And unsurprisingly, I went for the M27Q during the recent Prime sale. I've only connected it to a laptop now so I'm yet to see the 144Hz goodness. Soon....
I was considering buying it locally (costs about the same as Amazon's sale price: 30K-ish), but then in case of bleed/dead pixels I'd have to RMA and I'm lazy.
So I jumped the gun and bought it from Amazon, presuming I can go through a couple of monitors using their replacement policy in case the monitors are not to my satisfaction.
It arrived mid last week. Did some pixel checking after work and didn't find anything abnormal, though there was some bleed. Without much prior experience with such monitors and bleed, I thought it was in the acceptable range and figured I could live with it. Next day, I was unfortunate enough to notice 1 bright pixel, shortly followed by a dead/stuck pixel. The problem with these things are once you see it, you can't unsee it! Later that day I noticed 2 more mildly malfunctioning pixels and decided to replace it. I understand a couple of pixels being a dud among the millions on the screen is not a major issue, but you just can't unsee it if the stuck pixel bright enough. So, upon calling Amazon at midnight, I got a novice rep and after a long conversation he set me up a technician visit schedule for a week later (grrrr). It was past 12 so called it a day. He made it seem like a tech visit was the protocol for expensive products, so I let it be.
Next day, determined to force the replacement through, I called them again in the evening. This time, the rep was knowledgeable and quickly offered replacement as the option while acknowledging that his colleague from my previous call was mistaken -- no tech visit for monitors (maybe for TVs?). But he just needed to get an approval from his superior to give the replacement a go-ahead. Got a call back in 30 mins and the replacement was scheduled to be delivered the next day. This was good! Packed it all up at night and went to bed.
Next morning, the bell rings while I'm still in bed (it was a Saturday!) and the monitor's here. Couldn't have been happier about this rapid delivery. Did some pixel peeping at high brightness and nothing seemed abnormal. Did this a couple of more times at different brightness and ambient lighting just to be sure and all looked good! But I didn't want to get my hopes up too much since it was only on the 2nd day that I saw the dead pixel earlier. This has some bleed too but in a slightly different pattern from the previous one (noticeably less in some regions but a tad more in others) and I believe this is well within the acceptable category for me. I don't notice enough glow in the corners while watching a movie at 80% brightness, in a dark room, to bother me. It's technically there, but not that vivid, and who cranks the brightness up all the way anyway -- that was just for testing. I can't yet say to what extent it'll affect gaming, but I don't expect it to. However, even with low brightness, in a game like Limbo/Inside
some glow is visible in the bottom corners, but I'm guessing this is an exception since not every game is this dark, is it? It's barely visible in the RDR2 video Kratos47 had shared in his review and going by the photos of his screen I'd say mine is similar to his or even less. But photos accentuate the glow if not captured with the right settings so that's not really accurate. Instead, I looked at the screen from 2 meters while being center (this eliminates any glow from being visible) so I could see the bleed alone -- seemed not too bad to me. I can even capture it on my phone somewhat by keeping the ISO low which gives a relatively accurate representation, rather than overexposed auto shots. I'm not well versed in manual photography though. Could compare with Sumi's LG, but what's the point. If it doesn't bother either of us, nothing more to be done.
Coming back, it's Sunday night now and I see no dead pixel yet luckily. My eyes must be cursing badly me because of the torture I put them through these last few days. Dark room + high brightness +
dead pixel check = no good for eyes (be warned before you do this, because you really don't want to see the problematic pixel even if it's there). I'll slowly stop trying to find a fault in it (2 more days of once-a-day pixel check
) and just use it. Maybe it's just my head but I might even be seeing less bleed today than I did yesterday. This might just be placebo because I read somewhere that the bleed can settle/reduce a little once you start using the monitor.
All in all, guess I'm pretty happy with this for now. IPS glow is normal. Bleed depends on luck and, as of now, I don't think I want to enter the lottery again. I'll take slight bleed to dead pixels any day.
