For those of you looking at the new LG DualUp 16:18 ratio (almost square!) 27" LCD monitor for your arcade projects, I am posting this "retro-centric" review after owning one for 2 days...
MODEL LG DUALUP $599 - with simple standAmazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSLX8H3T/ref=twister_B0C1W6BCM1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1The appeal here is that the 16:18 ratio of this monitor is almost square, and this gives the ability to present horizontal AND vertical games at a large size, as compared to the drawbacks in 16:9 monitors of today. Also, at 2560x2880, the resolution and pixel density is comparable to 4k monitors.
SUMMARY-PROS: Large usable area. Vibrant Colors. High pixel density. Powers on automatically. Light-weight.
-CONS: Mere Average Black levels. No VRR. Not very usable in rotated (horizontal) position. Expensive.
GENERAL IMPRESSIONS:Nicely built, with very thin bezel edges. Includes all needed cables (HDMI, DP, USB). Separate power brick makes for a very light and thin unit.
Very well integrated into Windows 10. Full 2560x2880 resolution was made available without hassle. I installed the LG drivers ahead of time just in case. I am using an Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB DDRAM through the HDMI 2.0 port of the LCD. There is also a DisplayPort which I have not tested.
The size of this display utilizing the 4:3 region is equivalent to almost exactly a 23" monitor diagonal. This is with the display set in its original upright orientation.
The included VESA stand is very nice, relatively sturdy and hefty. However, the stand does NOT allow for 90-degree rotation. The Ergo stand (the other variant offered) does allow this.
The in-monitor interface for adjusting settings is beautifully crafted and the small button/joystick is a hidden joystick under the monitor bezel. Best system I have used for a monitor so far. When rotated however the interface itself does not rotate.
Importantly, the monitor powers ON automatically with the PC. Also, I tested unplugging the monitor while it was ON, and then restarting the PC, then lastly plugging the monitor - it always powers ON automatically. Perfect for MAME Cabinet integrations!
IMAGE SIZE AND QUALITY:Colors are vibrant. Resolution and pixel density are quite high. I carefully calculated a 3.1x increase in pixel density (and total pixel use) compared to your typical 1080p monitor of equivalent size (utilizing equivalent usable 23 inch diameter at 4:3 sub-region). On the other hand, If compared to a true 4K monitor- (also of equivalent usable diagonal 4:3 size), that figure drops to 0.8x. So not quite 4K but very close indeed.
Brightness levels set to 100% on the LCD panel are very bright. Perfect for even bright room gaming. The panel is coated with anti-reflective surface and there are no reflection annoyances associated with the glossy monitors which I avoid for this type of use. There are no motion trails to speak of in MAME games. Image is stable and very vibrant.
On the downside, black levels are merely average. They appear comparable to my other LCD monitors, and a little worse than my most expensive (non OLED) LCD. However, there is a significant catch: If you rotate the monitor 90 degrees, the backlight on the left side of the monitor (would have been the top originally) looks very grey and washed out, to the point that games with black background such as Pac-Man became very distracting to play. To me this was unbearable and I attribute it to being designed for vertical orientation for the viewing angles. Fortunately, the need to rotate the monitor is rather moot, as this monitor is almost square. There was a little extra to gain for horizontal games, which is why I tested the rotation. In normal orientation (monitor sits taller than wider) the backlight is not an issue for me at normal viewing distances. Also, in this position the viewing angles are fine. There is little/no wash-out by moving left/right or for 2 player gaming angles. Ultimately, I settled for normal orientation (as apparently LG intended) - and with this, games that don't have a black background look spectacular. Games with black backgrounds (Asteroids, Galaxian, etc.) look fine and are not awfully distracting to me. An OLED screen would have mitigated all this but that would have likely been a more expensive proposition.
As for refresh rate management, sadly there is no VVR/G-SYNC/FREESYNC and the panel is limited to 60hz refresh rates only.
MAME / FRONTEND INTEGRATIONI use HyperSpin as my frontend and it integrates perfectly to use a dedicated 4:3 region in the center of the screen, with black bars above and below as expected. To achieve this, I set HyperSpin to NOT use full-screen and set the HyperSpin resolution to 2560x1920. (Tip: Make sure you turn off 150% text scaling in Windows control panels because it messes up the HyperSpin scaling and resolutions! I pulled my hair for an hour before realizing this.)
MAME integrates perfectly and scales everything to meet 4:3 ratios. With that said, MAME integration was a little tricky to get it to work EXACTLY how I wanted. Read on....
I wanted horizontal games to use the full width of the panel, and have MAME adjust the height automatically. This is normal MAME behavior, and no adjustments were needed. However, for vertical games, I wanted MAME to use the *same height* as the horizontal game's width (basically mimicking an exactly sized monitor in both orientations). On a square 1:1 LCD this would have required no changes. However, the height of the LCD panel itself is taller than wider, so some adjustments are needed to make this work. I created a MAME Artwork Layout (.lay) file so that vertical games use 2560 pixels high and 1920 pixels wide, and also adjusted it so that it centered on screen. This leaves black borders all around the MAME gaming areas, which is how I needed it for my situation. There is a trick to set up games to use a vertical.ini file that itself references that vertical artwork file, whenever no artwork is found -- and I used this feature to ensure that vertical games lay out precisely at the right size and where I wanted them on the screen. I will post/detail that later in this thread. Note that horizontal games didn’t need tweaking for this, but can also be done if you want more adjustments on placement/size, or if you want to use marquee and other artwork on this huge screen and its unused spaces. With all this set up correctly, horizontal and vertical games both look identically sized and centered on screen.
I even created a custom layout for Tempest to make it a little more square and closer to 1:1 ratio. It is absolutely gorgeous. Speaking of Tempest, vector games look incredible at this high resolution, and with some HLSL/BGFX glow effects it is just pure eye candy. I will never look back to a CRT monitor now.
Let's talk HLSL/BGFX shaders... they look fine on this monitor. I thought there would be more of a benefit from the much higher resolution and pixel density, but after tweaking things such as the shadow mask size I couldn't really get it to look much better than on 1080p monitors. I do see the difference in the detail of the shadow masks etc., but overall, at viewing distance, I really couldn't tell so I left it all alone. Also, for some reason MAME shaders require a bump in halation and bloom type effects to show up more clearly on this LCD compared to my other monitors.
SOUNDThis monitor passes sound through to its internal speakers through HDMI. Sound is satisfyingly loud for a monitor. Quality was very appropriate for MAME. I won’t use this feature as I have dedicated mid rage speakers in my cabinet, but this feature/quality is something I wasn't expecting.
CONCLUSIONSThere are very few options today for 1:1 ratio LCD monitors (or anything remotely close). I am very happy with this solution, and it fits perfectly inside my Centipede-sized MAME cabinet. The benefit of having large horizontal AND vertical games is tremendous for me.
On the downside, the price is fairly high at $600. I would have gladly paid $600-800 if this monitor had deep blacks with an OLED panel and some sort of VVR/GSYNC integration - that would have been perfection.
Ultimately, other than the 2 points above this monitor has little fault. 4 out of 5 stars at this price point. While it is not perfect, I can definitely recommend this as a MAME gaming monitor.
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Topic: Full review of LG DualUp Square(ish) monitor (Read 996 times)
