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Need help finding a monitor
Sometime this year, probably around the middle of the year or later depending on my welfare, I want to replace my two monitors with an ultra wide.
I do have some preferences, such as:
- OLED Preferably
- Built in KVM
- 120hz or above refresh
- Has the ability to show two separate computers screens at once. Just in case I'm not being clear, two separate computers are plugged in as inputs and it can output the display for both on the same screen by dividing the screen in half. I've only seen this feature on one monitor, an ultrawide ASUS one but that was roughly $2000. This is probably the most 'nice to have' feature.
Would appreciate any suggestions or recommendations. Thanks.
Also, I have two monitors I would like to sell when I replace them, these being an ASUS VG27AQ, and a Dell S2721QS. Both of them are in perfect condition, other than being slightly dusty. What would be a fair price to list them for when selling?
Oh what you're describing is picture-by-picture (PbP), I think it may actually be somewhat common in ultrawides from a preliminary search. One of the few times I go back to reddit is to scan /r/buildapcsales when looking for new stuff, you can use flairs to sort by monitor. I find it's easier to find a sale through there than PC part picker, but PC part picker makes it easy to find just the right monitor/part.
My ultrawide (Massdrop Vast 35-Inch) has Picture-in-Picture (PiP) which shows one input in an overlaid window in a corner of my choice, and also Picture-by-Picture (PbP, which they called "Multi-Window Mode") which can display up to 4 other inputs at the same time by dividing the screen in half/quarters. And those are pretty common features for ultrawides these days. So yeah, OP shouldn't have much trouble finding ultrawides with those.
The built-in KVM is probably going to be much harder to find though, and likely severely limits the options. The only ultrawides I can spot with that feature are the Gigabyte M34WQ, and LG 49WQ95C + 34WQ73A-B... all of which are IPS, not OLED. There may be others out there that are OLED, but I suspect they will be rare and expensive like the ASUS OP mentioned. So getting a reasonably priced OLED ultrawide with PbP, and a separate KVM switch to go alongside it is probably the better option.
cc: @TypicalObserver
Thanks for the tag! It's great to know that most ultrawides have this feature, that's a pleasant surprise to me. I think I will most likely wait for a price drop on the last gen QD-OLED ultrawides later in the year (if there are any) and get a separate KVM like you suggested. We'll see what happens several months from now, however :)
It is. I haven't seen an UW without PbP and chances are you'll find the differences between monitors in how many times you can split it, like @cfabbro is saying, not if it splits.
From experience, most (if not all) LG Ultrawides have this functionality.
Are you sure about that? OLED is great for gaming and movies, but for text there is fringing involved. Burn in is also still very much a concern, considering you are flipping your old monitors I assume you do care about resale value?
It looks like these are still being sold for around $300 the Asus slightly over and the Dell for slightly cheaper. Generally speaking, for items in perfect condition 50% of retail can be tried. In this case that would be the current retail price which might suck for you as the Asus seems to have been much pricier.
So to me it seems that you should be able to get $150 for each of them. Though you could of course try to list them for a higher price and see if someone is willing to pay that.
I am quite sure about OLED, yes. I don't find burn-in to be as much of a problem as some people I think. There's quite a few technologies/methods that are employed these days for burn-in prevention:
The C1 OLED I currently have is hooked up to a PC and there's no burn-in as far as I can tell. Granted, I don't use it constantly as a computer. As for resale value, with how good QD-OLED seems to have gotten, I don't plan to resell this next monitor, and will most likely use it for its entire lifespan, essentially.
50% of retail seemed lower than I expected to be honest, but perhaps with how great panel innovation has gotten it has deflated the prices more than I expected. Thanks for the input though.
Fair enough, as long as you also don't mind text fringing, then QD-Oled might be a good choice for you.
For second hand items 50% of retail is generally accepted to be right for fairly new items in good condition. As I said, you can try listing it for a higher price to see if someone is willing to pay it.
The latest range of monitor-sized QD-OLED panels have just been demoed at CES this week, and the reports seem to be that they’re very good, so you can reasonably expect the big guys to be releasing new products wrapped around them in the next few months. Dell has already announced a couple under the Alienware brand (terrible for desktops nowadays, great for monitors, and they have a decent warranty specifically against burn in) although I haven’t looked at the specifics yet, and depending on budget it may also be that the inevitable discount on last year’s AW3423DWF is the way to go.
Other than that I’d echo what’s already been said about a separate KVM rather than limiting your monitor choices because of it. Broadly though it seems like a great time for displays - there’s some real innovation and meaningful competition going on and it’s exciting to see.
Thanks for the reply. The main reasoning for me not wanting to have a separate KVM is simply for a tidier desk and a smaller footprint lol, other than that I don't mind buying a separate one. Do you have any recommendations? A simple (but not shoddily built) one would do the trick for me. I just need one that will switch my keyboard/mouse (and webcam potentially if possible?) between my work and personal PC.
Going for the last gen tech is also appealing to me, I have only heard good things about the Alienware monitor you mentioned.
Can’t help you on the KVM side, unfortunately: my solution is so many keyboards lying around the place that it’s become a running joke with my friends! I just know from the display side, which I do need to keep somewhat up to date with for work, that many really good ones out there don’t come with KVMs and it’d be a shame to miss out on those options.
Can confirm that 2023-generation QD-OLEDs are gorgeous, though. That was the tipping point for me to finally replace my aging TV, and it was worth every penny to me, so if the Alienware does drop to “last gen” pricing I’d say you’re on to a winner.
level1techs makes KVMs that are highly rated and have super good support, at least as far as I’ve heard. They are not cheap, though.
I've been using the Cable Matters 4x4 USB 3.0 switch for most of the past year, and I've been pretty happy with that. It's simple and gets the job done of sharing my mouse and keyboard between three machines.
I've only ever used it for keyboard and mouse, though I'm sure it'd be fine with with a webcam on one of the remaining open ports (given that it's rated for 5Gbps).
Desk clutter wise, it is shockingly small. The pictures don't give a great sense of its size, but I'd say it's just slightly larger than a pack of cards.