qubit
Overclocked quantum bit
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2007
- Messages
- 17,865 (2.98/day)
- Location
- Quantum Well UK
| System Name | Quantumville™ |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i7-2700K @ 4GHz |
| Motherboard | Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 |
| Cooling | Noctua NH-D14 |
| Memory | 16GB (2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance Black DDR3 PC3-12800 C9 1600MHz) |
| Video Card(s) | MSI RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio |
| Storage | Samsung 850 Pro 256GB | WD Black 4TB | WD Blue 6TB |
| Display(s) | ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR (4K, 144Hz, G-SYNC compatible) | Asus MG28UQ (4K, 60Hz, FreeSync compatible) |
| Case | Cooler Master HAF 922 |
| Audio Device(s) | Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty PCIe |
| Power Supply | Corsair AX1600i |
| Mouse | Microsoft Intellimouse Pro - Black Shadow |
| Keyboard | Yes |
| Software | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit |
I bought this LG W2363D monitor a week ago and I'm so pleased with it that I felt it was worth a review on TPU. 
Note that I live in the UK, so this review relates to the UK version of the monitor and to pricing. Also, this review is not intended to exhaustively detail every feature and facet of this monitor, just the important points to help make a buying decision. For the full list of features, see LG's website.
I already have an Iiyama E2607WS 1920x1200 whch is a decent quality 26" 16:10 ratio 60Hz monitor. It's not too bad at gaming either, for a standard TN monitor. However, I've been keeping a lookout for a decent 120Hz monitor at a good price for gaming. Then, kurosagi01 found this LG at Ebuyer for just £159...
Connectivity: DVI (dual-link 120Hz capable), HDMI x2 v1.3
I checked out a couple of reviews and figured it was worth a try, especially as it appears to be discontinued, hence the good price and especially for a 1920x1080 display. 120Hz monitors more expensive than this, including the not-too-hot Samsung 2233RZ (I know, I had one) only have a 1680x1050 resolution.
Test PC specs:
Intel E8500 dual core 3.16GHz CPU @ 4.11GHz
4GB (2 sticks) OCZ Flex 2 PC2-9200 (1150MHz DDR2)
nvidia GTX 580 with slight factory overclock to 815MHz (current 280.26 driver)
Microsoft soft touch USB keyboard
Microsoft Wheel Mouse optical
Allegedly "gaming" mouse mat, with bling LED's around the edges, lol
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Fraps for displaying frame rate
Unreal Tournament 2004 & Hard Reset test games
Note that the monitor plays a short sound when the OSD menu is displayed or removed and when it's being powered up or down.
Here are my impressions, so let's get the bad ones out of the way first:
BAD
- Power LED. This glows a distractingly bright blue while the monitor is on. In standby, the damned thing flashes irritatingly, forcing you to switch off the monitor with the power switch on the front panel. Very annoying. I guess you'll be ecstatic with this feature if you're the "Green" save-the-planet type. Oddly enough, most reviews I've seen don't tend to mention flashing power lights on monitors. Samsung are notorious for flashing power lights and I will normally avoid a model that is like this. I didn't know about it before purchase, or I would likely not have bought the monitor.
- Capacitive "soft touch" controls. Not only are these not actually soft touch because you're just pressing directly on the hard front panel and so have zero feel, but they're not all that responsive either and more than one attempt tends to be required. I dunno, maybe it's just me and you'll have more compatible fingers.
- The control's legends are such a feint grey on black that they're barely visible. No kidding, where the monitor happens to be placed in the room, the light is such that I actually need a torch to see the legends! Pathetic and a problem so easily avoided.
- Slight fringe around vertical edges when on the desktop. Affects 120Hz & 60Hz modes equally. This is annoying and a deal-breaker for me, but was easily tamed by turning down the sharpness from the default of 5 to 2, where it has perfect sharpness - neither fringed nor blurred. I believe that this is an artefact of the overdrive circuitry used to improve response time.
- Waay too bright out of the box. Again, easily tamed by fiddling with the brightness and contrast.
- HDMI is version 1.3, so it's not 120Hz capable - no 3D mode with PS3 or XBOX 360. Does anyone care about that here?
- Screen wobbles side to side rather easily on a skinny stand and the motion is underdamped, which means that the wobble continues for much longer than it has to. Only a problem when placed on wobbly tables that tend to get bumped really, though.
- No analog VGA. This shouldn't really be a problem though, because most graphics cards for almost a decade have had DVI outputs and it looks much better anyway.
- No built-in speakers. Not really a fault as such, but would have been nice, as analog audio has been implemented with the headphone socket. Would only have increased the price by a couple of quid, at the most.
GOOD
- Lightning fast response and no discernable lag. You thought TN panels were quick, just you wait until you see this baby! It's got a killer feature called "Thru Mode" that claims to remove all lag... and it really works.
I compared the LG side by side with one of my old CRT's and with Thru Mode mode off, you could see a slight lag in games. Switch it on and it all but disappears; just the barest hint is left compared to the CRT. It's so good in fact, that you would need test equipment to properly detect it. Note that I tested this in both 120Hz and 60Hz modes (yes, I forced that old CRT to do 120Hz at 800x600, poor thing, lol).
I tested this feature by 1) playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and getting a feel for how laggy it felt when I spun the player in a circle using the mose and general lagginess when blasting enemies. 2) Pressing F1 brought up a grid of high scores instantaneously. Pressing it repeatedly causes this grid to flash on and off quickly and clearly revealed the lag present with Thru Mode off. Doing the same thing with Thru Mode on eliminated it, with only the barest hint remaining. Remember, I compared this side by side with my analog monitor connected with a VGA adapter to the DVI port on the graphics card.
- 3D Vision worked fine, without any hiccups or hitches. The picture was also quite bright, likely due to this monitor's super-bright capability. Note that crosstalk is better than average with this monitor, so less 3D ghosting is seen. Note that nvidia doesn't allow brightness or contrast to be adjusted when in 3D mode, so no 3D Vision certified display allows this, which I think is a bit pants, frankly.
- Good, clear, bright picture in 2D mode, without much obvious banding or backlight bleeding, just a bit from the top. I don't have any way of measuring the picture quality with instruments or properly calibrating it, so can only give you my subjective impression.
- Viewing angles. Seems quite reasonable for a TN display and is better than my Iiyama monitor.
- Input autoswitch - the monitor will automatically follow the input with a signal, which is handy, especially given the rubbish front panel controls. Not all do this, including my trusty Iiyama.
- No dead pixels.
- Headphone output. 3.5mm socket is on the left hand side, making it easy to get to - and to snap off the plug if it gets inadvertently pulled sideways...
GAMING EXPERIENCE
Ok, this is the bit you've all been waiting for. In short: excellent!
120Hz mode: As there was no lagginess and motion was so fluid at a solid 120 frames per second, I found myself being able to up my game in fast first person shooters, easily beating the bots playing single player UT2004 & Hard Reset. I was able to beat the bots in UT2004 even at the Adept setting, where normally I would have to go down one step to Skilled. I even had a chance on Masterful, but did tend to get pasted at that setting.
The effect of lag on your game is subtle, but insidious and makes you effectively a worse player, as you just take too long to respond. Turning off vsync made the games feel even more responsive, as you might expect. Note that I noticed no picture tearing this way on UT2004, because the frame rate was running somewhere between about 280 to 450 frames per second at all times.
Turning off Thru Mode, predictably brought back the lag and it was surprising how obvious it felt after having got used to not having it. The lag was of course worse in 60Hz mode, but still noticeably better than the Iiyama.
120Hz mode did help to reduce motion blur, but it's still really obvious on the desktop, although it feels more fluid. In-game, you're too busy blasting baddies to really notice. Also, you're moving forwards or backwards mostly, which suffers much less motion blur than a sideways pan or rotation.
I played a bit of TrackMania United too, a fast racing game and that also looked pretty fluid at 120Hz.
One really nice side effect of running the display at 120Hz, is that dropped frames from the computer are much less noticeable as judders, because the timing is so much faster. They can still be seen, for example if it drops to say 90fps, but don't look too bad. If it's only a few frames, then you'd be hard pressed to notice while playing a game.
Using the nvidia 3D Vision glasses worked great, with no glitches. Note that using these also has the cool side effect of removing all motion blur, giving you the sharpness of LCD, with the fluid, blur-free motion of CRT. Truly the best of both worlds.
nvidia should put in a 2D mode with their 3D Vision, for those who don't want the 3D effect at the moment, but want to eliminate motion blur. It would only require a small driver update to make the 3D angle zero to achieve this effect and would make discerning gamers very happy.
60Hz mode: this did feel a little laggy, even with Thru Mode on, but don't forget that it's because temporal resolution is now half what it was. It feels more laggy on the CRT too. Also, motion blur was fairly awful, like it is on LCDs, especially sideways panning. Note that 3D Vision doesn't operate in this mode, that's why the 120Hz rate is implemented. It could technically, but it would flicker like crazy and you'd get an almighty headache in short order, lol. Even though the monitor perfectly supports 60Hz video, there's no reason to ever use it if your video card supports it as far as I can see.
VERDICT
A decent monitor at a killer price, due to being discontinued. It's badly let down by some moronic ergonomic design decisions, but they're made up with that awesome lag-eliminating Thru Mode - a feature that even much more expensive 120Hz monitors don't have.
So, if you're after a Full HD 120Hz monitor for gaming that's compatible with nvidia's 3D Vision, you can forgive the stupid ergonomics and comes in at around £100 below similar models, then this is the monitor for you.
As far as I can see, only Ebuyer have them. They had 130 when I bought it a week ago, but now are down to 70, so don't delay if you're considering buying this monitor.
Verdict: 8/10, RECOMMENDED
OTHER REVIEWS
Here's some other reviews for you to get an alternative opinion and some picture quality measurements with test equipment.
Flat Panels HD
3D Vision Blog
Note that I live in the UK, so this review relates to the UK version of the monitor and to pricing. Also, this review is not intended to exhaustively detail every feature and facet of this monitor, just the important points to help make a buying decision. For the full list of features, see LG's website.I already have an Iiyama E2607WS 1920x1200 whch is a decent quality 26" 16:10 ratio 60Hz monitor. It's not too bad at gaming either, for a standard TN monitor. However, I've been keeping a lookout for a decent 120Hz monitor at a good price for gaming. Then, kurosagi01 found this LG at Ebuyer for just £159...
Connectivity: DVI (dual-link 120Hz capable), HDMI x2 v1.3
I checked out a couple of reviews and figured it was worth a try, especially as it appears to be discontinued, hence the good price and especially for a 1920x1080 display. 120Hz monitors more expensive than this, including the not-too-hot Samsung 2233RZ (I know, I had one) only have a 1680x1050 resolution.
Test PC specs:
Intel E8500 dual core 3.16GHz CPU @ 4.11GHz
4GB (2 sticks) OCZ Flex 2 PC2-9200 (1150MHz DDR2)
nvidia GTX 580 with slight factory overclock to 815MHz (current 280.26 driver)
Microsoft soft touch USB keyboard
Microsoft Wheel Mouse optical
Allegedly "gaming" mouse mat, with bling LED's around the edges, lol
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Fraps for displaying frame rate
Unreal Tournament 2004 & Hard Reset test games
Note that the monitor plays a short sound when the OSD menu is displayed or removed and when it's being powered up or down.
Here are my impressions, so let's get the bad ones out of the way first:
BAD
- Power LED. This glows a distractingly bright blue while the monitor is on. In standby, the damned thing flashes irritatingly, forcing you to switch off the monitor with the power switch on the front panel. Very annoying. I guess you'll be ecstatic with this feature if you're the "Green" save-the-planet type. Oddly enough, most reviews I've seen don't tend to mention flashing power lights on monitors. Samsung are notorious for flashing power lights and I will normally avoid a model that is like this. I didn't know about it before purchase, or I would likely not have bought the monitor.
- Capacitive "soft touch" controls. Not only are these not actually soft touch because you're just pressing directly on the hard front panel and so have zero feel, but they're not all that responsive either and more than one attempt tends to be required. I dunno, maybe it's just me and you'll have more compatible fingers.
- The control's legends are such a feint grey on black that they're barely visible. No kidding, where the monitor happens to be placed in the room, the light is such that I actually need a torch to see the legends! Pathetic and a problem so easily avoided.
- Slight fringe around vertical edges when on the desktop. Affects 120Hz & 60Hz modes equally. This is annoying and a deal-breaker for me, but was easily tamed by turning down the sharpness from the default of 5 to 2, where it has perfect sharpness - neither fringed nor blurred. I believe that this is an artefact of the overdrive circuitry used to improve response time.
- Waay too bright out of the box. Again, easily tamed by fiddling with the brightness and contrast.
- HDMI is version 1.3, so it's not 120Hz capable - no 3D mode with PS3 or XBOX 360. Does anyone care about that here?
- Screen wobbles side to side rather easily on a skinny stand and the motion is underdamped, which means that the wobble continues for much longer than it has to. Only a problem when placed on wobbly tables that tend to get bumped really, though.
- No analog VGA. This shouldn't really be a problem though, because most graphics cards for almost a decade have had DVI outputs and it looks much better anyway.
- No built-in speakers. Not really a fault as such, but would have been nice, as analog audio has been implemented with the headphone socket. Would only have increased the price by a couple of quid, at the most.
GOOD
- Lightning fast response and no discernable lag. You thought TN panels were quick, just you wait until you see this baby! It's got a killer feature called "Thru Mode" that claims to remove all lag... and it really works.
I compared the LG side by side with one of my old CRT's and with Thru Mode mode off, you could see a slight lag in games. Switch it on and it all but disappears; just the barest hint is left compared to the CRT. It's so good in fact, that you would need test equipment to properly detect it. Note that I tested this in both 120Hz and 60Hz modes (yes, I forced that old CRT to do 120Hz at 800x600, poor thing, lol).
I tested this feature by 1) playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and getting a feel for how laggy it felt when I spun the player in a circle using the mose and general lagginess when blasting enemies. 2) Pressing F1 brought up a grid of high scores instantaneously. Pressing it repeatedly causes this grid to flash on and off quickly and clearly revealed the lag present with Thru Mode off. Doing the same thing with Thru Mode on eliminated it, with only the barest hint remaining. Remember, I compared this side by side with my analog monitor connected with a VGA adapter to the DVI port on the graphics card.
- 3D Vision worked fine, without any hiccups or hitches. The picture was also quite bright, likely due to this monitor's super-bright capability. Note that crosstalk is better than average with this monitor, so less 3D ghosting is seen. Note that nvidia doesn't allow brightness or contrast to be adjusted when in 3D mode, so no 3D Vision certified display allows this, which I think is a bit pants, frankly.
- Good, clear, bright picture in 2D mode, without much obvious banding or backlight bleeding, just a bit from the top. I don't have any way of measuring the picture quality with instruments or properly calibrating it, so can only give you my subjective impression.
- Viewing angles. Seems quite reasonable for a TN display and is better than my Iiyama monitor.
- Input autoswitch - the monitor will automatically follow the input with a signal, which is handy, especially given the rubbish front panel controls. Not all do this, including my trusty Iiyama.
- No dead pixels.
- Headphone output. 3.5mm socket is on the left hand side, making it easy to get to - and to snap off the plug if it gets inadvertently pulled sideways...
GAMING EXPERIENCE
Ok, this is the bit you've all been waiting for. In short: excellent!
120Hz mode: As there was no lagginess and motion was so fluid at a solid 120 frames per second, I found myself being able to up my game in fast first person shooters, easily beating the bots playing single player UT2004 & Hard Reset. I was able to beat the bots in UT2004 even at the Adept setting, where normally I would have to go down one step to Skilled. I even had a chance on Masterful, but did tend to get pasted at that setting.
The effect of lag on your game is subtle, but insidious and makes you effectively a worse player, as you just take too long to respond. Turning off vsync made the games feel even more responsive, as you might expect. Note that I noticed no picture tearing this way on UT2004, because the frame rate was running somewhere between about 280 to 450 frames per second at all times.
Turning off Thru Mode, predictably brought back the lag and it was surprising how obvious it felt after having got used to not having it. The lag was of course worse in 60Hz mode, but still noticeably better than the Iiyama.
120Hz mode did help to reduce motion blur, but it's still really obvious on the desktop, although it feels more fluid. In-game, you're too busy blasting baddies to really notice. Also, you're moving forwards or backwards mostly, which suffers much less motion blur than a sideways pan or rotation.
I played a bit of TrackMania United too, a fast racing game and that also looked pretty fluid at 120Hz.
One really nice side effect of running the display at 120Hz, is that dropped frames from the computer are much less noticeable as judders, because the timing is so much faster. They can still be seen, for example if it drops to say 90fps, but don't look too bad. If it's only a few frames, then you'd be hard pressed to notice while playing a game.
Using the nvidia 3D Vision glasses worked great, with no glitches. Note that using these also has the cool side effect of removing all motion blur, giving you the sharpness of LCD, with the fluid, blur-free motion of CRT. Truly the best of both worlds.
nvidia should put in a 2D mode with their 3D Vision, for those who don't want the 3D effect at the moment, but want to eliminate motion blur. It would only require a small driver update to make the 3D angle zero to achieve this effect and would make discerning gamers very happy.60Hz mode: this did feel a little laggy, even with Thru Mode on, but don't forget that it's because temporal resolution is now half what it was. It feels more laggy on the CRT too. Also, motion blur was fairly awful, like it is on LCDs, especially sideways panning. Note that 3D Vision doesn't operate in this mode, that's why the 120Hz rate is implemented. It could technically, but it would flicker like crazy and you'd get an almighty headache in short order, lol. Even though the monitor perfectly supports 60Hz video, there's no reason to ever use it if your video card supports it as far as I can see.
VERDICT
A decent monitor at a killer price, due to being discontinued. It's badly let down by some moronic ergonomic design decisions, but they're made up with that awesome lag-eliminating Thru Mode - a feature that even much more expensive 120Hz monitors don't have.
So, if you're after a Full HD 120Hz monitor for gaming that's compatible with nvidia's 3D Vision, you can forgive the stupid ergonomics and comes in at around £100 below similar models, then this is the monitor for you.
As far as I can see, only Ebuyer have them. They had 130 when I bought it a week ago, but now are down to 70, so don't delay if you're considering buying this monitor.
Verdict: 8/10, RECOMMENDED
OTHER REVIEWS
Here's some other reviews for you to get an alternative opinion and some picture quality measurements with test equipment.
Flat Panels HD
3D Vision Blog
