Maximum PC - USA (2022-06)

THE ULTIMATE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY

BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO WAIT FOR IT

It’s the flat panel to rule

them all, the ultimate

display tech—we give

you MicroLED. But it’s

not coming to the PC

anytime soon. It’s still

years away, which is

a pity because when

it does hit the PC, it’s

going to be awesome.

Like OLED, MicroLED

is a self-emissive

technology that offers

true per-pixel lighting.

So, each individual

pixel can be turned off

completely. That means

essentially infinite

contrast and true black

tones. The difference is

that MicroLED sidesteps

organic compounds

and so doesn’t suffer

from burn-in. The latter

is a major issue with

OLED displays because

of the differential

degradation within the

RGB subpixels.

In an OLED panel,

the blue subpixels wear

out faster than the red

and green subpixels.

That eventually causes

permanent color

distortion seen as burn-

in. It’s a problem that’s

particularly tricky on

the PC due to persistent

on-screen elements

such as the Windows

taskbar, a prime

candidate for burn-in.

Of course, the latest

OLED panels have

numerous mitigating

strategies for reducing

burn-in. Samsung,

which supplies the

panel for the new

Alienware OLED

gaming monitor, and

Alienware’s parent

company Dell are both

confident it won’t be an

issue to the extent that

they provide a three-

year warranty covering

any burn-in issues.

However, burn-

in isn’t MicroLED’s

only advantage. It

also supports peak

brightness right across

the entire panel,

whereas OLED can only

achieve that in small

isolated patches of

the screen. An OLED

panel with a peak local

brightness of, say, 1000

nits can typically only

hit around 150 of full-

screen brightness.

The consequence

is that even the latest

OLED panels struggle

with really bright

scenes in HDR content,

suffering from clipping

and loss of detail. OLED

is at its best in HDR

terms when the screen

is mostly dark with a

few small and bright

objects. MicroLED

solves that problem and

will be by far the best

performing panel tech

for HDR content.

LET’S MAKE ONE THING perfectly clear.

LCD is a terrible technology for a full-

color display. Truly, it could hardly be less

suitable. The basics involve shining light

through a small aperture containing liquid

crystals, the latter changing orientation in

response to an electrical current.

That enables light to either pass

through or be blocked. Put three of these

tiny, independently controlled “subpixel”

windows together—one red, one green,

and one blue respectively—and you have

a system that, in theory, can render

any color. The critical phrase here is “in

theory”. Because in practice, LCD has

several fundamental issues.

For starters, the fact that liquid

crystals have to move at all immediately

introduces latency. It takes time for the

position or state of the crystals to move

in response to a change in current. That

process may be quick, but it is never going

to be instant. Similarly, while the amount

of light passing through each subpixel

is limited according to the crystals’

orientation, it is never fully blocked. Some

light always leaks through.

Making matters worse, the amount of

visible light that escapes varies depending

on your vantage point. Typically, maximum

light blockage takes place perfectly

perpendicular to the panel surface. But

from any given viewing point, that will

apply to only a small portion of the display.

As you look around the display, you are

viewing each point of the panel from a

slightly different angle. So you get both

apparent variances across the display

from a fixed position, and changes in

brightness and color if you move position.

To cut a long story short, LCD monitors

have fundamental issues with response,

contrast, color control, and viewing

angles, which is pretty damning of the

technology. In that context, what’s most

remarkable is just how good LCD tech has

become since that seemingly inauspicious

NANAO F-1020 monitor.

Today, pixel response is measured in

fractions of a millisecond, the viewing

angles of the best IPS monitors are

good enough to be a non-issue in many

scenarios, color fidelity is measured in

billions of hues, and the introduction of

full-array backlighting is finally solving

the contrast conundrum.

Indeed, it is actually possible to almost

entirely fix that final issue of light control

and contrast. The trick is to put two LCD

panels together in a sandwich, both of

the same headline resolution. You can

then use the rear panel to act as a per-

pixel dimming array, allowing most of the

light to be blocked before it reaches the

primary panel and, in turn, dramatically

improving black levels, contrast, and

HDR performance. The catch? That’s an

incredibly complex setup that introduces

a whole new layer of display modulation.

It requires algorithms to control the

dimming panel, which can cause image

problems of their own.

DELAYED RESPONSE

None of that, of course, addresses the

other major failing of LCD technology—

response. Impressive quoted response

times claimed by the latest gaming panels

are, in truth, fairly fictional. The standard

measure of pixel response used by most

monitor makers and referred to as ‘gray-

to-gray’ ignores the first 10 percent of the

transition from one color to another and

also the last 10 percent. Only the middle

80 percent is measured, which just so

happens to be the bit that occurs the

fastest. The full response time can be 10

times or more slower. In other words, the

true response time of a 1ms LCD monitor

may actually be 10ms.

The good news is that the answer

to pretty much all these problems has

finally arrived in 2022. Strictly speaking,

the Alienware AW3423DW isn’t the first

Back in 1993, the Eizo F-1020 was one of

the first flat panel monitors for the PC.

screen tech

50 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022

© EIZO