Who has the Worst Monitor at Linus Tech Tips?

Some people spend so much on their PC hardware that when it comes time to buy a monitor, you know, the thing that you actually look at when you're working or gaming, they only have enough budget left for a Facebook Marketplace special. But hey, if you're one of those people, don't feel bad. Even we have been guilty of falling for this classic blunder. But there is a solution. We are singling out three LT employees for their crimes against displays. And the sponsor of this video, MSI, is going to be giving the most guilty perpetrator a big upgrade to the MSI MPG 322 URQ OLED X24, featuring a quantum dot OLED panel at 4K resolution and 240 Hz. More about that beast later, though. First, let's come together and do what all of humankind loves to do and judge who's got it worst. Starting with Cassandra, our labs testing coordinator. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Okay, we'll talk about the monitors later, but do you juggle? I do. Can I see? Sure. I'm a little scared to do it in here, but I can do it. Sorry, I just I know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I immediately saw these and I was like, what? Yeah, I hopefully you won't break anything. Surely. No way. You want to try? No. The only juggling this man can do is juggling five corporations under one umbrella. Told you. Let's come back on topic and check out your setup. These may be the most monitor with a capital M monitors. They display a picture. What else do you need from a monitor? Well, that's let me guess the specs. 1080p 60 Hz HDMI and display port input. And that's the feature list. Yeah, pretty much. With that said, I was expecting our team's worst monitors to be a little more worseer than this. I mean, they're not that old. No, about 2019 or so. Like, you know, they don't have huge bezels. They don't use DVI. Oh, they do have external power bricks. Hey, which reminds me, our consolation prize, just in case you don't win, is some free cable management from Ree. Hey, Reys. Yeah, I'm coming. I mean, I think my cable management's fine, but you just don't look don't look under there. And it's If she thinks it's fine, we're good. I think we just end there. I can go home. That's really not how cable management works. Tell us why you need better monitors then. I don't think I've ever really had like a nice monitor before. Really? No. Uh, like those ones I got off of Facebook Marketplace for like $100 total. And what would you do with a better monitor? I love to play like artsy indie games. bunch of them are focused on like art and like visuals and stuff and so that'd be cool to see and actually like appreciate it more than I could with that monitor. Now, one of the things I'll be looking for today is evidence that our charity cases really don't need our charity that badly and Cassandra's already got a strike against her here because who goes, "Oh, poor me. I really need a better monitor." But then they flex by having RAM on their desk. Okay, I got that like like 6 years ago. Oh, so this is kind of like a family inheritance kind of thing. Exactly. All right, that makes sense that it would be sentimental and you would hold on to that then and have it on display. Okay. Mhm. All right, we'll allow it. Wait, is this the like $1,500 one? It might be. How did you end up with that? You guys were selling it and no one was buying it. We were. So, I bought it. How much did you pay for it? $150. Wow. That's one of the deepest losses I think I've taken on a staff purchase. Good for you. I'm also trying to figure out if maybe you aren't even dailying the best monitor in this room. Oh, no. Yeah, you are. I was thinking this looked like one of the newer like like gaming mobile displays. Oh, no. But it's not. No, it's just a random Amazon display. Nice printer though. Thanks. Got that at the Christmas party. Yeah, I knew that was coming. It kicked off a whole hobby for me. Cool. What do you like to print? Knickknacks. Classic. Like this one, I assume. So, there's another one of those that I originally printed that's uh a little bit smaller. This one? Yeah. So, that one. And it laid directly under the door. And so, this is like one of my first prints. Do you want to see a demo at the hula hoops? What was your previous job like circus perform? Yeah, I did. Shut up. Really? Well, kind of. I So, I did hoop for about 10 years um just like myself. And then I worked at the Vancouver Circus School for about four um doing admin and then some coaching and performing. I was joking when I asked. What a career left turn. I mean, is it that much of a career left turn? I think LMG is kind of a circus. Come on now. I've never been able to do this. Oh, yeah. What are you talking about? Okay, I can do it. Okay, I'm going to try the 10T. You sure this is a hula hoop? Any circle is a hula hoop. Do we need to go outside so we don't break something? This man wants to buy her a new TV, too. Okay. Okay, I'm going for it. So, can you show us what that's supposed to look like? That's better. Okay, I guess I guess I'm up here now. I had to I had to move so much to get it to go. All right, let's hoop out of here and check out the next setup. But before we do that, let's take a closer look at what's at stake. In addition to being a huge size upgrade, going from what looked like a 24-in class display to a 32, Cassandra would be 4xing her resolution, not to mention 4xing her refresh rate and dramatically improving her contrast, making it easier to focus on her display, which can reduce eye fatigue. Though, as my eye doctor always reminds me, the best thing for your eyes is to look away from your display periodically, ideally out in the distance, and always remember to blink. Seriously, when's the last time you blinked? Go ahead, do it now. What are we doing here, David? His setup is sick. Elijah's monitors are okay. uh they get worse the further out from the center you go. But I want to showcase that you should have a good balance between your PC gaming setup and your monitors for the best experience and that is not the case here. I can tell it's a little on the dated side. Curved monitors haven't been cool ever. Unless they're ultra wide. Yeah. Yes. Sure. Yes. This isn't 16 by9 ultra curved is a little wanky. Wanky. You heard me right. This looks TNA. Those were the two we got from my upgrade. So, those are 1080p 75 Hz. Okay. What is this one even for though? Well, I have a top down set for my streams and stuff. And when I'm sitting over here, I have chat on it. Got it. Yeah. So, basically, you're not going to win. Why? It's all about ratio. David admitted it. Frankly, we're less here to uh make fun of your monitors and more here to make fun of you. Uh and also point people to the Flowplane exclusive over at lmg.gg/flopplane GG/FloplClane where we go over Elijah's setup uh kind of after the AMD upgrade era. cuz you notice, look at how it's evolved since the AMD upgrade and also the RF blocking paint upgrade. I noticed um your popcorn ceiling is gone. Yeah, half of it fell off. Uh because of the painters. I thought there was someone who warned you about that. There was. And I attempted to handsome guy, right? Uh debatable. I attempted to pass that on to my painters. I don't know if there was a miscommunication or they just didn't understand, but they did not uh listen to that warning. Cool. Uh, you know, I'd also noticed the gross carpet's gone. I installed it myself because after the painters came by and fixed the ceiling, uh, they flooded my apartment because they popped the laundry machine hose and I said, "Why would I let insurance fix that small area? I'll just take all the money and do it myself." Right. Right. Right. Cost me several thousand more than I expected. With all that said, we should at least give you a chance to make your case. Why do you think you deserve the upgrade more than anyone else? Well, if we are talking about the how good my computer is compared to my monitor. Oh man, it's got so many other good things about it. It's QD OLED. It's 240 hertz. It's got 03 millisecond response times, I think they claim. And of course, it's got that infinite contrast. But I I think it might just be too wide for you, too much girth for you to handle. I can handle as much girth as you give me. What? Like some of our other contestants, you have a bit of a misallocation of funds problem working against you, though, because there would be nothing to prevent you from, I don't know, maybe divesting of even just your Kool-Aid themed Funko Pops and investing that into a monitor upgrade if you really felt you needed it. Correct. Defend. Um h I could, but then I wouldn't have a really cool streaming background. You can't even see this switch. Oh, I behind stuff. I can get rid of this if you want. No, that's cool. LT Stormer. Oh, I see a little bit of bias here. So, you're not even going to try to make a case for replacing like a not modern Okay, hear me out. Hear me out. I want to build a racing sim because I won some like mosa gear from the Christmas party. So, maybe I could use the new monitor for that. So, your pitch, and this is crazy work, is the rich should get richer. That is how America works. I think we're done here. Time to check out our third contestant, Peter, who has pretty nice monitors. You know, you're not going to win this, right? Well, that's my setup. The real setup you want to see is my wife's setup. I remember that monitor. That's one of the old 3D Vision ones. That's TN. Yeah, it is a TN panel. It's from like 2014 or something. Yeah, it is. I probably techtipped that monitor before you were born. Yeah, Peter's only 12. All right, let's see how it holds up. Let's see how it holds up. Uh, step aside, Psyduck. I was going to say there's other ways you need to get her set up on the same level as yours, but you also just store your headphones on your mouse pad. Okay, it's convenient. I like your deskpad extension. That was actually the original one I got her. The LT deskpad was actually just taken from CW in the in the extras bin. In the extras bin. This chair also came from the extras pile, didn't it? No, I've had that chair since like 2015. It was a Christmas present. Not that chair. This chair. I'm beginning to think your wife's monitor is the least of your concerns. I mean, listen, like my setup, I'm pretty happy with it. It's pretty comfy. It's pretty good. Uh, I mean, comfy is not really the word I would use to describe it, but it's like I get a lot of work done at it. Your priorities are so weird to me. You have a $30 fidget spinner on a desk that probably costs 10 bucks. The desk was like 75. It's from IKEA. You remember, right, when Logistics posted like 30 plus gaming chairs in the chat for free? Did you miss this? No, I I saw it. They looked really bad. They looked bad. This chair, listen, I got global elite counter-strike on that chair. Here's your problem, though. See, I was like, "Haha, you have an expensive fidget spinner." No, no. This is the thing that you have that literally you could get a new chair, new desk, um proper mouse pad, but no, you chose this instead. What's this worth? $5. See, you thought he was going to slip that one past me, but I just did a video with Brandon Lee, who explained the red dot and what these little tiny pinner lenses are worth. I did see uh one of the editors editing it, and I was like, "Oh, nice. He's got the M6. That's good. That's a good one." Even Brandon wouldn't buy an M6. He has one. He borrowed it. That's not his. No. He was like, "No, man. That's too bougie for me." It's my dream camera. It's my dream camera. I was I've been saving up since 2020. Why didn't you trump hand movements, man? Yeah. It's only DVI. It's DVI so I can hit 144 hertz on it. You're going to like this. I bought it from NCX. Nice. I paid for the dead pixel warranty. Uhhuh. How? And after a year, there was a dead pixel smack dab in the middle of the screen, and I returned it instantly, and I got a brand new one. All right, here's our specs. 350 nit dynamic contrast ratio 12 million to1. Absolute You know, looking back at it, there was nothing good about TN. It does like fringe on the sides is what I noticed when I was playing like Counter-Strike back in the day. Basically, what you're seeing here is these pixels are really slow. So to compensate for that monitors of this era would very aggressively overdrive and that is to say they would overvolt for the transition that they want. So if they wanted to go from here to here then what they would do is they would drive so much voltage that we send it kind of past because that would mean that we'd get here faster but we'd overdo it and then we'd be like no no no bring it back a little bit. And so what you would see is you would actually see a color other than what you want at both the leading edge and the trailing edge as it like settles into the state that you want. Of course, the motion performance is TN's best quality. Its worst quality is of course viewing angles. Like from a reasonable viewing distance for a 24-in monitor, you literally have to choose between the top of the screen being slightly dark or the bottom of the screen being slightly washed out. What a state-of-the-art. Did you ever try 3D vision on it? No. It was awful. Wasn't I kind of just set it, forget it, and tried to do color grading on it and it was awful. You tried to do color work on this? Yeah. Well, I mean, when I was like first starting out and stuff like that. Needless to say, everything was washed out in a really weird hue. And now my wife, she likes to do some editing, photo editing, video editing, and stuff on the side, like just for her own stuff. She'll like send me photos of it and I'm like, "I'm so sorry, but it has a tint on it." That's your fault. It is my fault. It is my fault. It's not her fault in the slightest. And I don't And I don't blame her at all. But you criticize her. I don't criticize her. I fully support her. She's laughing in the background, but that's because she knows I support her. Yeah. It's just You You support your Leica camera is what you support. Oh, man. I take lots of pictures of her on the Leica camera. That was why I bought it. It's time for us to deliberate. This is going to be harder than I thought. I was expecting someone to just kind of sandbag it with like a 19-in widecreen from 2006, but they're all usable. So, for me, I feel like it comes down to how unfit for purpose they are. And with that in mind, all three of them are unfit for purpose. Cassandra doesn't have a high refresh rate monitor at all, even though she wants to game. Elijah has that mismatch between his monitor refresh rate and his capture setup. And then Peter's wife is trying to edit photos on a TN. I can't imagine. I used to have a TN panel and I was doing video editing on it and I had to send it off to a friend to do my my color correction because it was so unusable. With that said, for all three of them, there are solutions. Peter's setup is literally right there if she wanted to do some color work. Elijah, come on, man. Really? 120 Hz? You're going to complain about that? Also, sell some Funko Pops. It's time. It's time. But then actually Cassandra, she can't combine her two monitors to get double the refresh rate. So if she wants to game, I mean, I do think that the year of our Lord 2026 is too late to be using a 60 Hz display. I also always fantasize about going back to the past and bringing technology of today to someone in the past. And I feel like we have that opportunity with Cassandra. We can bring her a display from the future and blow her freaking mind. With all that in mind, I think I've made my decision. I think I have a decision, too. Hopefully, they're the same. Otherwise, we're going to have to rock paper scissors this I don't know if I to the death. Not this time. That would be very dangerous for me. Could it be fun for me? Wait, did we go to the same place? Oh, yes, we did. Let's give a monitor away. I guess we agree then. Cassandra, while she honestly has two pretty decent monitors, she's the one for whom her use case of gaming is least appropriate for the setup that she has now. Whereas this is going to be flipping perfect. I never checked what kind of computer has. Can she even drive a 4K display? Only one way to find out. All right. Well, we're here. So, we'll just Yeah, we'll go in now. Surprise. This is massive. All right. Have Do you know what monitor this is? No. No, I don't. Oh, so it's all just like a surprise? Okay. Okay. Well, it's a latest gen QD OLED monitor, 32-in class size. Because it's one of the newer ones, you can actually see right away that whole like pink kind of glare that the earlier QD OLEDs have. There's way less of it. Also, less glare in general. And the surface coating is way more durable now. So, like the earlier ones, a fingernail would scratch it. Don't go out of your way, but it's a lot. I mean, I have long nails. I can test it if you want. I mean, it's yours now, so that's not to you. MSI calls their scratch resistance their dark armor film, and they say it's two and a half times more scratch resistant. In general, this display just kind of does away with the downsides of OLED, though. MSI even includes a three-year burn-in warranty. So, I'm very excited to have an OLED. What's the first game you're going to play? This is going to out me as a wee, but woo wa. It's a gotcha game. It's a gotcha. Anime gotcha. Do you have it downloaded right now? I sure do. Okay, let's see what it looks like. Let's go check it out. Uh, question for you. What GPU are you running right now? 3060. 3060. Okay. So, that's what that looks like. Burn that into your mind. David, we're going to quick swap this. Get this. Get this out of here. Get it out of here. The monitor is so much bigger. Even the people already looks so much better like comparing it to the old monitor. Oh, yeah. More refresh rate. All the refresh rate. All the refresh rate. 240. Let's go. Dude, even just looking at the wallpaper, that looks so good comparatively. That's insane. Whole other level now. I'm actually amazed at how well this is running at 4K. These gota games are so well optimized. Well, and wait till you try a game that supports HDR cuz this thing will do up to a,000 nits peak brightness thanks to its tandem panels. Pretty bright. Basically, it basically insane. Well, I would say don't spend too much of your time on these gotcha games, but I guess I have uh fed the beast rather than done anything to help you. It's true. Massive thanks to MSI for sponsoring this video. It was a lot of fun going around and getting to know a few members of the team that we haven't had a chance to before. If you guys want to check out the MSI MPG 322 URD OLED, we'll have it linked in the video description. And if you want another video that's got the same kind of energy, maybe check out who has the best setup at LMG. That was a great video.