So since my last video, I completely ripped my setup apart again because I wasn’t 100% happy with it because of its size, and screen burn issues that could happen after the warranty period ended, and it was for what it was. But the new monitor turned up, and it’s not OLED. Well at this point I feel like I’m the only one on YouTube right now that hasn’t been entirely satisfied with OLED tech. No, this time round I’ve gone Mini LED, because you still get your local dimming and super contrasty HDR, but without (hopefully) the screen burn issues. It’s the MSI MPG 274URDFW E16M which, quite frankly, is the most disgusting model number for any consumer electronic product like ever, but I suppose the question is again, am I impressed enough to keep it?
Well…. yeah sure, I am more impressed and happy with this than I was my last monitor, but am I completely 100% on it? No. And I know it sounds silly but the monitors again do not line up because the bottom bezel on the new E16M is so much skinnier than on my old monitor. However, for the slightly lower price, it’s definitely something I could get over. And noq I’ve gone the IPS route, it would be easy to get a second E16M and avoid all the issues with screen burn if I were to go the OLED route. My PC can be on for up to 15 hours or so a day if I work from home, and if my second monitor is sitting on a static desktop for most of that, then it could become a problem quite quickly. Anyway, this is all food for thought for the near future so in the meantime, let’s get on with talking about my experience with my new E16M gaming panel because I must say I am really having a great time with it, and in an unexpected way.
Having local dimming capabilities means that contrast ratios can be a lot wider, and I must say, after testing the OLED panel I’ve just had and now, the image quality achieved between the two to the naked eye is pretty negligible. Sure, the accuracy of OLED when it comes to dark and bright areas on screen is a lot more accurate, and Mini LED suffers from haloing around brighter areas, to me when playing my games, I’ve not noticed it in a massive way. Though there are settings to negate these issues, especially when using the monitor in its HDR mode. It comes with two settings Peak 400 and Peak 1000 with the latter producing a super bright image. Now in HDR, your brightness setting is locked, and you have to rely on your local and halo dimming settings. Local dimming set to Level 3 worked best for me as it produced the most comfortable-looking contrast difference. Set to Level 2 or 1, then highlights start to become really overexposed. However saying this, when I plugged my Lenovo work laptop into this monitor, I turned off all local dimming because it either made the image look far too contrasty on Level 1 and 2, or for some reason really washed out on Level 3. For halo dimming, I set it between 70 and 80 to keep that controlled. I am a fan of a bit of glow coming from bright areas of a scene. but if I turn off halo dimming completely, it becomes really messy. And for the most part, I’ve not really noticed any major issues with haloing in the games I do play anywway. Maybe I haven’t had enough dark scenes in them with smaller highlights to really notice.
I will say though games I think look absolutely fantastic. My go-to test with Ori and the Will of the Wisp? Wow, what a lovely game to play in HDR on this panel. And this is, to let you know, being played in the monitor’s 4K 160Hz mode. It’s got a 1080p 320Hz mode too, but I’ve got no real need for 1080p gaming as eSports aren’t really my thing outside of a bit of Overwatch, but 160Hz is more than fine for the types of games I play. It also features G-Sync and Freesync Premium compatibility through its adaptive sync tech which activates above 48Hz in its 4K mode and 180Hz in its 1080p mode. The Dual Mode setting is alright though if you have the need, and there’s nothing really to complain about, it’s a fast refresh rate with super smooth imagery and it performed well in games like CS2, but I bought this monitor for 4K resolutions at a decent framerate and the local dimming with HDR content, which I must say the monitor has exceeded my expectations like again in Battlefield 6.
To save a bit of time, it has an Overdrive mode, and throughout testing, I found that its Fast Overdrive mode is by far the best setting to use across the board with response time and overshoot. I used my OSRTT tool to test this, and at 4K 160Hz in its Normal Overdrive setting, I achieved an average initial time of 7.24 with a 40 percent in window, which isn’t great. The tool also failed to notice any kind of RGB overshoot in Normal overdrive, which I didn’t quite believe, and no matter what settings I changed on the monitor, it could not pick up any issues here. However, when upping the Overdrive setting to Fast, we saw some RGB overshoot creep in with an average error of 4.3, which is decent. Also, the Average Initial Time fell to 4.87, which isn’t too bad, but it only spent 43.33 percent in window. And finally, in its Faster Overdrive setting, the average initial time stayed the same, really though RGB overshoot increased to 12.0, which is still okay, but it isn’t perfect. Do let me know in the comments if you have had a different outcome to this. I’ve seen other reviews online of this panel claiming better results when it came to RGB overshoot, though I could not replicate them here.
During a ghosting test, there wasn’t any real difference between Normal and Fast Overdrive settings, but based on my results with the OSRTT tool, Fast would be the better option to go for. Faster, and even MPRT mode gave me some pretty solid ghosting and trails, which I did not want to see in game, and also if you’re playing eSports titles, then you’re going to need the fastest setting to ensure you’re shooting at the right thing.
I also wanted to mention using this panel in its SDR mode too, because I feel like local dimming looks nowhere near as good or effective as in HDR, but I guess I expected that? It performs like a great IPS monitor would. Just don’t expect the world from it would be my only advice. I would personally turn off Local Dimming in the settings for a uniform look if you’re using this monitor to consume SDR content. Though I must say, on my gaming rig, I do have my Windows HDR setting constantly switched on except when editing videos because I mainly game on this screen and do my day job anyway and turning it on and off constantly when switching between work and gaming is a faff. It’s not a bad monitor at all for work use and text is nice and sharp and clear. Using HDR when browsing online or for social media didn’t have much of an effect, and I wouldn’t think it would get in your way of working either. It’s not enough for me to kick off about it anyway. Also, just to warn you, the monitor can get bright, so if you’re finiding it a little difficult to use long term, get your HDR switched off and get the brightness down to about 50-60 for comfortable viewing in its SDR mode.
Colour accuracy to the naked eye isn’t bad either. There are a bunch of different image modes that you can run, but I have found the best settings are User or sRGB. Running my Datacolor Spyder X Elite, in the User image mode, it gave me 100% sRGB, 100% AdobeRGB, 96% P3 and 98% NTSC colour gamuts and an average Delta-E of 3.14. In sRGB, it gave me 97% sRGB, 72% AdobeRGB, 72% P3 and 67% NTSC colour gamuts and an average Delta-E of 1.35 which is significantly better than the User mode, however the gamuts fared worse. However, switching the User mode to HDR, gave me an average Delta-E of 1.49, which means this monitor’s User HDR mode super colour accurate, which is good because that’s how I play games most of the time.
I ran two different tests for its brightness and contrast settings, because of its local dimming capabilities, and with Local Dimming switched off, I achieved a max brightness in SDR of 515.5 nits with a contrast ratio of 990:1. However, switching the Local Dimming setting to Level 3, the max brightness hit 424.8 nits which is slightly dimmer, though the contrast ratio achieved hit 3,660:1 which is huge in comparison, making me think that the Level 3 setting shoutld really be used for most applications on this monitor, whether consuming HDR or SDR content.
Screen uniformity and Luminance uniformity I’m just going to touch upon because they were appalling across the board, which is to be expected really and definitely bad comparing to the OLED panel I had which was lovely. There were dark spots and light spots in both corners, and even with brightness uniformity switched on, it made no real difference. This, compared to my last OLED monitor, fared the worst when it came to results. Though in real time and while gaming, the faults with the E16M were not noticeable. Gaming was still an absolute pleasure, and looking at Battlefield 6 again on the Cairo map, local dimming within the tunnel section looked fantastic.
If your setup is anything like mine, with the monitor going on the walll using it’s VESA 100×100 mounting capability, you’re not actually going to see it to enjoy the unique design that the monitor offers, which is a bit of a shame, especially if consumers are paying a premium for the design elements this monitor offers with the white back and classy RGB pattern. However, the bezels on front are still black and yes they do look impressively skinny. The whole RGB dottted pattern is a bit of an odd decision and although does look mighty impressive if you were to look at the back of your monitor, there offers no practical use to a setup like this. It doesn’t even shine bright enough to produce a glow effect either. It does though have a single DisplayPort 1.4a, two HDMI 2.1 ports for console gaming and a Type-C port which can do up to 98w power delivery, but this needs switching on in the settings.
The E16M was a great choice for my setup. I am absolutely loving the HDR capabilities with its local dimming. Design wise it looks great, though like I mentioned at the beginning of the video and yes it’s going to annoy me as time goes on, but I think for the quality that I’m getting, I can look past it for now until I can afford to get a second E16M on my desk anyway. I know that haloing has been a bit of a problem in cases, and yes while local dimming and contrast differences aren’t as accurate and pinpoint as OLED counterparts, the haloing effect really hasn’t been a big deal to me, and has only really affected the starkest of differences with contrast, like the loading screen in Ori. If it bothers you that badly, then turn the halo brightness setting down.
