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As the article states, this is why RGB Stripe layouts are the next big things in OLED. Quite exciting, and sub pixel layouts that aren't good for text are exact

by girvo 10mo ago

As the article states, this is why RGB Stripe layouts are the next big things in OLED. Quite exciting, and sub pixel layouts that aren't good for text are exactly why I have an XG27AQMR in front of me for work/gaming instead of an OLED (27" IPS LCD, 1440p, 300hz)

jedbrooke 10mo ago
I wonder if the RGB strip layout has some downsides, and why such a no brainer idea hasn’t been tried before. If I had to guess it could be something in the manufacturing process is more difficult.
- kllrnohj 10mo ago
  RGB strip isn't really better, it's just what cleartype happens to understand. A lot of these OLED developments came from either TV or mobile, neither of which had legacy subpixel hinting to deal with. So the subpixel layouts were optimized for both manufacturing but also human perception. Humans do not perceive all colors equally, we are much more sensitive to green than blue for example. Since OLED is emissive, it needs to balance how bright the color emitted is with how sensitive human wet wear is to it.
  - kalleboo 10mo ago
    > A lot of these OLED developments came from either TV or mobile I remember getting one of the early Samsung OLED PenTile displays, and despite the display having a higher resolution on-paper than the display on the LCD phone I replaced it with, the fuzzy fringey text made it far less readable in practice. There were other issues with that phone so I was happy to resell it and go back to my previous one.
    - kllrnohj 10mo ago
      Pentile typical omits subpixels to achieve the resolution, so yes if you have an LCD and an AMOLED with the exact same resolution and the AMOLED is pentile, it won't be as sharp because it has literally fewer subpixels. But that's rapidly outpaced by modern pentile AMOLEDs just having a pixel density that vastly exceeds nearly any LCD anymore (at least on mobile). There's RGB subpixel AMOLEDs as well (such as on the Nintendo Switch OLED) even though they aren't necessarily RGB strip. As in, just because it's not RGB strip doesn't mean it's pentile. There are other arrangements. Those other arrangements being for example the ones complained about on current desktop OLED monitors like the one in the article. It's not pentile causing problems since it's not pentile at all.
  - girvo 10mo ago
    The article shows mac, it's not just ClearType... PenTile for example (as another commenter pointed out) was woeful with text, and made things look fuzzy. I'm not a fan of ClearType, but even on Linux OLED text rendering just isn't as good in my experience (at normal desktop monitor DPI) Perhaps its down to the algorithms most OSes use instead of just ClearType, but why hasn't it been solved by this point even outside Windows?
    - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
      I dunno, my phone's oled (oneplus 5T) looks perfectly fine even with small fonts...
    - kllrnohj 10mo ago
      iPhones all use PenTile and nobody complains about fuzzy text on them. Early generations of pentile weren't that great, but modern ones look fantastic at basically everything. See also everyone considers the iPad Pro to have probably the best display available at any price point - and it's not an RGB strip, either.
      - girvo 10mo ago
        > and it's not an RGB strip, either. The PPI difference matters though (and I think why my Nokia N9's PenTile OLED looked rough). Desktop displays simply aren't at the same PPI/resolution density, which is why they're moving to this new technology. If it didn't matter, I highly doubt they'd spend the huge money to develop it.
- moogly 10mo ago
  They've just have had issues manufacturing it, but there were several monitors from MSI, Asus and Gigabyte with Samsung's latest gen QD-OLED display announced (and reviewed) this week with RGB stripe subpixel layout, so we are there now (as soon as they are available), and this article is somewhat poorly timed.
  - c0nsumer 10mo ago
    (Author here.) I'd say that because the article documents my experience at this point in time, the only poor timing is when my old-ish monitor died and I went looking for a replacement. And this article documents my experience with that.
- omcnoe 10mo ago
  Originally OLED TVs used different sized subpixels for different colors as part of their wear management. Red wears out the fastest so it would have the largest subpixel.
- zokier 10mo ago
  Peak brightness is most likely to suffer.
- seanalltogether 10mo ago
  The problem with strip layouts is if you rotate the monitor (or phone) you lose all the subpixel rendering benefits. OLED pentiles work better in all rotations.
magicalhippo 10mo ago
I upgraded my 27" 1440p LCD to a 27" 4k OLED (PG27UCDM) and for me text rendering was a big upgrade. Yes there is color fringing if I take a zoomed in picture with my camera, but nothing I notice in day to day use. And I've been highly annoyed by missing or bad ClearType rendering. I specifically went for the 27" to get the extra pixel density though. I might not have been happy with the 32" variant. That said, the true blacks and bright whites is something else. For me a very significant upgrade both on the desktop and in games, despite the previous being an upper-level LCD when I bought it 4-5 years ago.
- sirfz 10mo ago
  I just ordered this monitor earlier this week (still waiting for it to be delivered), did you need to tweak it or use some thing like MacType like others are suggesting in this thread?
  - magicalhippo 10mo ago
    I'm on Windows. Didn't tweak it much, I changed the color settings slightly according to this video[1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CzgGB0kFJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CzgGB0kFJk
- girvo 10mo ago
  Yeah I'm quite excited to move to the 34" ultra-wide 1440p RGB stripe 360hz monitor they announced! OLED is an amazing technology, and this was IMO the final barrier to overcome to beat IPS on nearly all axes.

by girvo 10mo ago

jedbrooke 10mo ago

I wonder if the RGB strip layout has some downsides, and why such a no brainer idea hasn’t been tried before. If I had to guess it could be something in the manufacturing process is more difficult.

kllrnohj 10mo ago
RGB strip isn't really better, it's just what cleartype happens to understand. A lot of these OLED developments came from either TV or mobile, neither of which had legacy subpixel hinting to deal with. So the subpixel layouts were optimized for both manufacturing but also human perception. Humans do not perceive all colors equally, we are much more sensitive to green than blue for example. Since OLED is emissive, it needs to balance how bright the color emitted is with how sensitive human wet wear is to it.
- kalleboo 10mo ago
  > A lot of these OLED developments came from either TV or mobile I remember getting one of the early Samsung OLED PenTile displays, and despite the display having a higher resolution on-paper than the display on the LCD phone I replaced it with, the fuzzy fringey text made it far less readable in practice. There were other issues with that phone so I was happy to resell it and go back to my previous one.
  - kllrnohj 10mo ago
    Pentile typical omits subpixels to achieve the resolution, so yes if you have an LCD and an AMOLED with the exact same resolution and the AMOLED is pentile, it won't be as sharp because it has literally fewer subpixels. But that's rapidly outpaced by modern pentile AMOLEDs just having a pixel density that vastly exceeds nearly any LCD anymore (at least on mobile). There's RGB subpixel AMOLEDs as well (such as on the Nintendo Switch OLED) even though they aren't necessarily RGB strip. As in, just because it's not RGB strip doesn't mean it's pentile. There are other arrangements. Those other arrangements being for example the ones complained about on current desktop OLED monitors like the one in the article. It's not pentile causing problems since it's not pentile at all.
- girvo 10mo ago
  The article shows mac, it's not just ClearType... PenTile for example (as another commenter pointed out) was woeful with text, and made things look fuzzy. I'm not a fan of ClearType, but even on Linux OLED text rendering just isn't as good in my experience (at normal desktop monitor DPI) Perhaps its down to the algorithms most OSes use instead of just ClearType, but why hasn't it been solved by this point even outside Windows?
  - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
    I dunno, my phone's oled (oneplus 5T) looks perfectly fine even with small fonts...
  - kllrnohj 10mo ago
    iPhones all use PenTile and nobody complains about fuzzy text on them. Early generations of pentile weren't that great, but modern ones look fantastic at basically everything. See also everyone considers the iPad Pro to have probably the best display available at any price point - and it's not an RGB strip, either.
    - girvo 10mo ago
      > and it's not an RGB strip, either. The PPI difference matters though (and I think why my Nokia N9's PenTile OLED looked rough). Desktop displays simply aren't at the same PPI/resolution density, which is why they're moving to this new technology. If it didn't matter, I highly doubt they'd spend the huge money to develop it.
moogly 10mo ago
They've just have had issues manufacturing it, but there were several monitors from MSI, Asus and Gigabyte with Samsung's latest gen QD-OLED display announced (and reviewed) this week with RGB stripe subpixel layout, so we are there now (as soon as they are available), and this article is somewhat poorly timed.
- c0nsumer 10mo ago
  (Author here.) I'd say that because the article documents my experience at this point in time, the only poor timing is when my old-ish monitor died and I went looking for a replacement. And this article documents my experience with that.
omcnoe 10mo ago
Originally OLED TVs used different sized subpixels for different colors as part of their wear management. Red wears out the fastest so it would have the largest subpixel.
zokier 10mo ago
Peak brightness is most likely to suffer.
seanalltogether 10mo ago
The problem with strip layouts is if you rotate the monitor (or phone) you lose all the subpixel rendering benefits. OLED pentiles work better in all rotations.

magicalhippo 10mo ago

I upgraded my 27" 1440p LCD to a 27" 4k OLED (PG27UCDM) and for me text rendering was a big upgrade. Yes there is color fringing if I take a zoomed in picture with my camera, but nothing I notice in day to day use. And I've been highly annoyed by missing or bad ClearType rendering. I specifically went for the 27" to get the extra pixel density though. I might not have been happy with the 32" variant. That said, the true blacks and bright whites is something else. For me a very significant upgrade both on the desktop and in games, despite the previous being an upper-level LCD when I bought it 4-5 years ago.

sirfz 10mo ago
I just ordered this monitor earlier this week (still waiting for it to be delivered), did you need to tweak it or use some thing like MacType like others are suggesting in this thread?
- magicalhippo 10mo ago
  I'm on Windows. Didn't tweak it much, I changed the color settings slightly according to this video[1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CzgGB0kFJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CzgGB0kFJk
girvo 10mo ago
Yeah I'm quite excited to move to the 34" ultra-wide 1440p RGB stripe 360hz monitor they announced! OLED is an amazing technology, and this was IMO the final barrier to overcome to beat IPS on nearly all axes.