My interesting path in panel upgrading, finding the The BOE NV156FHM-N4B

So I like many wanted a 120hz panel for the notebook, and my laptop like many has only a 30 pin EDP interface. So if wanting high refresh rate, the main option is a chi mei n156hhe-ga1 panel that is often the most recommended, but its the only 120hz panel in 30 pin! So I ordered it from newegg to replaced my standard LG IPS 60hz, and oh wow I thought the panel was terrible. Yes terrible, despite all the rave reviews for the panel, I thought it was terrible. While I did enjoy 120hz over 60hz, the color rendition was far to washed out to enjoy, and the contrast ratio made black or dark colors look badly contrasted to brighter colors given the 500:1 CR of the chi mei. Booting it for the first time, I was wondering why the black background of the start up screen looked so bright compared to the stock LG LP156WFB-SPA3(I believe this is the model from a search).

So I took back the Chi Mei, and decided to go for a panel that no one has spoken about, The BOE NV156FHM-N4B and I have no regrets. The panel is 30 pin, IPS, has a contrast ratio of 1200:1, and can do a refresh rate of 150hz at a maximum clock. So what struck me first was how the panel has a much higher contrast ratio over the LG, and I saw it when booting by seeing the company logo in contrast to the black background. The lettering was significantly brighter, and the background screen was almost total dark compared to either the LG or chi mei, and when the windows screen came up, it in no way looked washed out. Looking into this panel more, I found the only other panels that can accomplish or go higher then 1200:1 CR are 4k panels, and while they look great, they take alot of gpu to even push games at that resolution, but its great for photo and video obviously. But for all intents and purposes, I like 120hz +, IPS, and High Contrast ratio, and while it has it weaknesses compared to the TN chi mei, I think the benefits far outway the cons.

The main benefits of the chi mei on paper are a 94%ntsc 8 or 10 bit color that wasnt noticeable to me, and 1.5 to 3ms response time, but the high washed out look and low CR makes that panel not enjoyable to look at for me, though it was smooth for games. As for the cons of the Boe panel, and brace yourself, the response time is 16ms. It does ghost some, and while 1ms TN users will notice it immediately, it doesnt take away from enjoying something like fast paced PVP. The ghosting doesnt look very bad though, and I have even disabled motion blur in Shadow of war and warframe occasionally, but ghosting generally isnt noticeable. The native refresh rate is actually 144hz, but the most I have stability gotten in an overclock is 150hz.

So how does this compare to 40pin IPS 144hz panels? Well In comparing, I thought the 40 pin panels looked washout some, but not as much as the TN chi mei probably due to the higher 800:1 CR of the auo panel, and on paper color rendition is the same as the boe. It does ghost slightly less based off of mouse and window movement, though it wasnt that noticeable. On paper I believe the Auo response time was ether 8 or 7ms, but I dont recall for the specific panel because they vary in response times usually between 5 and 9. Update: So for users with 40pin displays, there is a 40pin version: NV156FHM-N4(G/K) The K model is the one made later in 2018, while the G is the earlier model made in early 2018. Reportedly it may suffer from flicker from PWM and Im not sure what the difference there is besides that, but you get the CR ratio I so like without doing to a 4k panel.

As of writing this, I havent found anyone even so much as talk about this panel directly in English or at all, and so I hope this helps some people as I wasnt sure where else to talk about this obscure panel.

 

Hey, you are a legend, I was looking all around the web for some kind of review but you are the only one I ran into haha
do you mind telling me were you bought it, as I only have seen it listed in some sketchy websites

 

Well aliexpress is probably your best bet for least sketchy, but I went for ebay sellers to which I recommend you ask them for pictures of it working. They should also include free shipping that gets to the anywhere in the world in under a week, but aliexpress wont, but they are only 112 dollars last I checked.

This is the ebay dealer I went with. https://www.ebay.com/itm/144Hz-fram...h=item4b5b126624:g:m58AAOSwVXRbxYIL:rk:2:pf:0

 

Hey thanks!
I have a question as I am a little bit inexperienced with replacements when you change your panel dimming controls on the keyboard won't work, but the ones on the control panel will?

 

They both should work. The keyboard short cut and control panel both work for me, and they are just the same thing anyway.

 

Question, I am considering this panel as well to upgrade from the LGD046F I currently have, and I wanted to ask if this panel you got, the BOE NV156FHM-N4B, does it support G-Sync too?

 

My laptop doesnt have g-sync so I cant comment on whether it supports gsync or not. I think gsync is more or less a software lock so that odms have to buy licenses from nvidia and maybe even get a special permission chip, but I have no idea otherwise. Theres talk in forums about cracking that, but it like intel micro code is something no one has done, or spoken about doing yet.

 

Great news! since I have searched all over about this incredible panel, I can't find anywhere but you. So you can confirm that this
BOE NV156FHM-N4B is able to control brightness by keyboard (like N156HHE-GA1) right? That's sound awesome!
Thanks Man!

 

So. The brightness control still works as N156HHE-GA1.

 

Last I remember.

 

Yes it can control brightness. I dont know why it wouldnt otherwise, as I am not aware of laptop panels that dont.

 

What's your laptop?

 

Ya I should edit the post to say what it is lol. Its a tongfang NFSV1511.

 

you original panel was a LG LP156WFB-SPA3, right?

 

Ya, one of those similar models thats really popular, there are a number of them listed on panelook and I dont remember the specific model other then the attributes of 30pin 700 or 800:1 CR.

 

This panel looks good; the only problem is the really terrible response time. Oof.

 

I had spoken to a few people about getting tighter timings via firmware tweaks, but apparently you would have to dish out at least $1,000 to do that, and there is no freeware but I have found that tweaks with panels in this manner. It's certainly doable but that aside, I thought this panel was in every way better than that Chi mei. I suppose that is inconclusive since I did not have them both the same time and neither could I compare them side-by-side, but if I find somebody with the chi mei, I might see if we can do a side-by-side comparison.

 

@Casowen,

There are reports on Reddit about how this display has a very low PWM frequency (~200 Hz), which causes plenty of headaches (literally) and eye problems.

Have you experienced that? If you have a phone with a slow-motion video capture feature, could you try and capture the PWM?

 

It Wasnt actually this panel, but the 40pin version (NV156FHM-N4(G/K)) that is used on various razor and aorus laptop models if I recall. Otherwise I have never gotten a single headache from this specific panel. Screwing around with my phone camera, at times it shows PWM, and at times it doesnt, depending on settings and camera distance, so is there a definitive way of showing this? I personally cannot see it, but I might be able to capture it correctly.

 

Wonder if this would work in my Acer Nitro 5 w/ brightness control? I dislike my N156HHE GA1 greatly for reasons stated above.

 

It now comes down to BOE NV156FHM-N4B vs AUO B156HAN04.5 for my acer nitro 5....hmmmm

 

Here are the specs for that AUO panel: http://www.panelook.com/B156HAN04.5_AUO_15.6_LCM_overview_33006.html

CR in the AUO is a typical 800:1, and the Response time is the amount you would expect from a 60hz panel at 25ms, which will be very noticeable, and the AUO is a VA panel while the BOE is an IPS, so far better image quality and at 144hz. If you go for the BOE, I would be curious to know what you think of them side by side.

 

The AUO panel is AHVA (Advanced Hyper Viewing Angle), which is comparable to IPS, and not the same as VA (Vertical Alignment).

https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-explored/

 

Ill report back when the BOE NV156FHM-N4B ships from aliexpress hope it works in my nitro 5!
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/120...HM-N4bB-1920X1080-LED-Screen/32878900771.html

 

I'm waiting for your experiment.

 

Eye strain is gone.
BOE NV156FHM-N4B is much better in depth of color and strain on my eyes. It's 144hz and i can see slight ghosting but i do not care.
I do not recommend the Innolux N156HHE GA1. BOE NV156FHM-N4B for the win. On my acer nitro 5 the brightness works. I just hope it is reliable. Only thing i need to do is calibrate it i cannot find any ICC profiles for it maybe because its new.

 

Oh its new alright, and I couldnt find any calibrations for it either, so I suppose that spider device is in order. Care to tell us more of what you think? I tried explaining to a few people who will remain unnamed, that this panel really does out do the ga1, however everyone got caught up on the ghosting, which in my opinion isnt even more noticeable then 9ms 144hz panels that look washed out. People do not realize this unfortunately, and I suppose its mainly the on paper magic numbers that made everyone think that.

Brightness is certainly reliable, as I have had not a single issue with it in my entire time with it. Just make sure that the edp port is plugged in all the way as I made that mistake at first since I was new to panel upgrading. I think it will be fine without a panel profile, though I would certainly like to try one if you make or find one for this.

 

I play Battlefield V and Pub G on both of the screens. My first screen was a Innolux N156HHE GA1(from amazon) it a green pixel get stuck(gently smoothed it away finger) and it had a fairly bright dead pixel(black). The monitor itself gave me headaches as if it were always low PWM(not actually the case) despite being any on brightness even with blue light filters/icc profiles. I even paid for a ICC profile as well as downloading other the color profiles from MSI reviews that used the same screen. Chie Mei, Innolux, i have no idea who actually makes the display i got on amazon but it says innolux(same company as chei mei?). Did I mention the innolux looks very whited out? It looks so whited out it makes visual identification speed in FPS games slower(pardon, its the best i can explain it).

I do not even get the slightest have any gripe about the blur honestly i can barely notice and i am amble to game better much easier to see and I can spot enemies faster. I play at 120 frames capped but the screen is 144hz motion and blur is literally no problem, I will game on this all day. I definitely play much better and can see much better TBH i don't even notice any heavy blur that effects gameplay. Uncalibrated is looks fantastic. The whiting out is gone. Easy on eyes. I think this refresh rate is 25ms IIRC its just a better display overall. To me its beats the N156HHE in every category not even going to mention the blur as its just not in anyway an issue to me as i don't really notice it between the 2 even playing at capped 60fps is less choppy with this display.

When started the laptop up, first thing i noticed was the ACER boot screen, its black with green letters if you guys are familiar with it. The green in the letters really really popped out like a nice deep green with no white shade flooding the colors on the display. I definitely noticed the color depth right away.

 

Well im glad you like it, and im glad I made this post. I really dont have much gripe about the response time, and as you said, it isnt obvious and makes no difference.

 

I still wonder what its best vibrancy looks like when its correctly calibrated.

 

Thanks for this info! Was about to buy the Chimei but just ordered this instead. Bought from Taobao for ~$80 for an A+ screen. Will report back on how it goes.

Also note on the response time, initially I thought the specs looked atrocious but then realized it is Tr/Td while the 1-3ms specs are surely GTG. I'd expect this to be closer to maybe 8ms GTG.

 

So I found the NV156FHM-N4K, a 40-pin version with the full 8-bit colour and the same 1200:1 contrast ratio, 144 Hz refresh rate and all. Given I work with photographs fairly frequently, I was wondering how it'd compare with the N4B. I want to upgrade my panel, but I also want to ensure it is an upgrade in all measures, rather than a sidegrade (i.e. I really want 8-bit colour). Hopefully the N4K doesn't have the PWM problems that the N4G did...

 

NV156FHM-N4B works great for me on my Dell 7577. So much better than the OEM screen which was an eyesore next to my LG 34UC88.

 

I was able to install the NV156FHM-NB4 in a Thinkpad E580 and it works perfectly. However, I had to cut some plastic bits and tabs to make the panel fit because this panel was a bit larger than the OEM screen.

 

Hi guys. I've ordered this model N4B from Taobao for my Lenovo Y5070 onAA Windows 8.1. I think it is not compatible with my GPU since I logged in the screen will wash out to white. I tried to restart many times but there is only 1 time I can get to the main desktop and check the refresh rate. But if I try to open Chrome of any apps, the screen will be white. I don't really know it is about my Windows 8.1 or my GPU is too weak to run 144Hz (but 120Hz was fine).

edit: Now I know my panel got problem, so I have you change for a new one.
anybody suggest for a good seller that offer A++ quality?
Thanks

How could you do that. You got no problem with your laptop at all?

 

Hi guys. Update here
Since I've tested on Lenovo Y5070 now I know the problem that caused to the screens. There must be a battery management in NVIDIA. Everything works fine if I plugged the battery and play on. Tested by playing Overwatch for 2 hours. No problem, no screen flickering, But if I pull out battery, the screen goes black and white out.

I want you guys to test on your laptop with no battery charge. If no problem, then it is my laptop that too weak.

Thanks

 

I have no idea why it would do that, perhaps something in the bios can be set to max performance? Is the edp cable plugged in all the way till you hear that snap? I made the mistake of not putting it in all the way and it wouldnt screen boot.

 

Hey guys. Got me a Dell G5 awhile back and just happened upon the Chimei screen upgrade articles. I found this forum mentioned in on of the youtube videos and now I'm a bit curious. Pretty much everything Ive read about the TN Chimei panel has been positive except for the reduced viewing angles compared to the stock IPS on the G5. This is the only article i can find that mentions a lot of negative stuff about the Chimei TN panel.
Im wondering if anyone here has used the BOE N4B on a Dell G5 or G7 and can comment? I saw a user said he used it on his Dell 7577 which was the predecessor to the G series line and so should be pretty similar. The 2 main things I'm wanting to upgrade for are faster refresh rate for gaming (etc) and brightness as the stock LG panel on the G5 is not quite as bright as I would like it to be. The other thing being the brightness control although that is a lesser priority since I generally leave it at max brightness most of the time I use it anyways but if this panel is brighter I might change it more often.

I gotta figure that if the Chimei TN panel fit the OP's laptop then the BOE N4B should fit mine because the Chimei TN panel has been confirmed to fit G5's, but there is no confirmation that the brightness control works for my model so I am a bit hesitant to buy one especially since the Chimei is good chunk cheaper than the N4B.

Appreciate the OP starting this thread as its literally the only one I can find about the N4B. Most everything else is about the BOE 120hz (forget the specific model) one that has is rather sluggish in response time and does not have brightness control for the G5.

Thanks

 

N4K has 0.5 pitch though. If its going in in your 7530 how are you going to solve that problem?

 

I doubt that will be an issue.

 

How would you connect the panel to the computer then if the cable connector has different pitch

 

Can you illustrate with some picture links what your referring too? All 30pin edp interface links are the same, and I am not aware of any "pitch" standard, and of all 3 panels i have used, none of them seem to have the issue your talking about.

 

i think the right comparison would be this: http://www.panelook.com/modelcompare.php?ids=37089,23899

about the pitch, i really dont know about that, but the original screen on dell 7530 uses a edp1.3, the "new" screen uses edp1.4, so, this could be a incompatibility.

but, back to boe nv156fhm-n4b, i notice some atualization on panelook, now list suport to gsync, a don't remember to read that before. I was ready to buy for my acer helios (g3-572), because a lot of people had sucess with a acer nitro 5 (an515), but one review on aliexpres worried me.

anyone tryed this screen on acer helios, had some problem? A custom resolution utility could solve this?
thanks.

 

Just installed this panel into my Dell Precision 7530 (upgrade over the 45% gamut screen) and its definitely a huge upgrade - much richer colours, nice contrast, everything is a lot smoother. Downside wise this screen definitely uses PWM for any brightness setting bellow 100%, so will need to use it for a few days / week before I see how it affects me. Has anyone managed to find any calibrated profiles for this panel?

 

I couldnt find any, that said those are usually done per panel with an easily obtainable calibrator, usually from a local computer shop. An easy way to over come PWM is just to lower brightness and contrast in the nvidia control panel, though I rarely do that, and the PWM for me isnt noticeable. I personally doubt that it even needs to be calibrated, and in all likelyhood that was done at factory.

 

NV156FHM-N4B coming in the mail soon. It's going into a low end HP 15-bs234wm with Pentium N5000, but the platform supports eDP 1.4 and the connector has the same pin pitch as my original screen. I'll update soon.

Edit: I just installed the NV156FHM-N4B. And. It. Is. ****ING AMAZING BOYS. HOLY ****. It looks so good and I can't believe it worked right out of the box. Such contrast and color depth, much refresh rate! Brightness control works. And yes this is in my HP with the N5000 processor. Yes it's real ****ing life.

One issue that I had predicted may happen with my particular laptop, power issues. At max brightness at 144Hz I quickly get black screen with flickering, and at max brightness 60Hz the screen cycles between on and dark every half-second or so. So I'm pretty sure it's a power issue. I think I can get away with 144Hz at lowest brightness and I actually only use laptops below half brightness anyway, usually at lowest. But I could live with 60Hz to be safe, especially when I wasn't even trying to find a 144Hz screen when looking into panelook models. The stock screen takes 1-2w less power and my laptop is naturally a very low-power model, but it could be that or a timing issue, probably power though. I speculate that if it's power, it might be related to there only being two dedicated wires for LED backlight in my stock eDP cable even though there can potentially be up to four. The two LED backlight power wires come from the board and then are soldered to two pins each at the display side connector, 26+27 and 28+29. It does have both data lanes though, otherwise none of this would be possible at 1080p. I also think it could be minor differences in voltages between the original and the N4B but they surprisingly match very well in the datasheets.

My previous stock screen was supposedly marked for 8ms response time, and the N4B 16ms. I honestly don't notice a difference. It's feels great, and it's also the first 120Hz+ screen I've ever owned. And I've only actually used a high refresh monitor once in my entire life, at a Frys a few years ago.

I will be working on color profiles to see if I even need to get it towards a certain look. I'm so used to the higher gamma levels on my last monitor (necessary for that case) that gamma does look a tad low, but again I'll mess with it more. From what I can tell though, it looks very good and neutral right out of the box.

Incredible 1 week with this laptop. I got the RAM upgrade, the backlit keyboard, and now a beautiful display all in just a few short days. So ****ing hyped.

 

Well you might try running a custom refresh rate of say 120hz to see if that lowers energy enough. Maybe putting system performance on maximum? Have you tried using throttle stop? If those things dont work, mess around with refresh rate till your at a stable frequency or brightness level, and you can always artificially make it all brighter via raising the gamma. How bright are you able to get it, and at what frequency? I can technically run full brightmess for instance, but usually dont go past 85 percent during the day.

Mine didnt like getting set at 60hz a few times, but its okay with say 96hz or 75hz for whatever reason. Maybe it is a timing issue as you said, so maybe mess with screen timings? I am not sure.

As for the cable, I dont know if that will be it, but you should at least have a return policy just in case its not.

 

Intel command center doesn't let me use any non 60Hz/144Hz custom res, including ones like 75Hz. It says mode not supported. And I can't add 1080p 60Hz modes with different timings because it just says cannot add mode that already exists. I'm perfectly fine running 60Hz though and don't really appreciate the benefit of 144Hz as much as many others do. My original panel was 768p @60Hz btw.

But even then, things are still a bit buggy at 60Hz. There's this video I'm watching on Philipdefranco's channel, that if I run in full screen at a very specific point in the video it starts flickering the screen on and off for a few seconds. It's consistent every time at that exact spot. But it doesn't happen at all if not in fullscreen, and every other youtube video I've watched doesn't do this. And it does also happen at 144Hz, but not at all at any resolution below 1600x900. That then it makes me wonder if it's just the data lane output or firmware maybe not playing quite well with higher resolutions. So even though 1080p @60Hz is seemingly stable there are very rare bugs here and there and I doubt I can do anything about it. I'm honestly willing to live with an occasional bug. The passmark monitor test tool does report full 1080p, 8-bit color and the correct model number so I'm getting the performance I want out of the screen it's just not matching quite right with the motherboard and/or cable.

I just looked at the video again and found something interesting. If I'm moving the mouse while the video is playing, no black screen bug. If I move the mouse just before the problem area happens so that the seek bar is visible, bug doesn't happen. And when the bug does happen, the screen stays black during the entire 10 second section of the video with a specific background unless I move the mouse. Video must be fullscreen for bug to happen. The part of the video doesn't seem special so I don't know what is triggering the bug ( video, bug happens at 3:45). I feel like maybe the screen is being told to turn off because it thinks there isn't enough going on or something but then why doesn't it happen at lower resolutions? It's like the screen just doesn't like the specific combination of color data it gets at that section but then is perfectly fine if the seek bar is showing.

If I could get a display engineer to talk to me that would be cool. I'll probably go back to the datasheets but to my memory while the main voltages (3/3.3/3.6, 5/12/21) all matched, the two sub-voltages that are 2.0v on the stock screen are 2.2v on the N4B, and max total power usage is 1 or 2w higher. It's also possible the cable passed validation for lower resolution but didn't for higher res though I highly doubt that.

Timings are very confusing to look at but I did notice a lot of the values weren't the same. Not sure what the unit was but I assumed it was in ms, and a made up example would be, stock screen 100, N4B 200 for the line 32 vsync. That is from the timing table, while the pinout tables match very well except the N4B additionally has the H-sync out at pin 24 while the stock screen has it not connected. I've seen datasheets for other G-sync monitors where it says pin 24 H-Sync is optional so I assume this probably doesn't have much to do with the problem as I'm not using G-Sync.

Edit: Now I'm having more issues. Something happened not sure what but now I black screen if I'm viewing my desktop without any windows open. If I change my background the desktop is fine. Moving files or icons doesn't help much when the stock background is in place. But if I change display scaling to 150% no more flickering. The desktop wasn't doing this before so I'm not sure what I changed. I'm just going to use the old original Win10 background for now, found it in 4K online.

I ran through the passmark monitor test, and I get black screen on all of the solid color slides. So I believe what could be a problem is when the colors on the screen aren't diverse enough, not sure why that would happen though.

In this color test video I can watch it fine regular screen but in fullscreen, I can't see anything when the frame is on red or blue. Green is fine though. So something is wrong with color data coming into the screen. It can show these colors but not when...there is too much of one shade on the display? Doesn't make sense to me. I can even have it in regular screen mode and as I zoom out to make the video player larger, once I hit 33% then I get a black screen. So it's not necessarily fullscreen but a certain upper limit ratio of a specific shade of red or blue being too much and then black screen. Seems like that percentage limit is somewhere around 2/3 of the screen.

 

Update April 2020: I no longer use the ICC profile with reduced color range as I really want to use this display to the best it can be. For a while now, whenever there is a problematic website I use my adblocker to block the problem element (usually a banner or notice), or I just downsize my browser when I use that website. Videos are 99.99% fine, with only very rare videos having a few problem frames. I was using stock gamma for a while but eventually had enough...the contrast ratio is too good for standard gamma to be optimal for me, so I now use an ICC profile to bump gamma slightly. The display has been good to me for the past few months considering it was a totally unsupported mod.

The problem is likely due to the eDP cable power wiring not being complete. Could be fixed with a mod to the wiring in the cable by adding wires so power pins aren't sharing wires.

This is going to sound really, really strange, but I think I solved the black screen issue for the NV156FHM-N4B in my HP 15-bs234wm by using the color management calibration tool.

Currently I use the monitor without the ICC profile because it does slightly reduce luminance range, but if you need 100% stability this will work. Without the ICC profile I run into the black screen issue so rarely that I can go an entire session without it happening, and even then if it does happen it only happens for a few frames in a rare YouTube video.

At first I was researching and trying what made "sense" but eventually got desperate and started trying every random thing I could. So I decided to see if lowering red and blue levels would allow me to watch the red and blue frames of the pixel test video in full screen without black screening. And it worked. So I lowered all R/G/B equally by about 6 notches to preserve color balance and now I believe the black screen issue is solved. This is in tandem with lowest brightness, so to go brighter I'd need to lower the colors even more in the calibrator. For middle brightness I need to lower by 8 notches. To pass the RGB switching section of the video in full screen I need to lower by 15 notches. Passing every Passmark monitor test including the r/g/b gamma pages requires doing down by about 24 or 25. And yes, it works at 144Hz too. And from what I can tell, the picture quality isn't affected as long as the values are lowered equally. It just means you will need to raise brightness by a notch to match what you had by default.

I still don't understand what is going on and have lots of questions. If it's power related, is it just a power issue with the red and blue subpixels? Did lowering the color levels in the calibrator tool squish down the effective color depth that Windows outputs? Is the data output on my motherboard not prepared to send 8-bit? Maybe a different than expected ratio of sub-pixel voltage to LED voltage since my original screen had a lower minimum LED brightness? Very strange situation.

 

It may be possible that you have a defective screen as well. I recommend either taking it back and just trying another IPS panel that is 60hz. To be honest I am also not certain.