One thing that might be worth mentioning is that Rtings is a relatively young website compared to other trusted review sites, I think sometime in the mid 2010s is when they showed up? And even then they didn’t really move into monitor testing until the later 2010s if not until 2020 or something.
Furthermore, they tend to not test products that are more “bog-standard run-of-the-mill” pre-built OEM stuff or the like.
Both of these aspects could very well result in them actually finding most of their tested monitors being flicker free because, by the late 2010s or so, flicker-free was already a marketing selling point and, of course, cheaper monitors are going to be less likely to be flicker-free, many of which fall into the “bog-standard run-of-the-mill” pre-built OEM stuff that they don’t really care to review anyway.
I have a cheap $130 Asus that is flicker free. I think it depends as much on the brand as the price.
Some companies are run without concern for customers’ eye health, because the executives are either ignorant or uncaring or both, but other companies’ executives do care and are informed.
I meant like $100 or less, especially the OEM kind commonly sold with prebuilts. The likes of 1080p is “low end” enough nowadays that even one in your aforementioned $130 price-range can be competent considering that, once you get to the more $170 range, you’re already approaching high refresh and/or variable refresh 1080p monitors.
Perhaps I should have been more clear that, when I said “cheaper”, I didn’t just mean inexpensive but actual “cheap” as in “cheap feeling” quality as well as price and the like.
Nevertheless, this can end up once again going hand-in-hand with what I said about Rtings being relatively young in the monitor review field in that, by the time they joined that area, even $130 monitors were advertising that they’re flicker-free. That’s very much on the lower-end of the price range when it comes to non-OEM non-pre-built monitors that one would actually consider purchasing on its own which it the market that Rtings is targeting with their reviews.
So when one has only been reviewing monitors for maybe 3 years now, it’s no surprise that they find that most monitors are “flicker-free” since, from a general consumer side of things, it sounds like you almost need to try to find a monitor that isn’t flicker-free.