BGR Monitors

[JosuGZ]

 Hi, I recently bough a 27" 4K monitor from LG. I was happy with it under Linux. Under Windows, though, it is unusable.

 

The text looks awful and it is almost painful to read. It happens that the display has a BGR layout instead of an RGB one.

 

After researching, this is not acceptable. There is no solution to make the screen look good since every program renders text on its own way. The worst part is that they only have to turn the panel upside down to fix this, I can't believe they are making monitors this way. I don't understand it.

 

The problem is, this is not advertised anywhere. How do I know which screens are BGR?

[JosuGZ]

This is even weirder.

 

I've taken a picture of the display using macro and it seems to be RGB. So WTF is happening with Windows?

[Stahlmann]

It's a regular RGB monitor. You can play around with WIndows Clear Type or even disable it. There is really no need for it on a 27" 4K monitor, pixel density is more than good enough for clear text.

 

If you're using scaling like 125% or 175% you should try and set it to 150% or 200%. From my experience these scaling settings have less impact on text clarity.

[JosuGZ]

7 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

It's a regular RGB monitor. You can play around with WIndows Clear Type or even disable it. There is really no need for it on a 27" 4K monitor, pixel density is more than good enough for clear text.

 

If you're using scaling like 125% or 175% you should try and set it to 150% or 200%. From my experience these scaling settings have less impact on text clarity.

If the monitor is BGR disabling clear type is not a good thing because other apps will do whatever they want. And I'm not even sure I can disable it. Some settings on Windows these days do nothing.

 

On the other hand, my multicolor fuzzy text is apparently not caused by the monitor being BGR since the camera shows it is RGB. So I don't know what the hell is Windows doing. I will try soon with another laptop.

 

Anyway, for my next purchase, how do I know if a particular monitor is BGR?

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, JosuGZ said:

If the monitor is BGR disabling clear type is not a good thing because other apps will do whatever they want. And I'm not even sure I can disable it. Some settings on Windows these days do nothing.

 

On the other hand, my multicolor fuzzy text is apparently not caused by the monitor being BGR since the camera shows it is RGB. So I don't know what the hell is Windows doing. I will try soon with another laptop.

 

Anyway, for my next purchase, how do I know if a particular monitor is BGR?

Most 32" and smaller monitors are RGB. I only know of one 27" BGR monitor which is the Gigabyte M27Q. Most 42" and bigger LCD screens are BGR because they're just TV's and there BGR is the standard. There are 2 ways to check if a monitor is BGR or RGB:

 

- Check the review from RTINGS.com, there's a subpixell photo for every monitor they reviewed

 

- If you have physical access, make a closeup photo with your phone zoomed all the way it. That's typically enough zoom to see the subpixels.

[e22big]

12 hours ago, JosuGZ said:

If the monitor is BGR disabling clear type is not a good thing because other apps will do whatever they want. And I'm not even sure I can disable it. Some settings on Windows these days do nothing.

 

On the other hand, my multicolor fuzzy text is apparently not caused by the monitor being BGR since the camera shows it is RGB. So I don't know what the hell is Windows doing. I will try soon with another laptop.

 

Anyway, for my next purchase, how do I know if a particular monitor is BGR?

So you do still have ClearType on? 

 

If so then perhaps that's the problem. ClearType might be set to BGR which then causing a colour fringe issue on a traditional strip RGB layout. I would try change the ClearType setting to see if it helps, or follow Stahlmann advice and increase the text scaling, that's one of the surefire way to eliminate text rendering problems on any subpixels type

[Andrewtst]

On 1/30/2023 at 4:23 AM, JosuGZ said:

The text looks awful and it is almost painful to read.

Are you sure your resolution set as 3840x2160? 

 

The text shouldn't look awful even wrongly apply ClearType format. 

 

All 27" monitor from LG is RGB except the new OLED panel monitor. 

[SolarNova]

There is a solution to this problem, though how practical it is for you is for you to decide.

 

Take the monitor, and physically flip it upside down.

Go into ur GPU utility and flip the screen so its the right way up again.

You now have a traditional RGB monitor.

 

Drawbacks.:

Your screen is physical upside down, it may look weird depending on the physical aesthetics.

Using GPU utilities to flip the screen can disable some other options and introduce some small amount of latency. You'll have to see yourself .

[JosuGZ]

I tried another laptop and the problem was gone. I don't know what was happening, I will have to investigate.

On 1/31/2023 at 7:10 AM, Andrewtst said:

Are you sure your resolution set as 3840x2160? 

 

The text shouldn't look awful even wrongly apply ClearType format. 

 

All 27" monitor from LG is RGB except the new OLED panel monitor. 

Good to know about the OLED panel. This should be advertised though.

[Stahlmann]

10 hours ago, JosuGZ said:

I tried another laptop and the problem was gone. I don't know what was happening, I will have to investigate.

Good to know about the OLED panel. This should be advertised though.

Wouldn't hurt if they'd list it in their specs, but for most content it really doesn't matter. There are very few applications that even support clear type at all. Games for example are not affected at all by this.