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Looking for general monitor advice
My knowledge here is about a decade out of date so I would like to ask for some advice and recommendations. I am looking less for a specific model to buy and more for personal experiences and general tips on what to look at or good review sites or knowledge bases.
Ideally I'd want a general purpose midsized flat monitor with higher refresh rate.
Mostly what I find are either gamer branded items usually without chain linking or data interface or office ones with 60hz though I'll work around of what is available. The image quality is the important part.
What price ranges and display technologies should I be looking at to get a generally good image without too many compromises?
Highly recommend looking at 1440p 27" monitors. I feel it's the sweet spot for gaming and also provides extra space for productivity. 4k is honestly overkill unless you size up to 32"+.
Look for 144hz or higher refresh rate as well. It's a massive difference compared to 60hz. You can definitely see benefits going higher but they are diminished.
There's lots of good ones meeting that spec under $300, sometimes under $200.
4K 27" 144+hz monitors are pretty affordable these days. Here's an LG one for $350. Here's a KTC 4k 27" 160hz for $230 right now.
There's definitely some pretty good and inexpensive 4k ones available at 27", I just feel like at 27", the pixel density of a 1440p monitor is more than enough, and with 4k you're just using extra power for minimal gain, and then you'd likely need to re-scale your OS anyway otherwise everything will be too small.
1440p at 27" is so low density compared to everything else these days that I can't stand them! 4K costs only slightly more, the extra compute required is basically nil, and rescaling on Windows works very well. I've been operating on 4K scaled down on a $500 Mac for years with zero noticeable impact to performance.
EDIT: I read an article a long time ago that went over this myth that the downscaling has a big impact on compute. It doesn't in my experience and just math'ing it out. It would have an impact if you try to render a game at 4K, but just choose to render at 1440p too.
Must be nice to have great eyes lol
Jagged edges, jagged edges everywhere! One of Apple's biggest contributions to the market IMO was popularising the concept of "retina" resolution as an angular density metric, even if it's still only barely filtering through to actual standalone monitors.
Join us in /r/HiDPI_monitors/ if you're not already! The "barely filtering" part is finally happening. @Tiraon I didn't initially suggest this as ~$1k is a lot for a monitor, but there are options out there if you're looking for high DPI monitors.
Oh nice, that looks like a great resource! I should absolutely take a look at what's out there nowadays actually - I've been running LG 27MD5KL's for the better part of a decade but they're definitely starting to feel like, well, decade old monitors.
And yeah, I also try to avoid jumping in too loudly on threads like this on the basis that I assume most people probably aren't looking to spend entire PC money on a monitor* in an admittedly niche quest for maximum DPI, but I'm glad that nudge was enough to get me a reminder that at least some people are!
*Cost per hour for a good tool when you're using it for work makes it totally worthwhile IMO, but it's still obviously a luxury that I'm able to say that at all
Agreed! The key is less resolution and more pixel density. At a point, you're getting diminishing returns on improvements to image sharpness relative to hardware requirements to take full advantage of the resolution.
The one I settled on ~2yrs ago after several returns was an Asus 27" 1440p VA panel. I prefer VA to IPS for desktop situations, better contrast and limited viewing angle isn't as much a concern, especially with a mount. It has one of those fake HDR implementations and g4m3r marketing. I ended up overpaying since there's only a couple like that on the market that aren't curved and I wasn't waiting for a sale (birthday gift for myself that was already taking too long to get right). I paid like 250±30 and saw it on sale within a year for under 200.
I bought two of these, refurbished, for $110 each. Currently at $132, a steal.
https://ebay.us/m/tybeX0
Apologies, but the best I could suggest re. general recommendations is looking at rtings.com.
In case it helps, perhaps a DisplayPort splitter (example) (internally, they just use MST, same as monitors w/daisy chaining) could help alleviate that requirement? I wasn't able to find any that support DisplayPort 2.1, though, back when I was looking for one, in case that's a must-have.
Slightly off topic, but I'm really bummed that rtings decided to paygate a lot of their data. I acknowledge they do a ton of work to get that data, and they have to make money somehow, but I wish would have come up with another method to generate revenue.
Hrm. I hadn't noticed it recently. They had a banner and a "free view" limit for a bit, but I started opening their reviews in a private browser, which seemed to bypass it.
Previous somewhat related threads that might also be of use
What you want to be looking at sort of depends on the use case and also your own expectations. For most things a good IPS monitor will do the job and last you for a long time. But, if you also expect to be able to do HDR and all that you might want to look at OLED monitors. Those also have downsides, they do not last as long as traditional monitors do (burnin is not as much of a factor but they will slowly degrade either way) and their pixel layout has been such that you will get some text fringing which many people do not like when doing a lot of text based work. I think the latest generation from either LG or Samsung is an exception and has a "normal" rgb pixel arrangement, but it being the latest generation will also cost a lot if it is even already available. I just remember some recent coverage about it.
Update to my thread, I have been liking the LG 32GS95UE-B.
My Alienware OLED has burn-in from the Windows taskbar, which became apparent maybe 1 year into ownership, if not less. I did (and do) everything they encourage, including the maintenance refreshes every 4(?) hours.
There is a warranty that covers burn in, but you can only claim it once, so I'm waiting a bit longer before taking advantage of it.
I would be curious if other OLEDs have figured out how to avoid burn in.
I too have an Alienware OLED (AW2725DF), but no burn-in yet. It must have been about a year and a half since I started using it.
At first I cared quite a bit about the panel health, as you did. Ran the maintenance refresh every four hours and the longer one (the one that takes like 7-8 hours to run, I believe) when I am asleep. I thought the taskbar would be most likely cause for the burn-in, so I switched to an auto-hiding taskbar from day one. On Linux, where I have Waybar running, I created a little script to have it auto-hide as well. I also changed the energy settings so that the monitor would turn itself off within 5 minutes of idling (which, if monitor thinks is necessary, starts the maintenance refresh). That’s all I did.
After a certain amount of time I just stopped babying it, meaning I stopped engaging the manual maintenance refreshed every four or so hours because it became tedious. It’s surprisingly hard to sit in front of a turned off monitor, waiting for it to do its thing, even with a multiple-monitor set up.
But anyway, that’s all I did and do, and no issues yet, fingers crossed. Maybe it’s what I did, or maybe I just got lucky with the panel.
Although I should note, I don’t ever use HDR. I believe increased brightness increases your chances of burn-in. (Mine is set at 75%.) I don’t dislike the way HDR looks, but it’s so incredibly finicky both on Windows and Linux that I stopped caring about it. I must have spent literally days trying to get it to look like it should, but I just couldn’t make it work.
HDR may be the difference. I got it to where I like it on Windows (set the color to Reference Mode in the NVIDIA control panel) and have used HDR since day one or two.
Or maybe I just got a defective unit somehow. Either way, I'll be swapping it under warranty at some point.
Monitor advice strongly depends on what you want, and what you're using the monitor for. A good image can mean different things: do you want a good image for text? Publishing? Photography? Video? Games? Something else? Image quality and refresh rate feel like two very different things to me.
In general, as someone who cares about pixel density and image quality, I'd strongly disagree with the advice here about 1440p at 27": that's 109 ppi, less than the 138 ppi of 2160p at 32", where I find pixels to be noticeable and use 1x UI; my laptop screen, on the other hand, is 256 ppi, and pixels are happily not noticeable. 4k at 27" would be 163ppi, which still seems on the low side to me. But I'm interested in image quality for scientific publishing and for photography; I also don't find high refresh rates to be a substantial benefit.
For color quality, I'd note that while gamut specs can be useful, and provided calibration profiles are a good sign, a good calibration device can significantly improve colors, especially if you have multiple monitors and want them to be consistent.
I'm super picky about monitors, and have been for a very long time so I'm glad to give advice, but I'd like to ask a couple of clarifying questions:
I kept it purposefully vague but I don't mind clarifying.
Currently I have quad hd 27 inch 60hz monitor and it seems a good compromise on real estate, pixel density and price. Personally I would consider mid sized the 27-32 inches.
I will definitely be gaming on the monitor but it will also be used for general media and productivity, mainly programming. I'd prefer something that can switch between that without problems and has flexibility for the future and I don't mind paying more for it but so far I did not find something really excellent.
Right now I have AMD card, 6700xt but if the economy and the computer parts market was not in such poor shape generally I'd be tentatively looking for upgrade in a year or so and at point the choice of brand will depend on the conditions. I will also drive the monitor from integrated graphics.
What is most important to me is the quality of the image, though quality and longevity of the monitor is important too. Other things can be always worked around somehow even if it is inconvenient.
I appreciate the clarification, and sorry I have some followup question now.
Are you looking to replace your current quad monitor setup (I have one as well, quad monitor bros! o/) with a new single monitor that can "do it all", get four new panels, or just one superior monitor as your primary display?
Higher end monitors have come a long way and it is pretty rare to see actually poor image quality in general on a nicer display these days. Other than that, I doubt your general knowledge is that out of date as most of the promising newer display tech (e.g. QD-LED, microLED) has stalled getting to penetrate the market.
The only IRL recommendation I have on hand for 27" is that I got to see/play with an AOC Q27G3XMN 27" that had actually good HDR support a little while back and I was pretty impressed. It had the best input lag, or lack thereof, and motion/black issues that I've ever personally seen in a VA derived panel. It's "only" 180Hz, but it felt very smooth to me and I don't know that I could personally tell the difference otherwise. It seemed to have very good contrast, as most good VA panels do, and the miniLED back lighting seemed very bright and even. If I could get one in a size that matched my current primary monitor I likely would have already bought one.