Rant: WTF is wrong with monitors today?

I have been waiting two years past the date to replace my monitor and still am using the same old monitor. I even have upgraded video cards through two generations in preparations for my dream monitor. Patience is not the problem.

Looking at low end monitors, it is easy to find a few 4.5-5 star reviews. But not a single high end monitor in the last couple years earns high reviews and in all cases, they lose at least star because of the "screen lottery". The screen lottery refers to the probability that the monitor won't have dead pixels or excessive backlighting.

I have a theory of why this is the case.

1. Yield, I work at a silicon company (name unimportant), but sometimes yields of qualifying products can be in the single digits. Monitors are really awesome, it is not surprising that a good number of bad ones are created.

2. Quality Control. In my company we trash or sell as an inferior product that which does not meet the requirements. However, monitors are definitely lacking in this level of quality control.

3. Monopoly. AU Optronics seems to be making most, if not all, of the screens for every company. They are a Chinese company at least influenced by Acer. China does not let American companies own Chinese companies. Hence, it is not a stretch to believe that this company has a super cheap price and an equally horrible quality control. In fact I would go as far to say that they are responsible for the high prices, not because they are expensive, but because the crappy quality control is making companies eat the cost of monitors by as much as 2 or 3 to 1.

I am so frustrated that I have to spend a grand or more for at best a minority chance at a good monitor.

In summary, I think it is ridiculous to ask the consumer to fork over so much money just for the off chance of success. Every company should stop selling monitors until they address this problem. Either that, or they should only sell them where gambling is legalized.

 

Having just gone through this... and with two big ass boxes with 2k IPS screens in my living room awaiting the 8700K on Monday... Yea... It's horrible. One thing I will say is that a lot of the reviews you're reading are old. The *current* screen lottery isn't nearly as bad as it was a year+ ago when many of the reviews were written.

But yea... as I write this I'm cleaning up my area to test the two monitors and check for that dreaded backlight bleed.

 

I'm still thinking, after two years, about which one I should buy, all doubts due to these issues.

To date the best monitor I had is a DELL (I work with art).

 

I went through a couple recently that had to be returned. It is just so frustrating. How these companies make any money is beyond me. There must be high margins.

TV sets don't seem to have the same percentage of issues.

 

I guess I beat the odds this time. I have tried 3 (got an ASUS 34" curved that I sent back, not curved enough lol, gave me a migraine) and now my two ASUS 27" 2k G-Sync's in the past month that're all fine. One of these two has a bit more bleed than the other, but literally only noticeable when the monitor is turning on but hasn't quite gotten a signal yet (IE non-issue). They are bad-ass looking though and I totally recommend it.

 

I'm conflicted about the influx of inexpensive Chinese electronics with low quality control. I live in the US, and we still have some great IC companies with amazing levels of quality and "fairly" good English documentation (many things are still kept secret), although the actual fabrication is sometimes done in other countries. I would love to use some of these high-quality chips in my own designs (I build a lot of electronic things), but there are a few problems for me: the higher quality chips are often not individual/maker-friendly. Almost all of them are extremely small surface-mount, meant for automated assembly by a manufacturer, with few developer-friendly boards available, often expensive. But Chinese companies will flood the market with low-cost boards (containing their own low-cost chip equivalents). The chips often aren't as good (and some of them have hardly any or zero English documentation) but they work well-enough to be useful.

I think this kind of thing happened to the audiophile market in the 70's (at least this is how I perceived it as a kid)--new IC's were undercutting the high-quality audio boards (often discrete electronics) on price, but the audio quality suffered. It was sad to see earlier engineering attempts to achieve high-quality audio go to waste as the market moved towards convenience and cost (eventually digital). I don't know if a similar thing is happening in the areas that you are experiencing.

There was a good documentary I came across called Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware which really opened my eyes about how much faster innovation can occur in China vs. where I live. I've never been to China, but the documentary showed how amazing the part stores/markets are, full of high-tech boards and repair craftsmen with very specialized skills (reminds me of scenes from the old Bladerunner--haven't seen the new one yet).

I worry about Japan and Germany, too--they have a history of high-quality electronics but probably have trouble now competing with China. If high-quality IC companies would cater to the individual maker, their chips would be highly sought after and board prices would go down while at the same time, the name recognition of these chips would go up and it would educate the consumer. Intel made the (relatively expensive) Edison, but then they discontinued this project a few months ago. Most of us in the maker arena, for example, know about the ESP8266 (a Chinese chip)--there are other options out there, but you can build a huge number of IoT things around boards using this device that only cost a few US dollars.

I frequently read Texas Instruments datasheets (and love the devices) and then end up buying a Chinese chip that doesn't work as well but is available and inexpensive, with poor documentation. I can go through large numbers of Chinese devices without worrying about cost (which give me a huge flexibility to innovate).

There is a maker/startup culture in my city, but compared to China we are in the stone age concerning hardware innovation and experimentation. I know there are various maker scenes in Brooklyn, Austin, Kansas City, and other cities, and many small maker companies try to fill that niche and provide nice development boards... but the Chinese ones are so much cheaper.

 

My first non CRT was a LCD Asus with 4 dead pixels. Since it was under a certain amount of pixles I couldn't return it. I've had it for about 6 years and it's still distracting. I really wish I could find my old CRT Viewsonic, seemed to be much more clear.

 

There is an Asus curved 34" monitor I've been wanting. The reviews were decent.

ASUS PG348Q RoG SWIFT 34" Curved 21:9 QHD IPS G-Sync Monitor.

Tom's Hardware review.

I'd be willing to get rid of one of my monitors in my triple-monitor ASUS PB278Q setup to plop this in the middle.

 

@Spartus
Four weeks after the Pokemon Go launch there were Aiming phone cases that could be ordered and delivered online over alibaba. Now that is just a piece of plastic, but someone had to not only play, but realize the need, think of a solution, make the design and get it produced in large enough numbers to matter - in less than 4 weeks.

10 weeks after the Pokemon Go launch Power Bank sales started to visibly go up. Then something amazing and kinda telling happened: correctly predicting the trend Chinese manufacturers ramped up production faster than the retail stores (mainly in europe and USA) could react to the market change. So 16 weeks after launch the manufacturers still sat with an increasing surplus of stocks waiting for the slooooooow retailers to react to the market trend and order more so they could distribute them while the trend lasted. Which meant that the stores that 'got it' never ran out, but stores that 'didn't get it' ran out several times since their ordering process was simply too slow to catch up with the changing trend. Which again showed at the falling end of the craze where some sloooooooooow retail chains (mainly in europe and USA) kept ordering thinking it was the new normal to the surprise of the Chinese manufacturers who by then had started to slow down production.

Times are changing.

 

If you would like to listen to a bottom feeders advice, you can put a monitor like

ASUS PB277Q 27" 1ms (GTG) TN Panel Widescreen LCD/LED Monitor, Height, Tilt, Pivot and Swivel Adjustment, Built-in Speakers, Extensive Connectivity with Native WQHD Content


Which normally runs 350 on your watch list on the egg. You will be notified when it drops to 250 (again) unbeatable in all comparisons of price range when this happens. I.M.O.

 

I didn't like that one. It wasn't really curved enough to fit nicely on a desk. You would need a massively deep desk to be able to sit far enough away from this thing to have the whole screen in your field of view from what I experienced. Massive headache/migraine after 30 minutes =(.

 

This is essentially what I have, but mine was a PB 278Q 27", so like 2nd generation (or 8th?) I guess. I am a triple-monitor bottom feeder.

 

Good to know. I do have a deep desk - one of them L shaped IKEA desks for which I bought extensions for the left and right side. So I have A LOT of space. Just not wanting to totally give up my triple monitors, although I guess I could keep two on either side. That probably won't work as I imagine the end points of the curved monitor may not allow for the left/right ones to essentially be perpendicular to one another.

 

You could realistically treat this as a normal monitor. It's not NEARLY as curved as say a Samsung monitor. I think across the entire thing it curved maybe 2 inches lol. No idea if that's a limitation of the IPS screen or what, but it definitely didn't work for me. Definitely something to go see at a Frys or something of that sort before you buy.

 

the most likely reason for the lottery effect on monitors is a lot of people will just accept a lower quality product and not deal with RMA and sending it back and hoping for a better one in return. they can push out some bad products and not worry too much about their reputation so long as they are willing to keep shipping you one until youre happy with the one you get

 

I recently got the Samsung CHG90 Series Curved 49-Inch Gaming Monitor. No dead pixels and no power problems that I have seen others have had. I love it!

 

My latest computer build has this monitor. It's really nice

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BYU0GVC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1