TN Panels

[BabyPCMR]

Are there different types of TN panels? Not in terms of 1080p 1440p and so on, but just the quality of panel. 

[vanished]

yes

@iamdarkyoshi

[mariushm]

Yes. The higher fps panels are often 6bit per color maybe with FRC so you get worse color quality than TN panels with 8bit per color.  Then the backlight quality also makes a big difference and how the backlight is driven (if it's pwm based you may see flicker) 

 

And then there's quality differences between manufacturers as well

 

[iamdarkyoshi]

I haven't seen an official spec for it, but there's what I'd consider garbage TNs commonly found in laptops and ultra low end monitors where blacks are not even close at any angle:

 

 

 

and then there's "less crap" TNs that make up the majority of office monitors, where blacks are even across the whole panel

 

On laptops, the offenders are almost always 1366x768 for some reason.

[vanished]

13 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yes. The higher fps panels are often 6bit per color maybe with FRC so you get worse color quality than TN panels with 8bit per color.  Then the backlight quality also makes a big difference and how the backlight is driven (if it's pwm based you may see flicker) 

 

And then there's quality differences between manufacturers as well

 

Oh yeah I had forgotten about that (6 bit vs 8 bit).  So often when I think of terrible TN I think of non-existent viewing angles other issues of that nature, but there's more to it like this.

[vanished]

16 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I haven't seen an official spec for it, but there's what I'd consider garbage TNs commonly found in laptops and ultra low end monitors where blacks are not even close at any angle:

Spoiler

 

 

On laptops, the offenders are almost always 1366x768 for some reason.

It's sort of hard to imagine just how bad these are unless you've seen one in person.  I mean, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's just showing an image like this:

Spoiler

But no, as mind boggling as it is, it's actually being fed something like this: and is just managing to mess it up that badly

Spoiler

In real life usually this "black level fail" is monochrome or close to it, not blue like it appears here, but yeah, it's incredibly bad.  Looking directly at the screen sitting directly in front of it, you will see a thin band of acceptable colour run through the middle, with horrible dis-colouration above and below equal to what you might see only at 170°+ on an decent screen

[WereCat]

TN is fine for secondary screens as long as you don't plan to use it for media consumption but you just want to have things opened in there.

Really consider IPS for your main screen if you can afford it. Sure, there are some good TN panels and I had BenQ that was a really nice TN even compared to one of my IPS monitors as long as you did basic stuff like browsing but it had other issues (was only D-Sub and the image quality was blurry/grainy).

Some TN panels are really bad, especially on older laptops (I don't have experience with TN on newer ones). But even at work we have some TN screens which are really bad, the colours are terrible and even slight change of a viewing angle makes a massive difference to the colours. So if you are staring right on the center of the screen the edges look vastly different.

[vanished]

5 minutes ago, WereCat said:

TN is fine for secondary screens as long as you don't plan to use it for media consumption but you just want to have things opened in there.

Really consider IPS for your main screen if you can afford it. Sure, there are some good TN panels and I had BenQ that was a really nice TN even compared to one of my IPS monitors as long as you did basic stuff like browsing but it had other issues (was only D-Sub and the image quality was blurry/grainy).

Some TN panels are really bad, especially on older laptops (I don't have experience with TN on newer ones). But even at work we have some TN screens which are really bad, the colours are terrible and even slight change of a viewing angle makes a massive difference to the colours. So if you are staring right on the center of the screen the edges look vastly different.

A lot of BenQ right now are VA, which split the difference between TN and IPS in terms of viewing angles imo, but where they really shine is high contrast.

[WereCat]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

A lot of BenQ right now are VA, which split the difference between TN and IPS in terms of viewing angles imo, but where they really shine is high contrast.

Yea, two of my friends bought the cheapest BenQ FHD VA 60Hz monitors and were able to successfully OC it to 75Hz.

Contrast is great and colours as well, a bit more ghosting than on IPS but nothing really intrusive.