Looking to get a 4k monitor.

[krakek]

Thinking about getting one for my system, games and content consumption, would gigabyte FV43U or FO48U be good options? If so, what are the trade offs?

[jones177]

The FO48U is an LG OLED panel so competitive with C1 and C2 OLEDs.

Right now the FO48U is the same price as the C1 so it is what features you like.

 

 

I was thinking about getting a FV43U but I would rather wait for black Friday and see if the 42" C2s get close to $1,000.

 

[krakek]

3 hours ago, jones177 said:

The FO48U is an LG OLED panel so competitive with C1 and C2 OLEDs.

Right now the FO48U is the same price as the C1 so it is what features you like.

 

 

I was thinking about getting a FV43U but I would rather wait for black Friday and see if the 42" C2s get close to $1,000.

 

Thanks, for me TV features are not useful (I do not have TV signal) and the gigabyte OLED is cheaper locally as far as I can tell.

[jones177]

1 minute ago, krakek said:

Thanks, for me TV features are not useful (I do not have TV signal) and the gigabyte OLED is cheaper as far as I can tell.

I don't use TV either but going through the smart TV apps for Netflix, Prime and Hulu the image quality is better than going through Windows.

 

In my area the FO48U is $100 cheaper. So a good buy.

 

 

[krakek]

23 minutes ago, jones177 said:

I don't use TV either but going through the smart TV apps for Netflix, Prime and Hulu the image quality is better than going through Windows.

 

In my area the FO48U is $100 cheaper. So a good buy.

 

 

I don't really use either of the three and for me the privacy reduction from smart TV is overwhelming the utility of those features that I am not going to use.

(plus I use my 6900XT for upscaling anyway)

[Stahlmann]

On 5/25/2022 at 3:51 PM, jones177 said:

I don't use TV either but going through the smart TV apps for Netflix, Prime and Hulu the image quality is better than going through Windows.

 

In my area the FO48U is $100 cheaper. So a good buy.

The Gigabyte OLED is also significantly dimmer and lacks HDMI 2.1 ports. For it's max refresh rate you ca only DisplayPort, so it lacks the LG's versatility.

[e22big]

On 5/25/2022 at 2:12 AM, krakek said:

Thinking about getting one for my system, games and content consumption, would gigabyte FV43U or FO48U be good options? If so, what are the trade offs?

FO48U is a slightly worse off and more expensive option to LG 48 inch OLED TV. Its only pro is compared to a TV is that it's a monitor, although some people (like Tim from Hardware Unboxed) considered that a con for the lack of feature, it also means that any monitor functionality and compatibility will probably work out of the box. You can't for example, made use of Nvidia NIS (and I am pretty sure you will also face the same issue on AMD driver upscaling techniqe) on LG or most 4k TV because their recognised native resolution is actually 4096 x 2160 and not 3840 x 2160. Thus, NIS will upscale the image to that resolution instead of your PC native, which gave you black bar and the same blurry effect as render the image outside native resolution (it's better to just lower the resolution honestly.) While there's a relatively simple fix, it's not always a gurantee (nor convenient), thus it's a con for me. 

 

FV43U is a traditional FALD VA, it get many thing right (possibly the best traditional VA you can get for image quality) like exceptionally good black uniformity, impressive colour gamut, very good brightness both in HDR and SDR (it's probably the best HDR monitor for its price) USB ports and come in 43 inch which imo, the best size for a large format display. But it also comes with the same issues as any traditional VA, slow as snail especially in dark colour transition (thus lot and lot of black smearing), outright poor viewing angle (so poor that there's no escape even if you sit right in the middle), and limited dimming zones despite being a FALD (but being VA, this also mean that it's still produce a better contrast over something like Predator X27 even with the limit zones) 

 

It also share the same issue with a lot of VA TV in that the subpixel is BGR instead of RGB which resulted in poor text rendering. Samsung QN90B has the potential to be a better display than this monitor at 43 inch (but I heard firmware bugged made them downright garbage right now) 

[jones177]

1 hour ago, Stahlmann said:

The Gigabyte OLED is also significantly dimmer and lacks HDMI 2.1 ports. For it's max refresh rate you ca only DisplayPort, so it lacks the LG's versatility.

The OLEDs can be a pain to some.

One of my 55" OLEDs was for my Sons room and he did not like it at all. I ended up giving him my 3840 X 1600 LG ultrawide to use.

He probably would not mind the Gigabyte.

1 hour ago, e22big said:

FO48U is a slightly worse off and more expensive option to LG 48 inch OLED TV. Its only pro is compared to a TV is that it's a monitor, although some people (like Tim from Hardware Unboxed) considered that a con for the lack of feature, it also means that any monitor functionality and compatibility will probably work out of the box. You can't for example, made use of Nvidia NIS (and I am pretty sure you will also face the same issue on AMD driver upscaling techniqe) on LG or most 4k TV because their recognised native resolution is actually 4096 x 2160 and not 3840 x 2160. Thus, NIS will upscale the image to that resolution instead of your PC native, which gave you black bar and the same blurry effect as render the image outside native resolution (it's better to just lower the resolution honestly.) While there's a relatively simple fix, it's not always a gurantee (nor convenient), thus it's a con for me. 

When I did my i9 11900k build last month it defaulted to 4096 x 2160 on the OLED. Non of my other(older) builds did this. Do you think NIS caused it?

[e22big]

18 hours ago, jones177 said:

The OLEDs can be a pain to some.

One of my 55" OLEDs was for my Sons room and he did not like it at all. I ended up giving him my 3840 X 1600 LG ultrawide to use.

He probably would not mind the Gigabyte.

When I did my i9 11900k build last month it defaulted to 4096 x 2160 on the OLED. Non of my other(older) builds did this. Do you think NIS caused it?

NIS didn't cause it, it will just upscale yours to any native resolution of the monitor (when selecting a native resolution), the problem is OLED TV (most TV actually) does offer a dual native resolution of both 4096 x 2160 and 3860 x 2160. Apparently some film do make use of that 'true 4k' resolution but NIS can and often will pick up 4096 x 2160 as native even when you designated your resolution to 3860 x 2160 in both Windows and game, which basically destroyed it. 

 

There's a workaround that is to use a software to just delete the 4096 x 2160 from its firmware altogether but I heard that it doesn't work on the newer version of LG OLED in particular. Honestly, I don't know if FO48U was free of that issue but it should be since it doesn't have TV firmware altogether (and rting only list its support resolution as 3860 x 2160 but they missed some stuff before)

[krakek]

On 5/27/2022 at 12:23 PM, Stahlmann said:

The Gigabyte OLED is also significantly dimmer and lacks HDMI 2.1 ports. For it's max refresh rate you ca only DisplayPort, so it lacks the LG's versatility.

I do not plan to use anything other than my PC (with DP 1.4 output) to feed it. So that is not really an issue for my use case IMO.

[krakek]

8 hours ago, e22big said:

NIS didn't cause it, it will just upscale yours to any native resolution of the monitor (when selecting a native resolution), the problem is OLED TV (most TV actually) does offer a dual native resolution of both 4096 x 2160 and 3860 x 2160. Apparently some film do make use of that 'true 4k' resolution but NIS can and often will pick up 4096 x 2160 as native even when you designated your resolution to 3860 x 2160 in both Windows and game, which basically destroyed it. 

 

There's a workaround that is to use a software to just delete the 4096 x 2160 from its firmware altogether but I heard that it doesn't work on the newer version of LG OLED in particular. Honestly, I don't know if FO48U was free of that issue but it should be since it doesn't have TV firmware altogether (and rting only list its support resolution as 3860 x 2160 but they missed some stuff before)

To re-iterate, what I am reading (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that the perceived disadvantage of the FO48U is that it lacks TV features?

 

In the pure monitor use case, does LG equivalent have advantages (lets assume that they are priced similarly or even cheaper for FO48U locally)?

[e22big]

22 hours ago, krakek said:

To re-iterate, what I am reading (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that the perceived disadvantage of the FO48U is that it lacks TV features?

 

In the pure monitor use case, does LG equivalent have advantages (lets assume that they are priced similarly or even cheaper for FO48U locally)?

It's also a lot dimmer and have more aggressive ABL. The latter alone is a pretty big deal if you're using it as a monitor (as in web browsing monitor), and the latter can seriously affect your HDR performance (this monitor can only do 600 nit in 2 percent windows, and barely 400 nit in a typical highlight, I don't want to consider this a HDR monitor honestly)

 

It's a major step down from LG C2 and barely comparable to last year C1. But as I said, previously, the lack of TV features is also the lack of TV issues, which is a major advantage for this model imo, still only worth picking up if they are cheaper - significantly cheaper. 

[Stahlmann]

17 hours ago, e22big said:

It's also a lot dimmer and have more aggressive ABL. The latter alone is a pretty big deal if you're using it as a monitor (as in web browsing monitor), and the latter can seriously affect your HDR performance (this monitor can only do 600 nit in 2 percent windows, and barely 400 nit in a typical highlight, I don't want to consider this a HDR monitor honestly)

Due to it's true black it's still a pretty good HDR experience and will likely look a lot better than most HDR600 or HDR1000 monitors that use crappy edge-lit local dimming.

 

17 hours ago, e22big said:

But as I said, previously, the lack of TV features is also the lack of TV issues, which is a major advantage for this model imo, still only worth picking up if they are cheaper - significantly cheaper. 

The lack of TV features is a significant downside imo, not an advantage. You don't have to ever see the smart interface on an LG OLED if you set it up once and select your PC as an input. Plus you have the possibility to calibrate on a hardware level, meaning no stupid ICC profiles to correct colors that don't even work in most apps. There is also LG's AI upscaling which makes 1440p content almost look as good as native 4K, which you also don't get on the "monitor". And of course built-in streaming apps that offer better format support (Dolby Vision for example) and much better image processing.

 

But overall i agree, the Gigabyte OLED can be a good monitor option if it's SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper or if you don't have HDMI 2.1 to get 4K 120Hz out of an LG TV.

[e22big]

2 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Due to it's true black it's still a pretty good HDR experience and will likely look a lot better than most HDR600 or HDR1000 monitors that use crappy edge-lit local dimming.

 

The lack of TV features is a significant downside imo, not an advantage. You don't have to ever see the smart interface on an LG OLED if you set it up once and select your PC as an input. Plus you have the possibility to calibrate on a hardware level, meaning no stupid ICC profiles to correct colors that don't even work in most apps. There is also LG's AI upscaling which makes 1440p content almost look as good as native 4K, which you also don't get on the "monitor". And of course built-in streaming apps that offer better format support (Dolby Vision for example) and much better image processing.

 

But overall i agree, the Gigabyte OLED can be a good monitor option if it's SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper or if you don't have HDMI 2.1 to get 4K 120Hz out of an LG TV.

 

You can always buy Chromecast or something if you wanted TV functionality on a monitor, and it will most likely be better than any OEM implemetation of TV OS (at least you will have a lot of apps selection and suffer no ads whatsoever), it's well worth the 60 buck extra. You can also get hardware level calibration on some monitor, especially on higher end models.

 

On the other hand, you may or may not be able to solve TV-related compatibility issue (like the above mentioned driver-based AI upscaling like NIS, or the occasional firmware bug), and ads and such is also a thing in every TV OS  

[Stahlmann]

4 minutes ago, e22big said:

You can also get hardware level calibration on some monitor, especially on higher end models.

Typically only on professional displays, which in turn don't really have any gaming capabilities. I only know of 1 gaming monitor that offers hardware calibration and that was my LG 27GN950-B. And that implementation was rather poor and not really helpful for professional users. After they fixed the initially broken implementation It still didn't allow for a correction profile, so it's impossible to get professional-level accuracity results.

 

6 minutes ago, e22big said:

On the other hand, you may or may not be able to solve TV-related compatibility issue (like the above mentioned driver-based AI upscaling like NIS, or the occasional firmware bug), and ads and such is also a thing in every TV OS  

LG has been VERY solid with their TV firmware, even introducing new features when there is already a new TV generation out. My C9 still gets regular updates and new feature additions.

[e22big]

22 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Typically only on professional displays, which in turn don't really have any gaming capabilities. I only know of 1 gaming monitor that offers hardware calibration and that was my LG 27GN950-B. And that implementation was rather poor and not really helpful for professional users. After they fixed the initially broken implementation It still didn't allow for a correction profile, so it's impossible to get professional-level accuracity results.

 

LG has been VERY solid with their TV firmware, even introducing new features when there is already a new TV generation out. My C9 still gets regular updates and new feature additions.

There seem to be a few, although to be fair I haven't use that many gaming monitor personally but even the Gigabyte FV43U have hardware 6 colours calibration, pretty sure most of their higher end line as well as MSI's have some of that capability. 

 

Best Hardware Calibration Monitors of 2022 May - Bollyinside

 

And still, even if you're on good brand like LG (and there are many that don't enjoy the same reputation, even a major brand like Sony), I'll argue that the lack of TV functionality can still be solved easily and cheaply with a Chromecast or something. It's not a big deal, and probably better if you use the display mainly as monitor and only using it as TV occasionally. Monitor UI tends to be way easier to navigate compared to TV as well imo.

[Stahlmann]

12 minutes ago, e22big said:

And still, even if you're on good brand like LG (and there are many that don't enjoy the same reputation, even a major brand like Sony), I'll argue that the lack of TV functionality can still be solved easily and cheaply with a Chromecast or something. It's not a big deal, and probably better if you use the display mainly as monitor and only using it as TV occasionally. Monitor UI tends to be way easier to navigate compared to TV as well imo.

Yes you can easily add TV functionality, but you cannot add the image processing. Even if you would add a chromecast to the FO48U, other offerings will still offer much better image quality due to better near black handling, gradient performance, etc.

 

Again, the FO48U offers a good alternative. Buyers just need to be aware that it's not as good as other 48" OLED TV's, so they shouldn't pay as much for the Gigabyte option. If the missing TV functionality is not a big deal to OP that's alright by me.

 

For me personally the lack of hardware calibration capabilities would be a big downside though, along with the lower brightness, lack of a real movie mode and Dolby Vision support. So i could easily justify spending a few hundred $ more on a C1 or C2 for my own use.

[e22big]

5 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Yes you can easily add TV functionality, but you cannot add the image processing. Even if you would add a chromecast to the FO48U, other offerings will still offer much better image quality due to better near black handling, gradient performance, etc.

 

Again, the FO48U offers a good alternative. Buyers just need to be aware that it's not as good as other 48" OLED TV's, so they shouldn't pay as much for the Gigabyte option. If the missing TV functionality is not a big deal to OP that's alright by me.

 

For me personally the lack of hardware calibration capabilities would be a big downside though, along with the lower brightness, lack of a real movie mode and Dolby Vision support. So i could easily justify spending a few hundred $ more on a C1 or C2 for my own use.

Chromecast do offer image processing, they have build in 4k upscaling and all that. Whether they are as good as LG or (especially) Sony, I don't know. 

 

For pure monitor usage (which is what OP been talking about), TV functionality only make sense if it doesn't compromise monitor functionality in anyway imo. And NIS is a fairly big feature on PC usage, losing that is a serious enough issue for me to consider that a disadvantage worth noting. I am also not sure how well that image processing work in game mode, don't think a lot of people are willing to switch between game and TV mode while watching youtube and such.

But I agree that with the lack of the overall feature and the significantly inferiour performance on the FO48U, it will only make sense as a money saving option.

[Stahlmann]

3 hours ago, e22big said:

Chromecast do offer image processing, they have build in 4k upscaling and all that. Whether they are as good as LG or (especially) Sony, I don't know. 

 

For pure monitor usage (which is what OP been talking about), TV functionality only make sense if it doesn't compromise monitor functionality in anyway imo. And NIS is a fairly big feature on PC usage, losing that is a serious enough issue for me to consider that a disadvantage worth noting. I am also not sure how well that image processing work in game mode, don't think a lot of people are willing to switch between game and TV mode while watching youtube and such.

But I agree that with the lack of the overall feature and the significantly inferiour performance on the FO48U, it will only make sense as a money saving option.

One more thing about NIS: You can basically delete the 4096x2160 resolution out of the resolutions your GPU driver supports, which will prevent these kinds of issues. I did that for my C9 and i never ran into any downside of doing that.

[e22big]

8 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

One more thing about NIS: You can basically delete the 4096x2160 resolution out of the resolutions your GPU driver supports, which will prevent these kinds of issues. I did that for my C9 and i never ran into any downside of doing that.

Yeah but it seems to not be a gurantee solution to all of the firmware version, I don't know. I heard some people claim that it no longer work in the newer firmware on the newer TV like C2 or something. 

[krakek]

On 5/30/2022 at 2:23 PM, Stahlmann said:

Yes you can easily add TV functionality, but you cannot add the image processing. Even if you would add a chromecast to the FO48U, other offerings will still offer much better image quality due to better near black handling, gradient performance, etc.

 

Again, the FO48U offers a good alternative. Buyers just need to be aware that it's not as good as other 48" OLED TV's, so they shouldn't pay as much for the Gigabyte option. If the missing TV functionality is not a big deal to OP that's alright by me.

 

For me personally the lack of hardware calibration capabilities would be a big downside though, along with the lower brightness, lack of a real movie mode and Dolby Vision support. So i could easily justify spending a few hundred $ more on a C1 or C2 for my own use.

I have software upscaling on my PC. I use it to upscale youtube and such to my native resolution (1440p) already.

 

As to other features - I literally have no other source of video signal other than my 6900XT. No TV no gaming console, etc, and I do not plan to get them.