Types Of Monitors
Welcome to
Ultrawide Monitors
Ultrawide displays have a few drawbacks. For productivity, more vertical resolution is advised, but driving 3440x1440 is even more demanding than 1440p, meaning you'll need a high-end graphics card for gaming purposes. The displays are also typically more expensive than their 16:9 counterparts, and some games may need help (or even refuse to properly support) these resolutions. Utilities like Flawless Widescreen help bridge that gap, though Overwatch basically punishes anyone playing on an ultrawide display with a more restricted view of the game world.
Monitor Technologies
The overwhelming majority of computer monitors, laptop screens and tablets are based on TFT-LCD (Thin Film Transistor – Liquid Crystal Display) technology, but not all of them are equal. LCDs are divided by type, each having their own strengths and drawbacks. Here are the most common types, along with the benefits and drawbacks of each.
TN Panels
The most common and least expensive LCD panels are based on TN, or Twisted Nematic designs. Since TN screens are made on a vast scale and have been around a long time, they are very affordable. Online retailers stock an abundance of with reasonable features starting at just £150. The price is nice, but the pixel density isn’t—and neither are the color quality or viewing angles, TN’s greatest weaknesses. All TFT LCDs work by passing light, such as an LED, through a pair of polarized screens, a color filter, and liquid crystals that twist when current is applied to them. The more current applied, the more the liquid crystals twist and block light. Precise adjustments allow virtually any color or shade to be reproduced, but TN implementations have some limits. Each pixel in an LCD display is made of red, green and blue subpixels. Colors are made by mixing varying brightness levels for these pixels, resulting in a perceived solid color to the user. The problem with TN is its widespread adoption of a 6-bit per channel model, instead of the 8-bit per channel used in better displays.
IPS Panels
IPS, short for In-Plane-Switching, was designed to overcome TN's shortcomings as a display technology. IPS screens also use liquid crystals, polarized filters, and transmitters, but the arrangement is different, with the crystals aligned for better color visibility and less light distortion. Additionally, IPS panels typically use 8-bit depth per color instead of TN's 6-bit, resulting in a full 256 shades to draw upon for each color. The differences are pretty dramatic. While TN displays wash out at shallow angles and never truly "pop" with color no matter how well they are calibrated, IPS panels have rich, bright colors that don't fade or shift when viewed from the sides. Moreover, pressing a finger on an IPS screen doesn't cause trailing distortions, making them especially useful for touchscreen applications. While touted as the high end display technology of choice by giants such as Apple, the truth is that IPS screens still have drawbacks. Due to their more complex construction and the additional transmitters and lighting required for each pixel, IPS screens cost more than their TN counterparts. Thankfully, over the past few years, the popularity of no-frills import IPS monitors from Asia has helped drive down prices and force bigger monitor brands to sell more reasonably priced IPS displays.VA Panels
In between the high speed of TN and the color richness of IPS sits a compromise technology, the VA, or Vertically Aligned, panel. VA and its variants (PVA and MVA, but not AHVA) normally take the IPS approach with 8-bit color depth per channel and a crystal design that reproduces rich colors but retains some of the low latency and high refresh speed of TN. The result is a display that's theoretically almost as colorful as IPS and almost as fast as TN. VA panels have a few unique qualities, both positive and negative. They have superior contrast to both IPS and TN screens, often reaching a static 5000:1 ratio, and produce better black levels as a result. Advanced VA variants, such as the MVA panel used by Eizo in the Foris FG2421, support 120Hz officially and offer pixel latencies on par or better than IPS. Unfortunately VA has a few problems that are hard to ignore. First on the list is a TN-like color and contrast shift that occurs as viewing angles increase, which can make VA panels a tough pick for tasks that require accurate color reproduction. For gamers, there's another problem. While light-to-dark pixel transitions are speedy, darker color shifts have longer latencies which can result in blurring. VA panels aren't cheap, either. Still, if you want the best contrast ratios available in LCD technology, you won't find better than a good MVA panel. As a bonus, prices are quite competitive (eg, the pictured above costs just £150).
OLED Panels
The flood of innovation in the display market shows no signs of abating, with TVs on one side and smartphones on the other driving new technologies such as curved screens and desktop-grade OLED panels that promise speeds, contrast and color beyond anything seen so far. Dell had its UP3017Q 30-inch OLED display in 2017, but it was then canceled. It's unclear if the display was pulled due to reliability and cost, or if there was some other factor.
