Corsair K60 RGB PRO Low Profile Keyboard Review

Sep 27, 2024 03:14 PM By  Ben Trudeau

No worries! I kind of worded that in a confusing way, but yes DSC comes from the source side. The TV can only accept 4k @ 240Hz signals from sources that use DSC because of bandwidth limitations. The QN900D is likely using the same panel as the QN900C. We’ve seen other TVs this year that have a 120Hz panel but are capable of 240Hz at lower resolutions, such as the QM851G. That TV has a 120Hz panel but achieves 1080p @ 240Hz. The QN900D is doing something very similar. Despite it having a 120Hz panel, it’s using Dual Line Gate (DLG) technology to achieve 4k @ 240Hz. I’d highly recommend checking out this article from HDTVtest that talks about this in more detail. Thanks for reaching out, and I hope that helps!

Thanks you Ben for further commenting on this! It is a bit confusing with you citing HDTVTest as a source, and they citing you as their source, with FlatPanelsHD in between :)

Just to be absolutely sure there is not room for misunderstandings here, you have actually confirmed yourselves that the panel can operate at 240 hz for lower resolutions, ie not just that it can accept it as an input signal, Samsung has said it etc? That would be great if that was actually the case! Sorry for being such a nag about this, have been burned by Samsung claims in the past and just want to make sure this time :)

Thanks again.

Edit:

Here seems to be a more detailed explanation of the DLG tech https://inf.news/en/digital/a1ab06a84a8a11d0cfaae5ced61987c9.html

Sep 25, 2024 06:48 PM By  Ben Trudeau

Hey there. There’s no shenanigans going on with the TV’s 240Hz capabilities. You can game at 240fps in 4k on this TV if you have a powerful enough computer to handle that. The TV has a native 120Hz refresh rate, so it achieves this by using Display Stream Compression (DSC) technology. We’re not totally sure why the input lag is a bit higher than the QN900C, but it’s very possible that Samsung added some extra processing to the TV that drives those numbers up a bit. We’re currently very busy working through our backlog of TVs that need to be tested, but we’ll see if we can look into the dithering problem sometime in the future. Thanks!

Thanks for responding!

I must admit I don’t really understand the answer given though, “ The TV has a native 120Hz refresh rate, so it achieves this by using Display Stream Compression (DSC) technology.” DSC is used on the input side to be able to send more data using compression, while the native refresh rate is what the panel is actually capable of. Based on what you say, that should indicate the the QN900D has the same panel as the QN900C (since everything else seem to be the same) as the QN900C I believe has the same panel as the QN900B, and that only the processing of the input signal has changed. Ie, that even though the TV can actually accept 240 hz input signal but the panel itself isn’t really 240 hz but instead 120 hz.

This is the main reason for me asking since it seems a bit weird that a new panel would basically have the exact metrics of the old one, only that it had somehow become 240 hz instead of 120 hz, and yet does not seem to actually have any improved input lag etc. Please note that I am not in any way claiming to know this as a fact, more that I am really looking for a confirmation as Samsung in the past has been known for some creative engineering, mostly done in the marketing department :)

Thanks.

The sorting feature seems broken for comments, even if I select “newest first” i still get oldest first, and also, the selection menu itself seem to break once you have made the first selection. I’m using latest Firefox on Windows BTW.

(When I posted this, ie a postback, the comments actually got sorted correctly but perhaps it should not be a requirement to post in order to sort :) )

Sep 16, 2024 12:23 PM By  Adam Babcock

It’s still visible, you can see the grid in the gray uniformity photo. Doesn’t look like there’s much improvement here at all, unfortunately.

Hi Adam and thanks for a nice review,

Could you please confirm if the panel itself in the QN900D is actually capable of 240 hz or if the TV can just accept 240 hz as an input? That should of course be the case but Samsung has been know for some shenanigans in the past so better safe than sorry. The input lag measurements strangely does not seem to be much better than the QN900C (and even worse in some measurements) which is kind of odd with a better panel and improved “electronics”. Not that the input lag on either is bad though.

Please also note the discussion here lately on how to solve the dithering problem when uses as a PC monitor, that could be helpful to both test and include in the review perhaps.

Thanks.

Sep 18, 2024 09:13 PM By PixelzPerDegree

13

Yes! That worked. PC mode, Game mode, and enable G Sync for all windows. Dude, I’ve been living with this for about a year. Now it’s…. FIXED. It’s like a new TV. I’m welling up. Just want to say, Thank You!

Glad to hear you got it working!

@Rtings Please consider testing this yourself and perhaps include instructions on it in your reviews etc as there seem to be quite a few of us wanting to use these 8K TVs as PC monitors and the solution to get this working is not all that obvious. You already have a section about the usage as PC monitor and text quality, so it would seem like a no brainer to include this as well.

Edit:

For people interested in using an 8K TV (or one of the very few 8K monitors) for PC usage, I recommend having a look here as well https://hardforum.com/threads/where-are-the-8k-monitors.2027385 for some additional information and discussion. AVSForum is also a good source, but focus there is mainly for using it as TV.

My extremely poor photographic skills sadly makes the image look way more blurry than IRL as well as introducing what looks like moire, shadow text and blooming, please ignore that and just look at the dithering or rather lack thereof.

https://i.imgur.com/1mIRiyr.png

As I recall it, as strange as it seems, the key to success besides the usual PC mode stuff etc is to enable GSync but not enable “Display specific settings”. The firmware on the Samsungs is a bit flaky so it could be that you have to try it more than once to get it working. If it is not working, it will basically look as in your screen shots (ie terrible).

If you actually want to have GSync enabled for gaming and does not want to change it each time, I recommend using one of the non 16:9 aspect ratios and have it enabled there and you can quickly switch between them. From what I remember, this should then reintroduce the dithering again which isn’t a problem for gaming.

Please note that there could be differences with the 700B and the 900-series, never had one of those but did have the QN900B for a while and the fix above worked there as well.

@Rtings Have you been able to confirm if the panel itself is actually 240 hz or if it in fact, as has been suggested numerous times online, only accepts a 240hz input signal but the actual panel is in fact still only 120 hz? Most things seem to suggest that the QN900D is actually using the same panel as the QN900C, with added CPU power.

Sep 12, 2024 09:02 PM By PixelzPerDegree

13

Total FAIL on RTINGS part. Do you realize that the 900 series hasn’t been TRUE 8K HDR 10+? Samsung 900 series used DITHERING for all of their 900 series through the C. Anybody using the 65 inch 8K as a computer monitor (the only real application of an 8K TV) would have realized this horrendous DITHERING problem of all 8K Samsung TVs. WHY AREN’T YOU COVERING THIS? This means that each pixel is NOT emitting 10 bit color… OR EVEN 8 BIT COLOR! This is obvious because in Samsung’s supposed 8K TVs it takes 2 pixels averaged to make one color for an image. What this looks like when using one of these FAKE 8K TVs as a computer monitor when sitting close enough to take advantage of the 8K display, is a checkboard pattern that very visibly means images look terrible, text has a checkboard pattern around each character that ruins the whole purpose of getting an 8K in the first place. What’s the point of an 8K TV if it takes 2 pixels averaged in color to make the image? And this checkboard pattern is visible until you move so far back that it’s the effective resolution of a 4K TV? If the TV uses DITHERING, there’s no point in getting an 8K. You people have to get your act together and let us know about this kind of stuff. Especially since it’s virtually impossible to even view the 900D anywhere. Best Buy doesn’t carry them in their stores so for most people hoping they are using TRUE 8K with 10 BIT color per pixel is to buy it, hook it up, then be crushed in disappointment that they’re still using DITHERING. Samsung should be sued for their fraudulent 10+BIT 8K claims. 8K Dithering where each pixel only has 6 bit color requiring 2 to make a 10 bit color image is NOT 8k and every 8K TV you cover should say if the colors per pixel is actually 10 bit, or 6 bit per pixel color like Samsung has been getting away with for years. I expected more from RTINGS. SOOO Disappointed. Oh Canada!?!

This is true out of the box but not true with the correct settings, at least assuming you use an Nvidia card (probably an AMD one as well but don’t have one myself so have not tested this). It is a bit tricky to get it to work though and as I only use my QN900C as a computer monitor, mostly for work, so I have not bothered with HDR at all, but text in SDR is almost as good as my 27" 4K IPS and as good as a 32" 4K IPS. I am myself sensitive to text quality and would never have use the QN900C as a PC monitor if it could not handle text properly.

There is however a problem in dark mode when looking at text at more extreme angels, due to the wide view angle layer or whatever it is called (which is however mostly a good thing as it gives you much better viewing angles in general than most if not all other VA displays). More on this in the comments for the QN900C and QN900B reviews. I assume this is true for QN900D as well even though I have not myself seen one IRL yet.

Apr 26, 2024 01:59 PM By  Dylan Crete

Hello! Yes this is something we looked into. Our “supported resolutions” section of the review should clear things up. But let me know if you’re looking for something different!

I believe that you misunderstood the question here, it was about the refresh rate of the panel and if the 144 hz mode is fake (ie panel only being 120 hz). Thanks.

@Rtings Have you been able to test what panel is actually in this TV and if it is in fact only 120 hz? It seems like Samsung is using “software based processing” to create “fake” refresh rates above 120 hz but the panel is actually only 120 hz.

Mar 19, 2024 04:18 PM By  Ben Trudeau

We used the shorter cable during testing. It’s very hard to determine what causes the blackouts. There are some reports of people having more success with the shorter cable, but there are also reports that people had dropouts with both cables. There are also reports of people having no issues at all. It could be a bug with the current firmware or a hardware issue that only affects some units. Since we didn’t have any issues during testing, we can’t say for sure.

There definitly seems like Samsung has made some updates to the QN900C because this time around, there has been no dropouts at all even with the long One Connect Box cable. I also noticed that the packaging was a bit different now compared with when I tried out the QN900C for the first time 6 months ago.

Thanks. I am currently trying out the QN900C actually and while the problem is there, it is only really noticable outside of the center area.

On a similar note, would you say a visible FALD grid on white and blue backgrounds is something you just would have to live with or that there are units that does not actually have it? Based on the TVs construction, it would seem reasonable that they all might have it.

For the QN900B your wrote

“When looking at light text on a dark background, the TV’s anti-reflective coating causes a duplicate image when viewed off-angle. It’s not noticeable if you’re sitting directly in front of the TV, and there’s no dithering with shadow details.”

but that does not seem to be mentioned on this review even though it AFAIK has the same filter.

Is the problem still there on the QN900C as well?

Thanks for a good response.

It would be nice if you also did test with game mode and VRR enabled and commented on it removing the dithering effect to make text much clearer. At least I think that it would be true for this TV as well as it is for most Samsung TVs.

“With the input label set to ‘PC’, it flickers at 120Hz in both ‘Entertain’ and ‘Graphic’ modes, but it flickers at 960Hz with blips of 120Hz when in ‘Game’ mode.”

Does this mean that with input label set to PC mode and Game mode, it is 960 hz or that with input label set to PC, it will always flicker at 120 hz?

How come you give this a 9.9 score for this when most modes infact flicker at 120 hz according to your descriptions?

Thanks.

@Rtings Does this monitor have increased input lag when doing HDR or when FALD is enabled like many MiniLED monitors have? Thanks.

Mar 24, 2024 12:23 PM By MayImilae

8

Ooooh you must mean integer scaling / nearest neighbor pixel mapping. That’s still upscaling but whatever. Yea integer scaling is unfortunately not a feature of this TV. Fortunately, it doesn’t really matter for 4k. It would be nice for 1080p and 720p content though, especially with all the pixels available on the 8k panel.

Thanks. Well, I mean what I wrote, to disable any form of scaling so that what you send to the monitor is what you get. Like if you send a 4K signal, ¾ of the screen would be black. I chated with Samsungs support who claimed that there Smart View/Multi view or whatever it is called would do 4K@144hz but I have doubts and it still would not really be the same thing. This would have been a dream PC monitor if you could only disable the scaling.

Mar 24, 2024 07:07 AM By MayImilae

8

I own a QN900C. You can run the display at 8k60 without upscaling. Or just disable the fancy upscaling features outright if you want to.

Thanks but the problem is that AFAIK you can’t disable the upscaling. If you send it an 8K signal, there is no need for upscaling as the panel is 8K. If you still think know how to disable the upscaling, please share and prove me wrong :)

Were you able to find a way to disable the upscaling? This would be very useful when using this as a PC monitor. AFAIK, it can’t be disabled which kind of ruins it as only running it at 8K would give you 1:1 pixel mapping.

Dec 21, 2023 02:09 PM By  Adam Babcock

Yeah, we also had no issue with the 144Hz mode on the S95C. We don’t know why there’s a difference between them, it’s most likely a bug with the current firmware on the QN900C.

Did you use the long or short cable for the One Connect Box when you tried this? Based on you pictures it seems to be the short one with the OCB mounted to the back, from what I have heard the problems with dropouts are much more noticable with the long cable.

At least with my 3090, 144 hz has been supported even serveral months back when I bough (and then returned) the QN900C. Supported does not mean actually working more than a few minutes though…

Feb 14, 2024 01:12 AM By Bross

2

Game->Screen Size? It’s very bad. The highest option is 27" Wide (16:9) with black bars all around the image. Black bars aside when I set this option and set to any resolution (including 2560x1440) it looks very bad, no where near native. I’d call that 16:9 mode unusable. Samsung seem to have very bad monitor firmwares. I was expecting to be able to game at 240 Hz, on 32" inches on my NVIdia, but there is no such option.

Yes there is, you just need to disable scaling in NVidia CP and then select 4K as resolution and you would get a 4@240hz 32" (with black bars of course). No need to mess with that buggy screen size option.

@Rtings Despite commenting on the wrong post I think, that video appears to be of the B3 rather than the C3.

• The vertical viewing angles are, like, really bad. Most of the time I’m using my computer, I’m looking at a terminal, which is a huge chunk of solid color. When my eyes are level with the top of the screen, the bottom half of the screen’s colors are visibly off. When level with the center of the screen, the edges are visibly off. Like, there’s a visible gradient as the viewing angle goes even slightly off-axis

Agreed. I usually run Visual Studio in Dark mode but with the Neo G9 57" I had to switch to light mode as I just as you got so frustrated with the gradients. And at least vertically, there is no sweet spot where you would not notice it unless you have it quite far away from you, but that would mean you had to use scaling. Local dimming setting does not really affect this either as it is due to poor viewing angles of the panel itself.

What about with PC Mode enabled, is game mode still actually required to lower input lag at 120 hz? It used to be that with PC Mode enabled, game mode did not make a difference, at least not with regards to input lag but there has been some discussions if that still holds true. Thanks.

Nov 28, 2023 08:29 PM By tentes

180

https://www.rtings.com/discussions/uKs97OdnOa7D7dS4/review-updates-samsung-odyssey-oled-g9-g95sc#comment-76296

Thanks, but is the value actually used at all if the textbox is greyed out?

From the review

“These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see it in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off. However, if the text issues bother you, you can try using the free Better ClearType Tuner. With Font Antialiasing set to ‘Grayscale’ and Contrast on ‘1000’, the text clarity is much better, as you can see here in Windows 11.”

Is this really true as at least for me, the contrast textbox is greyed out unless you are in RGB or BGR mode with BCT?

Thanks.

Nov 23, 2023 01:44 PM By  Eric Tyndall

Fortunately, the brightness drop is less than the 30/50 setting would indicate! Here are the pre-1023 firmware results for SDR brightness: 10% window sustained: 436 nits 50% window sustained: 307 nits 100% window sustained: 263 nits So for fullscreen white, the OLED G9 was a little brighter (263 vs 241 nits currently), but this came with the problem that ABL was active depending on the window size. It’s still possible to use Peak Brightness by turning Windows HDR on or by sending a HDR signal in a game.

Thanks for the clarification!

Nov 22, 2023 03:41 PM By  Eric Tyndall

improwise, Excellent observation! The ‘Color Accuracy (Pre-Calibration)’ box shows the brightness of the out-of-the-box picture mode, and in the G9’s case, the brightness slider was at 30 out of 50… pre-firmware update. I just tested the monitor now (firmware 1023) and full-screen white brightness is at ~241 nits with the slider set at 50/50. It’s likely that Samsung intended 240 nits to be the max brightness, which is probably why they removed the Peak Brightness setting. All the other picture modes, RPG, RTS, FPS, Sports, etc., are dimmer and have very cool color temperatures. Even outside of game mode, which limits the monitor to 120 Hz, none of the picture settings can achieve higher than 240 nits fullscreen white. We’ll look into including information about brightness in uncalibrated modes, but we generally want to show brightness numbers with a semi-accurate picture.

Thank you! This basically mean that the G9 now can do max brightness the same as used to be the 30 out of 50 brightness, right? That is a serious degradation of brightness, about 40%, and perhaps something that needs to be highlighted even more.

I don’t see that presenting numbers in calibrated and non calibrated modes are wrong, perhaps you only need to adjust the titles of those sections as “ Color Accuracy (Pre-Calibration) ” at least to me would mean that unless interested in colors, I would skip it.

Thank again for retesting this.

Nov 16, 2023 03:35 PM By  Nicholas Di Giovanni

No you are correct, as we test the brightness after calibration because we want to see how bright it gets with an accurate image. The closest brightness measurement before calibration that you get in the review is in the pre-calibration box.

Thanks. Does this refer to the “Color Accuracy (Pre-Calibration)” box? If so, I think you might want to consider the name of that box, as the current name at least for me, isn’t the obvious choice to go looking for brightness numbers. And when looking there now, that does not mention the actual pre-calibrated brightness from what I can see (and the help text also indicated that max number is usually 100). I would suggest that you make it much more obvious what is actually the max brightness you can get as I find it a bit misleading currently in your reviews (assuming the look the same).

Nov 14, 2023 01:49 PM By  Nicholas Di Giovanni

As you can see in the Color Calibration box, the accuracy before calibration is still impressive, so you’ll get an accurate image. As for the brightness, we measured a brightness of 243 nits with the brightness setting at 30 (max is 50), meaning it should get brighter at the max setting, and closer to 300 nits. I hope this helps!

Thanks for responding. This is a bit confusing as if I remember correctly, neither the SDR Brightness or HDR Brightness sections mentions this? At least for me, I don’t care that much about correct colors (unless they are way off) but more about max brightness, so I would normally skip those sections of the review.

If you disregard color calibration, how things should like etc and just want to get maximum brightness out of this monitor, what would that be then? As I understand it, the meassurements your list in the review are after calibration etc. Thanks.

Oct 19, 2023 03:03 PM By  Nicholas Di Giovanni

You can see the max brightness that we last tested in SDR Brightness, which we tested after Samsung released firmware 1023 in August. With this update, you can no longer enable the Peak Brightness setting in SDR, which is why the brightness is worse than with past firmware.

Thanks. And we know things has not changed since that update then (for the better or for the worse)?

What is currently the max SDR brightness on the OLED G9? AFAIK, Samsung gimped it even further via updates and I was not to impressed with the brightness to begin with (compared to what I had expected from a Gen 2 QD-OLED).

Aug 16, 2023 02:44 PM By  Adam Babcock

Thanks for the feedback. I made a judgement call when writing the S95C to not mention it because I felt that it wasn’t as much of an issue as it was when the S95B came out. With the S95B, this was a big unexpected thing with the first QD-OLEDs, but whether or not it was even an issue proved to be highly subjective. Yes, the blacks are raised in a bright room when the TV is off, but this is also true of most TVs to a certain degree. Even internally, only about 50% of our team noticed it or was bothered by it. Given that community sentiment seems to agree that, for the most part, this isn’t really an issue, I decided not to mention it. If more users like you write in and feel that I’ve made a mistake on this, then we’ll definitely go in and update the review to mention it.

Sorry, but if Rtings is to be considered a trustworthy source for reviews, arguments like “didn’t notice it” just isn’t good enough. I have several friends and family that don’t seem to notice that their LCD monitors/TVs have poor black levels, will those monitors get highest score for black levels as well then?

BTW, at first, I didn’t notice this on my OLED G9, well, at least until I put a C2 right next to it at which point it became very obvious and continued to be until I returned the OLED G9 (not only for that reason).

Kudos for being honest about this though, that in itself requires a gold star.

Jul 17, 2023 04:50 PM By  Nicholas Di Giovanni

Hey, this is a great question. We take different factors into consideration for our recommendations, including price and availability. The INNOCN is currently unavailable to buy, which is why we had to remove it, and while the Cooler Master is available, its availability is also up and down at times. On top of that, the Cooler Master has many bugs, so while it has many strengths, there are also those known downsides. Let me know if you have other questions!

BTW, at least in Sweden the M9 is 30-40% more expensive than the GP27U also.

Jul 17, 2023 04:50 PM By  Nicholas Di Giovanni

Hey, this is a great question. We take different factors into consideration for our recommendations, including price and availability. The INNOCN is currently unavailable to buy, which is why we had to remove it, and while the Cooler Master is available, its availability is also up and down at times. On top of that, the Cooler Master has many bugs, so while it has many strengths, there are also those known downsides. Let me know if you have other questions!

Thanks for responding. The GP27U is at least in the EU a stock item and has been for as long as I can remember. Don’t own it myself but it seems like better than the Sony in every regard, something you seem to agree on in your review, so it seems a bit weird removing that from the list in favor of what seems to be a inferior monitor in most regards.

How come the GP27U dropped out as there does not seem to be another similar monitor with the same “multi purpose” strenghts? Especially as the INNOCN was dropped because they are unavailable? Thanks.

I own four RS 175 (for night time family viewing in old appartment) and neither has this problem according to me and rest of family. Perhaps a faulty unit?

Yes, it is strange and it would be helpful if Rtings could comment on this. Now, I don’t have an opinion of my own here as I have yet to even see the S95B IRL, but saying that good text handling is important for the score and that the text handling is bad, and still give out almost a perfect score seems a bit strange Something got to give.

Now, the general consensus seems to be that the LG is slightly better in this regard, and even as someone having used several LG OLEDs as PC monitors, I would never give them anything above maybe 5-6 compared to a good IPS when it comes to text rendering. Seems like they have only reviewed it as a PC Gaming monitor when it comes to the score, which might be fine, but then it should be made much clearer.