Why do the colours on a phone screen look the same from all directions but a laptop’s gets distorted when you look at it from a different angle?

Question

Why do the colours on a phone screen look the same from all directions but a laptop’s gets distorted when you look at it from a different angle?

In: Technology

Answer 1

It all comes down to the technology that’s used. There’s numerous different ways you can design a monitor. Three of the most common standard technologies are TN, VA and IPS. TN and VA both get distorted when you look at them on an angle *but* they’re cheaper than IPS and it’s easier to get them to run at higher refresh rates. OLED is another emerging technology that also doesn’t have this viewing angle issue, but is even more expensive too.

It comes down to a decision on product design. You *can* get monitors that don’t do this – in a phone size, in a laptop size, both work. I have a 27 inch IPS monitor, it runs at 144 hz, wasn’t that expensive and doesn’t distort when you look at it in a different way – we can make it work in larger than laptop sizes. It was *more important* for phones to have more angles so they got IPS screens earlier.