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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for some reason these are all coming from "gaming" monitor makers. I think the last one is trying to conjure up a "pro" vibe with the hood, but yes - these are definitely tacky. Acer, Asus, et al. tend to just remarket OEM technology with relatively little value-add. I suspect these are all built on the same panel, but I could be wrong.

Oh! Is that what those funny looking "hoods" are about? I thought for a second they might be functional, but I guess they're just decorative? "Gaming" equipment (monitors, chairs, mice, keyboards, etc. ) rarely seems worth it to me, simply because they spend too much effort and cost on things that are non-functional, but make the thing look attractive to the target audience. I am not a part of that audience, so I fin…

Hoods are for reducing reflections on the screen. They are functional, and are not (at least originally) a “gaming” feature. Somewhat common on high-end color-accurate displays. How useful they are depends on the lighting.

The monitors linked are actually quite good, the gaming styling they have is rather unfortunate.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#352
post #206

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…

Some of my colleagues love a vertical monitor for writing and reading documents.

I use one and have it setup at a 2/3 split, it's wonderful

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#354
post #220
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've just switched to a an LG "5K2K" ultrawide [1]. 5120 x 2160 and fairly reasonably priced. [1] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-34WK95U-W-ultrawide-monito...

Thanks for this idea. The product page says it is 218 PPI, but I don't see how that is possible given it is 34" wide. Pixensity says teh actual PPI is 163.44. Can you confirm the PPI on this monitor?

https://pixensity.com/list/lg-34wk95u-w-39631/

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#355
post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

> No. Just no. The best developers I've known wrote code with tiny laptops […] it's no big deal.

I coded on a MacBook Air 11" on daily basis during 1 year. I thought it was no big deal too until I started developing myopia.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#357
post #75

I still use a CRT, because features I want are still ludicrous expensive in newer tech (although they are getting cheaper over time). 1. Arbitrary resolutions, great to run old software and games, even better to run new games at lower resolution to increase performance. 2. Arbitrary refresh rates. 3. Zero (literally) response time. 4. Awesome color range (many modern screens still are 12bit, meanwhile silicon graphic…

I kept a CRT for quite a while but when I switched, I realized I didn't miss it.

1- True, if there is a thing I'd miss, that's it. At low resolutions, CRT sometimes get really nice refresh rates too (I've seen up to 18O Hz).

2- Modern gaming monitors have freesync/g-sync that not only give you arbitrary refresh rates, but they are also adaptive.

3- Also true, but not as significant as one might think. The monitor itself is zero latency, but what's behind it isn't. We are not "racing the beam" like in an Atari 2600 anymore, the image is not displayed before the rendering of a full frame is complete. The fastest monitors are at around 144Hz, that's 7ms. So for a 1ms gaming monitor to a 0ms CRT, you actually go down from 8ms to 7ms, to which you need to add the whole pipeline to get "from motion to photon". In VR, where latency is critical, the total is about 20ms today. More typical PC games are at about 50ms.

4- CRTs are usually analog. They don't use "bits" and it is all your video card job. Also 48bits is per pixel, 12bits is per channel. Apples to oranges comparison. CRTs do have a nice contrast ratio though, good for color range. Something worth noting is that cheap LCDs are usually just 6bit with dithering. True 8bit is actually good and I'm not sure that you can actually make a difference passed 12bits.

5- Never noticed that, maybe some driver problem. An interesting thing is that CRTs have a natural gamma curve that matches the sRGB standard (because sRGB was designed for CRTs). LCDs work differently and correction is required to match this standard, and if done wrong, you may have that kind of problem.

6- I hate text on CRTs. And unless you have an excellent monitor (and cable!), you have tradeoffs to make between sharpness, resolution, and refresh rate. And refresh rate is not just for games, below 60Hz, you have very annoying flickering. I wouldn't go below 75 Hz. And at max resolution, it can start getting blurry: the electron beam is moving very fast and the analog circuitry may have trouble with sharp transitions, resulting in "ringing" artifacts and overall blurriness. One old games, that blurriness becomes a feature though, giving you some sort of free antialiasing.

7- Some CRTs are crazy resilient, others not so much. Same thing for LCDs. And as you said, phosphors wear out, that's actually the reason why I let go of my last CRT (after about 10 years). My current LCD is 8 years old and still working great, if fact, better than my CRT at the same age (because it doesn't have worn phosphors).

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. It might depend on the program, too. Some might only work in pixels. Fortunately, it is usually not a problem if you are trying to run a program designed for Gameboy; the emulator should be able to scale it automatically, subject to the user setting. I don't know if any X server has a setting t…

> some web pages zoom text by viewport size, which I hate, and a bigger monitor would then just make it worse. Not that it excuses bad UX, but you might consider keeping your browser window at something below full width. I find this more comfortable anyway. Total aside: I've noticed Windows and Linux users tend to keep their windows fully maximized, whereas Mac users don't. Doesn't apply to everyone of course, but en…

> I've noticed Windows and Linux users tend to keep their windows fully maximized

Interesting, I've noticed the exact opposite. Mac devs, especially younger ones, tend to have full-screen IDEs and browsers and constantly flick back and forth between apps. My theory was always that Windows and Linux users had gotten comfortable with the desktop metaphor while a large percentage of newer Mac users grew up using iPads which were all full-screen, all the time.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#359
post #114

My take on having used quite a variety of displays: 1440p with a high (120, 144 etc) refresh rate is the way to go. With 4K you can lose a lot of performance especially since they are often paired with integrated graphics. Also what's the point of a higher pixel density when it's higher than you can resolve? Meaning if you have to zoom that's a sign that you get nothing more from increasing resolution. Also despite c…

>Bonus point that isn't mentioned in the article: HDR is a meme, don't buy into that crap.

I'd wager more people are going to notice the difference between HDR and SDR than they would 4k vs 1080p. It is by far the biggest picture quality upgrade I've seen since going from SD to HD.

The problem is HDR sucks on LCDs, so it's largely useless on PC. FALD isn't enough to limit the halos, even with a ton of zones. I own the PG27UQ mentioned in this article and I hate it.

I'll probably just buy an LG CX 48" for my next monitor.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

> No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. It might depend on the program, too. Some might only work in pixels. Fortunately, it is usually not a problem if you are trying to run a program designed for Gameboy; the emulator should be able to scale it automatically, subject to the user setting. I don't know if any X server has a setting t…

What X server? You should be using Wayland. X does not intrinsically support automatic scaling. Wayland does.
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