12 Year old monitor vs a 2023 Monitor

This is my first gaming monitor – a HANNSG HH221DPB. I bought it in January of 2012, making this as near as makes no difference 12 years old. It’ll be a teenager next year! It wasn’t much – it was the most cost effective option I could get my hands on, setting me back around £90 at the time. It’s a 1080p, 60 hertz, I think TN panel, with a claimed 5 millisecond response time, 250 nits of peak brightness, and a whopping TWO inputs! Those being DVI and VGA. This is what I picked back then, but something like this AOC Q24G2A is what I’d pick today. It is a little more expensive, even when accounting for inflation, but it’s such a leap forward that I think it’s worth the extra £50 or so. So, let me show you what’s changed in 12 years…

First off, I should make it clear that this bad boy hasn’t held up perfectly. Even at 100% brightness, my SpyderX reports just 80 nits of peak brightness. It is comically dim. While I can’t say for certain that it would have hit 250 nits when new – there’s only one review I could find of this thing from the time and it’s… sparse with testing. The reviewer notes that “the backlight was a bit duller than other monitors we’ve tested”, so perhaps it couldn’t reach that even at the time. Still, 80 nits makes this a somewhat hilarious comparison. It’s also worth noting that HANNSG never specifically marketed this as a gaming monitor, but there wasn’t exactly a slew of budget gaming monitors available at the time, so this is what I gamed on for a fair while.

With that said, just looking at spec for spec how far we’ve come in terms of fairly budget monitors, back then you got 1080p at 22 inches, at just 60 hertz, all on a frankly dreadful TN panel. Viewing angles are non-existent, even if we take the brightness claim at face value, 250 nits is still pretty weak, and even if you take the 5 millisecond response time claim at face value – which you really, really shouldn’t – that’s still a little on the slow side. Now look at the new one – that has excellent viewing angles, 400 nits of peak brightness, and a 4 millisecond response time claim I’m much more inclined to believe. I mean it’s still wrong, but it’s a lot, lot closer. 

Let’s look at some actual test results. The one that surprised me the most was the colour gamut coverage and accuracy – the old HANNSG hit pretty much 100% of the sRGB colour space, while while not all that impressive by modern standards, it functionally matches the Q24G2A and is pretty remarkable for the time. The colour accuracy was also a surprise, as despite not even being powered on for a good couple years at this point, it still came out with an average DeltaE of just 1.79, and a maximum of 3.9. That’s really quite impressive – especially since it can’t get past 80 nits! Despite its meagre brightness, the best contrast ratio I could squeeze out was around 500:1 – for some context, the AOC Q24G2A on its lowest brightness setting runs at 70 nits, and that had a 710:1 contrast ratio at that brightness. Despite that better contrast – at full brightness around 900:1 – the accuracy is remarkably similar to the old HANNSG, at a DeltaE average of 1.3 and a max of 4.22. 

One thing that definitely has improved is response times. Even though this is a 60 hertz monitor which allows it to be remarkably slow and still acceptable, this still manages to have multiple frames of ghosting on screen at any one time. My open source response time tool reckons this old TN panel averaged out to around 24 milliseconds, with the worst result peaking at 39 milliseconds. That’s 42Hz and 26 Hz equivalent, respectively. That is just awful. Truly. Compare that to the Q24G2A which averaged just 4.8 milliseconds, and you’ll see just how far we’ve come. In fact, even more budget options like AOC’s 24G2ZU are still fairly close, running at 7.6 milliseconds on average, which is considerably better than 24 milliseconds! 

Something that appears to be about the same is actually the latency – specifically the on display latency. A good result here is all the test results being under one frame at the monitor’s refresh rate. For this 60 hertz monitor, that’d be no results higher than 16.7 milliseconds. And, much to my surprise, using both DisplayPort to DVI-D and HDMI to DVI-D cables, none of the results are higher than 16.7 milliseconds, with the average sitting predictably in the middle of the frame. I’m quite surprised, although the more I think about it, the less surprised I am. This display is devoid of almost all features – beyond displaying a frame anyway. There’s no overdrive, no adaptive sync, no backlight strobing. It’s just taking a new frame in, and drawing it on screen. Nice and simple.

And I suppose that brings us nicely onto what has changed the most, that being all the features. While playing on the HH221DPB I couldn’t help but notice the horrendous tearing. VSYNC didn’t help – arguably it made it worse. It’s something I’ve generally gone without noticing for a good few years now, thanks to adaptive sync – either NVIDIA’s implementation, that being G-SYNC, or AMD’s take, Freesync. Neither of these technologies were available in 2012 – GSYNC would launch in late 2013, although that was in fairly expensive and new 144 hertz gaming monitors like Asus’ VG248QE. Nowadays, some form of adaptive sync is included in pretty much every monitor, with some offering extra features like adaptive sync with HDR. While many non-gaming monitors still don’t offer overdrive controls, anything even remotely marketed to gamers often comes with three or four overdrive profiles to help push the panel to change colours faster. That makes a big difference for response times, and to your gaming experience. Everything goes from a blurry, smeary mess, to, well being realistic it’s still not exactly pristine like an OLED panel, but it is a noticeable difference. 

By far the biggest change in features is the refresh rates. 240 Hz 1080p monitors like the 24G2ZU are remarkably affordable, with 360 Hz options not all that far behind. Compared to 2012, where there were considerably fewer options, all with decently higher price tags. 144Hz and 165Hz have really become the standard for gaming monitors, and there are countless options from AOC, iiyama and plenty more for basically the same price as this HANNSG one, adjusted for inflation. If I had the option to buy one of those – or save a bit more cash and get something like this stunning 1440p 165Hz IPS option, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. In short, this is what I bought in 2012, but this is what I’d buy today.