Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Response & Lag
To learn how we measure screen uniformity, please click here.
If viewing angles are important to you, TN is not the best choice. At the 24" size, it’s not really a factor on the desktop for a single user, however. Our photos of the VG245H are typical of the technology. To the sides you can see a red/green shift and a significant light fall off. From the top, detail is reduced but you can still see all the brightness steps. And the shift in color there is pretty minor. The takeaway is that you need to use a little extra care to place the panel precisely in front of you and angled toward the eye. But once this is accomplished, there is no penalty in image quality.
Screen Uniformity
Our VG245H sample displayed excellent screen uniformity in all three tests. As we noted in the ANSI test, there is a slight rise in black levels down the right side, but all other areas are perfect to the naked eye. In the white field test, there is a center hotspot, but again, it can’t be seen. Color uniformity is among the best we’ve measured from any monitor in our database. Considering the price point, this is mighty impressive.
Pixel Response & Input Lag
Please click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.
It’s pretty easy to spot the 144Hz screens here. With only 75Hz to offer, the VG245H gives up a little speed to the others. Is it something you’ll notice? Doubtful, unless you are a highly-skilled professional gamer. Even then, we don’t expect an 11ms difference in lag to be a factor. Remember that this monitor sells for under $200, which is less than the other screens here and less than nearly every 24" adaptive-sync display we’re aware of. This level of performance is more than adequate for just about everyone.
Gaming With FreeSync
After spending time with the 180Hz PG248Q, we could easily spot the drop to 75Hz. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy playing games on the VG245H. Like every other FHD screen we’ve reviewed, it takes only modest video card power to take framerates to 75 even when games are set to their highest detail levels.
While a faster monitor may spoil you, this one will still have no trouble keeping play above 40 FPS unless you have an older graphics board. Our Radeon R9 285 is getting a little long in the tooth, but it still provides an excellent experience at this resolution. Far Cry 4 on Ultra detail maintained rates over 50 FPS and occasionally hit 75. Tomb Raider was also very playable on Ultimate detail and kept speeds solidly above 60 FPS even during the most intense moments.
At these refresh levels, Trace Free is a factor and its effects can be easily seen. Maxing the slider produces obvious ghosting and object trails both dark and light depending on content. The default setting is 60, which eliminates artifacts but introduces too much blur. 80 turns out to be the ideal setting, which balances both issues to an almost-invisible point.
