Lcd screen hz.

[Oldschool297]

Is hz important if you don't play games? How much does it takes for great picture quality and video viewing?

 

[cvaldes]

Any lower than 60 Hz there's more risk of annoying flickering.

Everyone's eyesight is a little different. Some people won't notice flickering at 30 Hz but many will. 60 Hz is high enough to eliminate this annoyance for almost everyone which is why it's the most common refresh rate for quality productivity monitors. You don't really need a faster refresh rate for typical productivity tasks in a normal corporate setting.

Faster refresh rates consume more electricity. Energy efficiency is a big deal for enterprise customers, there's no reason to have a 240 Hz monitor chewing up watts in front of someone who spends their day poring over spreadsheets.

 

[Oldschool297]

Thanks i understand. I only have old lcd monitors and tv from 2006 to 2012 at the moment. I noticed that they only support 60hz and at 1280/1080 in hdmi. The picture quality isn't the best. It gives better picture over vga with 1920. What is the main thing for better picture? Resolution? I thougt it was hz first after resolution. HDMI is not to recommend on older screens. No good picture.

 

[cvaldes]

Thanks i understand. I only have old lcd monitors and tv from 2006 to 2012 at the moment. I noticed that they only support 60hz and at 1280/1080 in hdmi. The picture quality isn't the best. It gives better picture over vga with 1920. What is the main thing for better picture? Resolution? I thougt it was hz first after resolution. HDMI is not to recommend on older screens. No good picture.

There are a bunch of factors that determine picture quality: refresh and resolution are just two.

Flat panel technology has greatly improved over the years. This is particularly noticeable in smartphone display evolution since people replace their phones more frequently than they replace television sets and computer monitors. If you have a recent smartphone, it probably has a much higher pixel density than your old monitors and TVs. This is particularly important for text legibility, specifically for logographic writing systems (Chinese, Japanese, maybe Arabic, etc.).

I'm no expert on display technology. There are primers online that explain a lot of this stuff. Remember that it is constantly evolving, today's OLED technology is much better than OLED from five years ago. There are factors like colorspace coverage and accuracy, black and white point levels, contrast, viewing angle, and other factors beyond refresh rate and resolution.

Remember that if you're in a corporate environment doing standard office tasks, the content on the screen isn't moving super fast. So things like gray-to-gray response, input latency, and other features more important to gaming aren't relevant in an office environment.

 

[Oldschool297]

I want a cheap screen for my second computer. This has 2k and others for the same price 1080p https://www.amazon.com/XGaming-27-M...-15-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&th=1

 

[cvaldes]

I've only owned three PC monitors in the past 15 years, two Dells and one LG.

At my last corporate job, the company IT department provided me with an Acer monitor which was pretty average in quality (my home monitors were better quality). All of the monitor manufacturers make a range of products, some are more capable than others from the same company.

I have never heard of this XGaming brand so I cannot comment on its value.

Best of luck.

 

[joemama]

It woudn't affect picture quality, for videos, usually the frame rates are between 24~60 so higher than 60 doesn't help. However, fps higher than 60 would look smoother when you are moving the cursor, scrolling websites or moving windows around.

 

[Macro Device]

Like @cvaldes said, you don't need more than 60 Hz if you don't mean to play vidya.

Resolution matters. Generally, the more the merrier. This just flat comes to your budget. If you can afford 4K, go for it. You can't, go for 1440p. Impossible to get 1440p? Alright then, get a 1080p display.

Generally, 1080p is good on 23 to 25" monitors but if you are a bozo like me who never gets closer than 50 inches to your display you might get a 27 or even a 32" panel.
1440p is ideal on 32" panels and of very high fidelity on 27" ones, this is choose your poison.
4K on 27" makes little sense if you don't know what you're doing. Better go for 32" if you opt for 4K.

IPS panels are the best for design, programming and all that content creation stuff. Dell U-series are the best ones in this regard.
VA panels are the best for movies and casual gaming. I stress on the word "casual" since very high refresh rate VA panels tend to smear and ghost and this is not ideal for competitive gamers.
TN panels are a no go. Just don't buy them.
OLED monitors are active gaming and movie watching ONLY. They are not suitable for work, especially with static images.

The best interface is DisplayPort. HDMI is inferior in all ways possible. DVI and VGA are outdated and should be ingored, especially if you have a somewhat modern (less than 10 y.o,) GPU.

You should also make sure you're using a proper cable and you're not limited by your port physical capabilities if you opt for a 4K monitor. They need a lot of bandwidth and will run at 30 Hz if a cable or a port on your GPU is outdated. 30 Hz is pure pain.

 

[Mussels]

Is hz important if you don't play games? How much does it takes for great picture quality and video viewing?

Refresh rate and image quality are seperate things
Higher refresh rate is about a faster backlight and usually a newer displayport or HDMI connector, companies can pair that with a slow shitty display.

There is no perfect display - you have to find what matters to you, and do a lot of research or trial and error.

Rtings.com is great for learning about this, but they don't have every display for obvious reasons.


This video at this time, has a fantastic example: dark orange text (Magenta is worst, in my experience) on black.

Samsungs new 240Hz gaming displays sound great on paper, but have extremely bad overshoot - motion smearing that leaves trails behind objects.
To translate the below information to you:
The monitor can respond to a change very fast, but darker colours have an overshoot - they don't fade away as fast as other colours so they leave smearing trails behind them.
Yet it's considered one of the best gaming displays, I guess as long as you play brightly coloured games only.

This isn't just "gray to gray" like the marketing states, but "From" gray and "to" gray - this monitor is GARBAGE at going to gray to dark colours from black.
The top two are showing how long it takes to transition at the various brightness levels.
The bottom one shows how long until the image is fully changed - no traces of the prior colour/frame remain.
Black to dark colours is something this display is extremely poor at, in the bottom chart.

At 60Hz, that display has less overshoot, but still really high - it's a slow panel.

Samsungs older IPS G7 model has the same problem - this isn't exclusive to VA panels, but it does happen more often/worse there.
You'll notice that while it still has overshoot, it's now only 22% of the time and not 51%

https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/samsung/odyssey-g7-s28ag70




The popular M32U from gigabyte has its flaws, but it's image quality isn't one of them
Gigabyte M32U Review - RTINGS.com

It's quite fast despite being 'just' 144Hz vs the slower 240Hz above, but has greatly reduced smearing issues at it's full 144Hz

At 60Hz its slower but has *zero* overshoot whatsoever - this is why it's popular for PC gaming, because when used with Freesync/Gsync and the refresh rate dips down, things get better and not worse
This can be interprted as the display refreshing slightly faster than the panel can do perfectly

Rtings also cover static image quality and text clarity, which varies per display and no marketing information can really cover.

The M32U zoomed in:

While OLED displays that people love for watching movies, are utterly trash at text

Thanks i understand. I only have old lcd monitors and tv from 2006 to 2012 at the moment. I noticed that they only support 60hz and at 1280/1080 in hdmi. The picture quality isn't the best. It gives better picture over vga with 1920. What is the main thing for better picture? Resolution? I thougt it was hz first after resolution. HDMI is not to recommend on older screens. No good picture.

To answer this: Early HDMI devices had limited resolution support, so they used scalers to alter the image to fit.

The display panel could be 1280x720, 1360x768 or 1920x1080p.
The TV then has to support the resolutions sent out around the world as TV signals - 720p, 1080i, 1080p, and common resolutions and refresh rates from DVD and bluray -
No DVD players support 1080p, they're 480i or 576i - so the TV has to stretch the image to fit

VGA will work at it's native resolution, while the HDMI images will simply be stretched if they're not a 720p or 1080p panel.

I want a cheap screen for my second computer. This has 2k and others for the same price 1080p https://www.amazon.com/XGaming-27-Monitor-Curved-Computer/dp/B0BV6Q5WPF/ref=sr_1_15_sspa?crid=1U1CTASVT7GNI&keywords=Lcd+screen&qid=1694431724&refinements=p_n_feature_twenty_browse-bin:72511692011,p_36:-16000&rnid=386442011&s=pc&sprefix=lcd+screen,aps,358&sr=1-15-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&th=1

That's a VA panel, so it'll have the smearing issues above, like in the youtube video.

If you want higher quality look for an IPS panel, but the prices go up fast. LG and Phillips seem to have the least overshoot in their modern IPS displays.

This is the same brand, their slightly more expensive IPS panel. Since it's a cheap unknown brand it's still a risk for quality, but it's going to be better than the VA one.
Amazon.com: XGaming 27-inch QHD IPS Gaming ELED Monitor with Rainbow Lights, 165Hz Refresh Rate, Eye Care 2560 x 1440 Display, FreeSync G-Sync Compatible, 1ms DisplayPort, HDMI and Speakers, Black : Electronics


VA panels have a colour tint issue where the left of a display looks more red, while the right looks more blue - so they curve them to hide it. Thats why the IPS one is flat and the VA is curved.

 

[mechtech]

Check out tftcentral uk.

old lcds typically have an analog/vga input.
To get best quality use the dvi or hdmi or display port and run them at default resolution and refresh rate.

 

[Chrispy_]

My take on refresh-rates for non-gaming displays:

For text and general application use, refresh rate is irrelevant. LCD's don't flicker like old cathode ray tubes used to, so an LCD should be flicker-free at 30, 50, 60, 75Hz no matter what. Some cheap panels flicker the backlight to decrease the brightness instead of actually reducing the brightness, this flickering is called PWM backlighting and usually it's hundreds or thousands of Hz so very few people are sensitive to this, and it is unrelated to the refresh rate. You can have a standard 60Hz display with a nasty PWM backlight just as easily as a 165Hz gaming display with a nasty PWM backlight. Not all PWM backlights are bad, either - so it's really something you can ignore unless you know you are particularly sensitive to flicker.

Having a higher refresh rate makes text scrolling look more fluid, but it's hardly an important consideration for most people since you're not generally trying to read moving text very often. The only thing that refresh rate really affects for non-gamers is video playback.

Most content is 24fps (movies), 30fps (some tv shows and streaming), or 60fps (HD Youtube, for example)

• A 60Hz display can show 30fps and 60fps content perfectly, but will judder with uneven playback quite noticeably for movies, because 24fps doesn't divide evenly into 60Hz.
• A 75Hz display is just terrible for everything, it doesn't play 24fps, 30fps, or 60fps video well at all because 75Hz cannot be divided by any of those framerates evenly. I would run a 75Hz display at 60Hz for video playback smoothness. If you want to prioritise 24fps movie on a 75Hz display, you should create a 72Hz custom refresh rate so that the refresh rate is an integer 3x multiple of the framerate
• A 120Hz display is the best for video. All of the common video framerates line up perfectly for smooth, judder-free playback. Every other refresh for 60Hz video, every 4th refresh for 30fps video. and every 5th refresh for 24fps video.
• A 240Hz display is like a 120Hz display, but has the benefit of being able to play rare 48fps movies perfectly too. These really are very rare though, and can probably be ignored.

It's worth noting that you don't have to look specifically for a 120Hz monitor if you want the benefits of 120Hz; A 144Hz, 165Hz, 170Hz, or 180Hz monitor can always be set to 120Hz to get the benefits of flawless video playback. Nobody is forcing you to run the monitor at its maximum refresh rate!



Edit - I know some movies are actually 23.967fps and not exactly 24fps, so yes - you will get one single frame stutter every 30 seconds, but it's still waaaaay better than a janky uneven framerate all the time.

 

[Bill_Bright]

It woudn't affect picture quality, for videos, usually the frame rates are between 24~60 so higher than 60 doesn't help.

^^^This^^^

As others have noted, for years (decades!) "Hollywood" filmed movies at ~24FPS. In fact, I believe that is where the term "frame" came from. Anyway, we mere humans detected those 24 frames as smooth action. If our eyes saw the individual frames, our brains ignored them. And that's a good thing.

So as joemama and others pointed out, no, you won't notice any flickering or stuttering at 60Hz.

 

[Oldschool297]

Thanks for the excellent descriptions. I live in europe and have 220v. Can this adapter transform 220v to 110v? https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Volt...8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1

 

[Chrispy_]

Thanks for the excellent descriptions. I live in europe and have 220v. Can this adapter transform 220v to 110v? https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Voltage-Converter-Curling-Countries/dp/B0BW7YQWZS/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=Adapter+220v+to+110v&qid=1694535696&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1

Avoid them if possible; They're cheap and inefficient.

If you live in Europe, just buy a 220V appliance - getting stuff shipped from the USA and then paying extra for the voltage converter is rarely a good idea and often far more expensive. Just order from one of Amazon's European (or UK) sites.

 

[Vayra86]

I want a cheap screen for my second computer. This has 2k and others for the same price 1080p https://www.amazon.com/XGaming-27-Monitor-Curved-Computer/dp/B0BV6Q5WPF/ref=sr_1_15_sspa?crid=1U1CTASVT7GNI&keywords=Lcd+screen&qid=1694431724&refinements=p_n_feature_twenty_browse-bin:72511692011,p_36:-16000&rnid=386442011&s=pc&sprefix=lcd+screen,aps,358&sr=1-15-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&th=1

I wouldn't buy a curved screen if your aspect ratio is still 16:9.

I have a curved screen myself, but that's an ultrawide, so not 2560x1440, but 3440x1440. 21:9 aspect. That's where curved really pays off. 16:9 I would always go flat.

A few basics about panels then to help you pick, at least, decent panels:

Display tech
IPS: high color accuracy (as in near perfectly calibrated, even colors) and generally good uniformity (no big differences in light across the screen) even down to the more budget panels at say 150~200 bucks for a 1080p, 60hz screen. In that segment though the IPS isn't particularly fast. Response times aren't generally advisable for gaming but just fine for desktop work and video. A disadvantage of IPS is low static contrast: 1000:1 is all it can do, anything higher isn't even worth talking about (1200:1 makes barely a difference for example in actual viewing). Deep blacks are not possible on IPS. IPS becomes a LOT better when you get a high refresh rate version of it (even 75hz is an advantage, don't skip those in your options), 120hz or better recommended.

VA: decent color accuracy, but generally weak at darker hues, where it tends to lose response time against lighter color variations. This can cause a 'smearing' effect. Stay away from cheap VA monitors because they exhibit this effect. VA's major advantage over IPS is the static contrast: 3000:1 is basic, 5000:1 is possible (that's 3-5x better than IPS; giving you deeper blacks and much higher contrast, images pop more without oversaturated colors) HOWEVER. VA becomes arguably better than IPS at around 300~400 bucks, and at 450-500 you can get the ultrawide I've got, which is a midrange VA; it has important stuff: 144hz, and generally a faster panel which made smearing a thing of the past; strobing backlight (Black frame insertion) which is great against motion blur; and Freesync which means your ingame refresh rate gets matched to framerate eliminating screen tearing. The last one isn't essential, but the others are pretty nice to have on VA. In other words, go VA only if you buy into the midrange or better. And check the featureset: high refresh rate, BFI/strobe, and read a review to see if the panel's up to snuff.

TN: in general I would just avoid TN at this point. There aren't many advantages left there other than very fast response times, but high refresh VA and IPS gets close enough, its a matter of preference that only happens in the minds of people who have seen lots of screens and first person shooters.

OLED: high in price and not optimal for PC just yet. There are exceptions but we really don't know yet how fast they'll die from static imagery, which is what OLED can't handle well and PC usage has lots of.

Display size, PPI
Pixels per inch or pixel density / PPI is an important figure. 1080p at 24 inch is a rather low pixel density at around 90 PPI. 1440p at 27 inch is an upgrade in that sense, and IMHO the optimal PPI for a desktop-situation viewing distance. I barely if ever need to use AA to remove jaggies and letters also don't show pixel edges unless I sit waaay too close. This also means that getting a very high resolution like 4K on, say 27 inch, is going to be a waste. Very few people actually prefer this, as stuff gets too small at 100% scaling.

 

[agent_x007]

About high DPI issues :
"Zoom" in browser and 150-200% Windows scaling, do pretty good job at making high dpi very usable (I use 4k 27" monitor everyday, since a bit over two years ago).

 

[Oldschool297]

Thanks again for a excellent description. If you would buy a adapter from 220v to 110 on amazon what would it be? I would like to get a cheap one. Can a phone charger go from 220v to 9v then must a 220 from 110v be reliable? Some monitors can't be found in europe there before.

 

[joemama]

I would consider a more renowned brand for the monitor, a lot of them accepts 100~240V as input

 

[Dr. Dro]

60 Hz is the bare minimum. But you likely won't find panels that don't support at least 60 Hz today, it's the basics of the basics.

144 Hz IPS monitors are inexpensive enough you should buy one of those and don't look back.

 

[Oldschool297]

There seems to be 3V, can i buy a adapter on 220v that transform to 3v? https://www.amazon.com/XGaming-27-M...-15-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&th=1

 

[Mussels]

Thanks for the excellent descriptions. I live in europe and have 220v. Can this adapter transform 220v to 110v? https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Voltage-Converter-Curling-Countries/dp/B0BW7YQWZS/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=Adapter+220v+to+110v&qid=1694535696&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1

You dont want to do that, they're hot and inefficient
Choose a display and then we can look into if you even need to do anything with the power

The 1440p IPS one i linked to above, one of the reviews shows the power connector

Reviews state that all the ports are high bandwidth with the HDMI supporting 144Hz and the DP doing 165Hz. Some expensive monitors are worse.

It's a simple DC 12V connector, something you may already own several of, you could definitely find one locally if needed.

Most of these are universal inputs, even my decade old laptop has one that supports 100v-240v, and it wont even need the full 4A to work - that's with every single feature in use at once at maximum brightness and contrast, so as long as you check it doesnt get too hot a 3A would probably be fine.


the 24" model uses the type of power brick you'd see on an external hard drive or router and supports 100-240 - so the larger model should as well.

 

[Chrispy_]

Thanks again for a excellent description. If you would buy a adapter from 220v to 110 on amazon what would it be? I would like to get a cheap one. Can a phone charger go from 220v to 9v then must a 220 from 110v be reliable? Some monitors can't be found in europe there before.

Adding any kind of voltage converter is a last resort. Going from 110 to 220V is difficult to do well, the best options for those converters aren't cheap, and they're bulky/heavy. Going from 220 to 110V is easier but you seriously hurt the efficiency, and I've personally witnessed issues with converters (I work with several Americans trying to use their stuff) because like cheap UPS units, the output isn't a sine wave like the AC current coming from the grid, it's either a clipped wave, or a square wave, and that's actually harmful to some types of appliance, especially power supplies and power adapters with power factor correction.

As Mussels demonstrates, very few appliances are made for 110V only. Almost everything is 100-240V these days, with the exception for "made in the USA" domestic products, and occasionally you'll find stuff that's 220-240V only because it's a product that not intended for international sale.

Unless you have a large number of incompatible products that are 110V only, or 220V only, you are almost always better just buying a 100-240V replacement adapter. They're likely to be cheaper, better, safer, and more efficient than using a voltage converter, which IMO is a last resort only to be used when you cannot get around the issue any better ways.