this is part of a new generation of OLED displays that LG is calling dual mode it allows you to switch between the native 4K resolution and 1080p resolution wait you must be thinking I can do that on my monitor right now is my monitor dual mode or no DEA mode yes but also no if you have a Modern Display it may be capable of interpreting a signal in all of those different modes but only one of them is native that is able to be displayed cleanly without any scaling that is the trick here or at least it would be if it worked as well as this segue to our sponsor ug green their super compact two-in-one magnetic foldable charging station features a 15wt ch2 charger for your phone a 5w wireless charger for earbuds and a pass through port for plugging in a USBC cable check it out at the link below [Music] before we get into the details let’s just try the two different modes because there is more to this than just setting it to the ideal mode and then forgetting about it forever in theory a display like this can offer The Best of Both Worlds right now what we’re looking at is 4K 240 HZ obviously there’s outstanding picture Clarity amazing motion Clarity but because of how human Vision Works OLED is is still going to have some drawbacks compared to a classic CRT monitor that is unless you use black frame insertion to artificially strobe the image so to my eyes this is this is pretty darn clear even with fast onscreen movements but it can be better we experimented with this before we started and it turns out mid game at least in this game I can just press the mode toggle button and now we’re looking at 1080p 4 180 HZ we still get the same outstanding HDR and color performance but at this size I would say the image Clarity is a bit of a drag the upside is that by running at a lower resolution we overcome the limitations of our display port link and we can run it a whopping 480 Refreshers per second now I already spoke about this in detail when I took my first look at alienware’s new 500 HZ display but in a nutshell it makes more of a difference than you would probably imagine for reasons that we’ll get into later in terms of the subjective experience it’s great like I just can’t miss heads with this thing you know got him which is really cool but why can’t I just go into the advanced Windows menu and change my refresh rate here there dual mode right well no since the days of this connector monitors have included a bit of metadata called called an edid the ID’s purpose is to report the display’s capabilities to any connected device be it a computer game console or what have you this monitor has two eids which can be toggled through the OSD or this little button right here we extracted them we ran them through an interpreter and we had a look at the output end surprisingly the only major difference is that the 4K mode will not allow the display to be driven past 240 HZ regardless of the configured resolution in the window settings and the 1080p edid doesn’t list as many resolutions and maxes out at 1080p 480 HZ if you try to force feed it 4K resolution in 1080P mode it will actually scale that input down to 1080P and then back up again to the native 4K of the panel why did they feel the need to do this well we have some theories but let’s come back to them after we’ve talked about the performance of the display and determined whether this thing is even worth jumping through all these hoops for starting with color accuracy srgb mode is solidly okay the color temperature is a little cool but if you don’t know what that means you’re unlikely to notice it and if you do you can simply calibrate your troubles away at least unless you want to use gamer mode unfortunately it is tuned for colors that are pretty but not accurate no problem just ignore it then right I guess but unless you’re using one of the first four listed display modes an extra frame of processing latency gets added at 480 HZ or 240 HZ for that matter it’s not such a big deal but if you use adaptive sync for smoother animations and your GPU doesn’t happen to be god tier it could be a problem for you in HDR we measured both low Peak brightness mode and high peak brightness mode low is best viewed in a dim room while high managed to over 1,00 nits in a 1% window for dazzling highlights now let’s talk about responsiveness this is a gaming monitor first and foremost and both of the modes are great but they have some small differences because it refreshes at half the rate the 4K mode has inherently worse input latency of course we’re talking about a difference of about 1 millisecond so who cares right well hold on we’ve said for years that there’s a point of diminishing returns past about 240 HZ but the reason that faster matters for OLED displays is because of how our eyes perceive motion by switching more frequently we will see fast moving objects with better Clarity the 1080p mode has a curious trait of its own though if you run it at a lower refresh rate the latency goes up more faster than you would expect perhaps it has something to do with scaling those inputs it is a 4K native panel regardless of whether it’s running in a 1080p mode and scaling is impossible to avoid on a Modern Display because these panels are made up of a fixed array of pixels that can’t change in size or shape by contrast classic CRTs had no concept of physical pixels they could adjust the beams to draw tighter lines for higher resolution even if it came at the cost of brightness or refresh rate now sometimes scaling can be simple 4K happens to be exactly four times the number of pixels as 1080p so that’s fine you just double in each mention a voila perfect clarity just with bigger blocks this is called integer scaling because the higher resolution can cleanly be divided by the lower one 4K also happens to be divisible by 720p and for you retro Gamers 240p as well so you would think that we would use that kind of scaling as often as possible but as it turns out most displays just throw a blurry ambing filter on it and call it a day of course this isn’t most displays is it if LG expects you to use 1080p mode it had better be clean so how does it hold up as it turns out pretty okay even in 4k mode it seems like it’s trying to do integer scaling it’s sharper than you’d expect but if you look closely each 1080p pixel is offset down to the right by half of a 4K pixel okay hold on a second L is half a pixel you just told me they couldn’t change size and shape okay yes but check this out we’ve established that integer scaling converts four physical pixels into a single virtual 1080p pixel if you offset that by half a pixel in each Dimension now that one pixel takes up nine at 4K one in the middle and 8 half pixels on each side at first we thought this must be some kind of intentional scaling thing but after looking at how it affects the corner pixels we think it’s actually just an off by one error somewhere in the display logic that Maps the scaled image to the panel we get to see how well it actually scales if we try any other resolution including 720p and it gets blurred this is unfortunate because they could have integer scaled 720p as well that would mean that the Lion’s Share of common resolutions over the past two decades would look perfect on this display at 480 HZ that would be awesome if LG could rectify it in the future but if not it’s a pitfall that hopefully at least other manufacturers who use a similar technology can avoid in the future and in LG’s defense it’s not really a deal breaker in 4k mode you can still use integer scaling on your GPU driver or you can use upscaling methods like dlss and FSR to render your games at a lower resolution for better performance and then output 4K native from your GPU which is obviously going to look perfect the question then becomes why does the 1080p mode exist and should you bother to use it well our best educated guess for why the mode switch even has to happen is that the timing controller or the tcon needs to be reset to change its Behavior even though 1080p at 480 HZ requires half of the bandwidth of 4K at 240 HZ 480 HZ is fast in terms of time so the timing controller probably can’t directly address the full 4K pixel Grid at that crazy speed so instead it appears to use a technique called line doubling scanning out each line of the image twice to reduce the processing load we can verify that this is happening by looking at the pixels rather than being offset in both directions as 1080p looked in the 4K mode now the image is only offset to the right in summary then intriguing product hopefully it’s a solution that we just won’t need a few years from now but if you want tomorrow’s Tech technology today and you don’t mind pressing this switch depending on what mode you want to run in and what game you’re running and also if you don’t mind spending $1,400 you’re getting a genuinely impressive piece of technology even if there are a few limitations it also makes me even more excited for the day after tomorrow no not that one uh when we see updated tcons that can push even greater than 480 HZ because with pixel response times that are in the .3 millisecond range OLED has a lot more headro to be pushed and while 600 HZ or heck even this 480 HZ display is going to be endgame territory for most people perfect to the ey motion Clarity could require closer to 1,000 HZ or even more which is so fast that if you blink you’ll miss it like the segue to our sponsor delete me privacy isn’t just about individuals it’s about families that’s why delete me is expanding to cover everyone you care about there new family plans make sharing and caring as simple as it can get with their family account management you can easily add family members ensuring personalized protection for each person their privacy first design means every family member gets their own data sheet keeping their online footprint secure from kids to adults everyone’s covered reducing the risk of exposure spam and scams and with simplified management overseeing your family’s privacy has never been easier choose delete me for peace of mind for your entire family in the digital world check him out at the link below today and use the code LT at checkout for 20% off thanks for watching guys go check out that time we pitted an OLED against an HD crrt for a little bit more on the importance of motion Clarity let’s go finish the match

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