My Switch to IPS

[vanwazltoff]

I have had an Asus VS228H-P for a good 6 months now and I loved it since the second I turned it on, it was easily the best TN panel I had ever owned by long shot. I recently moved and decided to sell my 40" 720p TV with ghosting problems to get a large format monitor and I ended up getting an Asus MX279H. My first one sadly broke during shipping so I had to RMA, but out of the box the monitor's design with its frame-less panel and aluminum accents was absolutely breath taking.

At first I wasn't really sold on IPS because my eyes were tuned to my TN panel, but I noticed deeper and darker reds from the get-go. It took me about a week of use with my IPS as my main monitor to really see the difference between the two. I set both monitors to Scenery mode with the splendid feature that both had as it seemed the least washed out to me for both displays.

It took me a week of to adjust but I noticed that my IPS was very similar in some ways and different in other ways. The color reproduction always looks spot on except for blacks, but you can't really do much about that unless you turn down the brightness which degrades the rest. There was no light bleeding in any way on the MX279H but there was a slight hint of edge bleeding on the VS228h-P but only noticeable in a dark room with a dark picture. Reds, as I said were much more vivid out of the box, but I started to notice a very very slight blue hint on the TN panel, its almost unnoticeable. I had never noticed before because my TN panel was always right in front of me, but there was a slight bit on yellowing from side to side viewing angles and I don't have this problem with the IPS. Im not saying that my TN has bad viewing angels as that's the only effect, other than that there is no color wash out from viewing angles. After a bit of playing around and calibration I made most of the colors on both monitors look pretty similar, my previous TN panels were not able to get anywhere near the quality of the VS228h-P, so I was quite delighted when I was able to get the two monitors looking quite similar so I can use them side by side.

My conclusion is that my VS228H-P is a damn good TN panel if it can get that close to an IPS or that my MX279H is of a slightly lower quality than all the hype of IPS monitors. My guess it that the VS228H-P is just a damn good TN monitor with excellent viewing angles and colors that are probably similar to IPS panels of not to long ago. I am sure with a proper color calibration that my TN can get pretty damn close to the quality of IPS. My conclusion of the MX279H is that the colors are the best I have seen out of a monitor, the design is absolutely magnificent, the audio quality wont win any awards, but its more than suitable as a main audio source and the sound doesn't carry so its good for late night movie watching without upsetting other people in a thin walled home which is ideal for me, no one has ever asked me turn down the volume. There is no noticeable screen bleeding which has been a problem for almost every monitor or TV I have ever owned, though light bleeding on the VS228h-P is so minimal its almost non-existent. I have one major gripe about both and that is deepness of blacks, I have never been satisfied with this though, I have seen an OLED display once and the blacks were so deep and desirable that nothing else can really compare, until OLED is affordable which it probably never will be, I will never quite be happy with blacks. When it comes to reading text I prefer my TN because of the better pixel density but text is perfectly readable on the IPS. All in all I am happy with both monitors for what they are and how the perform for the price. Its hard to accurately judge colors without a proper color calibrator or without comparing it to a professional class panel like a Dell UltraSharp, though I believe it would be better for gaming because it doesn't have a slow GTG response time like most IPS panels.