midix

TL;DR: I had a GTX 960 previously and now I decided to upgrade to a 40 series card. So, I got it, installed the newest drivers, opened the Nvidia Control Panel, set the resolution, and enabled GPU scaling... Ouch, something does not look right. There's obvious edge sharpening going on. I checked if there was something messed up and maybe the monitor added its own scaling, but no, the monitor reports it's running at native resolution. So, clearly, Nvidia have changed their scaling algorithms. I'm wondering at which moment did it happen? Was it in 10, 20, 30 or 40 series? Was it a change in drivers? Here's how the edge sharpening looks like: Essentially, it sharpens the edges by adding pixels that contrast with the sharp line color - for light colors, dark pixels will be added and vice versa. Without the sharpening, the outer pixels would, most likely, be a bit smeared out, something in between the text & line color and the background. It's not a Windows ClearType settings issue, the sharpening happens for all lines, window borders, etc. It's not that bad, I just need some time to get used to it, after living with more blurry scaling for years Maybe this way will even be better. Still, that makes me a bit sad that I don't have any choice and control over which scaling mode is applied. OK, I highly doubt that anyone will actually know an answer to such a specific topic because there are not that many people using non-native resolutions daily, and even fewer who also happen to be tech enthusiasts and visit these forums. So, consider this an awareness-rising topic. The full story. Sorry, it will be long but I feel I have to tell you everything to give you the full picture (oh, the accidental pun here when talking about image scaling ) so that you don't waste your time recommending solutions that I've already tried or that are not possible for me. I'm a visually handicapped person, working as a programmer for 15 years. Upgrading a monitor or a GPU has always been a worrisome experience with going through multiple returns because manufacturers do not mention the specs that matter to my vision when using the devices at lower-than-native resolution and viewing at a closer-than-normal distance. I'm grateful to the people at RTings.com who perform in-depth viewing angle and uniformity tests for monitors so that I can try to find a monitor that does not look "dirty" and does not have a dip at 45 45-degree incidence angle. RTings also have some scaling tests for non-native resolutions. However, it seems difficult to find a monitor that ticks all the checkboxes for my special needs, and I always have to sacrifice something. Usually, it's the scaling quality. I haven't yet seen a monitor that does not do awful edge sharpening at lower resolutions. However, I was relieved to find that AMD and Nvidia GPUs have a smoother-looking scaling, which my eyes are used to. Intel built-in GPU has some sharpening but not as bad as monitors. So, I just enable GPU scaling and run the monitor at lower resolutions. I've been pretty happy with this for years. You might rightfully say, there are other options nowadays. Windows has a built-in scaling setting. However, that does not behave well with all applications. As a developer, I need to work with a multitude of random customer's software, some being decades old, and it does not work well with Windows scaling - sometimes only text is scaled, and sometimes the text or UI controls go out of bounds of some window, and things get messy and confusing. I have also tried various zooming utilities designed for the visually handicapped, but those tend to slow me down. Scaling the entire screen is just the most fool-proof and legacy-compatible solution. Many years ago I was buying mostly AMD GPUs. Then they broke GPU scaling in Windows 10 drivers. It just kept misbehaving, reverting to a strange resolution that I did not ask for, triggering both GPU and monitor scaling together, and that looked awful. So I switched to Nvidia, and then I got curious about neural networks, so I need Nvidia for CUDA cores anyway. Thanks for reading this long story

Yeah, where I live, the prices are also ... interesting. RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB is about 520 EUR. If you can find it for 400 EUR, it's a good deal, unless you can find better deals from AMD. RTX 4070 here is at least 640 EUR and also it might require a power supply upgrade for some people. For me personally, AMD is not an option, since I need CUDA cores for some specific workloads. So, RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB does not look that bad at all.

Found a few more: G502 X Razer Basilisk v3

As the title says - please comment if you know a mouse that has "everything optical" - the left & right button switches and the scroll wheel encoder. Currently, I have found only one: Cooler Master MM730 There should be more. I hope. The long story. As many of you have experienced, modern mice often have cheap components and in about 2 years they might start either double-clicking, losing text selection accuracy and start dropping items in the middle of dragging, or their scroll wheel might wear out and start misbehaving. It is expected from a cheap sub-10$ mouse. But when you pay more than 20$ you feel disappointed to treat your beloved mouse as a disposable. It's especially bad when it starts misbehaving while you do some "important stuff", such as deploying a software service to a production server with 10k users. What I noticed is that the scroll wheel lasts much longer on mice with an optical scroll wheel encoder. Actually, I never have experienced a misbehaving optical scroll wheel during my 20 years of PC user experience. Ok, they might get gunky or their rubber might get sticky and disintegrate in a year or two (looking at Logitech G102) but you can fix it without soldering. However, the positive experience might come from the fact that usually these mice start misclicking in a few years, so I have no idea how long their optical scroll wheel would last. The mechanical scroll wheel encoder barely lasts 2 years for me, on every mouse I have had. Judging by reviews of Steelseries and Razer mice (even those premium gaming models with optical switches), their scroll wheel might start malfunctioning even in just a few months! I have no experience with optical switches in mice, but I thought it would be good to find a mouse that has both goodies - optical button switches (at least for left & right click buttons) AND an optical encoder. However, it turned out to be not an easy task to find one. While manufacturers brag about mechanical switches, they rarely mention the scroll wheel encoder. So with some excitement, I searched for teardown reviews of the most popular mice with optical switches - Steelseries Prime, Razer Viper and Deathadder, Roccat Burst - but was disappointed to find out that all of them have mechanical scroll wheel encoder, which, judging by complaints on Amazon and Reddit, have failed too soon for quite a few people. Now I have found only Cooler Master MM730 but I've yet to read reviews to see if it's any good - it might have some other issues. So, it would be great to have people chime in and mention other options for those who are in search of a potentially long-lasting "all-optical" mouse.

I guess I'll have to buy a bunch of Omron switches (hopefully, getting the real thing and not some fakes). However, there was a video explaining how manufacturers are (ab)using Omron switches with electronic circuitry that shorten the expected lifespan of the switches. It's mostly about their contacts starting to bounce more, and then mouse built-in debouncing algorithm cannot keep up and start generating double clicks. That's a reaaaaly long research video with lots of tech stuff: Some mice have adjustable polling rate and it can help to lower it, but only in case if it gets applied to buttons and not only to the position sensor. That's why I hoped that going all optical would at least rule out the bouncing plague issue. But as you mentioned, there are also other factors - the quality of the plastics etc.

Most mice develop double click in about 2 years. The ones with mechanical scrollwheel encoder start glitching even sooner than that. I have G102 for 2 years and now it's double clicking. Its rubber scrollwheel got mushy and sticky in the very first year, so I removed it completely. What kind of rubber is Logitech using nowadays? Nothing like that has happened with cheap mice I've had over the years. So I'm considering a mouse with optical switches with a hope that it would last longer. My first candidate is Razer Deathadder V2 Mini; however, from Youtube teardown videos it seems it has mechanical scrollwheel encoder? That would be a real shame. What's the point of using optical button switches and bragging about them lasting long if the mouse becomes useless in a year because of scrollwheel wearing out? Can anyone please confirm, which of the switches and encoders in Razer Deathadder V2 Mini are optical and which ones are not? Are there any other good small-ish mice with optical switches and optical scrollwheel encoder? I have a small hand, prefer fingertip grip. I'm a programmer, not a gamer; doing lots of scrolling of text all day long, zooming in/out into images etc. I know most people treat mice as expendables and always keep a spare. However, I live in a small town where shops have really crappy cheapest mice and I have to order online if I want something better. It's so dreadful when the mouse starts glitching while I'm doing stuff on a customer's production server.

Thank you, seems nice and durable device. It's just weird that Altec Lansing website has only manuals and marketing materials but no actual specifications of their speaker. Also, their speakers seem to be difficult to find in European stores Does its AUX input have no latency? I recently found out that some speakers have latency even when connected with a cable in AUX, because they have DSP chip with complicated eq and other processing logic. That adds to latency and make the speaker unusable for, let's say, microphone or musical instrument input where real-time audio output is needed. Is it really stereo? Can you clearly separate the left / right speaker in this test video?

Thanks, Marley Get Together Mini looks nice, albeit somewhat difficult to find in stores on "European side of the big pond".

Thanks, I browsed their current models but unfortunately could not find any that mentions supporting stereo sound on a single unit. Portable Bluetooth seems to be treated as a "lower-class citizen", assuming that people use it just for "background noise" and do not care about stereo. Maybe buying two TWS units (and overpaying for the packaging, batteries, doubled BT receiver electronics) is my best option. It has a bonus - doubled battery life After some search, I found a few models by JBL that have stereo, but the price is ... oh. I hoped to get something under 100 EUR.

Most (all?) portable Bluetooth speakers on the market are mono. Some claim to have True Wireless Stereo (TWS) support for stereo sound, but you need to buy two units to make it work. I know that separate speakers give the best stereo soundstage, but also I know that well-designed single unit stereo systems can sound decent enough if speakers are oriented outwards. I remember enjoying my Nokia N79 built-in stereo speakers a lot! Are there any Bluetooth speakers that have stereo sound built into a single unit and also have a stereo AUX input jack? If there are no such options and I have to buy speakers with TWS, then I'm wondering how AUX works with TWS? Will stereo work with two units if I connect AUX to one unit only or do I have to split my audio cable and connect both units? If someone has Blutetooth TWS speakers with AUX, could you please check it for me, if it is possible to have stereo sound using single AUX cable?

I'm a programmer & occasional gamer. I'd like to have a keyboard with the following features: - full size - somewhat tactile switches, not loud (I'm afraid linear switches would be too much a surprise for my fingers, as they are familiar only with pretty much tactile rubber dome switches) - hot-swappable - I really like the idea of being able to replace the keys when they wear out or when I want to try something new - solid, time-proven build both mechanically, electrically and firmware - RGB or at least some backlight - on-board profile memory to make it work even without any software Nice-to-have: - software for more convenient RGB & macro key tweaking) - volume knob It would be great to keep it below 200 USD. At first, I wanted to go for "normal" mechanical keyboard. Ducky One 3 Daybreak seems nice, although I would love to have more color options. Also, would like to have good software and a nice volume knob, but, well, you can't have everything even for 200-ish USD. But have lately heard their macro-handling firmware and user support is confusing. Alternatively, I was considering also Glorious GMMK full size with Gateron Brown, much cheaper than Ducky and might be OK for my needs. Then I found some people complaining about mechanical switches having chattering problems too soon (even with Cherry Browns), so I started thinking about optical switches - those should last longer, right? As long as LEDs on the PCB does not die (not sure what is their lifetime). Unfortunately, I found only one choice for full-size optical hotswappable RGB: Cooler Master CK351. That one is not very convincing. The build quality is not great and the switches are LK DarGo (proprietary?), although some sellers claim they have CK351 with Outemu Browns. Confusing. I rarely buy new expensive stuff. I expect things that cost above 100 USD to last at least 5 years. I have some soldering skills and can also do repairs, as long as PCB is in good shape and controller chips are alive. I really would like to have a platform that will serve well for many years. What do you think? Is it worth even trying to go optical or they are too new and maybe would not pleasant at all as tactile switches? Should I better stick with Ducky or GMMK and just have some spare brown keys for replacement when the original keys start acting up?

One more piece of rant from me. After trying many displays and being disappointed by their glow, backlight uniformity, too high minimal brightness and other issues I finally decided to save some money for a few months and try a monitor from professional league. So I got NEC PA271Q. It's great, backlight uniformity is awesome, minimal IPS glow, brightness can be turned really low and 27" size is right for me. One day I woke up and noticed a pharaoh ant dead and stuck somewhere between LCD layers. Ouch. I tried multiple online tricks with electric toothbrush and whatnot - no luck. I wrote NEC support but their answer (expectedly) was that bugs fall under (pun intended) "force majeure - biological exposure" category, and thus it will not be replaced under warranty. I have some experience of disassembling LCD panels, as I have successfully replaced CCFL lamps in an old monitor. However, I wouldn't want to risk my 1000 EUR worth of monitor while it's still under warranty for any other reason. Let's hope that ant will dry out in a few months and fall down. I'll try the toothbrush trick from time to time. In the worst case, I'll have to wait three years. Anyway, this issue is a bit unexpected from such an expensive device. Why save a few cents on a tape to seal the panel. Pharaoh ants are known to become more common all over the world. Even if a person is keeping their office space clean and have no infestations, still there is some risk ants will visit them from neighboring areas. Internet search results show at least ten million results for dead ants in monitor. Also, I found a few cases with large dust particles somehow entering LCD layers. So, the missing sealing definitely can be a problem. I hope, cases like these will reach panel manufacturers, so that they become aware and invent some ways to seal LCD panels, and monitor marketing teams can proudly announce "Our monitor is protected against foreign objects accidentally entering the LCD"

Thanks. So, most likely, it's not fixed then. That's sad. At some point they added integer scaling but did not care to fix this bug. But it might work through custom resolutions settings. Maybe that's actually how AMD thinks it should be done in their drivers? I haven't had a chance to play with those and don't have an AMD GPU anymore.

Hi. If you happen to have an AMD GPU that's not older than about 5 years and you have reasonably up-to-date AMD GPU drivers and Windows 10 64 bit, then please help me with a test. Here are the test steps: if you have more than one monitor connected to your PC, disconnect all but one. Set your display resolution to 1360x768 or the closest non-native resolution supported by your monitor. Important: please check your monitor documentation for officially supported resolutions and frequencies. It might support 1366x768 and not 1360x768. Pick the one that's supported. If you choose a wrong mode, GPU scaling might take over making this test meaningless. Apply the settings. verify that your monitor is indeed switched to this resolution by opening your monitor's OSD (on-screen display) information sections and looking up the current resolution there. Make sure the image fills the entire screen without any black bars (you might have to adjust your display settings to use Fill mode and not 1:1 mode). Important: Do not trust your eyes and don't assume the display has switched to the requested resolution just because everything got bigger! In my experience, it could have switched to a different resolution, as commanded by GPU drivers to (wrongly) combine monitor's scaling with GPU scaling! That's why it's important to check the result in the monitor's information section. Please report your success for step 2: - if your desktop image fills the entire screen and looks enlarged, and your display reports to be at the exact resolution that you specified, then leave a comment "2 worked" - if the result is something else, then leave a comment "2 didn't work". I'll also appreciate a description of what exactly went wrong. 3) now open up your AMD GPU settings (Crimson etc.). Open Display tab. Toggle the GPU Scaling option to On. The screen will go black momentarily while GPU Scaling is being enabled. Select "Full panel" mode from the Scaling Mode drop-down menu. 4) verify that your monitor is at its native resolution by opening your monitor's OSD (on-screen display) information menu and looking up the current resolution there. Verify that the image fills the entire screen without any black bars. Please report your success for step 4: - if your desktop image fills the entire screen and looks enlarged, and your display reports to be at its native resolution, then leave a comment "4 worked" - if the result is something else, then leave a comment "4 didn't work". I'll also appreciate a description of what exactly went wrong. Also, it would be great to know your exact Windows 10 and AMD driver version, GPU model and also the tested monitor model. If you see that someone else has already left a comment with their results and your results differ, it would be good to know your system specs to compare. The issue might be specific to the driver/Windows version. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Now the long story. I'm a visually handicapped programmer and have to use my LCD monitor at non-native resolution to be able to work comfortably. Windows built-in text scaling does not work well because not every software deals with it the same way. I have seen broken texts, hidden input elements and other issues. So, a reduced resolution is still my best option. I have noticed that on some LCDs their internal scaler gives better image quality than the GPU one, and on other LCDs, it's the opposite. So, to have full freedom of choice, I need a GPU that can correctly switch between the monitor's built-in scaling and GPU scaling. Before Windows 10, I was using an AMD GPU. At that time I had a monitor that had pretty good built-in scaling. When I set the desired reduced resolution in Windows display settings, it worked just fine, I saw the correct resolution in the display's OSD menu. Then I upgraded to Windows 10 and GPU scaling started messing things up. When I set GPU scaling to Off in Crimson, I still see my display reporting it's at the native resolution, which means that the GPU scaling took over. I tried everything - reinstalling drivers, changing resolution after/before I switch GPU scaling On/Off. Nothing helped. The only thing that worked was to install old AMD drivers that weren't even officially Windows 10 compatible and I would have no future updates for them. Then I decided to try my older Nvidia GPU. Scaling worked as it should - I could turn it on/off, and the scaling was handled by my LCD or GPU accordingly. One important thing is that Nvidia drivers have their own resolution dropdown, and it must be used to make things work right. If I use Windows Settings resolution, it starts messing things up. So, the AMD's issue might be actually a combination of the fact that Crimson had no place to set the resolution, and Windows resolution setting messes up the GPU scaling on/off state. So, I upgraded to a new Nvidia GPU, scaling worked fine, and I haven't tried AMD since. But now, when in some stores there's a better chance to get an AMD GPU, I might consider AMD again, only if I'm sure it can handle both GPU / non-GPU scaling properly. I hope you will help me to verify if AMD / Windows GPU scaling issues have been resolved. Thank you for your time.

A story of an undocumented deficiency of some IPS panels - would you please investigate it? (also sent to an email). Hi there, A notice: English is not my first language, so excuse me if something sounds off. A one minute video is worth 60 thousand words: (30 seconds) (from 6 to 40 seconds, no need to watch the rest). The long story follows. While looking at IPS displays over the years, I noticed that, while all of them claim to have 178/178 angles, their behavior differs very noticeably. It does not depend on price or category or manufacturing year. It does not depend on the IPS panel manufacturer - some LG panels have it, some don't. Sometimes a cheaper and older IPS panel may look paper-smooth while another newer high-end display has this weird shadowing effect. I have posted a question on some forums a few times but there were no engineers who could answer what is the reason for this difference. Is it a specific anti-glare coating? Is it a polarizer film? Is it pixel structure (IPS can be implemented with different subpixel layouts)? Is it a backlight diffusing film? Nobody knows. Still, I have seen it being mentioned on some forums and videos, and even some reputable test sites. Prad.de in Germany criticized ASUS ProArt PA328Q for this "wandering gray haze". Some people find it annoying. Some even are so used to it that they think it is normal for all IPS panels. But it is not. There are panels that don't have this issue at all. Some people, who have to use monitors at a closer-than-normal distance because of their vision impairment, find it unacceptable for comfortable work. I was wondering if you with your resources and contacts could shed some light on this issue and possibly create a video about this. It might be not that important for your typical target audience but still, it might highlight the fact that the 178/178 degrees viewing angle claim that all manufacturers automatically put in their specifications actually does not mean exactly the same for all IPS panels. Of course, manufacturers will claim this is "within their specifications" and "industry standards" but it does not explain at all how is the brightness consistency being measured if there are so wild differences among IPS models. I've been asking customer support of some companies about that and, of course, I got nowhere. They could not answer which of their current models don't have this issue. There is no way for a "mere mortal" to contact any company engineer to find out how to avoid such models if a person knows they can't tolerate the issue. To add some personal touch to the story, I'll tell you about my own struggle with this issue. I am a 40-year-old programmer with serious vision impairment and I find it very difficult to find a good quality display because, besides the documented specifications, I have to beware also of the undocumented ones. Most likely, you have already encountered IPS glow and bleeding issues on some IPS panels. So, when I pick a monitor I have to "play the lottery" not only with regards to bleeding and backlight uniformity but also this strong haze effect. Otherwise, my 8 hour long coding day might turn into something akin to reading on an old TN panel (some of them felt so bad, like reading with a flashlight). For a normal person, using the display at a normal distance, this would not be a problem. But if you have to look up-close you are much more affected by any image imperfections. Visually impaired people don't care much about dead pixels or color depth but they need paper-smooth reading with uniform background color without any clouding and darkening in their peripheral vision. And, of course, they also watch movies and game at an up-close distance, thus they don't like patchy backlight and bleeding at all. Recently when my ViewSonic VP2365WB suddenly broke I bought the best display I could receive fast (considering pandemic and Christmas season). It was Dell UP3216Q. I was so disappointed not only for the backlight quality but also for this "gray haze". It was not that strong as on some ASUS ProArt models, but much worse than my old VP2365WB, and even worse than my parents' cheap 32" Samsung UE32K5502 TV! Yes, a 1000 EUR PremiumColor display from Dell can in some aspects be worse than a 300 EUR TV! I'm now in process of borrowing a new display for some time so that I can return UP3216Q to the seller. Fortunately, we have 14-day "change of mind return" regulation in my country. I'm confused as to what to try next. I'm aiming for the best-of-the-best Eizo ColorEdge CG2730 with the hope that it will be as close to perfect as realistically possible but I'm not 100% sure it is free from that "wandering gray haze" because it is not mentioned in specs and pre-sales support could not find someone on their side who could check it for me, and I personally don't know any owner of CG2730. I'll have to look for one online, I guess. So, my January might be very busy sending monitors back and forth to find the one that's perfect for my vision needs. Thank you for reading this long text!

Just wanted to share an amusing experience. Consider it as an experiment to measure the quality of manufacturers' customer support and their ability to deal with non-standard pre-sales requests. TL;DR - only one of four companies was able to actually help. To give you some context, I have to tell you a bit about myself and my experience with LCD quality issues. I'm a 40 years old visually handicapped man since birth. My situation is stable, no vision changes over the years. I've been studying and working as a programmer for almost 20 years already. Choosing a good monitor has always been a problem for me. I'm not sensitive to flickering (unless it's old CRT 60Hz) and I don't care about dead pixels much (can't notice them anyway, LOL). But I'm sensitive to various deficiencies that become visible when using a monitor at a closer-than-normal distance. My comfortable distance is about 25cm for displays up to 23" and also I have to use non-standard resolution or Windows built-in scaling and font settings (which got seriously crippled in one of Windows 10 updates; argh, Microsoft... But still could adjust them through regedit, hehe). My first attempt to buy a 17" LCD monitor was around the year 2001. I was a poor student in a small country. So I picked some cheap Neovo 17" model. At home, I noticed that I just can't work at all. It had a strong flashlight effect - the area in my peripheral vision was very dark and also yellow. It was so distracting. Of course, it wouldn't be noticeable at all if I had normal vision and could use it at a normal distance. So I returned it to the shop and pleaded to return my money. Thanks to them for being so forthcoming. The next one I tried was 17" Samsung SyncMaster 720V. I inspected it in the shop as closely as I was allowed to but did not notice anything suspicious. Yes, as a TN panel the viewing angles were not great but still much better than that Neovo. After I brought it home and worked for an hour, I started noticing that it has a small shadowy patch. Like a very light small fingerprint. It changed intensity depending on viewing angle, so it seemed as if it was somewhere in between the layers of the panel. I could live with it, so I didn't care much. Still, during my next vacation, I brought the monitor back to the shop and asked if it is normal. They decided it is not indeed and sent the monitor to a Samsung authorized service center in another city. After two weeks it came back with a reply "The defect is within expected quality and will not be repaired". Ok, no biggie. Still annoying. After some years this monitor broke and I went for a replacement and upgrade. Being on a tight budget and in a small town, my immediate choices were limited. All I could get was a 20" Samsung P2070. It definitely was an improvement... but I discovered that it has some kind of a small bright point which is not dead pixels but again seems to be something stuck in between layers. But it was visible only at a specific angle, so I could totally live with it. After some more years, I got a 23" Viewsonic VP2365WB as a gift from my first workplace. I sold my Samsung P2070 to someone who didn't even notice that bright spot because it is indeed totally invisible if using the display at a normal distance. I was very excited about my Viewsonic VP2365WB. No visible defects whatsoever discovered during 10 years of use. Yes, it has some annoying pinkish-yellowish IPS glow, but no bleeding, just glow in the corners. At one moment I had Asus PA238Q but returned it in disgust. It had bad bleeding and also something that reminded me of that old Neovo shadowy haze in peripheral vision. I returned it, but the disappointing experience made me wary and left me thinking that not all IPS panels - even much newer ones - are as good as my somewhat outdated (CCFL backlight instead of LED) VP2365WB. We are close to the main story, bear with me for just a bit. This year my Viewsonic started showing first signs of going bad, but nothing major, just some slight brightness flickering a few seconds after turning it on. Still, I was alarmed and started looking for a replacement. Knowing my previous issues, I thought it would be great to contact some manufacturers and ask for help. Maybe they could at least check their latest-and-greatest prosumer LCDs and suggest to me the one that doesn't have that haze or any other issues that might be undesired for closer-than-normal use. I didn't expect much but I didn't have anything to lose. At first, I tweeted two largest LCD manufacturing companies (won't mention their names yet) asking what should be the best way to contact them for some very technical support questions and also I posted a thread in some online community which seemed to be often visited by representatives of some companies. And also I shot a direct email to one more company asking the "haze question" in relation to two specific models they have been marketing a lot lately. The results were as follows: The 1st company - gave me an email of a person who later redirected me to somebody else in Europe. The European person tried to find a representative in my country to arrange an option for me to look at some specific models and decide for myself which one to choose. Unfortunately, he failed to find any official contact person in my country (despite the fact that the models in question were being sold in some stores in my country). The 2nd company - gave me an email address that responded with "server unreachable". When I asked about it, they gave me another email address... which responded with another error message. I found that both email addresses were also listed on some of their websites. Later they gave me one more email address. This time there were no errors. However, also no response. Still waiting after 6 months... The 3rd company - replied with a canned email that did not offer any solution or specific response. The person on the other end had no idea what I'm asking for and had no procedure to deal with such requests. The 4th company - kudos to them. Although they could not answer technical questions about minimal brightness level and the "flashlight haze" of their models, they managed to find a contact person in my country. Soon I received a phone call from a large store offering me an option to order one of two models and test it. However, they did not have it in their warehouse and it had to be ordered from their supplier. At that time my old monitor stopped misbehaving, so I postponed the order for a few months to deal with it during my next vacation. However, the vacation came together with total COVID lockdown and now the supplier says they cannot deliver the monitor that soon. So, I guess for now I'll have to try something else that is available in my local shop. Oh, that COVID... So, should I reveal the company names or do you want to have some fun guessing? A hint - all of those companies are somewhat specialized in display and projector solutions. None of them is one of "we do it all - from kitchen sinks to laptops" manufacturers. Still, all of them are widely known and it shouldn't be hard to guess their names.

Deleted for now, need more confirmations.

Hmm, should I open a bounty for this? How much should I pay a person who makes a few second video?

Hi everyone. I really need your help with some practical research. For you, it will take just a few minutes to set up your monitor to display a plain-colored background and to shoot a video while moving your camera up and down. For me and some others who are sensitive to this issue, it will save hours and even days of buying and returning multiple monitors before finding the best one. So, the essence of the issue is that a few people have noticed that some IPS monitors have a sharp wandering shadow that depends on the viewing angles. This shadow is not a problem for most people as it is only visible from a short distance and at sharp angles. However, it is a problem for me and other people who have very poor vision, because they have to use monitors up close, which makes the shadow very noticeable, annoying, and distracting in the peripheral vision. I would like to identify current 27" and 32" IPS monitors that have this issue. How does the shadow look like? A reputable testing website (Prad.de) also described this shadow in the test of Asus PA328Q: "When viewed vertically from above, the "gray haze" typical of IPS panels becomes noticeable from around 45 degrees. However, it is not spread evenly on the entire monitor image, but is visible as a moving stripe that changes its position on the image depending on the changed vertical viewing angle." Currently, I have found videos for three monitors with this problem: PA238Q, HP 22es, NEC e241n. Check out the videos to see the shadow: https://youtu.be/meA9N0jqnHA https://youtu.be/C_kQpFOLhno https://youtu.be/mFZviqO2xQo https://youtu.be/jqsXJZbXTxI?t=115 As you can see, not every IPS/PLS monitor has the issue. It doesn't even depend on price. It might be related to the coating or polarizer used in the LCD panel itself. I've made a list of monitors that are my candidates, it's at the end of this post. If you have one of them, please help me out. Here's what to do: - set your monitor to display plain white or yellow background (for some reason I found that yellow makes the shadow more noticeable on camera). Good old MS Paint will do the job just fine. - move your camera up and down in a similar manner as seen in the videos above - upload the video somewhere and post a link here - also, it would be great if you could comment if you see such a shadow yourself when looking at the screen up and down. If you look at it from 25cm distance, does it get noticeably darker in your peripheral vision or does it feel like an evenly lit sheet of paper, even in your peripheral vision? As sometimes it's difficult to recognize if shadows are caused by the display itself or by camera settings, it is best to have two different displays side-by-side to clearly notice any differences between them. So, here is the list of monitors I'm especially interested in: Eizo EV2750 Eizo EV2780 Eizo EV2760 Eizo EV3285 Eizo CS2731 NEC EA271Q NEC EA271U NEC PA271Q Viewsonic VP2785-2K Viewsonic VP3268-4K Viewsonic XG270QG Viewsonic XG2703-GS Viewsonic VP3881 Dell UP2716D Dell UP3216Q Dell U2718Q Dell U2720Q Dell U2719D Dell U3219Q HP Z27 HP Z27n HP Z32 Lenovo T27p-10 Lenovo P32u-10 Lenovo P32p-20 Benq PD3200U Benq PD3220U Thank you for reading this. I will really appreciate any feedback.

I've heard about SMR disks but did not know they actually have PMR cache and built-in data reorganization. I guess, for backup purposes SMR will be OK, especially since the PMR cache boosts the writing speed. So, I guess after each backup I'll have to leave it running idle for some time so it can rearrange all the data and free the PMR cache for the next backup session. Still wondering if there is any way to find out how large is the cache on this HDD.

I have a WD Elements USB3 hard drive, 5TB size, device manager shows as "WD Elements 25A3 USB Device", Hard Disk Sentinel shows "WDC WD60EMAZ-51LW3B0". I am using it twice a week to make a backup of all of my data (using FreeFileSync script - it's an awesome free backup tool). The drive works fine in general - good speeds, no issues, no any errors in Hard Disk Sentinel nor Event Viewer. During backup, it gives normal noise levels, as you'd expect from writing a few gigabytes of data. However, as soon as I finish doing the backup and the disk is idling, it starts making intense activity noises. It's nothing extreme, no clicking. It's just as if it's moving lots of data on its own. It seems to continue endlessly with some periods of inactivity (ten seconds or so, and then it starts again and runs for 5 minutes). I checked Windows settings - no indexing on this drive and no automatic defragmentation. Hard Disk Sentinel shows 0 activity on this drive during that noise. I'm wondering what's going on with that disk? Does it have some automatic defrag or something like that built into its controller? How can I find out what exactly is it doing? I have another WD SATA hard drive in my system - it has no such noises when idle. Clearly there's something special going on with that WD Elements.

I don't care about gaming much (only occasionally, mostly simulators and construction and adventure games, no shooters). My priorities: - good text quality (I'm a programmer) - good white uniformity (I hate it when a screen looks dirty or patchy) - good for watching movies in the evenings - good colors (not pro grade, but still need to have realistic colors for occasional video and image editing) - acceptable IPS/PLS glow - no backlight bleeding - not using PWM (true flicker free, even on lower brightness) - not many dead pixels (I can live with one or two) - solid build, no known instabilities (looking at Iiyama and Dell who can sometimes freak out for no reason and refuse to work with certain inputs or go to sleep unexpectedly or stutter) - relatively good and sharp text (as I could realistically expect) in non native resolutions, because I'm visually handicapped and, most probably, will have to use lower resolution (Windows DPI sometimes creates more problems than it solves, when dealing with different software). Also, because of my poor vision, I'm sensitive to various flickers and angular brightness issues and I would like to avoid "backlight bleeding lottery" that seems to affect almost every mainstream manufacturer. That's why I chose NEC EA271Q that costs about 600 EUR, hoping that NEC might have better quality control and also have higher quality panel "out of the box". But is it worth it? Can I get anything better for the price? Can I get the same quality cheaper? Am I overpaying for the brand name and maybe NEC is not that good as it was? One thing that worries me is some weird angular brightness shift, manifested by some IPS panels, as seen in these two videos: It's like a shadow moving over the screen, instead of gradual natural darkening. It is unpleasant, like on old TN panels, especially noticeable for me because I'm using monitors at closer-than-normal distance. Unfortunately, there are not many reviews mentioning this particular issue (prad.de describes it as "When viewed vertically from above, the “gray haze” typical of IPS panels becomes noticeable from around 45 degrees, but not on the entire monitor image, but rather as a wandering stripe that changes its position on the image depending on the changed vertical viewing angle"). So, I'm preparing myself for the buy-return-buy dance, but it would be nice to avoid it, if possible. Maybe I'm too nitpicky.

Yeah, half dead as a zombie because it can read but not write.

Tried the disk with different USB ports, with different computers, re-plugged all the cables - still the same issue. Write speeds are low and all over the place. Read speeds, however, hold steady at 190 MB/s. CrystalDiskMark also confirms this. The same on a Mac - reading steady at 190, writing average 40 MB/s (no nice graphs or event logs to see how it stutters and drops to 0 every 5 seconds or so). No reallocated sectors, no bad noises - just this error complaining about communication issues and operation retry. Compared to a cheap 2.5" USB3 disk enclosure with an old laptop drive inside on the same computers and ports - write and read speeds are both steady at 87 MB/s and no issues reported by HD Sentinel nor Windows event log. So, I can exclude my USB port or driver issues. Unfortunately, I have no other USB 3 cable with proper other end plug to try. I think I got a bad drive and will have to return it. I'm a bit worried they might say that the drive was damaged at my home or during transport. Wondering if there is actually a chance that it indeed was shocked during transport? Is it possible to shock a hard drive in a way that it starts losing connection during writes but is able to read at full speed?

I just got myself a new WD Elements Desktop 6TB drive for backups. So I started copying 1TB of data to it. In general, speed remains stable around 130 - 50 MB/s (depends if it's copying large files or lots of smaller ones). However, I noticed that sometimes speed suddenly drops to 0 and resumes after 2-5 seconds. Hard Disk Sentinel shows performance issues and increasing "Ultra ATA CRC Error Count" at those moments when speed drops to 0, and Windows Event Viewer also shows warnings about copy retry operations. I tried to attach it to another USB 3 port and it seemed to make the errors less frequent but I'm not sure. Is this behavior normal for USB 3 external drives or WD Elements? Or was it only because the constant stream of 1TB of my data is a bit too much and it will work fine later for incremental backups? Or is their supplied USB 3 cable so crappy and I should find a better one? Or is there something wrong with my USB 3 ports or drivers? I have Gigabyte GA-H270M-D3H motherboard.