This paper investigates the effect of the electrode edge of a patterned vertical alignment (PVA) liquid crystal (LC) device on the viewing angle characteristics. In general, a transmissive LCD applies an LC layer with half-wave retardation for a bright state and with zero retardation for a dark state. The retardation of the LC layer would be distorted in each point, however, when a voltage is applied because of the non-uniform voltage distribution in the electrode edge effect. In this paper, the feasibility of the full effect of the electrode edge on the viewing angle property is considered, and the optical viewing angles of the VA LCD with a uniform half-wave LC layer and the PVA LCD with a practical non-uniform LC layer are compared.