Review Aorus FO48U 4K OLED Gaming Monitor Review: Contrast Beyond Comprehension

[Admin]

The Gigabyte Aorus FO48U is a 4K OLED panel that can fit on a desk. It fulfills the dream of infinite contrast and nearly perfect color while bringing an addictive gaming experience.

Aorus FO48U 4K OLED Gaming Monitor Review: Contrast Beyond Comprehension : Read more

 

[mihen]

Already able to see some very minor burn in after playing a game for 10 hours that has a fixed UI. Only visible on dark gray screens. I was at 100% brightness =/, went down to 30% as suggested by others.

 

[saunupe1911]

Why would I even consider this over a 48 inch LG C1 at $1299....$1596 with 2 year burn protection?

 

[deesider]

For people who use this size of monitor (or TV), how far away do you sit from it?

I just can't imagine sitting at a desk with a 48" screen. I use a 27" as my main and prefer to sit at least 1 metre away.

 

[Bryman]

For people who use this size of monitor (or TV), how far away do you sit from it?

I just can't imagine sitting at a desk with a 48" screen. I use a 27" as my main and prefer to sit at least 1 metre away.

I sit about 38 to 44" away on my LG c1 when using for gaming/pc and 48" when watching TV
Desk is 33" deep

 

[larsv8]

For people who use this size of monitor (or TV), how far away do you sit from it?

I just can't imagine sitting at a desk with a 48" screen. I use a 27" as my main and prefer to sit at least 1 metre away.

If you check my sig to the pcpartpicker build I had a custom desk built to place my 48 incher further away.

It sits about 42 inches away, but its wall mounted so a little bit closer.

 

[Spike_xps720]

For people who use this size of monitor (or TV), how far away do you sit from it?

I just can't imagine sitting at a desk with a 48" screen. I use a 27" as my main and prefer to sit at least 1 metre away.

I have Acer Predator CG437K 43" monitor and I am sitting 33" from it. I love this monitor. All 4K details are bigger and gaming experience is great.

 

[rdmetz]

Already able to see some very minor burn in after playing a game for 10 hours that has a fixed UI. Only visible on dark gray screens. I was at 100% brightness =/, went down to 30% as suggested by others.

That's just image retention no oled is going to burn in after 10 hours. It will go away with varied content.

I've gamed for 1000's of hours (some at 100% for hdr the rest at 80%) on my 2019 lg c9 and have zero signs of permanent burn in.

Almost all panels that exist today are just LG display panels and for the most part should have similar burn in protections.

If you're talking about a panel pre 2018 then yes burn in was a bit more likely and even I, with the same game I've put thousands of hours in on my 2019 c9, saw permanent burn in on my 2016 after just 3 months and maybe 300 hours of said game.

Today its very very difficult to burn in your screen unless your absolutely careless or are purposefully disabling protections built in and enabled by default.

 

[rdmetz]

For people who use this size of monitor (or TV), how far away do you sit from it?

I just can't imagine sitting at a desk with a 48" screen. I use a 27" as my main and prefer to sit at least 1 metre away.

I game on a 65" C9 OLED and while I have a desk and keyboard mouse setup about 24" in front of it (it's wall mounted) but I do most of my gaming about 4 feet from it using a controller.

My vision isn't great and honestly only with a large screen and pretty much "immersed" can I actually stay competitive in the fps type games I like to play. Seeing "deep" into the picture is hard for me unless my vision is pretty much dominated by screen. I've grown quite accustomed to it and just make sure any hud elements are pulled in as close to center as possible so I don't have to move my eyes too much.

 

[Friesiansam]

This is thanks to its ability to shut off individual pixels on the fly to create an infinitely low black level. The word infinitely is not an exaggeration.

It is an exaggeration. To be infinitely black it would have to be invisible, emitting or reflecting absolutely no light whatsoever. Even Vanta Black still reflects a very tiny amount of light.

 

[mihen]

That's just image retention no oled is going to burn in after 10 hours. It will go away with varied content.

I've gamed for 1000's of hours (some at 100% for hdr the rest at 80%) on my 2019 lg c9 and have zero signs of permanent burn in.

Almost all panels that exist today are just LG display panels and for the most part should have similar burn in protections.

If you're talking about a panel pre 2018 then yes burn in was a bit more likely and even I, with the same game I've put thousands of hours in on my 2019 c9, saw permanent burn in on my 2016 after just 3 months and maybe 300 hours of said game.

Today its very very difficult to burn in your screen unless your absolutely careless or are purposefully disabling protections built in and enabled by default.

Thanks, I was worried when I noticed it.

 

[tom_alford]

Is this an "upgrade" from the 55" AW? Im one of the people who actually spent 3K on it, and have been happy with it for casual, non competitive gaming and have no issue with the size (my office room desk is a giant sized conference table)

But I wouldnt have an issue with a smaller monitor and just moving it closer to me, if the increased brightness really is an upgrade.

Any thoughts on that?

 

[Walktexranga]

The Gigabyte Aorus FO48U is a 4K OLED panel that can fit on a desk. It fulfills the dream of infinite contrast and nearly perfect color while bringing an addictive gaming experience.

Aorus FO48U 4K OLED Gaming Monitor Review: Contrast Beyond Comprehension : Read more

Not much mention of the ABL causing very low brightness when viewing websites etc with lots of white.. 150 nits is woeful.. This is good as a secondary gaming screen, quite poor as a primary.

 

[LittleJohnT]

For people who use this size of monitor (or TV), how far away do you sit from it?

I just can't imagine sitting at a desk with a 48" screen. I use a 27" as my main and prefer to sit at least 1 metre away.

I use a 43" 4K as my primary display, and flank it with 2 27" 1440p displays, and I sit about 20-26 inches away from the center of the 4K display. the 48" I would think would be pretty similar but with the text being slightly larger. If I sat farther back I would probably have to amplify the text size in order to read well, and also I would have to take my keyboard off my desk which I do not care for.

 

[terraphantm]

Can you clarify how the brightness measurements are done? Is it with a full screen white image? And is that in both HDR and SDR modes?

 

[JTCPingas]

First is the Aorus Prevention Compensation System (APCS). This routine will scan the screen every 4 hours with lines intended to even out pixel use. It takes about 5 minutes and will run when the monitor is in standby mode.

Not it doesn't. You have to turn the monitor off with the remote for the short pixel refresher to run. I left it in standby for a couple hours, and I still noticed minor image retention after waking it up and viewing grey uniformity tests. Why did you have to lie?

 

[mihen]

Thanks JTCPingas. I was noticing the same thing until I turned it off.

 

[JTCPingas]

Thanks JTCPingas. I was noticing the same thing until I turned it off.

You actually got that warning message from leaving it technically on but letting it go to sleep mode? Sometimes that warning will incorrectly appear if you let it run the pixel cleanup and turn it back on immediately after it finishes. I just personally like being able to leave a monitor powered on just so it can sleep and wake up with the PC.

 

[mihen]

Yea, I like doing that too. So I never actually powered it off until Sunday. Never got a message or anything to power off so it can pixel refresh. I also have the most recent non-beta firmware.

 

[Carl Edman]

Already able to see some very minor burn in after playing a game for 10 hours that has a fixed UI. Only visible on dark gray screens. I was at 100% brightness =/, went down to 30% as suggested by others.

Me too which was a bit surprising, but then I ran the built-in un-burn-inner and it all went away. I may just do that every couple weeks when I am not using the device. It seems a small price to pay for having higher brightness.

 

[Carl Edman]

I have Acer Predator CG437K 43" monitor and I am sitting 33" from it. I love this monitor. All 4K details are bigger and gaming experience is great.

It is a question of taste. I have a 72-inch wide motorized desk and sit about 2 feet away from my AORUS 48O with interface scaling set at a 100%. This is perfect for having a ton of information displayed continuously in many windows.

Personally I don't understand people who buy a large 4k monitor and then set it to 150% or more interface scaling. At that point you have thrown away almost all the benefit from a large high-res screen just to get prettier letters.

A screen is the most efficient interface straight into your brain. Try to maximize its bandwidth.

But everybody knows their own taste best.

 

[Carl Edman]

One more comment in case anybody else runs into this:

DSC (display stream compression) looks god-awful on fine text on high contrast background (like black on white). It most resembles horribly misconfigured ClearType with heavy colored bands next to all vertical and horizontal lines. It was so bad that I was considering sending the monitor back.

The reason DSC was turned on was that I ran my desktop at 4k 120Hz and DisplayPort 1.4 just can't handle that without DSC.

The solutions:
(1) Set the desktop to 4k 60Hz which is perfectly fine for desktop work and which doesn't require DSC.

(2) If you want to run games at 4k 120Hz, give it a try. For most generated imagery there are no such sharp single-pixel gradients and it will probably be fine even with DSC.

(3) If your graphics card and HDMI cable support HDMI 2.1, they ought to be able to do 4k 120Hz without DSC. But I have not tried that yet as my ancient 1080 only has HDMI 2.0a.

 

[mihen]

After I discovered you need to turn off the monitor to start the pixel refresher, I shot my brightness back up. Setting the brightness high also helps with some temporary ghosting. Right now I have brightness set to 100%.

 

[mihen]

Year and a half report. No issues with burn in.