New monitor recommendations

[LaP]

Hi guys!

 

I'm gonna build myself a new computer soon. My Core i5 750 is starting to show its age lately. It's starting to be slow even while browsing the web ...

 

I have two 1080p monitors. Both of them are lg 23ea63v-p model. Very happy with them. They are IPS LED monitors. Colors are awesome and accurate and they were out of the box. Viewing angle super good. No backlight bleeding at all. Black are almost black and white almost white. I had a far better experience with those two monitors than any crappy tn panel i owned in the past. There's slight ghosting but i can live with it. I work as a web designer/developer (i do both front end and back end stuff) and for me color accuracy and viewing angle is VERY important. I also have a graphic tablet and although i'm only an amateur artist i like to draw. I'm currently using Krita, free version of Autodesk Sketchbook and Affinity softwares.

 

I plan to buy a new monitor. I like the two i currently own but they are kind of small. And i always wanted to have 3 monitors anyway. Some things to consider before making any recommendations :

 

- Must be IPS. I'm not wasting my time with TN panels this time. Last time i shopped for a monitor i had to return two TN panels because colors/angles were too bad for me.

- I don't plan to game on 3 monitors. I almost always have some work or things to monitor on a secondary monitor when i'm gaming.

- I don't mind some ghosting as long as it's not too much

- Would like the monitor to be FreeSync as i plan to buy a Vega 56 gpu if they ever become affordable (damn you miners). If i buy a 1070 instead then FreeSync will still be an option in the future.

- I'm buying from Canada and my budget is maximum 600 $ CAD (taxes not included in this budget).

 

I can't decide between buying a 4k monitor or an ultrawide one. Ultrawide 1440 and 2160 monitors are way too expensive in Canada so to go ultrawide i would need to buy a 1080 one (2560x1080). It has the advantage of having the same number of vertical pixels as my current monitors and while it's not 4k it's still an upgrade as it's ultrawide. This one looks very nice http://www.lg.com/ca_en/desktop-monitors/lg-29UC88-B. It's curved and it's 29 inches which means the height will pretty much be identical to the monitors i currently own. This one is super interesting too http://www.lg.com/hk_en/monitor/lg-29UM59-P. It's only 270$ CAD which makes it one of the less expensive monitors with more pixels than 1920x1080 north of your borders. I'm not so sure about working on an ultrawide monitor though. Even less on a curved one ... there's also the old games not supporting ultrawide resolutions. Anyone has experience with ultrawide monitors and curved ones? Working with them and gaming with them.

 

The other option is either 2k or 4k. I'm almost sure my new computer wont be able to run all the new games released in the next 3  years at 4k . But i suppose running 2k on a 4k monitor looks the same as running 2k on a 2k monitors of the same size? A 4k monitor is also future proof. I build this PC for at least 6-7 years minimum (with gpu upgrades along the road if the miners/amd/nvidia are kind enough to let me do that). My problem with 4k is the size and resolution wont be the same as my old monitors. Don't know if running a triple monitors setup with different resolutions and sizes is seamless enough. I don't care much about how it looks physically but windows is not super awesome at managing multi monitors. Also all cheap 4k monitors are 60Hz in Canada which is not super cool. This one is interesting http://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27UD58-B-4k-uhd-led-monitor. Not too expensive and specs are okay. I don't see the point of 2k. It's pretty much the same price as 4k and all the cheap ones are 60Hz too.

 

So sorry for the wall of text but if anyone bought an ultrawide or 4k monitor lately and have some recommendations for me fell free to post them here. Thanks in advance.

Edited September 15, 2017 by LaP

[DevTech]

So keep it simple - restrict your options early on.

 

1. You do web design so eliminate curved monitors

 

2. You do web design so get 100% Adobe RGB coverage and then use profiles to adapt color ranges for specific targets.

 

3. Simple math can tell you the size of a 4K monitor to buy that will pixel-match your current monitors but it may not be worth the trouble - you can make current monitors more "special purpose" such as putting them in portrait mode for script editing etc

 

4. For gaming you can use the GPU to scale for perf reasons. Get a 1080 period. 1080 can sort of almost handle 4K right now and you actually need two 1080 to handle any 4K so a 1070 just won't have the longevity you are looking for. At $5,000 per Bitcoin, don't even waste your time on high end AMD.

 

 

[DevTech]

1. You should start with a "semi professional" monitor (since you can't afford professional such as NEC) and the ASUS ProArt Professional series is excellent:

 

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_1195_700_1429&item_id=096764

 

 

ASUS PA329Q 32" 4K LED RGB ProArt Monitor 
3840 x 2160, 5ms (Gray to Gray), 100000000:1 (ASCR) 
HDMI(v2.0) x4, Mini DisplayPort 1.2, DisplayPort 1.2

 

 

The important spec:

 

100% Rec.709 and 99.5% Adobe RGB true color reproduction, factory pre-calibrate for outstanding color accuracy (?E <2). Support DIC-P3 and Rec. 2020 color standard.

 

 

It is outside of your budget, but it is useful as a standard for you to compare other monitor candidates

 

 

 

 

 

[LaP]

36 minutes ago, DevTech said:

So keep it simple - restrict your options early on.

 

1. You do web design so eliminate curved monitors

 

2. You do web design so get 100% Adobe RGB coverage and then use profiles to adapt color ranges for specific targets.

 

3. Simple math can tell you the size of a 4K monitor to buy that will pixel-match your current monitors but it may not be worth the trouble - you can make current monitors more "special purpose" such as putting them in portrait mode for script editing etc

 

4. For gaming you can use the GPU to scale for perf reasons. Get a 1080 period. 1080 can sort of almost handle 4K right now and you actually need two 1080 to handle any 4K so a 1070 just won't have the longevity you are looking for. At $5,000 per Bitcoin, don't even waste your time on high end AMD.

 

 

1. Probably but i've never tried. Still temped to try it lol must be cool for gaming ...

 

2. I'm not that nitpicky to be honest. I already have calibrated monitors at my job. I'm not really a designer either. I don't do the original design but i might have to make some changes to a design sometime. I'm doing backed stuff for the most part. Sorry it was not clear in the original text i'll modify it (well apparently i can't edit it anymore ...). I'm not working for a very big company and sometime we cut some corners I do some freelance here and there (i do more design when i do) but again for medium sized companies and those people don't even know what RGB is I just want to avoid something that is totally off like crappy TN panels (are or used to be?) so when i have to finish work at home it doesn't looks like a completely different work than it's going to look at my job. I'm on a budget after all i'll have to mortgage my house to buy a new GPU apparently so i'll have to go cheap on the monitor. Don't forget that 450$ US in Canada is 600$ (550$ + borders). We have pretty much nothing under 500$ when it comes to monitors. Anyway in the store i checked.

 

3. That's exactly what the other two monitors will be used for. Just don't know how windows and nvidia/amd drivers will handle different resolution never actually tried.

 

4. Yeah i'll probably get a 1080 in canada the price of 1070 is almost the same as 1080. Why the *** would anyone buy a 1070 at around 85% of the price of a 1080 i don't understand. Just not a fan of spending 600$ on a gpu but looks like i'll have to do it THANK YOU M***** F***** MINERS.

Edited September 15, 2017 by LaP

[DevTech]

Only "affordable" design quality monitor I could quickly find in Canada

 

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_1195_700_1429&item_id=084392

 

$685 (CDN)

 

ASUS PB328Q 32"Wide Screen LED-backlit Monitor,
2560x1440,4ms (Gray to Gray),16:9,100000000:1 Contrast Ratio, 
HDMI, D-Sub, DisplayPort,Dual-link DVI-D

 

Display Colors1073.7M (10bit)

 

It has a VA panel which is just as good as IPS

 

Otherwise get any old IPS 4K such as:

 

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_1195_700_1104&item_id=098373

 

LG 27UD58-B 27" ULTRA HD 4K MONITOR 
3840X2160 IPS 16:9 5M GTG 2XHDMI VESA

 

$450 (CDN)

 

[LaP]

Yeah i have these two on my list only the 27" version of the Asus instead of the 32".

[DevTech]

41 minutes ago, LaP said:

Yeah i have these two on my list only the 27" version of the Asus instead of the 32".

Well, I think you have it covered then.

 

By the time you pull the trigger on everything, the prices and therefore the "value" of what you get will have changed a little or a lot and so there is limited purpose to surveying things too far in advance.

 

[LaP]

Well i already started to buy parts. I'm a mid life guy with a family i wont buy everything in one shot i'll buy them over a month watching the price and trying to find good deals and then i'll assemble the computer somewhere in october.

 

I created this post mostly to have opinions about ultrawide resolutions. This new computer wont be able to run 4k very well and i'm afraid for gaming a 4k monitor will be wasted more often than not. So i'm wondering if it would not be better to buy ultrawide 1080 for now and eventually upgrade both the gpu and monitor to 4k in 3-4 years. I would normally wait another year or two to upgrade but the core i5 750 is a pain in the ** to work with lately. My computer at work is more powerful and it bothers me more and more.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

5 minutes ago, LaP said:

Well i already started to buy parts. I'm a mid life guy with a family i wont buy everything in one shot i'll buy them over a month watching the price and trying to find good deals and then i'll assemble the computer somewhere in october.

 

I created this post mostly to have opinions about ultrawide resolutions. This new computer wont be able to run 4k very well and i'm afraid for gaming a 4k monitor will be wasted more often than not. So i'm wondering if it would not be better to buy ultrawide 1080 for now and eventually upgrade both the gpu and monitor to 4k in 3-4 years. I would normally wait another year or two to upgrade but the core i5 750 is a pain in the ** to work with lately. My computer at work is more powerful and it bothers me more and more.

I strongly recommend that you hold off on buying anything until you have the budget to build an entirely new PC. There's no point in pairing a GTX 1080/1070 with a Core i5-750. That CPU is painfully outdated and it will severely bottleneck both of those video cards. Do you really need a 4K monitor right now? 2x1080p IPS doesn't seem bad. I think you should save up and wait for new tech. You'll likely regret buying the parts piece by piece over time. You're just gonna end up with partially-outdated stuff.

 

With that said, it's just a recommendation. You're free to do what you want with your money. If you're itching for something new, then it would be better to sell your current monitors and pick up an ultra-wide 1080p or a 1440p monitor.

 

[LaP]

51 minutes ago, Yusuf M. said:

I strongly recommend that you hold off on buying anything until you have the budget to build an entirely new PC. There's no point in pairing a GTX 1080/1070 with a Core i5-750.

 

I'm buying everything. It's gonna be a Ryzen 1600x. I just don't have the time to shop for all the parts at the same time. So i'll do it over a couple of weeks, a couple of parts every weekend. I'm just trying to decide if i'm buying a 400-600$ ultrawide 21:9 monitor or a 400-600 4k 16:9 monitor. Would like people with experience with both to share their experience.

[DevTech]

9 hours ago, LaP said:

I'm buying everything. It's gonna be a Ryzen 1600x. I just don't have the time to shop for all the parts at the same time. So i'll do it over a couple of weeks, a couple of parts every weekend. I'm just trying to decide if i'm buying a 400-600$ ultrawide 21:9 monitor or a 400-600 4k 16:9 monitor. Would like people with experience with both to share their experience.

It is your eyeballs and therefore very subjective and hence awfully hard for other people to make suggestions that fit you unique style whatever that might be.

 

With 4K, most people hate the tiny text of hi-re displays and so scale the window to get the "Retina Display" effect of very sharp text but almost no gain in overall pixel resolution otherwise known as "screen real estate"

 

For me, I like to have only slight scale (150%) and get lots of extra Windows Desktop space so with 4K you really don't need more than one monitor! (provided you can live with really tiny text or actually glorify in the luxurious look of really tiny text like I do) For the majority, as stated they go the opposite route as the "Apple Way"

 

But I was flabbergasted when the first Mac Pro Retina came out and I went to an Apple store to examine it and the desktop was set at 1280 x 800. Sure the text was sharp and the images crisp but what an absolutely horrid design and that is what people try to emulate with Windows 10 scaling. Not for me at all. It's subjective, with a dash of Lemming!

 

Just ignore gaming as the deciding factor. If you get a 1070 or a 1080, it will scale from whatever resolution gives you performance. Scaling in a modern GPU takes no significant resources.

 

So your Windows Desktop can be 4K and your gaming can be whatever works. So why deprive yourself of a gorgeous 4K display for every day Windows usage?

[adrynalyne]

5 hours ago, DevTech said:

It is your eyeballs and therefore very subjective and hence awfully hard for other people to make suggestions that fit you unique style whatever that might be.

 

With 4K, most people hate the tiny text of hi-re displays and so scale the window to get the "Retina Display" effect of very sharp text but almost no gain in overall pixel resolution otherwise known as "screen real estate"

 

For me, I like to have only slight scale (150%) and get lots of extra Windows Desktop space so with 4K you really don't need more than one monitor! (provided you can live with really tiny text or actually glorify in the luxurious look of really tiny text like I do) For the majority, as stated they go the opposite route as the "Apple Way"

 

But I was flabbergasted when the first Mac Pro Retina came out and I went to an Apple store to examine it and the desktop was set at 1280 x 800. Sure the text was sharp and the images crisp but what an absolutely horrid design and that is what people try to emulate with Windows 10 scaling. Not for me at all. It's subjective, with a dash of Lemming!

 

Just ignore gaming as the deciding factor. If you get a 1070 or a 1080, it will scale from whatever resolution gives you performance. Scaling in a modern GPU takes no significant resources.

 

So your Windows Desktop can be 4K and your gaming can be whatever works. So why deprive yourself of a gorgeous 4K display for every day Windows usage?

Until MS figures out scaling as well as Apple has, I myself won’t be touching 4K monitors unless it’s big enough to not need scaling. Partial percentages lead to blurring (125-150-175 vs 200). 

[DevTech]

2 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

Until MS figures out scaling as well as Apple has, I myself won’t be touching 4K monitors unless it’s big enough to not need scaling. Partial percentages lead to blurring (125-150-175 vs 200). 

It seems logical that blurring could be an issue, but I am ultra finicky and would go nuts if there was any blurring.  There is no blurring.

 

It used to be that if you had different monitors at different scaling, they would all get weird blurring but that problem was fixed for a long lime now. 

 

Every so often you still come across the odd software that ignores scaling but at 150% it's not a big deal.

[LaP]

I'll try to find a store with a 4k and ultrawide monitors displayed. But the state of electronic stores in quebec city is ****. There's like only two chain selling monitors (Best Buy and Staples and both of them tend to have only very cheap monitors). Other than that you have to dig smallish no banner stores and there's lot of them and most of them don't have more than 3-5 monitors displayed (if they have any).

 

[adrynalyne]

29 minutes ago, DevTech said:

It seems logical that blurring could be an issue, but I am ultra finicky and would go nuts if there was any blurring.  There is no blurring.

 

It used to be that if you had different monitors at different scaling, they would all get weird blurring but that problem was fixed for a long lime now. 

 

Every so often you still come across the odd software that ignores scaling but at 150% it's not a big deal.

I assure you there is blurring.  Look at any of the management snap ins or even device manager. First use 125% and then 100%. You will see a marked difference. I hate it. 

 

Edit: Attached some examples. Look how crisp the text is without scaling (first one). This effect only gets worse with smaller screens. 125 looks better than 150 looks better than 175, but they all look bad.  200% looks fine again, but then you have to deal with the occasional apps that doesn't support scaling as you mentioned. I actually went from a 1440p laptop to a 4k laptop, just so I didn't have to worry about partial percentages.

Edited September 16, 2017 by adrynalyne

[The Evil Overlord]

My 2 cents

My main screen is a 32inch 1080p Samsung curved screen, flanked by 2 28 inch curved sammys, I and my wife run a work from home business, creating and selling digital art, Neither of us have noticed any blurring on any of the screens, and I have 21/10 vision when I was sight tested last year.

That's not to say there can't be blurry images, but I haven't seen any. And I would have been the first to complain about it.

 

Obviously the better quality of monitor helps.

[adrynalyne]

2 hours ago, The Evil Overlord said:

My 2 cents

My main screen is a 32inch 1080p Samsung curved screen, flanked by 2 28 inch curved sammys, I and my wife run a work from home business, creating and selling digital art, Neither of us have noticed any blurring on any of the screens, and I have 21/10 vision when I was sight tested last year.

That's not to say there can't be blurry images, but I haven't seen any. And I would have been the first to complain about it.

 

Obviously the better quality of monitor helps.

The blurring I am referring to is due to scaling. 1080p monitors at your sizes are not scaling at all so I wouldn’t expect you to see any blurring. 

 Manufacturers also have some neat tricks up their sleaves to prevent pixelated text on 1080p as you get larger. 

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

On 9/15/2017 at 7:23 PM, LaP said:

I'm buying everything. It's gonna be a Ryzen 1600x. I just don't have the time to shop for all the parts at the same time. So i'll do it over a couple of weeks, a couple of parts every weekend. I'm just trying to decide if i'm buying a 400-600$ ultrawide 21:9 monitor or a 400-600 4k 16:9 monitor. Would like people with experience with both to share their experience.

Ah, I see. That's better. When are you going to buy your CPU and motherboard? It'd be a good idea to wait for the release of Intel's 8th-gen CPUs. The Core i5-8600K (6C/6T) would be a better fit for gaming.

[DevTech]

15 hours ago, The Evil Overlord said:

My 2 cents

My main screen is a 32inch 1080p Samsung curved screen, flanked by 2 28 inch curved sammys, I and my wife run a work from home business, creating and selling digital art, Neither of us have noticed any blurring on any of the screens, and I have 21/10 vision when I was sight tested last year.

That's not to say there can't be blurry images, but I haven't seen any. And I would have been the first to complain about it.

 

Obviously the better quality of monitor helps.

If your Windows Desktop is set to 100% then you are not scaling and it would be impossible to notice that hypothetical (because I have not seen it in Creator's Update) effect.

[DevTech]

16 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

I assure you there is blurring.  Look at any of the management snap ins or even device manager. First use 125% and then 100%. You will see a marked difference. I hate it. 

 

Edit: Attached some examples. Look how crisp the text is without scaling (first one). This effect only gets worse with smaller screens. 125 looks better than 150 looks better than 175, but they all look bad.  200% looks fine again, but then you have to deal with the occasional apps that doesn't support scaling as you mentioned. I actually went from a 1440p laptop to a 4k laptop, just so I didn't have to worry about partial percentages.

Thanks for your detailed analysis.

 

My Dell XPS 9550 with 4K screen is nearby so I will double-check any possible blurr with a magnifying glass and report back. If it exists it is going to be subtle.

 

[George P Global Moderator]

You know, I hate my market, i keep looking for a good 27 or 32" 1440p screen but the prices here are too high, and I'm tired of this 24" LG.  I might just bite the bullet and get a 32" 1080p and forgo the 1440p even though I built this new PC (i7 6700k, GTX1070) with the goal of going to 1440p.  I could just skip 1440p and go to 4k 3-4 years from now though as screens in that res are probably going to start becoming the norm like 1080p is today.

[adrynalyne]

4 hours ago, George P said:

You know, I hate my market, i keep looking for a good 27 or 32" 1440p screen but the prices here are too high, and I'm tired of this 24" LG.  I might just bite the bullet and get a 32" 1080p and forgo the 1440p even though I built this new PC (i7 6700k, GTX1070) with the goal of going to 1440p.  I could just skip 1440p and go to 4k 3-4 years from now though as screens in that res are probably going to start becoming the norm like 1080p is today.

How do you feel about 25 inch? I have three color calibrated Dell Ultrasharps at 1440p that are gorgeous and we’re just under 300 a piece when I bought them. 

4 hours ago, DevTech said:

Thanks for your detailed analysis.

 

My Dell XPS 9550 with 4K screen is nearby so I will double-check any possible blurr with a magnifying glass and report back. If it exists it is going to be subtle.

 

Ive got a 4K ux501vw.  I can give you screenshots to compare from that too if you like. I see the same behavior. 

[LaP]

8 hours ago, Yusuf M. said:

Ah, I see. That's better. When are you going to buy your CPU and motherboard? It'd be a good idea to wait for the release of Intel's 8th-gen CPUs. The Core i5-8600K (6C/6T) would be a better fit for gaming.

I'll probably buy very soon. Not sure i'm willing to wait next spring. 8th generation is rumored to be released later this year. But by the time it's available here and not overpriced it's probably gonna be around the beginning of 2018. I might wait for the reviews of the new intel cpus but for me to wait 2018 it will need to blow Ryzen out of the water in both games and work.

[George P Global Moderator]

1 hour ago, adrynalyne said:

How do you feel about 25 inch? I have three color calibrated Dell Ultrasharps at 1440p that are gorgeous and we’re just under 300 a piece when I bought them. 

Nah, I'm sure they're great screens but when I do get a new one I want bigger not just higher res, at least 27".

[The Evil Overlord]

7 hours ago, George P said:

You know, I hate my market, i keep looking for a good 27 or 32" 1440p screen but the prices here are too high, and I'm tired of this 24" LG.  I might just bite the bullet and get a 32" 1080p and forgo the 1440p even though I built this new PC (i7 6700k, GTX1070) with the goal of going to 1440p.  I could just skip 1440p and go to 4k 3-4 years from now though as screens in that res are probably going to start becoming the norm like 1080p is today.

Well, I, for one, feel comfortable in recommending any decent quality, reputable 32 inch 1080p, some are surprisingly reasonable in cost, and you can always use it as a secondary if your budget changes and you can go for a 1440 or 2160.