Have you experienced monitor ghosting? It is annoying, right? Monitor ghosting can have a worse impact on your gaming experience. It means that when you move from one screen to another, the pixels stay longer on the screen than they're supposed to.
This results in ‘’ghosty’’ and blurry effects when you are moving on your screen. In other words: you will experience ghosting because your monitor creates a trace of the image that looks like a ghost. Monitor ghosting mainly occurs when there are fast-moving images or scenes on your screen. That’s why mainly gamers experience this issue, but it can also happen when you’re watching a movie, for instance.
Also, monitor ghosting can result in eye strain and this is also something you don’t want to get from it.
But I have good news for you: I know how you can fix your monitor ghosting issues! I have experienced and fixed it myself too. And it doesn’t matter what type of panel you have, you will get to know everything to fix this because I want you to happily enjoy playing games.
And for now, this means eliminating the ghosts together. Are you ready?
Why Does Monitor Ghosting Happen
You might think: why do the pixels stay longer on my screen? Well, that’s because of the amount of time the pixels take from a black color to a lighter color. The higher this is, the longer the pixels will stay on your screen which could result in monitor ghosting. We can also call this the response time. So with a high response time, physical pixels can update fast to keep up with the image.
Panel Type Matters
What makes a difference, is the type of LCD panel you use. There are three types (used on modern LCD monitors): VA panels, TN panels, and IPS panels. VA panels are known to have the most monitor ghosting issues because of their higher contrast ratio. You could even experience ghosting issues on the best PC monitors.
You can notice this difference in contrast ratio when you compare the VA panel specs with IPS panel specs, for example. The contrast ratio of a VA panel could be like 2500:1 whereas the contrast ratio of an IPS panel is 700:1. Don’t panic when you have a VA panel, because I’m here to fix this with you. The reason why VA panels have a higher contrast ratio is that these panels are vertical aligned. What does that mean?
Vertical vs Horizontal Alignment
Vertical alignment means that pixels can turn vertically, which makes them able to block more light and to have better reproduction of the black color. VA panels have this vertical alignment and therefore these panels have a higher chance to get monitor ghosting, also called black smearing. The IPS panels, on the other hand, are always horizontally aligned (and the TN panels have horizontal alignment too). This results in less contrast but better viewing angels.
The higher the contrast, the more chance you have to experience ghosting which is the case with VA panels. This doesn’t mean VA panels are bad. VA panels are known to offer a superior contrast ratio (as you've seen this contrast ratio is generally much higher) and excellent image quality.
No Ghosting, But Overshooting!
Usually, TN or IPS panels don’t have monitor ghosting. Instead, they have a problem called overshooting or undershooting. This means that the pixel response is overclocked too much. It feels and looks like monitor ghosting, but it isn’t the same and it’s usually less blurry. However, you will be able to fix this problem as well when we get into the solutions.
Does Monitor Ghosting Cause Damage?
Good to know is that monitor ghosting won’t cause any damage to your screen. What usually happens though, is that monitor ghosting looks worse over time. Therefore, you might think something bad happened to your screen, but in fact, there's nothing to worry about. This is only the case with things such as a screen burn-in or image retention.
Monitor ghosting first starts to look pixelated, and after some time it will look ‘smeared’. Hence monitor ghosting is also called ‘’black smearing’’ (as we said before). It is still a problem many gamers have to face, and to this day manufacturers are still finding out ways to reduce this problem. But luckily, there are quite some things we can do to solve this ourselves.
First of all, monitors come with advanced settings for a reason. It’s there to make the screen optimized for our needs. And also to fix monitor ghosting! Let’s dive into it now.
1. Fix Monitor Ghosting Within Your Monitor Settings!
Tweaking your monitor settings has, in my opinion, the best chance of solving the monitor ghosting issue. If you use a VA panel like me, three settings can help you fix it: overdrive, gamma (brightness), and shadow (I will explain how).
If you have a TN or an IPS panel, then the setting overdrive alone could fix this (overshooting) issue for you.
As you change your monitor settings, I recommend going to this UFO monitor ghosting test that’s specially made to solve this problem.
On the right top, you can change the speed if you like. Switch between low and high speed, and look if all the UFOs keep a sharp image and if your screen doubles the length of the UFO that you can see. If they seem to become blurry or have a blurry trail behind them, you know your monitor suffers from monitor ghosting. Therefore, keep changing your settings until it looks good and sharp to you.
Follow the settings in this order and see if you can stop your monitor from ghosting!
Overdrive
The first setting you need to adjust is overdrive. What overdrive does, is that it pumps more voltage to your pixels so you can change them over faster. In other words: you will overclock your pixels. I recommend turning this on and trying out overdrive on medium level.
Make sure you don’t set this setting too high, as surprising artifacts will start to show. With an overdrive that's too high colors change so fast to a certain color, they're expecting themselves to be, and then they have to go back to the color they should be. And this could result in strange colored ‘’artifacts’’ on your screen.
When you have an IPS panel, it could happen that the overdrive on medium doesn’t help. If so, turn overdrive off or reduce the overdrive settings. Because with an IPS panel, it could be an overshooting or undershooting issue instead of actual ghosting (even if it looks like it). While response times may be better with higher overdrive settings, you will have the overshoot or undershoot problem.
So to get the best image quality overall on an IPS panel with overshooting or undershooting, try to reduce or turn off overdrive. You can also try this out and experience what happens within the UFO test (if you don’t know your type of panel, for example).
Gamma
On TN or TPS panels, the overdrive settings will most likely fix the problem. If not, or when you have a VA panel, then you need to have a look at your gamma level. Gamma helps you to change your overall brightness levels. As you go up in levels, the brightness of the pixels changes slightly. The goal here is to decrease the darker colors. This will reduce the ‘’black smearing’’ a.k.a. monitor ghosting.
Your colors will look less good, but the black colors will likely go away. However, when you decrease the darker colors it could be annoying in some games that use a lot of dark colors. As soon as you notice it hinders your gaming experience, set it back to normal.
Shadows
The last setting you can change to reduce monitor ghosting is shadows. When you give your monitor fewer shadows, you will reduce monitor ghosting. It is the same idea as with gamma. We want to decrease the darker colors. But also, your image won’t look as good as there is less contrast. Black is going to look grey, and the colors will look more washed out.
As you change all these settings, keep having an eye on the UFOs that are flying by in this UFO test. Do you see less monitor ghosting already?
Motion Blur
Some monitors could also show a motion blur option, which helps you to blur fast-moving images. It can also make your movement in game feel more realistic. However, I won't recommend using this when you want to be as effective and quick as possible in your games. Usually, using motion blur requires turning FreeSync off, for example.
However, using FreeSync is important as it provides you with a variable refresh rate, which prevents your screen from stuttering and it removes screen tearing. FreeSync will run at no extra cost to the monitor as long as you have a GPU that supports FreeSync.
Screen Tearing vs Screen Stuttering
For if you don’t know what screen tearing or stuttering is: screen tearing happens when the FPS of your GPU and the Hertz of your monitor doesn't match. As a result, horizontal cracks will appear in your frames (screen). Screen stuttering happens when your monitor refreshes more often than your GPU’s fps.
2. Lower Your Monitor Hertz
If all these settings didn't work out for you, or maybe you don't feel like it completely fixed the problem, you can try to lower the Hertz of your monitor. Maybe you think: why should I do this? I bought my monitor to take advantage of this amount of Hertz. And I feel you.
But this can actually help to reduce your monitor ghosting. Especially with higher overdrive settings on a VA panel, you will get less black smearing at 85Hz instead of 144Hz, for example. It can also help you to experience less overshoot or undershoot but usually for that, the overdrive setting will solve this.
You can change your monitor Hertz as followed: go to your Windows settings, display, scroll down to advanced display settings, click on display adapter properties, click monitor, and change your screen refresh rate.
Consider if it’s worth it to decrease your monitor Hertz to get less black smearing. It doesn’t mean that you need to set your monitor on 15Hz, you can also decrease it a little bit and see what it does. If it works, decide if you want to give up more Hertz to experience less monitor ghosting. Lower Your Monitor Hz
3. Other Tips That Solve Monitor Ghosting
If both adjusting your monitor settings and lowering your Hertz didn’t work for you, then there’s something else wrong. First of all, check if your monitor cable is plugged in firmly. It could sound silly, but it could be a reason why monitor ghosting happens. What could also happen is that other devices interfere with your monitor. Think about a wireless keyboard or speaker. You can try to disconnect them and see if this solves the monitor ghosting.
Furthermore, make sure your graphics card is up to date. Even though monitor ghosting is almost always related to the monitor, it’s an easy thing to check. And if nothing has worked then I recommend you to check the warranty of your monitor. It could be your monitor port that's broken, or something inside that’s causing the problem. Hopefully, you can get a repair, refund, or buy a new monitor.
Monitor Ghosting Example
So as you know, when you experience monitor ghosting you will find traces of images that look like ghosts. The UFO ghosting test is a great way to see if your monitor is ghosting. And to give you another example of how monitor ghosting looks like: the picture below shows how the moving person is traced by ''ghosts''. It looks like the screen isn't ready to erase the previous images to create the current image. The lower the response time, the harder it is for physical pixels to keep up with the image.
And? Did we manage to eliminate the ghosts together?
I hope this article helped you to solve your monitor ghosting! It's a very annoying issue, but in most cases, it can be fixed. I can also help you with other things, such as:
- Find the best DXRacer gaming chair
- Meet the lightest gaming mouse in the world
- Know if gaming gloves are worth it
- Is GFuel bad for you?
Have a blessed day!
