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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#251

Post by asdff »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #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 b…

I'm not sure which version exactly, but somewhere along the line apple just ruined the experience for everyone without a retina laptop.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#252

Post by zaphoyd »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #202

More than 5 years ago, I bought two 24" 4k monitors from Dell (UP2414Q), with a PPI of ~180 (and sitting over a foot away), they give me a retina experience with my desktop. They were an early product from Dell, so despite great picture quality, they are buggy and have large bezels. This week, one of them failed. While looking for a replacement, I was expecting the range of 24" "retina" displays to have improved some…

FYI: The Dell P2415Q does have 4K60hz over HDMI as long as you get one manufactured recently. They did a silent spec bump in 2017 or 2018 or so. I use a number of these and while they are still slightly buggy, I've found them much better in that department than the UP2414Q.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#253

Post by itnAAnti »

I had a 34" 4K monitor in 2019, and it was a mess in Windows 10. I sold it and picked up an ultra-wide, 38" 3840x1600 (~109 PPI) and I couldn't be happier. I agree that a "good" monitor is a necessity, but I disagree with OP that "good" = 4K 120 Hz.

With any legacy application, and even many modern ones, UIs were either fuzzy, or tiny, or a mix of the two, even with all of the Windows per-program custom high-DPI settings tweaked. The UX was not consistent enough to be enjoyable, so I ditched it.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#254

Post by asdff »

duncanawoods wrote: post #49
boromi wrote: post #23

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

I notice that the main topic for > 100Hz monitor owners is how smooth it is to drag windows about. When they show off the monitor, they grab a window and wiggle it really fast. Given no-one has yet come up with a more meaningful demo I'm starting to think it's the only benefit! There is probably a term for this type of performance chasing. It's like car owners bragging about their top speeds despite only ever driving…

In the car world, it's called bench racing. In photography, it's called pixel peeping.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#255

Post by hrayr »

Well timed article for me. I'm looking to buy an external monitor to go along with my older (mid 2015) 15" MBP.

I was searching hacker news and elsewhere for opinions last night. I got confused, frustrated and gave up. Today is no exception. The only thing I know is, I want a large hi-res monitor that is at least comparable to my laptop.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#256

Post by pmiller2 »

This is all very interesting. I've recently, and very seriously considered getting a medium sized UHDTV (say, 40-50") to use as a display. The purpose of this would mostly be to render very high resolution photos while keeping more of the image visible at full resolution than is possible on a smaller screen.

Anybody actually gone and done this?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#257

Post by the_af »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #238
the_af wrote: 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…

I write code on 1366x768 and 1080p and see no difference. 1080p is slightly bigger, but that's all.

Aside from the added screen real estate, I find my external 1080p LG monitor simply looks better than my Dell Latitude's. The laptop display just looks... cheaper. It's hard to explain, it just looks worse.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#258

Post by sneak »

foobarian wrote: post #178

All my life I had an obsession with more pixels. As kids we always envied the classmates with the highest resolution graphics cards and monitors. The pinnacle of my life at one point was the unnamed best CRT ever made which got up to 1280x1024, but then LCDs happened. My new pinnacle is a beautiful 32" IPS panel on a Benq 4k monitor. I don't care for the refresh rate jump from 60 to 120 as much as 30 to 60. But I abs…

That's a pretty low ppi setup you describe. All of the retina iMacs are 27" 5k, so >200 ppi. A 27" 4k is 160ppi, and a bigger 4k is lower yet.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#259

Post by turtlebits »

thomaslord wrote: post #239
the_af wrote: 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…

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…

OS X handles hidpi perfectly. Never had an app that didn’t display as it should.

I do agree with you that 4K under 27” isn’t necessary.

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