OLED displays may be more affordable than ever in 2026, but many users are still wary of investing in one due to burn-in concerns. This is why they prefer IPS monitors, thanks to a great combination of image quality, response time, and refresh rates. I can understand the hesitation in buying a monitor that degrades over time, but the practical OLED experience has transformed over the last few years. Burn-in protection is robust, text clarity is better than ever, and even the brightness levels have caught up. On the flip side, IPS displays are still plagued by the age-old issues of IPS glow, poor contrast ratio, and subpar local dimming. These problems might have been tolerable in the past, but in 2026, they're inexcusable. OLED monitors are better in almost every aspect, and with the current pricing, even the OLED premium argument falls flat.

The dreaded IPS glow and backlight bleeding

You can't really get rid of them

I'm sure everyone reading this has seen the dirty screen effect of IPS displays, nicknamed "IPS glow." This washed-out look of IPS monitors is most visible during dark scenes and dim lighting, or when you're looking at the screen from an angle. It's not a defect so much as an innate property of IPS panels, and can never be completely removed, no matter how good the tuning and quality control. I've spent over 8 years gaming on IPS displays, and I could never enjoy dark scenes during gaming without groaning internally. I even got LG to replace the panel on one of my older monitors because I thought the IPS glow was a bit too much. The replacement didn't really solve the issue; it just relocated the dirty parts of the screen to different corners.

Then, there is the inevitable backlight bleeding that comes with using a traditional LED monitor. Now, this one is more of a manufacturing defect, and can mostly be eliminated with proper quality control. Still, it never goes away completely, and some level of backlight bleed is actually considered par for the course. As long as your monitor has a conventional backlight, some degree of bleeding will occur. Since I switched to a QD-OLED monitor around six months ago, I have gotten rid of both of these problems. The per-pixel illumination of the OLED panel eliminates any unwanted "glow" or backlight bleeding. Whatever you think about OLED displays, there's a massive gulf between them and any other panel technology. Even advanced Mini-LED panels produce halos around bright objects in dark scenes. IPS monitors are still fine for most use cases, but they're rapidly becoming a liability in 2026, considering how much display technology has evolved.

Poor contrast ratio means no real HDR

IPS and OLED are not even in the same league

IPS displays have always had inferior contrast ratios compared to VA panels. The latter always looked better in darker scenes, and was preferred by a significant number of users. When OLED displays became popular, and people realized what per-pixel local dimming could do, things went downhill for IPS displays pretty fast. OLED monitors left everything else in the dust when it came to contrast ratios. Their organic pixels could switch off completely when not needed, producing near-infinite contrast. Thanks to true, unadulterated blacks and punchy colors, OLEDs instantly became the gold standard for HDR content. Before using an OLED display, I never understood the appeal of "true HDR," but once I got one, I was seeing things in games that I had never seen before, even when replaying older titles.

Even the best IPS monitors top out at contrast ratios of around 1000:1 or 1200:1. VA panels are significantly better at around 3000:1, but OLEDs smoke them both — since they produce perfect blacks, dividing by 0 essentially gives you "infinite" contrast. Today, you can get your hands on a 27" 1440p 180Hz QD-OLED display from Samsung for as low as $350 during a sale. When you can get a premium HDR experience at this price, there's really no argument to be made for an IPS display if you value peak image quality.

Inferior response time vs. OLED panels

Your eyes can track the difference

Another knock on IPS monitors, despite their excellent gaming performance, is the inferior response time when pitted against OLED displays. The "1ms" response time figure you see plastered on almost every IPS monitor is a theoretical calculation that you never actually see in real gaming scenarios. Manufacturers measure that 1ms response time with aggressive overdrive settings that give rise to artifacts like pixel overshoot and inverse ghosting. What you actually experience while gaming on an IPS display is more like 3–4ms response time. OLED displays, by virtue of the self-emissive pixels, exhibit response times in the 0.01–0.03ms range — no overdrive required. The difference between 3ms and 0.03ms can be perceived by your eyes, and leads to the "smoother motion" people associate with OLED displays.

In addition to a naturally lower response time, OLEDs excel in motion clarity due to another advantage over IPS panels: effective frame persistence. While both IPS and OLED are sample-and-hold displays, meaning they hold a frame in place until the next one is ready to replace it, a frame on an OLED display is visually complete as soon as it appears. IPS displays, since they're slower in terms of pixel response time, have to deal with leftover visuals from the previous frame that your eyes can track even when the next frame has been loaded. This creates smearing and motion blur that subtracts from the experience, handing OLEDs an easy win. The difference in motion clarity between IPS and OLED displays may seem inconsequential on the surface, but it's very real. And when you're spending under $400 on an OLED gaming monitor, the inferior motion clarity of IPS alternatives becomes hard to justify, even if the latter costs half that of the former.

It's time to put IPS displays in their place

For the longest time, IPS monitors remained a great choice for gaming because OLED pricing just wasn't there yet. Most people weren't going to drop $800–$1,000 (or more) on an OLED monitor just for deeper blacks and better HDR. Within a few years, however, that price range has literally been halved, shedding more light than ever on all the downsides of IPS panels. The stark difference between IPS and OLED monitors can no longer be ignored.