Five things you need to know about TV vs. computer for games

Summary

TV vs. computer for games.. For months, there hasn’t been a clear line between TVs and video games. PC gamers are buying OLED TVs to have the most realistic experiences, and console gamers are buying high refresh rate monitors to get the most out of their new platforms. Which one should you pick?

TV vs. computer for games

Which is better for gaming: a TV or a monitor? It depends on what games you play. Most likely, you’ll want to use a TV for computer games and a monitor for your PC. We’ll talk about why this is and some important differences between the types of displays that you should know about when you’re shopping.

Working with images

Let’s get this out of the way right away. Picture processing is what makes TVs and computers different, especially when it comes to games. TVs have built-in computers that improve the picture. Some examples of this are tone mapping, motion reduction or sharpness, and sharpening. They improve the picture on your TV, but they also slow down your input.

It takes longer to finish the work that is more intense. Monitors, on the other hand, are just plain “dumb” screens. The Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 is one of the few monitors that is designed to give you a straight link to your source whenever you plug it in. If you don’t do any picture processing, the only input lag you’ll feel is from the monitor and the signal moving down the wire.

Most TVs have a “Game Mode” or “PC Mode” that turns off picture processing to get around this issue. That gives you a straight link to the screen, like a monitor, but it turns off all the extra features that make TV pictures look great.

There isn’t a clear winner here because both a monitor and a TV can give you the lowest input lag. It mostly depends on whether you want to process images for things other than games or whether you don’t mind keeping the same picture for games and other media.

Rate of refresh

The frame rate is a big difference between TVs and computers. If you don’t know, update rate is the number of times your screen changes in one second. The picture is better when the update rate is higher. A 60Hz frame rate, for instance, means that the screen shows a new picture 60 times every second. If the screen has an update rate of 240Hz, like the LG UltraGear OLED 27, it does it 240 times.

It’s not the same thing as your frame rate in games. Think of update rate as something that can hold a lot. You’ll only see half of the frames if your game is running at 120 frames per second (fps) on a 60Hz screen. If you play a game at 30 frames per second on the same 60Hz screen, every frame will be shown twice. There is more to update rate than this, but this is a good way to think about it when you play games. Some things will be smoother if your refresh rate is higher, but games might not be smoother if your refresh rate is higher.

For TVs and computers, this is important because the frame rate you can expect in games will tell you a lot about the refresh rate you should get. To begin, let us look at platforms. Some games for the new Xbox Series X and PS5 can run in 120Hz modes, and some TVs, like the LG C2 OLED and Hisense U8K, can handle up to 120Hz. You’ll mostly find TVs with a 60Hz speed rate, though, unless you’re looking for the newest and best. Most console gamers won’t have a problem with that because most games can’t go above 60 frames per second.

When you shop for TVs here, you need to be careful. A lot of brands will show a “effective” update rate based on the motion slowing technology they use. You should turn off motion smoothing because it makes games less fun. Most of the time, the “effective” refresh rate is half of the original refresh rate. For example, if a company says its motion smoothing technology can do 120Hz, the monitor can only do 60Hz.

On a PC, you can raise the frame rate as high as your gear will let you. It’s not a surprise that trackers have tried to keep up. Most game monitors have a speed rate of 144Hz, but some, like the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8, can go up to 240Hz. Alienware even sells a game monitor that runs at 500Hz. For the most part, the stated refresh rate is the real refresh rate for displays.

Again, it comes down to what you need to decide between a TV and a computer. No matter what you use, a monitor or TV will work with a computer. However, a 120Hz speed rate might be best. If you use a PC, a TV will only let you go up to 120Hz. If you want to play games at higher frame rates, you should get a monitor.

VRR, or Variable Refresh Rate, is another thing to think about here. This keeps your screen’s refresh rate in line with the game’s frame rate to stop screen tearing. Nvidia G-line, AMD FreeSync, and VESA Adaptive Sync are all types of this technology that can be found in monitors. There are some newer TVs that have VRR, but most older TVs don’t. On the other hand, most TVs made in the last ten years support VRR in some way, and VRR works on both PC and current-gen devices.

How big and tall

The size is another big difference between TVs and computers. Watch TVs that are 42 inches across and go up to over 100 inches across, while computers are usually 24 inches to 32 inches across. While there are some variations to both, those are the most common amounts you’ll find. Your viewing distance is the most important thing to think about here. A bigger TV is usually better if you want to play on the couch. But you’ll need a smaller screen if you play at a desk.

But there are some strange cases here. For example, the LG C2 OLED and the Asus ROG Swift PG42UQ both have 42-inch OLED screens—the same screen, but the Asus is a monitor and the LG is a TV. They are different in some ways, like how they process images, but the stand is also very important. Large form factors with monitors are usually made for a desktop, while TVs are almost always made to fit on a media stand.

Monitors come in a lot of different aspect ratios, not just different screen sizes. The Alienware 34 QD-OLED has a “ultrawide” aspect ratio of 21:9, while the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 has a wider ratio of 32:9. A 16:9 viewing ratio is what almost all TVs have.

Ports and ways to connect

When it comes to links, TVs and monitors are not as different from each other as they used to be. This is mostly because of HDMI 2.1. This standard can handle 4K at 120Hz, which gives both TVs and computers a high resolution and frame rate.

DisplayPort, which used to be the standard link for high resolutions and frame rates, is also built into monitors. The link could be made again over HDMI 2.1 with DisplayPort 2.1 in the future, but right now it’s only available in a few screens.

USB ports are the main change. You can connect a laptop with just one wire if the monitor supports USB-C input and power transfer. Aside from that, most monitors come with small USB hubs that let you connect a computer, mouse, or other device to the screen. There are also USB ports on TVs, but they’re mostly used to connect storage devices like USB sticks.

Change the colors

Lastly, there’s making changes. When it comes to TVs, you usually have a huge number of ways to change the picture, along with a number of modes. You can also change the settings on a monitor, but they usually don’t have as much of an effect on the picture quality as they do on a TV.

When you use a monitor with a PC, however, software makes it much easier to set the right settings. You can make a color setting that you can use in Windows with devices like the SpyderX. While it won’t work with other input methods, it will work on a Windows PC.

You could do the same thing with a TV, but it might not work very well. TVs handle images in a way that means you might need to adjust and change the setting more than once before it looks right. The tuning method for monitors is easier to understand.

Which one should you pick?

In the last few years, there hasn’t been much difference between TVs and computers, which is kind of a good thing. It means you can choose from more displays to find the best one for your needs.

Today, it’s still a good idea to use a TV as a computer and a monitor as a PC. What makes them different is that screens like the LG C2 OLED and Asus ROG Swift PG42UQ are great for players who play on both PCs and consoles.

I’ve already talked about some of the most important differences between gaming TVs and monitors, but there are still a lot of smaller things to remember.