Hi All,
Newbie to the forum here, but I wanted to register and share my thoughts/experience on this monitor as I recently bought one after reading through most of the comments on here, so I figured it will only be right to share with you guys.
I bought the monitor (24") 2 and a half weeks ago from Checkers Hyper at Somerset Mall. This was after watching it for a while hoping the special will come back from a year ago and seeing as it didn't I took the plunge at R2,599. The reason for wanting the monitor is I am an avid player on COD Warzone and I really wanted 120 FPS on my Xbox Series S, and this seemed like the cheapest way to get there.
The monitor has some weird quirks that I am not sure everyone is aware of as I do tend to tinker with things a lot and some of these quirks are hidden, but before I get to the quirks I want to explain that in order to get 120hz on the Xbox with this monitor you need to choose the Override option and select HDMI, after that you will be able to select 1080p @ 120hz. You will not be able to di 1440p @ 120hz due to the HDMI 2.1 limitation on the monitor (it only has HDMI 2.0).
Quirk 1.
When you select HDR under the monitor settings the colours will look all blown up and the contrast will be whacked, but when you turn the monitor off and back on again the contrast will look much better keeping the vivid colours. This is something you have to do every time you turn the so-called HDR on. Even though this HDR is fake, I do prefer it as without it enabled the colours look bland and no amount of tinkering got me to get it to my taste. This said you will still need to make some adjustments to the colours to get it right which brings met to quirk 2.
Quirk 2.
You will need to adjust the colours as out the box (with or without HDR) it will need tweaking. I prefer a warmer colour, so this will be somewhat up to you, but for my preference I chose PC RGB rather than Standard Colours on the Xbox (Standard will be brighter, but RGB will have better colour IMHO) and on the Monitor I set it to as follows:
R47
G44
R41
This is where the quirk 2 comes in. When you now turn off your computer/Xbox or just the monitor and you turn it back on you will notice your colours are not the way you left it. You will need to go back to the colours setting on the monitor and adjust any of the colour by one point and you will see the colours shift back to where you left them.
Both these quirks are not isolated to only my monitor as I tested it on the display model they have in store and it did exactly the same, so I am curious to hear if any of the others that bought this monitor have the same.
Some other interesting points: The Xbox does not detect the monitor to have HDR. It seems like others that run this monitor on PC's say that it does for them, but unfortunately I cant test this.
The Xbox does not give you the option to select Variable Refresh Rate if you choose the Override in order to set 120hz so if you want VRR then you have to set the Xbox to Auto, but then you lose 120hz. I have not found a way around this yet.
Final thoughts:
Am I sorry I bought it? No, not entirely, but if you have a little more in the budget than me I think you can get a LG from Evetech with the same specs for R800 more. Seems to be a special price so not sure how long this will last, but other than that you will be spending much more to get 120hz on your console.
Would I recommend it? Depends on your budget. If you are budget tight then yes, just accept it for what it isn't. It is not an expensive gaming monitor. For me personally it dramatically increased my gaming experience over the 60hz Samsung 24" LED that I had before this.
It is a shame though that the Xbox does not have a Display Port as I believe I would have been able to take better advantage of the screen should I have been able to use this connection, but all that said, I am enjoying it.
carbonite.co.za
