TV vs Monitor for GAMING
For gaming, your display is your window into the virtual world, so it’s pretty important to use a good one. In this video I want to walk you through the age-old debate – TV, or monitor? There are pros and cons to both, so coupled with my rather thorough testing with my very own open source response time tool, let me walk you through which is for you!
For arguably most people, TVs have a bunch of obvious advantages. The size, and the fact you almost certainly already have one are the big two. For most people, that makes it the obvious choice – just hook up a console or a PC, hell even an NVIDIA Shield and stream your games, whatever, and kick back on the couch and enjoy. The size helps with that too, generally being in the 50 to 60 inch range these days. Admittedly you do tend to sit quite far from them so that size doesn’t often engulf your vision, but it’s hard to argue it isn’t an enjoyable place to be.
The biggest downsides to TVs as gaming displays is that they aren’t built from gaming. Especially if you didn’t buy your TV with gaming in mind, or you just didn’t spend too much on it anyway, there is a very good chance your TV is pretty naff for all the usual gaming related metrics. Things like response times, which describe how fast the pixels can change colour, and input lag, which describes how long an input takes to show up. Some TVs do have a game mode that can help to some degree with this, and newer TVs in particular, especially the higher end selection, do tend to have some pretty impressive game modes, but odds are your TV is more like mine. I have a Hisense 55 inch 4K TV that was around £300, and a newer version is still available for basically the same price, but with more annoying “smarts” inside.
So, how does this budget TV fare? Not well. Looking at the response time results you’ll notice all that red. The sea of red. Yeah, that’s pretty bad. With highs of 38 milliseconds, that is just painfully slow. Interestingly though, 63% of transitions did fit within the fairly long 16.7 millisecond refresh rate window, meaning there shouldn’t be toooo much ghosting, and looking at the high speed footage we can see that is the case. There’s very little ghosting – that’s old frames still on screen while the newest frame is on screen at the same time – although it’s clear just how slow the panel is when seeing that it takes the full frame time for the last frame to go away and for the newest to be drawn. This does mean you end up with a less-than-ideal experience for sure.
By comparison, an equivalently priced gaming monitor, like this Asus XG27ACS, fairs much, much better with an average response time somewhere around 4 milliseconds, and with 87% of the transitions falling within the much, much shorter refresh rate window of just 5.6 milliseconds. That means motion on the monitor is considerably smoother, and a lot sharper too thanks to the panel’s ability to actually draw new frames at a good pace. The refresh rate difference is also something to keep in mind. While some newer and higher end TVs can offer 120Hz modes, gaming monitors really tend to START from 144Hz, and depending on your budget and preferences, go up to 540Hz these days. Really a 160Hz, 180Hz like this one, or maybe 240Hz panel might be best for most people, but at least you have the option. Odds are though your TV is 60Hz – like mine is – which means motion is even more stilted and blurry to your eye. The faster the refresh rate, the smoother your experience and the sharper the image will look, especially in motion. For more competitive games – say like COD, Siege, or Fortnite – that is likely a pretty big deal. For more casual games like platformers, simulation games – including racing games – it isn’t quite as important, although it’s still a massive benefit.
The other, potentially even more key con for TVs is the input lag. That can make playing games actively difficult – you press a button and it takes an age to then show you that action on screen. It makes timing actions difficult – I know this because we used to play Overcooked on my TV, and I’d regularly end up dropping food, falling off the map, or missing throws, all because the TV took too long to show new frames. Now a lot of TVs, including mine, do have game modes, and from my testing it does seem to help. With no game mode enabled OSRTT reckons you’ll get around 55.6 milliseconds of on-display latency, which is dreadful. With game mode on that drops to 39 milliseconds, which is… still dreadful. For context, this Asus monitor takes on average just 3 milliseconds to show you an input, which is right in line with almost all other gaming monitors I’ve tested. And bare in mind that these figures are from OSRTT’s very isolated test. Add in latency from a controller, a console and a game and you’re likely north of 100 milliseconds on the TV, even with game mode on! Now it is worth noting that some TVs do have amazing game modes that don’t add nearly as much latency as mine does, and if you are buying a TV with gaming in mind, finding one with a good game mode is highly recommended, but if you already have a TV, well at least you’re going to be well informed on what it’s doing!
These figures themselves don’t say what it’s actually like to game on this TV, at least not fully. For the right kind of game – Helldivers 2 is a personal favourite – it’s still a perfectly decent gaming experience. It’s pretty easy to notice the added latency which makes aiming and even moving or picking up ammo more difficult, but it’s still a great time. The big screen, comfy sofa and often much better sound system makes it really enjoyable. For a more competitive game like Siege, it isn’t quite as fun. The mix of slow response times, slow refresh rate, and slow input lag get in the way a fair bit more than they do in a more relaxed game. For that, I would much rather be playing on the monitor. That feels smooth, fast and responsive. It’s much easier to hit targets, aim, move, just everything is easier. The monitor gets in your way an awful lot less.
There are few other ways that, in general, monitors make for a better gaming experience. One of those is adaptive sync – also known as variable refresh rate, Freesync or G-SYNC. Some TVs do support adaptive sync over HDMI, but it’s pretty rare. Monitors on the other hand almost always support one of the forms of VRR. It’s pretty rare to find a gaming monitor that doesn’t these days! The benefit to adaptive sync is that the monitor only refreshes when your graphics card has finished drawing a new frame. That’s important, because otherwise you get what’s called tearing. Basically you get parts of frames drawn at different times, and especially with fast motion that is painfully obvious and really uncomfortable.
Of course, monitors have their own drawbacks too. You are much more likely to be buying one specifically for gaming, rather than already having a TV, and they are only as “smart” as the device that’s connected. Now that might be a good thing – you can just as easily watch movies on Netflix or videos like this on Youtube on a PC as you can on a TV – arguably easier in fact – but it’s likely to be a solo experience. It’s also pretty likely smaller, and so needs a dedicated space – normally a desk – to use it. Again, that might not be a problem for you, but compared to the existing space you likely have for a TV and couch, it’s a factor to consider.
Realistically, which works best for you depends on your circumstances. Do you have a great TV already and just want to kick back and play some fun games? Great! Do you want to sweat real hard on COD? Get a monitor. Want to have your own space for everything from gaming to media? Probably get a monitor. Oh, and if you’re interested, the monitors I’ve tested have been just as, if not more, colour accurate, colour rich, and just as bright. Like my Hisense TV nits 380 nits at most, whereas this Asus monitor hits 450 nits. It’s also a lot more uniform – one of the things filming my TV made clear was just how bad my TV actually looks for uniformity. Here’s what the SpyderX2 reckons – up to 26% less light on the edges – that’s 100 nits less on the corners. That’s terrible.
Anyway, that’s a look at why you might want to game on a TV, or why a monitor might be a better fit. Of course, I’d love to hear what you think in the comments down below!
