Your new OLED gaming monitor might not work how you expect. Here’s why.
Brightness isn’t what it used to be.
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Reviewed / Matthew S. Smith
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It finally arrives: your 27-inch, 240Hz refresh rate $1,000 OLED gaming monitor. Eagerly, you unbox the hardware, clip the stand to the display, and press the power button.
The incredible contrast, vibrant color, and instantaneous response times OLED panels deliver will likely demolish the display you had before. But slowly, over time, you notice something odd.
The monitor’s brightness seems to rapidly swing up and down, especially when you open and close windows. The Word document you have open appears brilliant when the window is small but, when opened full screen, suddenly looks dull and gray.
Welcome to the dark side of OLED computer monitors. OLED monitors are an excellent choice for many people, especially for PC gamers, but not ideal when it comes to simple, day-to-day productivity tasks like web browsing or editing documents and spreadsheets.
The problem
Auto-dimming on OLED monitors can struggle to keep up.
This problem is often called temporal luminance stability. Put simply, temporal luminance stability describes how a display's brightness changes over time.
This is a common issue. Old CRT televisions were often dim when turned on but then brightened rapidly when they warmed up. LCD-LED monitors can also vary in brightness depending on how long they’ve been on. But, in most cases, the problem is uncommon, short-lived, or too mild to easily notice.
OLED displays are different. Power draw ramps up quickly as brightness is increased. High brightness may also decrease the lifespan of OLED pixels, leading to permanent burn-in. OLED panels combat these problems by automatically reducing their peak brightness when large portions of the display panel are lit; this is called auto-dimming.
Auto-dimming is significant. I’ve measured the Alienware’s AW3423DWF maximum HDR brightness at 453 nits when just 10 percent of the display is lit. Throw a bright image across the entire display, however, and brightness is reduced to 306 nits—a reduction of nearly 50 percent. It’s a big swing, and one that you'll notice, especially if you regularly bounce between tasks.
Monitors need stability
Mini-LED monitors use an array of LEDs arranged in a grid that dynamically adjust or dim in brightness to improve contrast.
The problem is not auto-dimming in and of itself. OLED televisions have used this technology for years. The issue is more severe with monitors because of how auto-dimming can conflict with the ways a computer monitor is used.
A monitor is not just a television. Televisions typically display just one thing at a time—whether that’s a movie, a game, or an app. A monitor must handle dozens of windows and interface elements, all of which may vary in brightness, expand to take up the entire screen, or disappear at a moment’s notice.
Auto-dimming on OLED monitors can struggle to keep up. It can only react to what the user is doing, and that reaction inevitably requires at least a few milliseconds, if not more. Some OLED monitors perform better than others but, if you buy an OLED monitor right now, you should expect the monitor’s brightness to noticeably change as you open and close windows and otherwise go about your daily routine.
The severity of the problem is a matter of taste. Some people despise it (myself included), while others hardly notice. Still, it’s definitely not the way monitor shoppers expect a monitor to work, and the high price of OLED monitors underscores the issue. It can be shocking to see a $2,000 OLED monitor suffer an issue that never appears in older, less expensive LCD-LED alternatives.
Tough solutions
Fortunately, there is a solution. Several recent OLED monitors we've tested, such as the Corsair Xeneon Flex and the Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDM, have a brightness stabilizer. It caps the maximum brightness of the display at a level that effectively auto-dimming.
It's not a perfect solution, however. The brightness stabilizer limits the brightness of the monitors to roughly 150 nits. That's fine in a room with blinds but may seem dim in a bright, sunlit room.
Monitor shoppers can also avoid OLED displays altogether and instead purchase a mini-LED monitor like the AOC Agon Pro AG274QZM or Cooler Master Tempest GP27Q.
Mini-LED monitors use an array of LEDs arranged in a grid that dynamically adjust or dim in brightness to improve contrast. They can also suffer from auto-dimming issues, but a mini-LED monitor always provides the option to turn the dynamic backlight off, which eliminates the problem.
Or you could stick with a boring IPS or VA monitor with a static, edge lit backlight (by far still the most popular choice). They can’t match the depth and contrast of OLED, but recent advancements, like LG’s IPS Black display panel found in the Dell Ultrasharp U3223QE, can offer remarkable image quality.
OLED is great. Not perfect.
OLED monitors are an excellent choice for many people, especially for PC gamers.
Don’t get me wrong: OLED technology is excellent and has obvious advantages over its competitors. Nothing matches the contrast, depth, and sense of dimensionality OLED gaming monitors provide. Most OLED panels also provide vibrant, attractive, and extremely accurate color. These traits make OLED monitors ideal for gaming, watching movies, and other entertainment.
If you’re more interested in productivity tasks like writing or video editing, however, give OLED monitors a second thought and do your research first (especially as 4K OLED monitors still clock in at 42 inches or larger). The advantages remain, but become less relevant, and problems like temporal brightness uniformity, lackluster maximum brightness, and burn-in shouldn’t be ignored. The best monitor is sometimes a boring one—simple, reliable, and stable.
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