I’m looking for a decent 4k monitor for mostly doing development and CAD, and some gaming. It will be older games, emulators, DOSbox, that kind of thing.
I wanted 5k but have given up. I wanted 16:10 to get more code on screen, but 4k ones seem to be rare and expensive. So now I’m just resigned to something decent.
Any recommendations? I intend to run two side-by-side so reasonable bezels would be nice. VESA mount essential. Decently low latency would be nice. Needs to be available in the UK. Ideally with decent colour so that they at least match.
There should be plenty of 4k 60hz options out there. I guess it depends on what kind of colour accuracy you are looking for. Probably one of the Wasabi Mango models of 4k monitors would be your best bet.
Two ultrawide monitors maybe?
Also if you really wanted real-estate, you could go something 55 inch. 55inch is two 27inches on diagonal, so it is the real-estate of 4 27inch displays. Crazy idea, but figured I would throw it in there for something outside of the box. It would solve the issue of bezels.
I had a look at Wasabi Mango but the smallest 4k they do is 40" it seems. And with the 55" it would be like four 2k monitors. I’m really looking for 4k to get that high level of readability.
There are a fair few 4k 27" monitors from LG and Samsung, but reading reviews they all seem to be fairly compromised. Often 6 bit panels, people can’t get colour to match even after calibration, and mostly gaming oriented. 6 bit panels are bad for readability in my experience.
Seems like they are either gaming monitors or expensive professional monitors, with very little in-between.
Which OS are you running?
Windows Scaling is still a shitshow. Running anything other than 100% will not increase readability. In most applications it will decrease it, as fonts aren’t properly scaled and get horrifically washed out or other applications don’t scale at all, making them really hard to read. If you’re on Mac, then this might work. Linux, hit or miss.
Overall, i’d say go for 1440p on 27". For normal viewing distances, you won’t be able to tell pixels either way. The added “real estate” of the 4k panel is only relevant if you use 100% scaling, which is impossible to read for long periods of time.
The physical size of the screen has nothing to do with the amount of content you can get onto it. A 55" 1080p TV will have the same real estate as a 22" 1080p Monitor.
Windows 10 scaling is one reason why I wanted 5k monitors at 27". Then you can have perfect 2x scaling for legacy stuff. The only ones available are £600 each though, and reading reviews they seem to have a lot of problems.
However, having been using Windows 10 on a 4k display for a while at work I can say you are wrong about readability. It’s significantly better and most apps do scale properly. Even legacy apps have better text quality in most cases, ever since Microsoft introduced a new mode where legacy apps have a scaled UI but native resolution text.
For coding 16:10 is best to get more vertical space. Failing that, a 27" display with 4k text allows for a decent amount of text on screen at a still readable size.
I own a 24" LG 4K monitor and it is gorgeous. The 24UD58-B. There’s a 27" version of the same monitor, but I believe there is actually a newer revision of both out now, I don’t remember. Bezel might be a bit thicc for your preference though (it’s fine for me).
If you’re happy with 200% 5K real estate, why not save the fuss and go 1440p? I have two Dell U2518D at work, which I use for 3D modelling, and it’s tons of space. There are also some 27" VA 144Hz options for not too much, like the MSI MAG271CQR (were on sale for £300 on Ebuyer recently, but can’t find them below £390, currently).
I’ve got to agree with @domsch1988 about Windows scaling being terrible. Running full screen apps at non-native res always breaks it for me (well, makes icons a blurry mess, which I find unnecessarily annoying).
[quote=“Zavar, post:9, topic:146419, full:true”]
If you’re happy with 200% 5K real estate, why not save the fuss and go 1440p? I have two Dell U2518D at work, which I use for 3D modelling, and it’s tons of space.[/quote]
I had two at work before I upgraded to 4k. They were the right size but the readability of the text wasn’t nearly as good, and neither was the Kicad display.