TN Panels: the Porsche of Gaming Monitors

When you think of a Porsche a few words come to mind. Words such as high Performance, luxury, Sleek design, reliable. A supercar with everything you need, especially when it comes to speed. When you think of gaming monitors from a competitive standpoint, TN Panels are the supercar of gaming monitors. It’s consistently the fastest, most reliable and the gold standard in the realm of Esports. To understand why this is you must first come to know about all the other popular panels that all types of gamers prefer. TN panels have been around for quite some time in which it has proven to be a staple when it comes to pushing fast response times, refresh rates, decent color options and arguably the most ideal motion blur/ghosting reduction when paired with technology such as DyAc and ULMB. If a TN panel is like a Porsche, then an IPS panel has to be a Mercedes! A very balanced gaming monitor that doesn’t do any one thing great as well as it does every good. It has good viewing angles, great colors and overall acceptable high fresh rates thus making it a pretty solid panel. Although we do love colors, viewing angels, 4k gaming and all that jazz, in the end when it comes to competing that means nothing at the expense of faster response times and increased potential for less clearer and sharper dynamic image quality. Another important panel to talk about is the VA panel. This panel typically produces better colors, viewing angles than a TN panel but you run into having to sacrifice having lower refresh rates and slower response times compared to TN. It’s typically a leisure and more immersive style with it being a curved panel. While all three have their place it's important to understand which one would be the best suited to meet your everyday needs as a gamer! This is my journey in finding out what category I fell under and I’ll explain what to look for in understanding how to identify where you fall into as well.

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Here's my story of how I learned what type of gaming monitor I would end up preferring. I'm a former Professional Halo player & Coach who now works in Esports Partnerships and Marketing Management for ZOWIE under the parent company known as BenQ. ZOWIE’s mission is to develop & provide the BEST equipment specifically for Esports professionals and gamers who may not be pro but want to play on what the pros play on to enhance their overall performance. Now you may begin to read this and say, well of course Marcus is going to advocate for ZOWIE he literally works for them so, why would he ever say anything that goes against the integrity of the company? In most cases you’d be right to address that point but, if I take you back about over a decade ago, then you’ll start to understand there's more to it than that. Now if you're an experienced competitive gamer then somewhere down the line you’ve owned and or competed on a BenQ/ZOWIE monitor in your prospective Esport title. I’d most likely be accurate in that deduction wouldn’t you agree? I’ve played on almost every gaming monitor on the market. One company has always been at the top of the discussion in just about every gaming scene and that’s BenQ’s very own ZOWIE!

I first got introduced to BenQ back in 2011 at MLG Columbus while playing Halo Reach professionally and was completely caught off guard when every station at the event was equipped with a BenQ monitor. I guess I missed the memo about a new company becoming the official monitor of MLG which I didn’t think would make as big of an impact on me at the time. It was your ideal situation where BenQ partnered up with MLG and into a pool of different gaming communities at the same time thus capitalizing on the console market which then moved further into PC gaming a few years later. I’d say it was very good on BenQ to capitalize on the competitive market at that particular time. To dive a little deeper about my preferences a bit I'm a very serious competitive gamer and have been all my life so typically I'd only care about what the pros are playing on and if the specs are optimized strictly for performance. That being said, features such as colors, viewing angles, and 4k gaming among others aren’t a priority when I'm looking for an Esports gaming monitor. To be honest I haven’t even looked at buying any other brands on the market because my ZOWIE monitors last so long and they are still widely used in a bunch of your favorite Esport titles to this day. If you look at the events that took place in 2023 using ZOWIE monitors, you’d find that HALO, Valorant, Counter Strike , Rockey Leuage, Apex, Leauge of Ledends, NBA2k leagues all used ZOWIE. Additionally, if you talk to most Call of Duty pros, they’d also tell you they’ve grown up with and still currently use ZOWIE monitors that utilize a TN panel. After looking through most of the tiles listed, the majority were FPS games but that's the main focus when it comes to ZOWIE. At the start 2016, I joined Team Envyus, a professional Esports organization and at the time was sponsored by ZOWIE. Before joining the team, I had already invested in their RL series monitor but was able to continue building my experience with the monitors into their XL series. These moved up from 60Hz to 144Hz which at the time for Halo wasn't necessary for us to play Halo 5 due to console limitations. Nevertheless, the quality and longevity of the RL & XL monitors were second to none in its class in my humble opinion. At that time, I had no real idea about panel types and the difference between TN & IPS. I just knew what I knew and experienced through the competitions I participated and what I observed in other professional Esports events.

Fast forward to when I really started digging into higher refresh rates up to 360 Hz this changed my gaming experience drastically. I ended up buying an XL2566K 360 hz ZOWIE monitor without doing much research at all due to my trust in the brand’s morals and quality so, it wasn't hard to make that investment. (I do want to note that this was before I joined BenQ for the record.) Performance was all I cared about, nothing else mattered and as I dug deeper and learned more about TN and why people were starting to say it's an outdated technology. I had to pay close attention to the demographic of gamers who were expressing their opinions on that topic. I learned that a lot of these casual and some intermediate gamers preferred the overall experience when it comes to modern day gaming. That's when I started to learn more about IPS panels, 1440p, clearer colors, movie watching, video & photo editing which to a professional means very little when competing. First thing I've done and observed pros do is lower their graphic settings to maximize FPS because that’s going to increase overall hardware performance for competition. Anything possible to squeeze extra frames and any advantage on your opponents on the battlefield. Very quickly started to understand why people were in favor of an IPS panel over a TN one outside of the professionals. They just cared more about having a balanced gaming monitor with the option for more quality-of-life features and a more affordable price being as it was newer technology vs investing in what they’d call older tech but from a performance standpoint more viable when it came down to just MS and refresh rate. While all those features are great, I’d say, my philosophy is “What is useful isn't always necessary.” Another important detail to note about TN panels are limited to 1080p but, in today's world where just about every game's graphics are on avg stunning, I’d point out once again for professional gamers any more than that isn't needed if we are talking about sacrificing response time even if it's not much in regards to the comparison with an IPS or for any other panel other than an OLED. As refresh rates keep reaching higher and higher numbers, I believe from a performance-based view point in strictly Esports competition TN has its place in the conversation still. It’s reliable, well tested and proven. Even to this day most tournaments use a TN panel over any other panel when you look at the market. It comes down to identifying your values as a gamer, and understanding what category you fall under.  Ask yourself, are you a casual gamer who just likes an all-around balanced gaming monitor that wants every stat to be checked, or a serious gamer with aspirations of more in mind when it comes to selecting the type of monitor that helps support performance while still doing everything else well? That falls onto what type of gaming monitor is best for your needs and wants while playing!

IPS, VA, and TN panels all have their merits, with each panel type succeeding in a specific category. IPS has better color visuals, VA has better contrast, and TN has better response time. The choice of TN panel technology in all ZOWIE monitors, specifically the ZOWIE XL2566K, is intentional because response time is key for first person shooter games.

TN panels are known for their incredible speed and responsiveness, making them a perfect match for competitive gaming. The XL2566K's FastTN panel ensures that you experience minimal input lag and its rapid response time virtually eliminates motion blur. While the color accuracy might not be as high as with IPS panels, the focus in competitive gaming is on speed and precision. If you're a Call of Duty player seeking the ultimate advantage, read our latest article on the various gaming panels and which one best suits your gameplay style.

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