Monitor help: 32" and 34" recommendation appreciated

Dear L1 team and community,
I really like your honest and straight to the point reviews, so I hope you can spare a few minutes for a personal recommendation.

With all this working from home I am considering replacing my old Asus VS24A monitor with either a 34" 144p 21:9 ultra-wide or a 32" 4k/2160p 16:9 so I can get more productivity space. Since it would be a home monitor I am also doing some very light gaming and quite a bit of movie watching on my NUC8i7HNK desktop (obviously not a gaming rig).

It would help a lot to get a good value recommendation for each of those 2 monitor types, so I can spend the time between today and cyber Monday to see when I can find one of them heavily discounted to my 700-800$ maximum price range.

Thanks in advance,
Markus

VA based 4K 60hz panels work good for productivity space and value.

The Viewsonic VX3276-4K-MHD is worth looking at:

https://www.viewsonic.com/us/products/shop/monitors/vx3276-4k-mhd.html

For coding work, the extra contrast VA provides is welcome.

Check out TCL Class 6.

They are 4k TVs, 120hz, 55 and 65 inches and are actually often suggested for exactly your use case.

The only other brand that is gonna give you that quality with that kind of price other than TCL is Sceptre, and in that case maybe look at a monitor, but unless you are actually doing competitive gaming and trying to do it professionally, the TCL tvs are probably your best bet.

Yes I know bigger than you wanted, but its real estate lol

the VA Viewsonics I second are great, but you can probably get a nice benq or lg with better color coverage for the same price range.

Be aware that the BenQ and LG options won’t have as many OSD options for color calibration in the VA class of monitors. I was surprised by how much you could tweak in the OSD on Viewsonic monitors.

I bought a LG 32GK650F about a year ago. I found an awesome deal at a local brick and mortar store for $299, if memory serves.

This has a VA panel in it, but It holds its own against IPS panels and of course it has much better contrast. It’s not perfect. but for the price, it’s damn good.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/LyCD4D/lg-32gk650f-b-320-2560x1440-144-hz-monitor-32gk650f-b

If you don’t need a 10 bit panel or hdr (ie. you’re not using os x) there’s an ok Phillips momentum for 450

I will just say it. 4K is not a good experience under 40 inches.

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I own a LG 32" 4K monitor for a few years now. First of all, as @FurryJackman VA is great for the price. Viewing angles on my monitor are great good hz and nice colors. Would not recommend for photo editing but for anything else its great. For a good while my monitor was terrible in terms of scaling. 100% scaling is just too small for reading. Maybe with good eyes you will be able to read at desk distance but your eyes will become tired really quick. In Windows this no longer a problem, I personally just leave it at 150% and will set my monitor against the wall behind my desk. For the odds wondering in MacOS this is also no problem. But in Linux on the other hand this is far from usable. In Ubuntu 20.04 they have released new features in gnome to help with this, but from my experience just not usable. Depending on what you use it for the 16:9 would be my go to. you can just have windowed application all over the screen for multi tasking. Games usually work better on 16:9 instead of 21:9. for productivity a 21:9 could be more usefull as it is essentially 2 screens in 1. But if you are planning to use Linux I would say you don’t want any of the two or another HiDPi screen.

KDE has been pretty good in my experience setting the DPI to the native DPI of the screen. Cinnamon’s double DPI didn’t work because it made everything look too big.

Try KDE with your screen. A modern KDE Plasma might just be what you are looking for.

Be very wary of TCL. I have a 55 inch panel that just had the LEDs burn out after 18 months. This is a very common problem and TCL will not support you in any way. Getting the LEDs in a kit costs around 100 dollars and the power board for them costs another 60 . . .

I bought a Dell U3219Q 32" 4k monitor last year as I wanted a larger monitor for coding and watching videos. It has been superb. Its killer feature for me is an integrated KVM, and it has a very good adjustable stand (but you may not care about these things). Amazon.com currently lists it at $749. Amazon link

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Well I guess it depends on your warranty etc.

Also was this a Class 6-Series? They are far a lot better quality than class 4 and 5

Oh man this is a beauty, but at the current listed price I couldn’t justify it for what it is unless it came with a calibrator, y’know in case you(me) dumb and mess up the calibration lol.

It does not exactly fit what you’re looking for, but I love this 43" Acer monitor. I use one at work, when I get back there some day. :slight_smile:

I do software development and the screen size is great. I can easily fit all of Visual Studio’s panels in there, full size, plus three panes of code.

I think the color is good too. I went to Microcenter and was able to see it in person which I think is always good with a monitor. Your mileage may vary.

Update: I was trying to find pricing information on this and it doesn’t seem to be in stock anywhere. It may not be available! If so, sorry.

40 is too large for only 4k. ~140dpi - no scaling - at arms length is a good sweet spot, as long as your monitor is relatively color accurate to display your fonts with aliasing that isn’t broken or artifacty due to weird gamma ramps.

IM a big fan of dual 32" monitors I have the PX329, they are ok probably could do better but price was good for me.

I second this recommendation ONLY if you have the money for it. It’s IPS, which is good for photo editing, but it’s low contrast ratio is slightly worse for coding.

40" 4K is literally 4x20" 1080p. Standard for 1080p nowadays is 22-24". I own 32" 1440p and I absolutely can’t imagine squeezing 4K into that thing and having good experience.
I don’t know, it’s just me.

My recommendation (biased, as I have one);

Dell S3220DGF - $459.99 (mine was a Best Buy ‘open box’ in excellent shape shipped for $332 w/ full warranty: has been seen on sale for $399.99)
-32"
-1440p (2K)
-165hz
-4ms
-VA
-Curved
-10bit
-FreeSync2 (FreeSync Premium Pro)
-400nit brightness
-HDMI 2.0
-DP 1.4
-Height/Tilt/Swivel adjustable stand
-Professional Look

My current setup is Ryzen 7 3800X & 1080 ti. I don’t have G-Sync Compatibility turned on, as it causes issues. Some games I play make well over 200-300 FPS, and I get no screen tearing with FreeSync (AdaptiveSync) turned on. Watching HD video’s in 2K and 10bit color is crazy awesome (like Nat Geo stuff)!

Happy hunting, and an alternative suggestion is 2K or 4K IPS panel type monitor with 75hz or better refresh rate and 400nit brightness or better.

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Thanks a lot mate. Not 4k, but it looks really good and substantially below my overall budget, which is great.

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