AOC g2460Pg

Responsiveness

Input lag

Input lag was calculated on the AOC g2460Pg using a small utility called SMTT 2.0 and a highly sensitive camera. The latency of the monitor was compared with other reference screens of known latency. Using this method we recorded 3.2ms (under ½ a frame at 144Hz) of input lag. This input lag figure is influenced by both the pixel responsiveness of the monitor (element you ‘see’) and the signal delay (element you ‘feel’). This value is indicative of a very low signal delay which was reflected in how responsive the monitor felt in relation to our input. Activating ULMB did not significantly impact this figure (on some runs it was marginally higher and some marginally lower, averaging a very similar value).

Pixel responsiveness

To assess the pixel responsiveness of the monitor we used the UFO Motion test for ghosting, which is a web-based test, alongside a highly sensitive camera. The test was set to run a ‘1920 Pixels Per Sec’, meaning that the object crossed the screen in around 1 second. The medium cyan background is shown in the image below (middle row of test) at various refresh rates and ‘Overdrive’ settings. The top row in our image shows 60Hz, the middle row shows 120Hz and the bottom row shows 144Hz. The columns show various ‘Overdrive’ settings; ‘Off’, ‘Weak’, ‘Light’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Strong’, respectively.

Trailing (various 'Response Time' settings)

The refresh rate did not significantly impact the pixel responsiveness and hence trailing observed in this test. There are some minor differences in places, but these can be accounted for by the snapshots being captured at slightly different transition phases in some instances. As the refresh rate is increased you can see that the separation distance between each trail and the original object is decreased, however. That is simply because the screen is updating (refreshing) more rapidly at higher refresh rates and the UFO is essentially redrawn more frequently.

The monitor offers good flexibility with its pixel overdrive control. With this set to ‘Off’ there is a bold primary trail and weak secondary trail. Using the ‘Weak’ setting weakens the primary trail and as good as eliminates the secondary trail. This indicates that the pixel responsiveness during these transitions has improved. The ‘Light’ setting improves performance further by weakening the trailing so that it is very faint. The ‘Medium’ setting changes the nature of the trailing slightly, introducing a bit of overshoot (artifacting) which is most noticeable in the 60Hz snapshot in this example. The ‘Strong’ setting introducing significant overshoot (‘inverse ghosting’), giving very strong and incorrectly coloured trails.

In our analysis of this test and using the monitor more broadly, over a wider range of pixel transitions, we can say that the ‘Light’ setting is our favourite. The default setting (‘Medium’) is actually very good as well, but we did notice some very slight overshoot during actual use. This wasn’t overly distracting and most users probably wouldn’t even see it let alone be distracted by it, but dropping the overdrive to ‘Light’ eliminated this issue without visibly compromising performance elsewhere. The ‘Weak’ setting was also decent and used an effective level of acceleration. There was a very small amount of trailing in places that wasn’t visible in the ‘Light’ or ‘Medium’ setting but this was very minor indeed. The middle three settings are therefore very useable (unlike ‘Off’ and ‘Strong’ in our opinion) with ‘Light’ offering the best balance of high speed without obvious overshoot.

Responsiveness in games and movies

In order to assess things in a more realistic way and overcome some of the limitations of static photography (as used above) we used a range of game titles. This provides a greater variety of different pixel transitions and very importantly allows the assessment to take into account the crucial factor of eye movement and how we perceive motion. As pointed out in the responsiveness article, the movement of our eyes is a significant contributor to motion blur regardless of how great pixel responsiveness is. It’s also one of the key reasons why a higher refresh rate improves the motion clarity and why ‘ULMB’ works the way it does (as we explore later).

On Battlefield 4 we couldn’t observe any trailing resulting from slow pixel responses on the monitor nor any obvious overshoot from overly aggressive acceleration. Where the frame rate and refresh rate of the monitor matched (i.e. 144fps at 144Hz) the fluidity and connected feeling was excellent. The clarity of motion was very good, meaning that even during fast manoeuvres in a vehicle or in foot the game world retained a good degree of sharpness. The monitor also ‘felt’ very responsive in relation to your input and there were no real hitches getting in the way of man and machine. As the frame rate drops, the motion blur increases and you are hit by stuttering (VSync on) or tearing (VSync off). We still felt that running the game significantly above 60fps felt like a real bonus compared to a 60Hz screen, but without some of the variable refresh rate goodness talked about shortly the experience wasn’t as smooth as it could have been.

Dirt 3 told a similar story really. On this title we didn’t feel that the ‘connectedness’ to the vehicle was as important as the connectedness to your character on Battlefield 4. We’re sure that says a lot about our use of the keyboard rather than a ‘proper’ controller for this game, however. The reduction in motion blur and smooth visuals at 144fps was really nice, anyway, and did add to the racing experience. Again there were some hitches in fluidity (tearing or stuttering) as the frame rate dropped away from this magical value, even if it dropped just slightly below it in fact. We didn’t notice any obvious inverse ghosting, either, which is good considering the broad range of pixel transitions presented on this title. There were some very faint hints where light and marginally darker shades moved against one another (snow against bright sky for example) but not something that stood out even to the trained eye.

We didn’t notice any issues at all related to slow pixel responsiveness on the Blu-ray film titles we tested. We didn’t notice any overshoot, either. Fluidity was marred somewhat by the low frame rate at which these films run, which is ~24fps (typical for Blu-rays and other movie content currently) but that wasn’t the fault of the monitor. Another thing to note is that the 144Hz frame rate allows this 24fps to divide into it evenly (each frame is repeated 5 times), unlike 60Hz (2.5 times). This gives a bit of an edge in fluidity by greatly reducing ‘judder’ which some users particularly dislike. It still doesn’t have that smoothness you’d get from a high frame rate, though.

G-SYNC

Rather than repeating what we’ve said on other reviews and articles, we’re going to move on as quickly as possible to our actual ‘real world’ experiences with G-SYNC on the g2460Pg. To give you the briefest of introductions first, G-SYNC is a technology that allows the monitor to respond to the current GPU frame rate (your FPS in game, for example) by adjusting its refresh rate. On a very basic level this gets rid of the stuttering, tearing or juddering that you may notice if the refresh rate stays where it is but the frame rate diverges from it. It does this in a way that provides lower input lag than using VSync and which has similar latency to VSync off at a fixed 144Hz in the variable refresh rate environment. If you’d like to learn more about the technology we’d highly recommend reading our dedicated article about G-SYNC. If you’d like to know how to activate it please refer to the ‘G-SYNC – activating it’ part of the ‘Responsiveness’ section on our review of the PG278Q. The process is exactly the same with any G-SYNC monitor. Please note that the application must be running full screen for this to work and Nvidia recommends disabling VSync in game in addition to ensuring VSync is set to G-SYNC in the Nvidia Control Panel.

To kick off our subjective analysis of G-SYNC we’ll start with the very popular FPS title Battlefield 4. Obviously the performance you can expect on this title depends on your system, the settings you’re using and what’s going on in the game world at a given moment. For us the game frequently dropped below 144fps, even if just by 5-10fps. Traditionally this would be accompanied by the aforementioned ‘nasties’ of stuttering or tearing – but with G-SYNC enabled things remained smooth. In fact with such slight drops in frame rate the only way to even see the frame rate had dropped was to observe an FPS counter. There were some instances where frame rate dropped closer to 100fps. In this case the game remained smooth (no stuttering etc.) but there was a little bit of a drop off in ‘connectedness’ and a slight increase in motion blur as you would expect at reduced frame rate. It’s important to note, then, that reduced frame rates are still reduced frame rates with G-SYNC enabled.

We also took the monitor for a spin on Dirt 3, which didn’t really tax our system even with the settings turned up rather high. One ‘fun’ way of really breaking our GPU into a sweat was to enable the DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) feature of our GTX 970. This causes the GPU to render at 3840 x 2160 – obviously the monitor can’t display that and you don’t ‘see’ all of those pixels in their awesome clarity, but things do like better and importantly for this test run slower. The game commonly ran between 50fps and 80fps using these settings. This, again, hit home the fact that low relatively frame rates are relatively low frame rates – and that’s not something that G-SYNC can change. It was definitely a bonus not having tearing, stuttering or other related imperfections due to what would traditionally be a mismatch between frame rate and refresh rate, but you were still left wanting a higher frame rate.

Finally we took a look at Tomb Raider, a title on which we like to turn the settings up to ‘Ultimate’. The frame rate commonly fluctuated in the region of around 80-120 fps, which at a static 144Hz would cause stuttering or tearing. G-SYNC worked very nicely here, doing exactly what it was supposed to. And indeed the frame rate was high enough for the game to have a good degree of fluidity. We definitely found that the variable refresh technology aided the experience in this title and of course that same feeling would extend to many other titles that we haven’t specifically tested.

ULMB

Another Nvidia-specific technology which is part of the G-SYNC module (but can’t be activated at the same time as G-SYNC) is ULMB or Ultra Low Motion Blur. As with the previous section we don’t want to spend too much time repeating things we’ve said elsewhere. On a basic level ULMB causes the backlight to ‘strobe’ rather than remain on constantly (‘sample and hold’), so that the backlight actually spends more time off than on. As we explored previously, eye movement is a key cause of motion blur on a typical LCD. When ULMB is enabled and the backlight strobes on and off, the eye movement and hence motion blur is drastically reduced. ULMB requires G-SYNC to be disabled and for the monitor to be set to 85Hz, 100Hz or 120Hz. Further technical information can be found in the ‘Measuring motion blur – strobe vs. sample and hold’ section of our responsiveness article.

One issue we came across when activating ULMB on the g2460Pg was some fairly faint but potentially distracting interlacing lines which moved quite slowly down the screen when certain shades are displayed. These lines appeared a slightly lighter shade than the shade that is supposed to be displayed and appeared to crawl down the screen. They are only visible with ULMB enabled at 120Hz, not at 100Hz or 85Hz. Another point to bring up is that the monitor uses a fixed ‘Overdrive’ setting with ULMB enabled that is quite aggressive. This is nowhere near as aggressive as the ‘Strong’ setting with ULMB disabled but does bring about a little bit of overshoot (inverse ghosting) in places. This occurs most commonly where medium and lighter shades are involved, for example on the last row of the UFO Motion Test (light cyan background) as shown below.

Overshoot with ULMB

In the photo it appears quite faint, but in actual use it stands out a bit more. That is partly because the strobe behaviour of the backlight causes multiple repetitions of the object not just the single trail seen in the photo or smooth blur you’d traditionally see. In Battlefield 4, for example, you can see this if you strafe past light metal frames with deeper blue sky in the background – a sort of dark semi-transparent repetition of the frame can be seen. If you were to strafe past a dark wooden post with white clouds in the background, for example, you may notice that the repetitions of the post appear as a brighter semi-transparent shade. Not everyone will notice this or find it distracting during normal gameplay, but it’s worth noting nonetheless.

If you push those issues aside and look at the experience as a whole then things are much better. The clarity of motion was exceptional with ULMB enabled, provided the frame rate matched the refresh rate of the monitor. The sort of scenario that we find can cause significant blurring even on a highly responsive 144Hz ‘sample and hold’ monitor is when turning rapidly or spinning around in a vehicle. The Gymkhana mode of Dirt 3 features this sort of motion to quite an extreme degree. With ULMB enabled the sharpness was excellent and the obstacles around could be focussed on during movement in a way that isn’t usually possible. Battlefield 4 features plenty of fairly fast-paced elements as well. Even when just running about on foot and turning quickly, the extra clarity was a nice bonus. Where ULMB really came into its own is where the pace of action was increased significantly, for example when performing strafing runs in attack aircraft. The ability to focus on enemy vehicles and soldiers whilst manoeuvring at in aircraft at high speed almost felt like cheating.

We personally can’t tolerate having VSync disabled whether using ULMB or not as we are very sensitive to tearing and resultant juddering. We feel that the latency penalty of having VSync enabled is kind of outweighed by the vastly improved visual clarity of having a solid frame rate = refresh rate situation with a strobe backlight feature enabled. As the frame rate drops below the frame rate of the monitor you get very noticeable stuttering. Because the motion blur is so low, there is nothing to really mask this stuttering and it really spoils the whole experience. The potentially good news is that it is possible to lower the refresh rate to 100Hz or 85Hz for a target frame rate of 100fps or 85fps, respectively. As noted previously that increases flickering, which some users will find bothersome. It also worsens the motion clarity and of course doesn’t feel or look quite the same as the solid 120fps you can see at 120Hz. Even at 85Hz, though, the motion clarity with ULMB enabled was exceptional in our opinion. Indeed the level of motion blur is much reduced compared to 144Hz with ULMB disabled.

Some users may also like to play with the ‘Pulse Width’ setting of the monitor. As explored previously this dims the image but improves the motion clarity. We personally found the clarity excellent even at a Pulse Width of ‘100’ and didn’t really like the drop off in brightness as this was reduced much. Everybody is different, however. You can adjust the ‘Pulse Width’ between ’10’ and ‘100’ in increments of 1 single unit, so there is excellent flexibility. If you’re interested in knowing how much clearer motion actually is with ULMB at different refresh rates and pulse width settings and how it compares to ULMB being disabled, you may want to consider something called the MPRT (Moving Picture Response Time). We didn’t have the time or want to suffer the visual discomfort of having to test this as thoroughly as we did on the ASUS PG278Q, but the testing that we did suggested that performance was very similar. The results for the ROG SWIFT (and hence the sort of thing you’d see on the AOC as well) are shown in the graph below.

MPRT values on the PG278Q

On this graph shorter bars (lower MPRTs) represent improved motion clarity. You can see that a lower refresh rate leads to worse motion clarity. With ULMB enabled raising the Pulse Width (PW) also worsens motion clarity. Even at 85Hz with a Pulse Width of ‘100’ the MPRT is significantly lower and hence motion clarity significantly better than at 144Hz with ULMB disabled, however. You can see that the decrease in MPRT from ‘60Hz’ to ‘144Hz’ with ULMB disabled is also hugely significant. Further analysis on this can be found towards the end of that responsiveness article we keep on talking about. We’ll also be updating that with a few readings from the AOC shortly after the review is published.

We also tested ULMB in our film titles but didn’t feel that it worked well at all there. It added a bit of flickering but didn’t really help overcome the hurdle of fluidity that is the low frame rate at which the films are shot. And to finish off, we’d just like to say a few final things about the choice between ‘G-SYNC’ and ‘ULMB’ – because you can’t have both at the same time. G-SYNC works beautifully in variable refresh rate environments, getting rid of tearing and stuttering that results from a divergence between refresh rate and frame rate. In such environments ULMB does not work well, because the stuttering and anything else of that nature sticks out like a sore thumb. If you can consistently match the frame rate to your static refresh rate (120Hz, 100Hz or 85Hz) then ULMB is definitely worth considering for the exceptional motion clarity it can provide. Not everybody likes the slight flickering it introduces and indeed some users find the clarity of 144Hz with ULMB disabled more than good enough for their needs anyway.

Nvidia 3D Vision 2

This monitor supports Nvidia’s 3D Vision (1 and 2) system, but requires the user to buy both the glasses and emitter if they wish to make use of the feature. If you’d like to know more about the technology and also our general impressions of the technology please refer to the ‘Nvidia 3D Vision 2’ sections of the ASUS PG278Q review, just above the conclusion. Some key points to bear in mind:

We are also pleased to say that no ‘interlace-pattern artifacts’ were visible as we saw on the SWIFT. For example there weren’t any shadows accompanying certain objects in the game with an interlaced texture. There were some minor convergence issues here and there but they were more to do with the 3D implementation on the game/GPU side than the monitor. A few things we did notice are that in some instances it was possible to see the pixel structure of the monitor. It was fairly faint but most noticeable on certain lighter textures, such as areas of sky. This is a limitation of the pixel density and again not specific to the monitor – it was quite faint and un-distracting really. We also noticed the same issue with the moving horizontal lines that we observed when using ULMB at 120Hz, but this was extremely faint and barely noticeable when playing the game normally.

We found the 3D experience on ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) particularly impressive with the 3D Vision 2 system. The depth effects were outstanding, bringing plenty of elements out of the screen rather than just into it as you see with many other titles. This really made for an enjoyable experience and also breathed new life into certain elements of the game. Spell effects, particularly those with finer particles, appeared to ‘float’ out of the screen in a really impressive way. We also have to comment, as we did on the ROG SWIFT review, on how beautiful the ‘High Hrothgar Wraith’ vanity pet (shown below) looked in full 3D.

Even though it wasn’t being rendered with the same pixel density as on the SWIFT, as this is a 24” 1920 x 1080 model compared to a 27” 2560 x 1440 model, the transparent textures really worked beautifully well in 3D. Some other impressive effects included stretches of water on the game and other textures with transparent or specular qualities.

We also tested 3D Vision 2 on Tomb Raider. The experience on this title was a little different using the default stereoscopic settings as everything goes into the screen – with the exception of some small moving objects (debris, particles etc.) which appeared to hit you in the face at times. Nonetheless the 3D effects on this title were impressive and it seemed to be a very ‘polished’ experience that lent itself well to stereoscopic 3D viewing. We didn’t notice any issues with crosstalk or anything particularly troubling really. With the exception of the occasional and very faint (undistracting) convergence issue everything looked about as natural as active 3D can look. There were some issues with some of the menu systems as certain elements were difficult to focus on due to their plane. When a mouse cursor came onto the screen, in camp menus for example, the cursor itself appeared far closer to you than the thing you’re clicking. It was difficult to pick ‘stand out effects’ on this title, but there were a few elements that worked particularly well in 3D. When it rained or you came into contact with water (walking through a waterfall, for example) the water appeared to trickle down the screen surface. This helped set the perspective, as if you’re looking through a window into Lara’s world which is what the developers intended. Embers from nearby fires were also very impressive, appearing to float in many different planes.

The 3D Vision 2 system also supports 3D Blu-rays, allowing you to view such titles in full 3D if your movie software supports it. Unfortunately we didn’t have any 3D Blu-rays to hand at the time of review. At least, none that our Blu-ray drive would actually read.

Conclusion

When it comes to 144Hz monitors it’s often the case that responsiveness is very good but image quality verges on poor. People often dismiss this as a limitation of TN panel technology. Whilst that is a contributing factor, much more of the poor performance is down to how the panels themselves are set up. The AOC g2460Pg uses the same AUO 24” 144Hz panel we’ve seen on many models before, but put it to much better use. Whilst the image was a bit garish out of the box, this was largely down to the default brightness being extremely high – not uncommon on modern monitors. Once the brightness was lowered and some slight tweaks were made to colour channels we were presented with a good palette of rich colours. Although it wasn’t required to please the colorimeter, the monitor does include alternative gamma modes which some users will wish to make use of. The colour gamut of the monitor was also a pleasant surprise as it offered the most complete sRGB coverage we’ve seen on a 24” 144Hz model.

Although contrast was nothing to scream from the rooftops about, it was as good as you’d hope for from a TN panel. And perhaps equally importantly, there weren’t any funky gamma enhancements in place that would create an artificial and flooded look in dark areas, completely breaking the atmosphere. The overall look to the image was therefore quite appealing, although we would personally have preferred to see the use of a lighter matte screen surface. This is something that is increasingly seen on models with VA, AHVA, IPS and PLS panels and is long overdue for TN panels as well.

As for responsiveness, it was – in a word – excellent. The foundation was set for a very solid responsiveness performance with highly adjustable and well-implemented pixel overdrive. This provided fast pixel responses that allowed optimal 144Hz performance without introducing the unsightly inverse ghosting that really puts some users off other monitors. Another key consideration is input lag – which was nice and low on this model and absolutely nothing to worry about. The icing on the cake, though, was the G-SYNC capability of the monitor. This worked exactly as advertised, making those dips in frame rate much less painful by eliminating the stuttering and tearing that comes as part of the territory at fixed refresh rates.

We also liked the addition of ULMB, which did its thing as well – massively reducing motion blur. We wouldn’t say the implementation was perfect and it isn’t something that everyone would want to use due to the flickering, reduced brightness and lack of G-SYNC when it is active. The pixel overdrive was boosted a bit too much and is not adjustable with ULMB enabled, providing inescapable inverse ghosting in places. It appears from our testing of other ULMB monitors that this is fairly unavoidable and something that Nvidia themselves tweaks rather than the monitor manufacturers. One issue we came across that isn’t always seen was a strange mobile interlacing line behaviour at 120Hz with ULMB enabled. This wasn’t present at 100Hz or 85Hz with ULMB enabled and was not there in the normal operating mode of the monitor. We actually found the technology very effective at 100Hz and found the 100fps target for optimal performance there quite doable on our system with decent settings, though.

So here we have a monitor that is a notch above many other 144Hz models when it comes to image quality but also does a really fine job when it comes to responsiveness. So it’s all good ‘under the hood’. But what about externally? The monitor quite proudly identifies itself as a G-SYNC capable model with a painted-on light green stripe on the bottom bezel, a removable light green cable tidy and G-SYNC and Nvidia logos at various places. Not everyone will like these unique touches, but we found them quite inoffensive and sort of warmed to them. The overall build quality of the monitor was quite similar to others in its class – quite decent with a fully ergonomic stand, in other words. If you can stomach the price, which we feel is quite reasonable for what’s on offer here, then this makes one fine 24” gaming monitor.

 

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