**A Comparative Review: VA Panels in Gaming Monitors**

As a gamer, I recently found myself drawn to the world of No Man's Sky after experiencing subpar performance on my home VA panel. Initially, I didn't notice a significant difference between the two displays, which was surprising considering the noticeable smearing on my VA panel at home.

I got into my ship and flew around in No Man's Sky, eventually finding some smearing on the VA panel as well. The inconsistency of smearing intensity made me realize that the extent of black smearing on this Cooler Master VA panel varies greatly depending on the color palette of the scene. This realization was quickly confirmed while playing around in Photoshop.

**The Problem with VA Panels**

Some games smear more than others on this display, and considering the worst defending color palette, it's real bad news for people who like to use dark mode browsing – even just scrolling through a dark Mode YouTube feed on this Cooler Master VA looks pretty rough. This issue isn't limited to gaming; motion in general is also affected.

**The LG 32GK60: A Mid-Range Option**

I recently purchased the LG 32GK60 for several reasons, including its price point being between that of the Cooler Master and a Samsung display I tried earlier. It's one of the few VA panels available without a curve, which is quite rare.

**Motion Rendering Tests**

My first impression of this screen size (32 inches) was positive, although the pixel density at 1440p isn't great. However, we're not here to discuss that. Let's get into some games used earlier for motion rendering tests – aside from being in a scene where the monitor is offended by gray, the motion rendering is really bad on these displays.

**Comparing VA Panels**

I launched my spaceship and quickly realized that smearing was definitely a problem on this LG VA panel as well. The smearing is clear in footage, making it look like something out of a Bigfoot sighting video. While the smearing on this LG VA isn't quite as bad as the Cooler Master's, it still looks pretty terrible.

**Conclusion**

At the end of the day, both IPS and VA have one main shortcoming: IPS doesn't have particularly good contrast ratio, while VA has pretty terrible motion rendering. This is a bit of a shame for the latter; the former might not be as big a deal for everyone, but it's certainly noticeable.

I'm quite sensitive to this kind of thing, so maybe it won't affect you as much. If you have a VA panel that doesn't bother you about smearing or haven't noticed it at all, please let me know in the comments below.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enover the last while I've been living with some va-based gaming monitors and I quickly came to  the conclusion which is my opinion of course that VA monitors despite many strengths kind  of suck for gaming now if you want a very condensed reason why I think that here is  some motion being displayed on an IPS gaming monitor whereas here is some motion being  displayed on a va-based gaming monitor oh look at that smearing now as is always the case with  life it's not quite as straightforward as VA panels give you cholera and IPS panels  give you belly rubs so we're gonna have a closer look at gaming on VA panels in this  video to see how we feel about it by the end of it but before we get into that it's  time for a word from today's video sponsor that helped buy some monitors for the videoin a world dominated by garbage trash fans one fan Rises to the  top with uncompromised build quality and a dedication to Performance the  be quiet silent Wing fours lay waste to the competition no unicorn vomit gimmicks  just silent performance and dependable reliability the be quiet silent Wing Forceforeignexperience with a VA panel was earlier this year with a Samsung g302 and I was really  excited to try it out because VA solves one of the biggest shortcomings of ips displays  contrast ratio IPS displays really struggle to display deep black levels and VA is much  better at it although my excitement evaporated quickly for the g302 because the motion rendering  was very blurry which in a game like escape from tarkov which I was playing a lot back  then it makes it really difficult to spot enemy players far off in the distance because every  time you move everything just kind of blurs together it didn't look very good so I sent  it back quite quickly and replaced it with a 24 inch LG IPS display which despite having  very similar response time and refresh rate specs had motion rendering that didn't feel  like it was rubbing Vaseline into my eyes every time I touched my mouse and this was my first  disappointing experience with VA you can have black levels deeper than the Mariana Trench  but if the monitor has built-in heavy motion blur it's not going to be a good gaming displaynow my second experience with a VA panel was by far the longest and most disappointing and  it was with this Cooler Master gm34 cqargb what a beautiful name now don't get me wrong  this monitor has a beautiful image it's bright contrasty the colors pop and are really amazing  but that's with static images the moment that there's movement things all fall apart really  badly it has a pretty serious black smearing problem with movement that picture that I showed  you in the beginning of the video of the smury asteroid yes that one that was from this display  the smearing problem is so bad on this monitor that in the video where I first looked at it I  was convinced the panel was damaged in shipping but a lot of people commented on that video  saying nah that's just what VA looks like now in the displays menus there are a lot of settings  to help combat this things like overdrive and Clarity settings but that smeary asteroid picture  was with the best settings I could find for the monitor in terms of motion rendering having said  that it is better in some games than others Battlefield 5 for example doesn't have an  immediately obvious smearing problem at least depending on the map so despite having very  impressive response time and refresh rate specs this monitor has a really bad motion artifact  which after spending a month using this monitor as my primary gaming display I just couldn't get used  to it it's so distracting so I decided to go out and buy a comparable IPS alternative to this VA  Ultra wide so that they can battle it out it's a surprisingly light big monitor now for this video  I went out and bought this GN 850 by LG because aside from two characteristics it being an IPS  as opposed to a VA and it having a slightly less aggressive curve to it specs wise this monitor  is remarkably similar to that Cooler Master VA panel I've been using it's even got a nano  IPS panel compared to the quantum.va on the other monitor so it's like gimmick IPS versus gimmick VA  and first impressions were very positive yeah the motion is so much better than it is on the VA  panel like it is a remarkable difference between the two actually but remember earlier in the video  I said Battlefield 5 wasn't nearly the worst offender when it came to the smearing on the VA  panel so let's get to some other comparisons first I tried out some high contrast CS go with the IPS  display in its stock configuration compared to the VA panel in the best motion settings now  this is by no means a perfect test but it does help to illustrate the difference the VA panel  has a lot more overshoot and the edges of the gun is quite a bit more blurry and despite being  said to the same refresh rate and having similar response times to my eye in person the VA looked  a lot blurrier I then moved over to No Man's sky where initially subjectively I didn't notice much  of a difference between the two displays which I found really weird considering that I noticed  really bad smearing while using the VA panel at home so I got into my ship flew around a bit  it and eventually found some smearing on the VA and the inconsistency of the smearing intensity  in no man's sky made me realize something which I quickly confirmed playing around in Photoshop the  extent to the black smearing on this Cooler Master VA panel varies massively depending on the color  palette of the scene which is why some games smear more than others on this display and considering  the worst defending color palette it's real bad news for people who like to use dark mode browsing  even just scrolling through a dark Mode YouTube feed on this Cooler Master VA looks pretty rough  which shows it's not only a problem for gaming but don't get me wrong even motion that is in a  color palette that doesn't offend this monitor is still pretty bad looking but at least it doesn't  have that deep black smearing in it but is that the case for all VA monitors are they all good  unless you like movement and gray well to find out I guess I've gotta go buy another monitornow I also bought this LG 32 gk60 for a couple of reasons first off I wanted to display that price  wise landed between The Cooler Master and the Samsung display that I tried a while ago also  it is one of the few VA panels that I've seen around at the moment that isn't curved that's  that's quite rare for some reason so let's plug in this LG V8 Monitor and see if it's  any better now my first impression is actually that I really like this screen size 32 inches  awesome although this one's 1440p which you know the pixel density is not great but at 4K this  would be amazing anyway that's not really why we're here so let's get into some of the games  that we used earlier for motion rendering tests oh another player that's very rare  um anyway aside from that even even not in a scene where the monitor is offended by Gray's  ah the motion rendering is really bad on these displays bye player and after that excitement I  launched my spaceship and very quickly realized that the smearing was definitely a problem on  this monitor as well oh it's so bad and with this shot that looks like it's from footage of  a Bigfoot sighting there's the smearing clear as day having said that the smearing on this LG  VA isn't quite as bad as the smearing on that Cooler Master VA but honestly it still looks  pretty terrible so at the end of the day both IPS and VA each have one main shortcoming IPS doesn't  have particularly good contrast ratio whereas VA has pretty terrible motion rendering one of those  is a bit of a shame the other is a complete deal breaker at least to me now I am quite sensitive to  this kind of thing so maybe it's not going to be as big a deal for you let me know in the comment  section down below if you have a VA panel that you use for gaming where you don't really mind  about the smearing or haven't noticed all also I have seen some Hardware unboxed reviews of some  high-end new Samsung VA panels which apparently mostly solve the problem however I haven't had  any first-hand experience with either of those monitors so I can't really comment on that which  neatly brings me to the closing thoughts on this video something may seem very promising on paper  but it doesn't mean that it won't attack your eyes with dessert Forks the moment you get it  behind closed doors anyway until the next video thank you for watching bye thank you