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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#81
post #42
post #23

What's the point of 120Hz if your just programming?

Can read the content clearly while smoothly 120 Hz scrolling or moving windows around.

How often do you read text while moving the window containing it around? Does that justify the 2000$ expense for a 4K 120Hz monitor?

Personally, I find this 120 Hz endeavour pretty pointless when most applications have input lag that's way worse than a single 60 Hz frame.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#82
I am using the same three Dell Monitors since 2008, they are still working perfectly (1680x1050) and in my opinion the text rendering with ClearText subpixel AA is excellent on both Sublime Text and VSCode.

Of course, on macOS that's an other story, they didn't always had ugly fonts, but that's been the case since a very long time now and that prevented me to switch more than once (I still have use macOS in a VM to build for iOS)

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#83

It's frustrating that consumer Hi-DPI display development has completely stalled in the last five years. As mentioned in the article, macOS works best using true 2x integer scaling. Using 2x scaling, a 4k monitor will result in an equivalent workspace to a 1080p display—unusable for productivity and development. A superior option is iMac/LG 5k display results which nets an equivalent workspace of 1440p. The only opti…

I use a Pro Display XDR for programming / design work, I think you forgot this one. It seems like it would fit your needs (with the obviously premium price) as it’s 32”. It’s overkill for most, but still the best display I’ve ever used and I love it. I actually tried an Asus 4K 120hz for much less but the fan noise was a deal breaker even if the screen didn’t break on arrival (it did). Disclosure: Apple employee

Apple-only monitor? That's ridiculous. You can change its settings only from apple device.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#84
post #79

I bought a 1080p 27" HP 27yh for under USD 100 last Black Friday. I thought my monitor would be squarely middle of the pack but turns out it is barely above 80 ppi Display size: 23.53" × 13.24" = 311.5in² (59.77cm × 33.62cm = 2009.68cm²) at 81.59 PPI, 0.3113mm dot pitch, 6657 PPI²

The most important thing here: does your new monitor look good for you? Do you like how it renders graphics/text/whatever-you-use-it-for? If so, please disregard articles like TFA. They are trying to convince you of something you, by definition, don't need.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#85
post #47

After using a rMBP for 6 years, I realized that using a lower resolution and lower quality display makes absolutely no sense at all if both graphical power and budget is available (first 13' rMBP had some serious issue driving the display). Better quality image is better quality image. I think Apple's biggest selling point over any vendor right now, despite numerous issues with its hardware and software in the recent…

I've been focused on Apple display products for the past few months as I'm looking to make an upgrade from the Dell P2715Q 4k 27" I use primarily for development.

There is a three page thread on using the Apple 32" XDR for software dev on MacRumors. [1]

I believe there is a major product gap at Apple right now in the mid-market display. Specifically a replacement for the LED 27" Cinema Display which was announced 10 years ago next month. [2]

I am speculating that Apple could announce a new 27" 5k in part because of the rumored announcement of a new Mac Pro but also because the build quality of the LG 5k Ultrafine is just not great and there are obvious synergies with XDR production and Mac Pro.

I think this should be announced at WWDC is because developers specifically are being left out of good display products and Apple should be looking out for what they stare at all day.

While there are no supply chain rumors of such a display, I wargamed what this product might be and its pricing anyway.[3]

In short, I speculate Apple will release a 27 inch IPS display, 5120 x 2880 @ 60Hz with standard glass at $1999, Nano-texture Glass at $2799.

I had not paid a lot of attention to the refresh rate, but it does seem like kind of a miss that the XDR does nor offer this.

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[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/xdr-for-software-dev.22...

[2] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2010/07/27Apple-Unveils-New-2...

[3] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/wishful-thinking-wwdc-d...

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#86
I've found my journey through tooling evolution to be fascinating (to me at least).

When I was new and coding was slow, my worries were about so many other things (like how the language even worked) than even what text editor I used, let alone the monitor.

As I became experienced, a lot of newbie problems went away and the next topmost problems emerged, leading to be obsessing over text editor, shortcuts, and even a multi-monitor setup with a vertical monitor.

Then went through a minimalism phase where I was annoyed by how much time I was spending maintaining my tools rather than using them, so gone went almost all of that. Just one giant monitor and VSCode for better or worse (mainly because it does all six languages I use well enough).

I'm now at a phase of thinking, "who are all these people who do so much coding in a day that these things matter?" because reading and writing code is maybe.... 35% of my job now? What I need to optimize for is reading/writing human text. And that's where I currently am: figuring out how to optimize writing documentation/design/architecture docs, given how awful making and maintaining a sequence or block diagram is currently.

My conclusion so far is that I expect my needs to continue to mutate. I do not believe they are "converging" and do not believe there is any sort of golden setup I will one day discover.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#87
post #56

I’m not willing to give up my 3840x1600 ultrawide. That real estate is now non-negotiable to me. So to improve the dpi I’ll need 7680x3200, and at 120hz I don’t think that’s happening any time soon.

Same. I'm at 7680x2160 pixels but over two 24 inch screens at 60hz. Once you get used to it you won't go back.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#88
post #62
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an equivalent workspace to a 1080p display—unusable for productivity and development. I have to disagree here. I use (and have used) a 1080p display for years and don’t feel the need for anything larger. That might be an artifact of my early years on 80x25 character displays, though.

> 80x25 character displays I am sure Doom and other great pieces of software were written on one of those.

Not to take away from your point, but Doom was actually written on a NeXTstation and cross-compiled for PCs, so at a minimum they were using 1120x832 resolution (2 bit greyscale).

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#89

For me, I find 1440p + high refresh rate as the true sweet spot, the "affordable" monitor listed in this post is $900. That's not a bad deal for a 4k high refresh rate monitor, but if you play any games you would need at least a 2080 or 2080ti which is another 700-1200, 1440p high refresh monitors go for around $300-400.

I struggle to hit 60Hz at 4k with 2080TI even with graphics settings knocked down a few notches. Maybe next generation.

1440p144hz seems to be the sweet spot that real world single graphics cards can max out on.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#90
post #8

Using 55" LG OLED @4k as my main display, nothing compares.

The new CX generation from LG comes with a 48" model which may fit people better and supports variable rate refresh which is good for gaming as some cards and consoles can support it.

Living with a C9 65" as my main television, not computer monitor, while I acknowledge the picture quality is incomparable from my point of view I am in the camp of that for a general work computer screen it would be best to wait for micro LED technology to spread. OLED still suffers the risk of burn in but this is mostly from fixed elements where the screen is level on for days if not years. Still not worth the degradation that will come as most elements are fixed and always on display with Mac OS.

So for the most part a well lit IPS display will serve users just fine these days and reserve OLED for the living room.

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