When buying electronics, people often think that IPS and TFT LCD are different technologies. The two are not mutually exclusive. TFT LCD is the basic design, and IPS is an improved version of this, built on top of it.

TFT LCD (Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display) has a switch for each pixel, so it can control the brightness and colour very precisely. This fixes the problems of slow response times and blurry images that were common in early liquid crystal displays. It's the basic design for most modern LCD screens and is used in many basic devices (like TN panels). It's cheap and uses little power, but the colours look a bit wrong if you look at it from the side.

The IPS display is better than standard TFT LCDs, a technology first introduced by Hitachi in 1996. The most important new feature is that the liquid crystal molecules are arranged horizontally. This is because the electric field that controls their rotation is now lateral (sideways) instead of vertical (up and down). This design makes the screen look the same every time, no matter how you look at it. IPS technology offers superior colour accuracy and eliminates the "water ripple" effect often seen when a screen is touched, making it perfect for applications like graphic design and video editing where high image quality is very important.

The main improvement to IPS technology is that it uses a horizontal alignment of liquid crystal molecules, with their rotation controlled by an electric field on the side — this is different from traditional TFT displays, which use a vertical electric field. This design makes sure that IPS screens always look the same colour and brightness, no matter how you look at them. This makes everything you see easier to see and enjoy. IPS is also very accurate and doesn't have the 'water ripple' effect that you sometimes get with other screens. This makes it perfect for graphic design and watching videos, where having high-quality images is very important.