Why I returned a perfectly good VA panel monitor

I am sure this topic has been discussed here ad-nauseum, but I wanted to share my personal experience. I owned an old LG ultra-wide 75hz IPS panel monitor and decided I wanted something a bit bigger with a better refresh rate. After doing some research, I originally landed on a Dell S3422DWG and I was excited about the purchase.

After receiving the monitor and setting it up, I was initially vey impressed by the quality, the immersive experience and the curvature. But, I also noticed the colors looked a little more "washed out" than my LG IPS monitor. I took the time to calibrate the monitor and tweak the settings and fired up some games. The games looked fantastic! Very immersive, great contrast / black levels and great response times. The problem came when I exited the games and went back to the desktop. The clarity of text was mediocre, the color reproduction (even after calibration) was average, and the viewing angles were flat out poor. The colors and image looked noticeably different from the center of the screen to the upper right and left corners! This seemed to improve a bit when I sat farther back from the screen, but I thought it was a bit ridiculous that I had to sit at a certain distance for the monitor to look better. I realized it would also be poor for graphic design. With the colors looking noticeably less vibrant than my old IPS panel, and the far sides of the screen washing out slightly, you know it's just not going to be great for professional artwork.

I deemed this unacceptable, and decided this thing had to go back. The moral of the story is this. If you're considering a VA panel, be aware that you will get GREAT black levels and contrast that come at the cost of poor viewing angles and color accuracy. I will stick to IPS panels at this time and am now considering a Gigabyte M34WQ.
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you sent a perfectly fine display back because you didn't set the SDR slider?

 

No, he sent it back because of the poor viewing angles, he was clearly getting a shift in gamma/colour/brightness off angle. What is a "SDR slider" anyway?

Which is kinda strange, because on my 49" Odyssey G9, that is a lot wider than a 34" UltraWide, this is not an issue.

What did you use to calibrate the monitor and what values did you calibrate the monitor to @DSparil?

 

A tiny little bit of bias lighting behind an IPS monitor works wonders in my experience. What is perceived as "deep black" is always very dependent on viewing conditions. If you think your IPS display isn't showing deep blacks, try bias lighting. Seriously, it completely changes things.

 

Yeah, that wasn't the problem. Believe me. Besides, monitors have nothing to do with small burgers.

I think SDR sliders are those really small burgers you can get at some places. The little White Castle style ones. They're delicious but don't help much with VA panel monitors! To answer your other inquiry, I guess I used the word calibrate a bit loosely. I didn't care for the stock settings out of the box, and tweaked all of the settings and parameters to values that were deemed perfect for this monitor. I believe I got those values from the rtings.com community. While it was certainly an improvement, this did not improve the viewing angles. It was a curved 34" ultrawide, and although it was subtle, the colors and gamma washed out just slightly at the top far corners of the screen. Especially when I sat up close. If I backed off a bit, that improved, but the image was not the same on the far sides as it was in the center.

No matter how much time I spent with it, or what I did, I couldn't get the image to be as visually attractive or consistent as it was on my old IPS panel. I mean the contrast and black levels were fantastic, but that wasn't enough for me. I think maybe I'm just not a VA guy? Btw, your G9 is probably of a much higher caliber and quality. I'm not saying the Dell wasn't quality, but it was more on the "affordable" end of the spectrum than a G9. Perhaps that was part of the problem alone.

Oh this wasn't an IPS that I returned fine sir. This was a VA panel, and actually the black levels were quite deep and impressive on it. But sadly not much else was.

 

The irony is that curved is supposed to improve viewing angles.

 

How on earth is that anything to do with the topic of bad viewing angles?

Anyway, to achieve accurate white levels, you'll have to hardware calibrate your panel. Dragging a slider around isn't going to accurate white level.

 

imprecise SDR balance while in HDR mode leads to text artifacts as well as a washed out appearance, which is what the op originally wrote.

 

Well, I have ordered a replacement monitor and this time I went with an IPS panel. What would you recommend for proper "hardware calibration" when this arrives?

 

Couple of things. He never mentioned HDR. And you will not achieve accurate white balance without actually hardware calibrating your monitor.

His issue is bad viewing angles. You're completely off topic.

A colorimeter. Using values from a website is not calibrating. You're just moving sliders around. That will never be accurate because same panels will have variance out the box, also you have to decide what values you want to calibrate to when it comes to colour temperature, gamma etc. This will also depend on ambient light in your room, for example. There's a few values most people tend to calibrate to, around 100 nits of brightness, gamma 2.2, 6500k colour temperature. Most of the time you'll see the nits go from anywhere like 70 to 120-130, this will mostly depend on what the monitor is being used for and on ambient light.

 

Well i dont see anything like that on my VA Samsung panel and it's now 3-4years old c24fg73, guess yours had a weaker quality panel in it?

 

There's a difference between sitting in front of a 16:9 24" monitor and a 34" 21:9" monitor. The possibility of shift in gamma/colour is significantly higher on the ultrawide.

 

A colorimeter is one of the most valuable items I've had over the years. It will be needed not just for the initial calibration, but to correct color drift that occurs over time with all displays no matter how good they are.

I've used a 40" VA Samsung TV (non-curved) for a monitor and never had issues with viewing angles when seated facing it. But over time its color drift got worse and was harder to correct without upsetting other values, so replaced with an LG 43" IPS which am quite happy with.

 

He didn't have to, i know what the monitor supports and i know its not great at hdr, nothing 400nits is.

I believe this has a BGR pixel arrangement, you'll have issues with a mixed monitor environment as windows currently only supports changing the font pixel arrangement globally in the cleartype wizard.

 

So you're just assuming? My monitor has 1000 nits and I don't use HDR in games because PC monitors have terrible HDR. Also, loads of games do NOT support HDR in the first place. And again, that still would have nothing to do with viewing angles.

 

VA's only issue with viewing angle is being at the wrong viewing height for the user.

 

Well whatever it has, I hope for the best because its already on its way. RTINGS.com gave it consistently higher marks than the Dell I just returned, and it really sounds like this one should fit the bill. I will spend some time with it to be sure it's properly setup and see how it goes.

Ok cool, thank you. I will give this a shot with the Gigabyte monitor I have on the way and keep my fingers crossed.

That's not entirely true at all. VA panels are known for viewing angle issues. Check out the scores for viewing angles here. Very low. https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/dell/s3422dwg

 

I don't know how viewing height will eliminate horizontal viewing angle issues.

It will depend on the size of the monitor and the distance from it. Curve helps to eliminate viewing angle issues.

 

my TV is VA panel and it have no issue with color washing out or anything mostly cause I dont want it on angle. so for monitor why you be view a monitor that smaller at any angle? if your gona view thing on angle get an ips. now my TN monitor has horrid colors on angles. which why i dont view my monitor on angle and even then I would never view monitor on angle.

Every night I watch my TV on angle and it color are still pretty much the same, and i have my TV mount on wall about 6 feet up on wall angle down to my normal viewing spot just my opinion though.