I have some extra money lying around and I wanted to get a budget monitor. My current monitor is a DELL P2414H. So, just a regular 1080p IPS. Nothing special and there’s nothing really wrong with it.
These are two candidates:
32"/1440p/75Hz/IPS (model: AOC Q3279VWFD8);
24"/1080p/144hz/1ms/VA (model: MSI MAG241C).
Both are pretty much the same price. On one hand, a 32" monitor offers a lot of real estate and a better resolution. It would probably be a blast to do stuff on such a large panel, and it’s an IPS so color accuracy is much better than the VA panel. On the other hand, 144hz is really nice, I do play quite a lot of games that would benefit from that, the VA panel offers incredible contrast ratio. On top of that, 1080p is not hard to run.
My question to you is, which one would you pick and why? Which one do you think would offer more pleasure?
I have 32 inch for over 10 years, I would not go back to anything below 27 inch. I also prefer AoC to MSI, but the difference is small in my mind.
Regarding VA - horrible colors and fast speed, but to be honest I gind anything above 60Hz good enough. You need at least stable 60Hz to reprezent easy to read motion and the rest is in the hands of the game developer. Some games will throw you off and issues with server tick will get even worse in some games.
tl;dr look at anything different from you current monitor (Size, resolution, color accuracy, backlight issues, refresh rate…) and split it into two colums I want to get used to this and I do not want to get used to this. And the reason is that monitors are things of habit, just like mice.
You monitor is the perfect combination of average so you will feel changes in either direction try to only choose negative things you are willing to sacrifice, chances are you will end up having the same preference for many years.
1440p > 1080p every time.
144Hz is nice, but if you never saw it in person, you won’t notice too much. Once you’ve had it, it’s hard to go back.
IPS > VA every time.
If you plan to game on it, it depends a bit on your GPU. I run 144Hz 1440p with a 1070ti. It’s workable but i need to lower settings here and there to consistently get high fps (above 100). Since you aren’t looking at a G-Sync Panel, hitting above 60 Frames on 1440p in modern games can be a challenge, depending on GPU.
For my money (if they are the same price), id take a larger, 1440p IPS Panel over 144Hz any day. IF you need to compromise, refreshrate is the best place to do so and has the least impact on using it, especially if you have not used a faster panel before.
I would pick 1440p monitor. I don’t game much and don’t find high refresh rate necessary for me. It does looks nice but I find 1440p IPS screen more suitable for me. If you do like to play games then 1080p 144hz screen is not bad option for you, and like you said, it doesn’t need that powerful GPU to run.
32" 1440p is my shit (Run 2 of them) Have run pretty much all set ups (43"+24", 34" ultra+24" and now 32"x2) and dual 32" is my favorite by far at this time, if I didnt game that much 43" would be my go to.
Thanks everyone. I was pretty certain that the AOC is a better option so thank you for confirming it. It’s always a good idea to ask others for an opinion if you can.
AOC it is. More real estate and sharper image combined with better color reproduction does seem like a better choice. It also comes with FreeSync and it runs at 75Hz so it’s not all bad. As much as I’d also like a 144hz monitor, staying at 1080p in 2019 and beyond doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And I’m not sure if I would even like a curved screen. Also, as games become more demanding, chances are, I wouldn’t get to experience more than 60 fps in quite a lot of games anyway. On top of that, I’m not a competitive gamer, and I don’t seem to be playing much these days anyway, so a purely gaming oriented monitor that might or might not suffer from ghosting is not a necessity at this point.