sooooo for me screen real estate is king. not overly concerned with refresh rate or latency. 5ms is fine. 60hz is fine. what i care about is how much productivity can i get out of it and how nice it looks. i play cs go but best i ever got was gold 1. not ever going to need 1ms but the really shitty tv's are out of the question unless they have decent response time.
budget is 300. i can go a little over but money is money. spending less would be great. that 28in 4k monitor Wendell reviewed would work but it's 350$ now and im worried 28 may be too small. i used to have multiple screens but one by one they died on me now i am down to one. i see a lot of 1080 p monitors i could afford that are huge but i dont know enough to know how good/bad the pixel density would be.
is 4k the only way to go with large screens? do i have to sacrifice quality for size to not break the bank?
I would suggest that you wait and get a little more money. Monitors are worth the extra considering how important they are. Anything less than 4k will likely have you itching to upgrade again in the near future.
and the 3x1080p monitors might work if i turn them vertical but then bevel >_< and difficulty playing videos and games on multiple monitors would make me cri. mostly bevel thou.
and ofc the extra cost of monitor arms would put me over budget.
1440 p is nice but it would be one 27 in screen vs 3x 22 in with similar pixel density. even thou the 27 is slightly higher, i need the screen real estate. the 1080p ones even have better contrast ratio.
Have you tried looking on eBay for used Dell / HP 30" 2560x1600 displays? I used them for years and loved them, perfect resolution and a big display to boot - these were also flagship displays so are excellent quality...
I now have an NEC PA322UHD and I can not use native UHD resolution on a 32" screen even sitting really close everything is just way too small for me. I run it on 2560x1440 just now rather than using Windows scaling which is dire.
So if you can't find a cheap used 30" I would recommend a IPS 27/28" 2560x1440 screen, still lots of real estate and easier to drive for gaming. 40" UHD screens are great but I need a top of the line panel for work.
I got an HP 27" 1080 screen from Best Buy that was on sale for 129 on sale just before Christmas. It took my breath away how gorgeous it looks. In CSGO I'm lucky if I last 3 rounds against the stupid bots but I LOVE that game!
bought and paid for guys. using the 3x1080 screens now. and i'd love a 40in 4k from korea but hey money =/. also the day i got my new monitors i jumped to the highest rank i have ever been in csgo. pay to win confirmed.