Is BenQ’s DesignVue PD3220U
really an HDR display?a maximum brightness of just 300cd/m^2.
That’s insufficient for true HDR visuals.
What is sufficient? HDR10 support just
indicates signal processing capability.
More useful and widely applied by many
manufacturers is the VESA DisplayHDR
standard, which actually encompasses
multiple standards. The entry-level
DisplayHDR 400 certification is not, in
our view, true HDR. It involves a peak
brightness of 400cd/m^2 and only sRGB
color gamut support. All the other levels
of DisplayHDR certification demand at
least some local dimming, which is critical
for HDR for enabling the much higher
contrast involved in true HDR visuals, plus
a wider color gamut, and better controlled
black levels. But we think it’s only with
DisplayHDR 1000, a standard that requires
a sustained brightness of 1,000cd/m^2 , very
low black levels, and local dimming, that
you get a really rich HDR experience.
Of course, all of that applies to LCD
monitors; OLED is a whole different ball
game and has its own HDR standards. But
as we explain elsewhere, OLED isn’t about
to become mainstream in PC monitors.other monitors. The Pro Display’s panel is
believed to be manufactured by LG, but it
might be an Apple exclusive—at least for
a time.
All of which means that 2020 won’t
be the year 5K, 6K, or 8K becomes more
accessible on the PC. Nor will it be the
year that OLED makes the jump from T V to
PC. It once seemed inevitable that OLED
technology would eventually take over
from LCD as the default technology for
PC monitors, but here we are in 2020, and
OLED availability in desktop PC monitors
is virtually zero.
Again, the picture is a little better in the
mobile market. A number of laptops, such
as Razer’s Blade 15, can be had with OLED
screens. But it’s increasingly looking
as though OLED may never become
dominant for desktop monitors. Instead,the PC monitor market may largely skip
OLED and jump straight to microLED.
OLED suffers from a number of
problems, including burn-in and
asymmetric degradation, that are
particularly problematic for the PC.
In terms of the former, the persistent
elements of the Windows interface, such
as the taskbar, make burn-in much more
likely. The longer the image on an OLED
display remains static, the more likely that
image is to be “burned in.” The result, on a
PC, would be a faint image of the taskbar
permanently burned into the display.DEGRADING EXPERIENCE
As for degradation, the first problem is
that OLED light output degrades over time
and with use. What’s more, the individual
subpixel diodes degrade at differentrates. PC displays typically have pixels
made of red, green, and blue subpixels.
The blue diode subpixels in an OLED
display degrade much faster than the red
and green diodes. Without compensation,
not only would your display become
dimmer, but the color balance would
shift as the blue diodes dimmed. Various
technologies do exist to compensate for
this, but PC monitors are generally more
sensitive to color shifts and involve more
persistent interface elements than TVs.
The alternative is microLED. For
starters, it’s brighter than OLED, but it’s
also more stable than OLED. It degrades
more slowly and the rate of decay of
the red, green, and blue subpixels is
more even. MicroLED is also much more
resistant to burn-in while simultaneously
offering all the advantages of OLED, suchDell’s 8K panel is one of a few high-DPI ones. 2020 won’t be the year of OLED PC screens. New LG IPS panels claim 1ms response times.maximumpc.com MAR 2020 MAXIMUMPC 47
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NQ
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