Why OLED on Laptops.. kinda sucks. Razer Blade 2019 Review

[AlexTheGreatish]

OLED on TV's is basically the best thing ever. The colours, the deep black, the insane contrast.... oh yeeeaaahhh. But is it still that good on a laptop?

 

Buy Razer Blade 
On Amazon: https://geni.us/Id9n
On Newegg: https://geni.us/wervt

 

 

[Red :)]

LTT video: *non spon-ed and uploaded on a friday*

 

Me:

 

 

Also me realising, that a showcase will be uploaded tomorrow:

[AlexTheGreatish]

1 hour ago, Red said:

~Snip~

Actually this is uploaded in place of the WAN show, which will be done live at LTX tomorrow.

[Mr. Smiley]

How does this stack up against the Gigabyte Aero OLED? I am needing a new laptop for grad school and have my eyes on the Aero with a 1660ti/16gb/512gb. The Aero is much much cheaper, ~$1000 USD, and should have better battery life due to the larger battery and smaller GPU. I don't need a 2080 in a laptop, I will never play a game on it as that's what I have a desktop for. 

[PeterBocan]

> Linus: But 3000$ is a lot to ask for the privilege of beta testing something.

> Macbook users: Hold my latte.

[Nystemy]

Throughout the whole video, I have been more curious to if the fancy table is just a piece of glass painted green on the back, though the light bouncing off Linus' arm makes me doubt this. So have LMG acquire a fancy table display?

 

Though, the composition of the scene fits the video very nicely.

 

But I do have to agree that a 1440p display with a higher refresh rate would be a very nice option.

[Luscious]

I remember looking at the first 15 inch 4K notebooks around 5 years ago. Back then you would get a Sharp IGZO panel - nice IPS-like performance with vivid colors and wide viewing angles. But it used MST with two 1920x2160 streams to stitch together that 4K canvas over an eDP connection. That also meant that there was no native scalar leaving any full screen capabilities of lesser resolutions totally dependent on the GPU drivers. Raise your hand if you enjoy getting cut by the bleeding edge???

 

That's been one of the most stubborn problems with notebook displays over the last decade or so - panel manufacturers stuck on the TV bandwagon. They would serve you up 1080P, they would serve you up 4K. Ask for anything in between and you either got last gen resolution or a horrible TN variant.

 

The situation hasn't changed much even today. You can pick an IPS panel, you can pick a fast refresh rate G-sync panel, and you can pick a 4K panel - but there's no way in hell you're getting a panel with ALL THREE. 1440P could have been a real game changer in notebooks had they pushed it forward, but they didn't. Panel manufacturers simply didn't bother as they saw more sales in TV's and adopted their production lines to suit. Notebook manufacturers also couldn't be bothered - in their mind 1080P was good enough and if you wanted better they gave you 4K.

 

The fact that notebook GPU horsepower could barely drive a 4K panel back in 2014 was also not something you would ever see them talk about. Maybe today a SLI rig can handle it for gaming, except that not everybody wants to lug around a $4000 17 inch behemoth, or an external TB GPU dock in their back pack.

 

Wanna get cut by the bleeding edge again? Go invest in an OLED laptop. Even on my phone I can see bands where stuff has been sitting on the screen just long enough. What do you think will happen with Windows, especially for the desktop junkie who always has his task bar visible, always opens the same windows in the same locations, or spends hours inside a browser NOT USING dark mode?

 

Part of me really thinks laptops are a dying breed and panel manufacturers have shifted their priorities elsewhere where the money is bigger. When a 1920x1200 panel was the best you could get in a laptop things really were looking good..But it has just gone downhill since those days. Pushing technology forward is one thing, but don't bring TV tech to the laptop where it doesn't belong.

[SolarNova]

3 hours ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

OLED on TV's is basically the best thing ever. The colours, the deep black, the insane contrast.... oh yeeeaaahhh. But is it still that good on a laptop?

 

Buy Razer Blade 
On Amazon: https://geni.us/Id9n
On Newegg: https://geni.us/wervt

 

 

The one stand out comment you made in this video that annoys me somewhat is your encouragement for people to choose the 240hz IPS display for gaming.

 

240hz and IPS ..hell even 240hz and TN ...just ..240hz in general is stupid.

LCD Pixels can NOT transition fast enough for 240hz.

240hz requires a full 100% MAXIMUM (not average) pixel response time of 4.1ms. There is no LCD display i have seen reviewed and tested that can achieve such low pixel response figures. I havnt even seen one that can technically handle 144hz yet.

When the pixels cant transition fast enough then the image you get , even if ur getting more frames each second, isnt accurate both in color and in sharpness. Slow pixel response = ghosting/blurring.

 

Now i will concede this... some people may not notice ghosting once pixel speeds reach a certain point, but may perceive smoothness of more frames.

However, it does not change the fact, and it is a fact, that blurring/ghosting WILL still be present and WILL still be negatively impacting the advantage of the higher refresh rate and, depending on the pixel response times, it can be a better idea to drop down to a lower frequency screen with a faster pixel response as it would have a sharper looking moving image.

For example a certain 240hz screen has been tested and shown to have certain pixel transitions as slow as 22ms, thats to slow even for 60hz. In that instance it would be a far better idea to get a 120hz or 144hz screen with much faster pixel response.

 

Anyway the point i want to make is that it would do everyone a great favor if more tech youtubers openly talked about and used full (so not just 'averages') pixel response time tests and results to better suggest and talk about good gaming monitors in regards to speed. I far to often see people buying or thinking about buying these 144hz and 240hz gaming monitors with absolutely no idea about pixel response times and how important they are in regards to image clarity, theres no point having all those frames if they are not clear and crisp.

 

 

That out of the way though .. great vid ..gotta love OLED displays. Though with nothing really in the monitor space still, im now more looking forward to ULED and HybridOLED

[mynameisjuan]

Was hoping this video didn't turn out to be "it's bad because it's not 144hz for gaming".

 

The trade off of 120hz vs 60hz for unbelievably better viewing experience is worth it

[AlexTheGreatish]

3 hours ago, Mr. Smiley said:

How does this stack up against the Gigabyte Aero OLED? I am needing a new laptop for grad school and have my eyes on the Aero with a 1660ti/16gb/512gb. The Aero is much much cheaper, ~$1000 USD, and should have better battery life due to the larger battery and smaller GPU. I don't need a 2080 in a laptop, I will never play a game on it as that's what I have a desktop for. 

If I had to guess it's probably the exact same panel.

2 hours ago, Nystemy said:

Throughout the whole video, I have been more curious to if the fancy table is just a piece of glass painted green on the back, though the light bouncing off Linus' arm makes me doubt this. So have LMG acquire a fancy table display?

It's the Samsung 8K TV built into a table haha

[Fnige]

2 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

Was hoping this video didn't turn out to be "it's bad because it's not 144hz for gaming".

 

The trade off of 120hz vs 60hz for unbelievably better viewing experience is worth it

didnt it say 240hz?

[DrMacintosh]

Yep. I've never liked OLED for that very reason. I've seen people with burn before their phones were 2 years old, and smartphone usually have lots of moving elements on screen. Desktop operating systems are for more static and are way more likely to burn in at an extreme rate, especially if you have the brightness up. 

 

It's just not recommendable. We'll have to wait for microLED before we can get the perks of OLED in a reliable package. 

[ahuckphin]

no mention of upgradabiltty no mention of thermals no mention of deck flex. why?

 

as for4k gaming laptops, I feel like these are targetted for people who play dota, lol or equivalent while also being heavy media consumption users

[Guest]

4 hours ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

It's the Samsung 8K TV built into a table haha

Make videos on how to do this please and thank you. If I see another CPU cooler video that just goes nowhere I might not watch it. 

[Red :)]

10 hours ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

Actually this is uploaded in place of the WAN show, which will be done live at LTX tomorrow.

That's exactly, how I realised that.

[TechyBen]

One of the best reviews you have done. Balanced. OLED has some massive great points, and some interesting problems/aspects that are less than stellar. You covered them well, and were enthusiastic with the great stuff (gaming at 60fps/performance/OLED image definition)... and also the consumer risks/information (OLED burn in/no 120fps etc).

[Video Beagle]

9 hours ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

It's the Samsung 8K TV built into a table haha

I'd like to hear more on this... I was chatting with a friend over tacos about this very idea...like as a monitor for tabletop gaming or stuff...but were thinking the viewing angles would really suck.

[Video Beagle]

12 hours ago, Mr. Smiley said:

How does this stack up against the Gigabyte Aero OLED?

I'd think the caveats about OLED would be the same.  I'd be leary of the power consumption issues and burn in.

[imcaspar]

I'm really waiting on your review on a XPS 15 OLED, when it's available. 
They actually put OLED option cheaper than the 4k Touch IPS one, and market it towards content creators.

 

And because of it not being targeted towards Gaming the whole package seems to make more sense

[William Payne]

Burn in alone is reason enough to not use an OLED for content creation. Editing is a scenario where you will spend a great deal of time looking at the same thing. 

[SolarNova]

I think all you talking about burn in as some MAJOR devastating flaw should really read into the rtings test.

Now they are using an older model OLED but even then after 72 weeks equal to over 10,000 hours of showing nothing but the same game over and over, their COD-WWII gameplay hasn't burnt in.

Ofc games with far richer bolder UI's will, Fifa18 for example start showing very minor burn in by week 10, equal to around 1400 hours of, ill stress again, nothing but that gameplay footage with those UI's up all the time.

 

Some minor use changes for windows, such as auto hide task bar, changing desktop background, few or no desktop icons, not always fully expanding windows such as ur browser, and ensuring u dont leave it on all the time is enough to more or less prevent burn in so long as ur use is varied.

 

Remember OELD 'burn-in' isnt the same as 'real burn-in'. Burn in originally was named due to the heating affect of static images on CRTs and Plasma's that caused physical damage to the screen. OLED 'burn-in' is the degradation of the individual subpixels. So while a CRT or Plasma could cause permanent damage within say hours of showing a static image, OLED 'burn in' takes longer as its degradation , not damage.

Notice that even after 1400 hours of showing the worst case images, the 'burn-in' is still minor, if this where a CRT or Plasma it would be far far worse. CRT was THE monitor .. and I use a Plasma as i type this and have been for years.

 

OLED 'burn-in' isnt as bad as some people seem to think. While cumulative degradation is harder to avoid in the long run ,over the burn in of old in regards to CRTs an Plasma, for those that regularly have the same image displayed over and over, it is still avoidable and is at least something that wont happen in a short time frame unlike with CRT and Plasma's. OLED's biggest problem is size availability, with very small screens for mobiles and the like being common and very large screens 55"+ being the only ones available.

 

A note on Phones with OLED's and the bad burn in horror stories always used as examples.

Phones have high contrast static UI's, the same things shown over and over, they are very bright for use outside, and are used very heavily, Those screens will be suffering from cumulative degradation caused by an unvaried use case over months of heavy use. So ofc they are going to burn in badly. They are arguably a even worse case use than even rtings worse case example.

 

(I'm not defending OLED to defend a purchasing choice, simply stating the facts)

[Tamesh16]

Can i just say, i loved the little part about the dac, cause honestly a bad dac can turn me off a laptop really quick, i know the dacs arent going to be the best on laptops, but knowing what to expect would be great, given that i purchased my current laptop mainly from your review of it

[samcool55]

That table tho, dayum, even tho it's subtle and imo awesome, it's insanely distracting!

 

[AlexTheGreatish]

On 7/26/2019 at 8:07 PM, bindydad123 said:

no mention of upgradabiltty no mention of thermals no mention of deck flex. why?

 

as for4k gaming laptops, I feel like these are targetted for people who play dota, lol or equivalent while also being heavy media consumption users

It is the same chassis as in this review and the video was already pretty long due to the focus on OLED 

On 7/27/2019 at 4:45 AM, caspar! said:

I'm really waiting on your review on a XPS 15 OLED, when it's available. 
They actually put OLED option cheaper than the 4k Touch IPS one, and market it towards content creators.

 

And because of it not being targeted towards Gaming the whole package seems to make more sense

Yeah I really want to give it a try, and Dell might be using a different panel.

[GetWeird]

@AlexTheGreatish - Did you guys not test any HDR Games on the OLED panel for this review? I recently got one of these laptops and found that HDR Gaming on these is very broken and does not work correctly. This seems like something worth pointing out as some people might buy this very gaming branded laptop that has HDR and reasonably assume that HDR gaming would work. Not so much.

 

I've seen some comments that the other Samsung OLED panel laptops by other brands are all possibly in the same boat with this. Hopefully it's just some sort of driver issue that will be sorted out, but for now it's a pretty big let down.