Pretty simple really. Can anyone recommend 24"-32" gaming screens with the lowest amounts of backlight bleed and/or IPS glow? Bought an Iiyama X2783HSU, which is a £140 AMVA+ panel. Can't expect miracles for that price, but wow, the bleed/glow is horrendous. So my budget is much higher now, I figure I'm going to have to spend about £400. It's worth it if it's better in this one crucial regard - loads of the games I play are very dark (Elite Dangerous, Alien: Isolation, etc.) and a cheap panel with glowy dark areas just ruins them. Problem is, reviews seldom mention glow/bleed, and if they do, they use irritatingly vague relativistic judgements like "backlight bleed not bad for this price range" or "IPS glow isn't the worst we've seen". Beyond the bleed/glow, my requirements are pretty lax. 120Hz+ is nice to have. IPS/VA is nice to have. QHD is nice to have. But I'd throw them all under the bus for decent dark performance.
Also be mindful of ghosting/smearing. Its awful on some VA panels (like my MSI) so I basically can't enjoy Stellaris anymore as its a mess to look at!
It's been a long time since I bought a monitor, but in my experience it's not a hard and fast thing. I bought three Dell U2515's for Surround and none of them had backlight bleed that was distracting - but I ran them at low brightness because I don't like my eyes bleeding. I recommended said monitor to a friend as he was on the hunt for something similar... and the one he got had a very blotchy backlight. It was sent back; the replacement was better but still not as good as mine. I've generally had good experiences with the Dell Ultrasharps... they're rarely the best specced monitors, but they're solid performers.
For contrast in dark areas, the answer already exists: OLEDs. Unfortunately, they're only really in TVs and phones. If this is your main use case, and you are prepared to look after the screen properly (i.e. work to avoid burn-in), have you thought about using the smallest, high-quality OLED TV you can find as your monitor?
I’d be wary of input lag with TVs though. It would ruin a gaming experience - at least for me, though I suppose this is perhaps subjective
Avoiding burn in on PC's is nearly impossible due to desktop elements, the task bar would be your bigest enermy. Then playing the same game too much would be a problem, so if you only play one or two titles you're done. Its the reason no one has bothered to make a OLED monitor, as they really just don't work for PC's.
I think the new LG OLED 48" CX is meant to have low lag and is aimed at gamers, but haven't got my hands on one yet. Think I'll pick one up close to Christmas if the launch price comes down. Appreciate 48" is a bit (or more than a bit!) bigger than your max size though @boiled_elephant!
Aye, I have a 55" LG OLED and it's beautiful for gaming, but the conundrum is that I just prefer gaming at a desk and have moved the pc back up to the office. Like most, I made the smallest room in the house into the office, and a TV would totally dominate it. Way too close. 32" is about the top of it. Some of the new VA curved panels seem like a good option as they have excellent black depth and contrast, but confusingly they are often reported by TFTCentral to have bad backlight bleed at the corners. Seems like a shame. The million dollar question becomes, then: which IPS models mitigate IPS glow the best?
I did just see that LG have announced a new 1ms 'Ultragear' gaming IPS monitor, might be worth a look? Hopefully someone like Rting etc. will do a review and check for glow?
