MiniLed vs OLED Review — My personal monitor advice

Recently, I bought three different monitors and compared them all at once.

I came from an old 2020 curved VA monitor and wanted something new. At first, I decided to buy a new curved VA monitor but there was literally no difference except the monitor looked ever-so-slightly more detailed. I returned that immediately.

I decided to buy a Miniled and an OLED because I didn’t know how the OLED monitor would look in my room because I have a window to the side, and had no experience with OLEDS.

I kept thinking about the pros and cons, and how you shouldn’t really use OLED for coding because of burn in risks and text clarity. I thought about it for a long time.

I asked myself these questions: What’s the point of going half-way when you can go all the way? If the purpose of my monitor is for gaming, why do I have to worry about using it for work when I can just use my old monitor for that?

After comparing Cyberpunk, both monitors looked incredible. The OLED had slightly more depth and detail, which was noticeable, but both monitors still looked amazing.

I kept going in loops until I looked at a Resident Evil gameplay and compared them side-by-side. 

These exact images are what sold me on the OLED: INNOCN GA27T1M vs ASUS XG27aqdmgr

miniled

oled

As you can see, the OLED has absolutely amazing shadows in dark games like RE9. Looking under the table, you can see the difference in grayscale and how the OLED captures the subtle dark/light differences in the shadows.

My worries + resolutions:

Curve: When buying monitors, I was worried about switching from curved to flat. I was concerned that I would miss the curve, but I don’t even think about it when I play. It really doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did. When I switched, the monitor looked insanely convex at first, like the center was poking out at me. The illusion went away within a couple of days.

Glossiness: The ASUS is glossy, and at first, seeing my reflection really annoyed me. I got used to it and you only see your reflection in almost completely black screens. Even then, you kind of have to focus to see your reflection, so it’s not really a problem at all.

Headache/eye strain: When I started using the OLED, my eyes felt weird. It felt like I had a headache and I wasn’t used to the difference at all. It took me a day to get used to the new monitor, and everything is fine now. I don’t feel any strain. For more context, this is a W-OLED.

Text clarity: Text clarity isn’t as much of a concern as I thought it was. While the OLED isn’t for reading, the text isn’t noticeably bad. After changing some settings around, I barely even think about it when reading things on the screen. If you read things for a long time then you start to notice that it doesn’t feel good, but like I said earlier, the purpose of the monitor isn’t for browsing and reading on the internet for long periods of time.

Light source: My window isn’t a problem. It’s to the side of my monitor and not right next to it. I keep the upper blinds open and the lower ones closed. I don’t have to use the OLED in complete darkness and my room doesn’t have to be dark at night either. There are no light sources behind me so I keep the lights on and there is no problem.

White colors: When comparing the miniled and oled. One thing to note is that a completely white screen on the miniled looked *much* more white than the oled. The oled looked a little bit yellow. I know there’s an explanation for this, but I’m too lazy to look it up. The whites on the oled don’t look yellow by itself, but when comparing it to the mini-led right next to it, there was a slight but noticeable difference. However, it’s not a problem and when I look at the oled on its own, the white color looks perfectly fine— and white of course.

TLDR: Look at the two images above. OLED is amazing. I didn’t get understand it at first and thought it was overhyped, but after comparing my old monitor and the ASUS, my old monitor literally looks gray!!! You don’t know what you’re missing until you experience it.