I swapped my mini-LED display for a $1,300 OLED monitor. Here’s what happened

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I told myself if I an ever get an NVIDIA 5090 card at MSRP (or less) then I will splurge on a lavish monitor like this. Yes that will be a very costly upgrade day!
 
I did the same oled upgrade although to a G9 ultrawide. It truly is a seismic shift in how media and content is displayed.

About that broken VESA screw: is any of it exposed? If so, you can try to file or get a straight slot onto it, which will allow you to flathead the screw back out.

Option B: a small amount of epoxy on the screw head
 
Last year I was in the market for nothing less than a minimum 42" OLED. I poured over reviews and even made a 6-hour round trip to MicroCenter just to see them in person. After all that, knowing how much I use my monitor and how long I would need it to last, I chickened out and went with a mini-LED Samsung G7 instead. It's a fantastic monitor in its own right, so, no regrets. But yeah, OLEDs are amazing except for their price compared to shelf-life.

EDIT: Actually, I just remembered one other caveat to OLEDs - Text clarity. I was really underwhelmed at the text clarity when I finally saw them in person. Now, granted, I was looking for a 42" or larger, which meant lower pixel density, but the difference was significant enough to be a turn-off for me.
 
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The Samsung Odyssey OLED G8, dubbed the G81SF, now sits atop my workspace in pride of place, alongside my relegated BenQ PD322OU, a tremendous mini-LED display for the discerning Mac user who likes to edit photos.
Click to expand...

Yet another fake AI written article on Toms.
Hallucinated a non existent PD322OU with mini LED backlight...

We all know its not a typo for thePD3220U (note the ZERO, not the letter O)
because that monitor which does exist does not have a mini led backlight.
It is a normal edge lit IPS monitor for professional/creator use.

Here you go a spec sheet:
https://www.benq.com/en-my/monitor/professional/pd3220u/spec.html
Note the backlight technology and peak brightness in HDR with a max of 300 nits....definitely not mini LED.
 
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I have been using OLED for the past 3 years, I was an early adopter.
I have seen burn-in first hand on a few displays I owned.

I highly recommend the following not only to avoid burn-in, but also to ensure all OLED pixels wear as evenly as possible:

- Set a medium dark grey uniform background for the Windows desk top.
- Disable all Icons on your desktop. This takes a few hours to get used too but once used you will be amazed why you never done this before.
- Auto hide the Windows task bar.
- Use your monitor's anti burn-in options rigorously.
- Set a full screen screen saver that comes on after 1 minute o Windows inactivity.

After that, there is 1 additional thing I recommend doing: when you auto hide the Windows taskbar, there's a single pixel white line that at the very bottom of the screen to let you know where your hidden taskbar is. There's no way to turn that off with any Windows setting and because it's white it is bright and will burn in over time.
There are free programs, very small, that will get rid of that pesky white line to ensure everything is fully hidden except your medium dark grey background.

I have tried a completely black background, which would be optimal, but I find that highly difficult to work with as it always looks like the monitor is off and it feels really weird to have a completely black background.
 
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I came here to bite the rage bait (high quality Mini LED is very, very close to OLED), but now everyone is claiming this article is fishy since there is no BenQ monitor that matches the authors claimed previous model.
 
Stephen Warwick said:
It is exposed! That's a great shout, I couldn't believe it, hadn't had it out of the box 10 minutes...
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Get a small file, dremel or even a fine tooth hacksaw blade and carefully put a slot in the broken screw, you should be able to back it out carefully with a flathead then. If enough of the screw is protruding you might be able to get a grip with vice grips as well.

Good luck!
 
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I went from a fast but TN paneled HP Omen 27 to an Alienware 3423DWF. The change was astounding. I only wish I could max out the frames but this ol' 3080 unfortunately can't do so with these modern games.

I really wanted a Samsung Ark but couldn't justify the price. And the look on my wife's face when seeing it the first time, full of "are you serious right now?" was priceless.
 
SkyBill40 said:
I went from a fast but TN paneled HP Omen 27 to an Alienware 3423DWF. The change was astounding. I only wish I could max out the frames but this ol' 3080 unfortunately can't do so with these modern games.

I really wanted a Samsung Ark but couldn't justify the price. And the look on my wife's face when seeing it the first time, full of "are you serious right now?" was priceless.
Click to expand...
It's an amazing monitor, glad you're happy with the upgrade, I also went from a fast gaming TN to OLED and the difference is unreal
 
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vanadiel007 said:
...I highly recommend the following not only to avoid burn-in, but also to ensure all OLED pixels wear as evenly as possible:

- Set a medium dark grey uniform background for the Windows desk top.
- Disable all Icons on your desktop. This takes a few hours to get used too but once used you will be amazed why you never done this before.
- Auto hide the Windows task bar.
- Use your monitor's anti burn-in options rigorously.
- Set a full screen screen saver that comes on after 1 minute o Windows inactivity.
Click to expand...
All good tips. 👍

When I was contemplating OLED, I decided to set my taskbar to autohide to see how annoying that would be to deal with on a permanent basis. When navigating to the taskbar to switch between apps, the little extra pause required to hover at the bottom while the taskbar pops up was a constant nuisance. It was also not totally compatible with some apps - the taskbar wouldn't pop-up at all when certain apps were full sized, turning task switching into a complicated 2-3 step process.

For me to go for OLED, the following needs to happen:
A) The longevity of OLED advances enough to not need aggressive burn-in countermeasures
-OR-
B) I will need to make enough money that I can be comfortable buying a $1500 screen every 3 years.
-AND-
C) Sub-pixel layout needs to improve for decent text-clarity, or else 8K monitors come down in cost so that the pixel density is better on a large screen. (But then trying to game on an 8K screen is impossible at this point until GPUs catch up.)

So, for me personally, based on where things sit currently - OLEDs are like a hot girl that's also crazy.... nice looking, but not worth the trouble.
 
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wakuwaku said:
Yet another fake AI written article on Toms.
Hallucinated a non existent PD322OU with mini LED backlight...

We all know its not a typo for thePD3220U (note the ZERO, not the letter O)
because that monitor which does exist does not have a mini led backlight.
It is a normal edge lit IPS monitor for professional/creator use.

Here you go a spec sheet:
https://www.benq.com/en-my/monitor/professional/pd3220u/spec.html
Note the backlight technology and peak brightness in HDR with a max of 300 nits....definitely not mini LED.
Click to expand...
You're quite right, that should simply say LED, thanks for spotting!
 
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vanadiel007 said:
I have been using OLED for the past 3 years, I was an early adopter.
I have seen burn-in first hand on a few displays I owned.

I highly recommend the following not only to avoid burn-in, but also to ensure all OLED pixels wear as evenly as possible:

- Set a medium dark grey uniform background for the Windows desk top.
- Disable all Icons on your desktop. This takes a few hours to get used too but once used you will be amazed why you never done this before.
- Auto hide the Windows task bar.
- Use your monitor's anti burn-in options rigorously.
- Set a full screen screen saver that comes on after 1 minute o Windows inactivity.

After that, there is 1 additional thing I recommend doing: when you auto hide the Windows taskbar, there's a single pixel white line that at the very bottom of the screen to let you know where your hidden taskbar is. There's no way to turn that off with any Windows setting and because it's white it is bright and will burn in over time.
There are free programs, very small, that will get rid of that pesky white line to ensure everything is fully hidden except your medium dark grey background.

I have tried a completely black background, which would be optimal, but I find that highly difficult to work with as it always looks like the monitor is off and it feels really weird to have a completely black background.
Click to expand...
Auto hide, check, icons disabled, check (and I totally agree it is a revelation) - but I had no idea about that single white line - I think I can see it now you mention, so I will absolutely look into this.
 
For text clarity there are a few options. For RWBG OLED (LG) there is a MacType and ClearType Tuner. These can correct the left to right variance the extra sub pixel causes. Not perfect, but helps a lot. They can't handle QD-OLED though as that pixel layout is quite different.
 
Stephen Warwick said:
You're quite right, that should simply say LED, thanks for spotting!
Click to expand...
Ok, this makes so much more sense. A quality Mini-LED display will go brighter than most OLEDs, has comparable black levels, and only falls behind on things like gray to gray response times and the outer edges of color space. Blooming on a high end miniLED isn't really an issue. All other things equal, a high end OLED with true HDR10 (not HDR400) will have better quality than a high end miniLED, but not by that much.

But all things aren't equal, as miniLEDs don't have burn in, don't have as many QC issues, and cost significantly less.
 
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I recently brought a Asus laptop with an OLED screen, but I couldn't tell much of a difference between this and a good LED screen from my Surface Laptop. As for the monitor, I have an $200 34" ultrawide LG monitor and I don't see a need to buy an oled screen. Oled makes a big difference in phone screens but not much else IMO.
 
pug_s said:
I recently brought a Asus laptop with an OLED screen, but I couldn't tell much of a difference between this and a good LED screen from my Surface Laptop. As for the monitor, I have an $200 34" ultrawide LG monitor and I don't see a need to buy an oled screen. Oled makes a big difference in phone screens but not much else IMO.
Click to expand...
I agree. With how good LEDs are nowadays, absolute brightness matters more for most users than true blacks or the last 10% of color accuracy.

The latest crop of professional & gaming laptops with OLED screens all top out at 300 nits instead of last-gens 500 nits. This is completely unacceptable. The only reason why I can imagine they would do this is to control burn in better. If the manufacturers are concerned about burn in, then consumers should be as well.
 
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