a Target sale, so pretty excited about that.

 

[Kdawg]

Thanks, will check with the HDMI specific black-levels and see what happens. I do a lot of photo editing, and the tools I use (Photoshop and Capture One, in particular) have dark grey backgrounds, and the best way to describe it is like a 'shiny' grey.. it's not like the flat grey color I expect.. I guess washed out would be a good description as well.

..... I do have my old PB278Q next to it for now and it's muuuuch brighter. I think it's me really, not so much the panel, at least for the brightness.

Dark grey is where all these panels differ.

You'll probably find the VA panel shows an even shinier gray, but not washed out.

What's interesting is that my phone and tablet, which have IPS screens, show grays exactly like the VA panel TV, suggesting that the 43 mu6300 might be miscalibrated from the factory. Greys on the 43" have a little brown tint.


is the Asus pb278q the one that comes color calibrated from the factory?
What do you think of the samsung color reproduction vs the Asus ? Have you done a bunch of comparisons yet?

 

[nameBrandon]

Dark grey is where all these panels differ.

You'll probably find the VA panel shows an even shinier gray, but not washed out.

What's interesting is that my phone and tablet, which have IPS screens, show grays exactly like the VA panel TV, suggesting that the 43 mu6300 might be miscalibrated from the factory. Greys on the 43" have a little brown tint.


is the Asus pb278q the one that comes color calibrated from the factory?
What do you think of the samsung color reproduction vs the Asus ? Have you done a bunch of comparisons yet?

YES! Brown tint.. definitely! I remember thinking shiny brown when looking at some photo editing apps and their UI (which should be a rather flat, dark grey).. I'm wondering if viewing distance and the resulting angles are causing this.. Since I'm much closer up than one normally is to a TV of that size, the angles when I look in different directions are much more drastic than if I was 5-6 feet away. Not sure what to do about that other than get a deeper desk, or a different stand (that rear plastic piece keeps it about 6-8 inches from being flush with the wall behind my desk).. Will have to play around with distance a bit.

Not sure on the Asus factory calibration, I've always calibrated it using my Spyer4Pro. I think it's a TN panel as well. I think the color reproduction on the MU6300 is really nice. I don't think the gamut is as wide as the Asus, but it covers sRGB which is my primary woking color space always as most of my photo work is geared towards the web / mobile devices. I was flipping through some photos yesterday and really being impressed.

I haven't done many comparisons yet because my photo stuff is on the Mac which is not displaying at 60hz, and I'm also not sure 4:4:4 is working either... kind of a questionable display environment at the moment. Have a couple DP->HDMI active adapters on order so when those come in and I get the full 60hz going I'll do more in-depth comparisons.. should have the 49" MU6500 in next week as well to see what the VA / IPS difference makes as far as 'shiny grey'. Will probably setup the LG UM3495-P that was the old monitor and try and compare that also.

 

[Kdawg]

the brown tint has nothing to do with viewing distance.
If you resize the Photoshop window to 1/4 of the screen and dead center, you will still see brownish grays.
You just need to tweak the white balance in the TV's picture settings.

 

[serowoon]

So I just received the 43" 6300 for a family member after having played around with my 40" 7000 series for around a few hours yesterday. I set both up side-by-side in a fairly bright living room environment with the YouTube app within the TV playing the same 4k 60fps video simultaneously and every setting meticulously tuned identically.

I'll go ahead and say right away that the 43" literally pales in a side by side comparison to the 40" 7000.

Yes, the 40" 7000 is a higher tier model that has a wider color gamut and other minor upgrades but it really came down to brightness which I've never once considered as a factor in monitor/TV purchases until now. For every monitor/TV I've owned, brightness has always been more than enough that I've never gone past 50% of max brightness. But for some reason, with these TVs (that clearly do have much higher brightness measured in cd/m2), my eyes aren't as bothered by the brightness as they have been with every monitor/TV I've owned in the past.

Just going by my own eyes, the 43" 6300 with the IPS panel at max brightness setting of 20 is matched just about evenly with the brightness setting of 12 (out of 20 max) in the 40" 7000 with the VA panel. Max brightness do hurt my eyes looking at webpages but I've just only realized that they make a world of difference when watching videos, especially watching any of those 4k 60fps YouTube nature videos. I probably would have never complained about the brightness capacity of the 43" if I had never done a side-by-side comparison to the 40".

While the colors for the most part would look about the same on casual glances except green (which looks darker on the 43" as shown in Kdawg's pics) and red (which looks about twice as vibrant on the 40" 7000 VA), I'm much more impressed with the overall picture quality on the 40" 7000 VA.

And yes, even in a fairly bright living room environment in a side-by-side setup, the contrast difference or the black level difference between the two TVs can easily be seen on any scenes that have blocks of black color.

I don't know if these differences will be similar with the 40" 6300 VA but the brightness capacity according to rtings and their measurement seems similar between the 40" 6300 and 7000 series. Also, I've never seen this mentioned anywhere else, but the 40" 6290 and the 40" 6300 must clearly use different panels if their official sizes listed as 39.9" (for 6290) and 39.5" (for 6300) are correct. I also couldn't find info on whether or not 6290 offers ambient light sensor.

I was briefly tempted to see if mu8000, mu9000 models would offer any clear picture quality improvements worth the price difference until I realized they don't offer anything under 49".

 

[Mad Maxx]

Would be interesting to see a side-by-side of the 40" MU7000 and 43" X800D. Both are VA and considered to be top of the line in the 40" to 43" category.

 

[serowoon]

Kdawg, do you think you could take one last side-by-side comparison shot of the 40" and the 43" but at this angle with this video paused at this spot @3:30?



Could you also make sure the black level on both is set to normal if it's available as an option and not greyed out (it's made available under PC connection but not in the YouTube app within the TV)?

Here's my shot of that scene, and I just want to know if I missed anything and if the 40" 6300 VA or the 6290 VA performs similarly to the 7000 as rtings seems to suggest.

https://imgur.com/xGbHTYF

Much thanks.

 

[Kdawg]

I discovered that the 40" mu6300 had some miscalibrated colors

I went to www.lagom.nl, and the color gamma was way off on the blue.

Kdawg, do you think you could take one last side-by-side comparison shot of the 40" and the 43" but at this angle with this video paused at this spot @3:30?



Could you also make sure the black level on both is set to normal if it's available as an option and not greyed out (it's made available under PC connection but not in the YouTube app within the TV)?

Here's my shot of that scene, and I just want to know if I missed anything and if the 40" 6300 VA or the 6290 VA performs similarly to the 7000 as rtings seems to suggest.

https://imgur.com/xGbHTYF

Much thanks.

why is your 43" so washed out at an angle? and why is the 40" so saturated an angle?

I thought the 40mu7000 was a VA panel. It's not supposed to be that rich

 

[Kdawg]

ok, I see what happened.
Typical IPS. Loss of details in the dark colors because it's washed out.
Dimmer colors on the 43" turn to mush.
VA dark colors get lighter and washed out a little, but still able to make out details.

In the lighter scenes, the 43" trumps the 40" VA panel at an angle, with rich colors maintained.
Blues are still blue, greens are green.
The IPS is just more enjoyable to watch at all wonky angles, in most cases.

It's a case of pick your poison.

the mu7000 should have a different panel from the mu6300, as it has a higher color gamut.

 

[serowoon]

Thanks for taking these shots.

What setting was it that threw the 40" off and are all the settings now identical between the two now? What I forgot to mention on my angled shot and all the pics on this post is that while I had every setting identical between the two, I had to lower the backlight of the 40" down to 12 (against the max of 20 on the 43") to get any sort of apples to apples comparison. Otherwise, the brightness difference between the two would make fair comparison on other picture quality aspects difficult.

The watermark logo "MYSTERY BOX" in the bottom right is mysteriously much clearer and less faded out on the 43" but the colors (especially red) are slightly more vibrant on the 40" though some might prefer the more "realistic" colors on the 43" but this goes against the conventional thought of IPS having more vibrant colors.

On any dark scenes like the one below, the details under the shade are difficult to make out. I also like the warmer tones that give the sands some reddish earth tones on the 40" rather than it appearing grey as on the 43".

Looking at Kdawg's pics and comparing the results to mine, it seems IPS on the 43" does better with bright scenes and VA with darker scenes which isn't unexpected but I personally would rather take the poison of the washout effect on the VA where the screen turns lighter over the screen darkening to grey on the IPS on off-angle viewing.

What I'd like to know more at this point is just how 6300 VA or even 6290 (with the backlight setting lowered to 12 or so to match the max brightness of the 43") would fare in these shots against the 6300 IPS so an indirect comparison can be made between the 6300/6290 VA and the 7000 VA.

 

[Kdawg]

On the 40", I had to turn down the blue offset in the white balance.

When I took the pictures, I had both TVs set to max brightness. VA was gonna desaturate at an angle no matter what brightness.

As a desktop monitor which you will be looking at straight on, VA would still be a good choice even for bright colors. Even at off angles, like if you were to watch TV from your bed, it's still OK and watchable.

You can't really compare the VA 6300 and 7000 through pictures. You need both side by side. But I imagine they're both about the same.
it seems the 7000 might be just a bit brighter than the 6300, and that's probably what helps give it extra color gamut. I notice all the brighter TVs on Rtings have wider gamut.
12/20 backlight on the 6300 VA is very dim, dimmer than the 6300 IPS.

On the IPS, the mushy hard to see details in dark colors kinda pisses me off. But I remember that's how my LG IPS monitor was too.