Consumer electronics vendors are always looking for the next thing that will convince us to upgrade to the latest and greatest. For screens and TVs this use to be a race of resolution and frame rate however things began to stall once 1080p became ubiquitous. 3D and 4K were the last two features which screen manufacturers used to tempt us although neither of them really proved to be a compelling reason for many to upgrade. Faced with flagging sales the race was on to find another must-have feature and the result is the bevy of curved screens that are now flooding the market. Like their predecessors though curved screens don’t provide anything that’s worth having and, all things considered, might be a detrimental attribute.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that a curved screen is a premium product as they’re most certainly priced that way. Most curved screens usually tack on an extra thousand or two over an equivalent flat and should you want any other premium feature (like say it being thin) then you’re going to be paying some serious coin. The benefits of a curved screen, according to the manufacturers, is that they provide a more theatrical experience, making the screen appear bigger as more of it is in your field of view. Others will say that it reduces picture distortion as objects in the middle of a flat screen will appear larger than those at the edge. The hard fact of the matter is that, for almost all use cases, none of these attributes will be true.
As Ars Technica demonstrated last year the idea that a curved screen can have a larger apparent size than its flat counterpart only works in scenarios that aren’t likely to occur with regular viewing. Should you find yourself 3 feet away from your 55″ screen (an absolutely ludicrous prospect for any living room) then yes, the curve may make the screen appear slightly larger than it actually is. If you’re in a much more typical setting, I.E. not directly in front of it and at a more reasonable distance, then the effect vanishes. Suffice to say you’re much better off actually buying a bigger set than investing in a curved one to try and get the same effect.
The picture distortion argument is similarly flawed as most reviewers report seeing increased geometric distortions when viewing content on a curved screen. The fundamental problem here is that the content wasn’t created with a curved screen in mind. Cameras use rectilinear lenses to capture images onto a flat sensor plane, something which isn’t taken into account when the resulting image is displayed on a curved screen. Thus the image is by definition distorted and since none of the manufacturers I’ve seen talk about their image correction technology for curved screens it’s safe to assume they’re doing nothing to correct it.
So if you’ve been eyeing off a new TV upgrade (like I recently have) and are thinking about going curved the simple answer is: don’t. The premium charged for that feature nets no benefits in typical usage scenarios and is far more likely to create problems than it is to solve them. Thankfully there are still many great flat screens available, typically with all the same features of their curved brethrens for a much lower price. Hopefully we don’t have to wait too long for this fad to pass as it’s honestly worse than 3D and 4K as they at least had some partial benefits for certain situations.
