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43 inch 4k TVs for use as pc monitor.
January 23, 2022 at
03:12 PM
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Last Edited by link626 January 27, 2022 at 04:58 PM
Hisense 43A6G
I needed a replacement for my TCL 43s405, so I just bought a Hisense 43A6G to try out.
TL;DR,
the hisense 43a6g is not suitable as a pc monitor if cross-hatching checkerboard image quality bothers you, as it does for me. See attached image for checkerboard image. Cross hatching is seldom seen on actual pc monitors. Cross hatching makes colors and images look pixelated. It's less noticeable if you sit 2.5 to 3 ft away
There aren't many options in the sub $300 price range.
The TCL 43s405 and 425 always had clean smooth image quality because it didn't have any cross hatching.
-----------------------------
the hisense 43a6g I received has an IPS panel made by BOE, although one person on Bestbuy website said he received a VA panel version.
IPS panel black levels suck.
43a6g is noticeably brighter than the old TCL 43s405.
43a6g is said to have 300 nits and I believe it. I tested with my phone's lux meter.
Colors are inaccurate, but there are built in color settings and 20pt white balance you can change.
TCL 43s405 had a VA panel made by AUO.
both TCL and hisense can do chroma 444. The 43a6g must be set to Game mode to display clear text.
Overall the 43a6g isn't too bad as a pc monitor. If you don't mind some lines and dots through certain colors, no deep blacks, but you want the IPS viewing angles and RGB subpixel for clearer text.
The VA panels in the competition usually have BGR subpixels, so text might appear fuzzy.
Pick your poison. there are trade-offs.
==================================================================================================
TCL 43S431/435
In the end, the TCL roku 43s431/435 is the best sub-$300 TV for PC use in this bunch.
It just works out of the box for pc usage, and has cleanest text and image.
It does 4k60 444 without any glitches like Google TV version.
The roku software is most polished, whereas the Google software is buggy.
The roku phone app also lets you fine tune color settings.
43s431 is hardware-identical to the 43s446, except the motherboard. Same VA panel, backlight, power supply board, chassis.
I needed a replacement for my TCL 43s405, so I just bought a Hisense 43A6G to try out.
TL;DR,
the hisense 43a6g is not suitable as a pc monitor if cross-hatching checkerboard image quality bothers you, as it does for me. See attached image for checkerboard image. Cross hatching is seldom seen on actual pc monitors. Cross hatching makes colors and images look pixelated. It's less noticeable if you sit 2.5 to 3 ft away
There aren't many options in the sub $300 price range.
The TCL 43s405 and 425 always had clean smooth image quality because it didn't have any cross hatching.
-----------------------------
the hisense 43a6g I received has an IPS panel made by BOE, although one person on Bestbuy website said he received a VA panel version.
IPS panel black levels suck.
43a6g is noticeably brighter than the old TCL 43s405.
43a6g is said to have 300 nits and I believe it. I tested with my phone's lux meter.
Colors are inaccurate, but there are built in color settings and 20pt white balance you can change.
TCL 43s405 had a VA panel made by AUO.
both TCL and hisense can do chroma 444. The 43a6g must be set to Game mode to display clear text.
Overall the 43a6g isn't too bad as a pc monitor. If you don't mind some lines and dots through certain colors, no deep blacks, but you want the IPS viewing angles and RGB subpixel for clearer text.
The VA panels in the competition usually have BGR subpixels, so text might appear fuzzy.
Pick your poison. there are trade-offs.
==================================================================================================
TCL 43S431/435
In the end, the TCL roku 43s431/435 is the best sub-$300 TV for PC use in this bunch.
It just works out of the box for pc usage, and has cleanest text and image.
It does 4k60 444 without any glitches like Google TV version.
The roku software is most polished, whereas the Google software is buggy.
The roku phone app also lets you fine tune color settings.
43s431 is hardware-identical to the 43s446, except the motherboard. Same VA panel, backlight, power supply board, chassis.
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The TCL 43s446 Google TV from bestbuy is suitable as a pc monitor. Maybe. if they ever kill the bugs.
The GoogleTV software is buggy as hell with PC mode, so you probably wanna stay away from this.
Google TV works fine in other tvs, but in these TCL tvs they're a hot mess.
It is slightly brighter than the hisense 43a6g, which also makes it much brighter than the old 43s405. The 43s405 was kinda dim.
The 70/100 brightness setting of the 43s446 is about the same as 100/100 setting on the 43s405.
if you like deep blacks, 43s446 has a VA panel made by AUO, just like all the 43" TCLs in past years.
the color settings are all built into the TV, including black level adjustment.
This is where the Google beats out roku. Roku still doesn't have built-in advanced color adjustment. You have to use the roku phone app to tweak the colors.
there are no cross-hatch or checkerboarding artifacts in the image. All the colors display cleanly.
Biggest con of the 43s446 is the buggy google software.
Out of the box, the colors are all jacked up, sharpness, everything was ugly. If you plug in your pc, you will be disappointed until you tweak the colors, temp, etc.
It was difficult to get the TV to recognize that a pc was plugged into the hdmi port. Unlike the roku, there's no way to manually set hdmi 2.0 enhanced mode.
Even the Hisense android TV had an hdmi enhanced setting you could choose to force 4k60 444.
43s446 has a PC mode, but even that couldn't get the chroma444 image to display properly at first.
There is a dance you have to do to get Google tv to properly display stuff from your pc.
Go to Game mode and turn off all the sharpening and other extra options.
Then unplug and replug hdmi cable. Then change to PC mode, then back to game mode...
If that doesn't work, turn on/off HDR mode inside Windows, and chroma 444 might start displaying properly.
Basically trial and error. Once you get chroma 444 working, the image and color looks good.
However, once you turn off the TV, pc mode gets messed up again.... text and colors don't look right.
Some say the google OS is laggy, but it felt snappy enough to me. I read that you could enable developer mode and turn off animations to make it feel quicker.
TCL 43s446 has "power on to last input". Hisense 43A6G does not.
So with the hisense, you need to bookmark your pc hdmi port to the favorite button on the remote control.
With the TCL, every time you turn on the TV, it will conveniently use the last used input/hdmi.
Google knows they made crappy software for TCL TVs, and google says they will fix bugs through future updates. But for now, stay away.
TCL improved the speakers on these cheap TVs. They actually have hard dome tweeters, so treble comes through. Big improvement over the old 43s405.
These are decent cheap speakers.
TCL fukt up on the latest 43" 4 series TV. 43s455
It is no longer a good pc monitor, because like other cheap TVs, it now has cross hatching static dither.
This sucks. End of the line.
I went to Bestbuy and took a picture of the pixels.
You can see the checkerboarding...
A television set is designed with a backlight system that throws out enough light to be visible from six to twelve feet. A computer monitor is designed to be viewed at about two feet.
So... get it through your head that those two things are not the same. A TV will cause eye strain at computer viewing distances. In addition, television controller chips are designed to blur motion, because that's the nature of video. If it's sharp and crisp like a PC monitor, it won't look as good, and PC monitors don't display motion video as well as TV's. You can tell me that they do, but they don't. And a TV can say that it has a PC display mode, but that usually doesn't get rid of all the motion and color scaling artifacts. Computer monitors are very literal display devices, and TV sets are not. And, the color models used in TV video, YCbCr, aren't the same as what's used in PC video, and this often creates scaling artifacts.
So if you're thinking that cheap $300 TV is going to equal a PC monitor... it won't. Sorry.