I'm going to be comparing these two budget gaming monitors to see how they perform in
ghosting and what it means for gaming and productivity. This is the Viewsonic VX3268-2KPC-MHD
and it's a VA monitor. It costs $355USD and has the worst ghosting I've ever seen. Beside
it is the Viewsonic VX2705-2KP-MHD and it's an IPS monitor that costs $314USD. Hardware
Unboxed has reviewed this and it's one of the slowest IPS monitors they've tested, by
a huge margin. But first we have to understand what causes ghosting, and to do that we have
to zoom in... like really zoom in.
This is a pixel and it's made out of three sub pixels red green and blue. Each of these
subpixels can go from zero or off to one hundred percent or fully on and how long it takes
to transition from one brightness to another will determine how much ghosting actually
occurs. In other words, the slower the transition the more noticeable the ghosting. This is
what it looks like on a graph. Here, blue has a slower response time or transition time
than red because it doesn't reach the desired value as quickly. Now that we know what causes
ghosting, let's take a closer look at the two monitors.
On paper they both have a 3ms Gray to Gray response time and a 1ms Motion Picture Response
Time. These numbers don't actually mean much because in reality the IPS panel has a 17ms
response time. Let's start with the UFO tests. The VA produces much longer trails compared
to the IPS. This is only true for the two darker backgrounds though. Looking at the
light background both trails are about the same in length so there's no difference here.
In real life, this means there will be ghosting in darker scenes. For games like Horizon 5,
there's already a lot of motion blur so ghosting isn't very noticeable. Even in areas where
there's a lot of high contrast, I wasn't able to see much difference between the two. For
fast-paced games like Halo Infinite the ghosting can also be mistaken for motion blur. I didn't
notice any issues when trying to lock onto enemies. Another game I tried is age of empires,
and ghosting isn't too bad here either. I only noticed it when I was looking for it
and it's more visible along the edges of the fog of war. Now one game where ghosting is
extremely noticeable is Hades. Here thin lines on the VA panels disappear when moving and
reappear when I stop. This is more clearly illustrated along the pillars. The IPS panel
performs much better. The lines become dim but don't completely disappear from view.
Another area is the repeating patterns along the handrail. Here, both monitors turn dim
but the VA panel is just a bit more dim before settling to the correct brightness. This is
extremely distracting and takes away from the gameplay. So in high contrast games that
don't use a lot of motion blur IPS is better than VA.
For productivity, I did notice a bit of ghosting on the VA panel but it's not very obvious.
But to really show ghosting, here's a black background with white text. the text on the
VA panel becomes dim before settling to the correct brightness. The IPS is better here
and doesn't become as dim. Now to really drive the point home, here's some orange text with
a black background. I find these results to be quite fascinating, because the on paper
specs are about the same but the IPS panel is able to perform much better at ghosting
than the VA. As for coding ghosting can be an issue if smooth scrolling is enabled. Typically
editors don't have this enabled by default. What's more backgrounds are typically not
100 black and text is a 100 white so it's really not an issue.
So far, I've shown what causes ghosting and how it affects real life usage, but there's
one additional response time setting called ultra fast. Running the same white on black
test on the VA panel, there's no longer any ghosting and it's the same for the IPS. Going
back to the monitor charts we also see that the response time have decreased from 17ms
average down to 6.3. The fastest response time is 1.7ms. This isn't as fast as the advertised
spec of 1ms, but it's pretty close. Numbers aside, this setting seems to have completely
solved ghosting. So what's going on?
Well, you see, although this setting is able to boost the pixel transition speed, it also
introduces something called overshoot. This means colors will first hit a brighter level
before settling back down to the desired value. Going back to the graph, this is what the
ultra fast response time looks like. If I wanted to go from 0 to 50% brightness, the
pixel might overshoot to 75% before settling back down to 50%. In advanced mode, the pixel
never goes above the desired brightness but takes longer to settle. The 1.7ms measurement
is taken when the brightness first hits the desired value, in this case 50% brightness.
It doesn't take into account the additional settling time before reaching the desired
value. This can also be seen from the charts from Hardware Unboxed where the response time
is much shorter than the total response time. So how do these charts and graphs correspond
to the real world?
Well, visually overshoot causes a glow or inverse ghosting around moving objects. Here,
the UFO test clearly shows this effect. There's a white glow around the UFO as it moves across
the screen. The issue seems to be much worse with the two lighter backgrounds compared
to the darker background. Here's a side-by-side comparison to the advanced setting. I recommend
pausing the video here to take a closer look at the images. Compared to the IPS, the overshoot
trails are brighter and last longer. Now going back to the original question- the reason
why there's no glow is because the monitor can't get brighter than white. In a way the
setting completely bypasses the purpose of this test. But the moment I throw in something
other than pure white then the effect becomes quite obvious. Here, I have ultra fast response
time on the left and advanced on the right. As expected the ultra fast overshoots causing
the orange text to become brighter. The IPS panel is guilty of this too and performed
just as bad. Testing the ultra fast setting in gaming produces some really weird results.
In Horizon 5 the entire scene lights up and makes the gameplay look a lot worse than ghosting.
The best example of this is this telephone line. It's not supposed to turn white. Looking
around other scenery, the roads and all the environment elements have the same halo effect.
The same is true for the IPS panel to a lesser degree, but it's still very distracting. Trying
out Halo we can see the effect very clearly on this rock. This kind of performance is
unacceptable for either monitor, so there's no real winner here. In general ultra fast
response time is not a solution for ghosting and can only be used as marketing material.
Now there's one more response time setting and that's standard. This is basically the
same as advanced but a bit slower. I wasn't able to tell any difference and the response
time charts from Hardware Unboxed showed the same conclusions.
So far I've shown the real world effects of using advanced and ultra-fast response times.
But before putting this experiment to rest, I wanted to test one more IPS gaming monitor.
This is the QNIX QX2710 and it was very popular back in 2013. This monitor is considered B-stock
which means it didn't pass QA. It has a minimum response time of 8ms with an average response
time of 12ms. This is 8 times slower than the advertised response times of either Viewsonic
monitors. Firing up the UFO test, it's better than the Viewsonic VA panel and seeing this
really upsets me because it means manufacturers can't be trusted to provide accurate specs.
Overall the Viewsonic VX2705-2KP-MHD is one of the slowest IPS panels, yet still has better
ghosting performance than the Viewsonic VX3268-2KPC-MHD. If you are in the market for a budget gaming
monitor, I recommend getting an IPS panel. I've linked a few good ones in the description
below. The custom web pages I've used for testing is also there as well. Personally
I find the Viewsonic IPS panel to work very well as a secondary display.
The point of these tests isn't to throw shade at VA panels, it's to help you make an informed
decision about buying monitors. These things are expensive and it's hard to make a purchase
when manufacturers don't provide accurate specs. And if you're curious about how high-end
monitors compare to high-end VA panels, check out this other video that I made. Alright,
thanks for watching like and subscribe. Trying out halo we can see this effect very oh come
on man