Testing PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X on an 18-Year-Old CRT

Back in the day CRTs were all the buzz and some of them can still compete with modern OLED screens and they can even beat the latest monitors in image quality. Sony GDM-FW900 is one of the best gaming CRT ever, and people are still willing to pay lots of money for this legendary monitor. It has a 24-inch 16:10 screen that can process resolution up to 2560x1600 at 60Hz, plus you can scale the resolution down and thus increase frequency. 

PC CRT monitors normally use a 4:3 aspect ratio which makes them a not-so-perfect choice for modern games but this is a great fit for the older ones, especially when it comes to DOS games.

Sony's FW900 handled the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 games like a champ, even downscaled to 1080p, according to Digital Foundry's results. This is because CRT monitors do not really care about native resolution and resolving the input resolution does not require scaling. When it comes to the latest monitors, their fixed pixel grid structure needs interpolation when you are not at a native resolution. 

As Digital Foundry explains, "a CRT with downscaled 4K content still looks stunning, even at 720p, because the way in which CRTs literally 'beam out' information changes the user's perception of detail and resolution." 

CRT screens are also the winners in this image quality race when talking about motion resolution. The difference is in the system that the monitors use to display moving images. In modern screens, the sample and hold system is used and it drops resolution when an image is moving. CRTs work differently: they switch rapidly between black frames and frames filled with content which allows for an artifact-free display.

Now all technicalities aside, just take a look at a beautiful example of how games work on a good old CRT from Sony. The quality is absolutely unmatched and the picture is nice and crisp.

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