Time to Upgrade Your Monitor • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#51

Post by kazinator » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

boromi wrote: post #43

vardump wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Guess I never thought about that. Is the difference noticable. I always thought High refresh rate was for gaming.

High refresh rate has to do with reaction times in competitive multi-player gaming.

You absolutely don't need 120 Hz in any single player video game produced between 1978 and 2020.

Games at 15 FPS (even less) used to be perfectly playable and fun. At 30 FPS things are smooth well past giving a damn.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#52

Post by draw_down » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

I recently bought a Mac Mini and a display not made by Apple. This is the first time I've used a display not made by Apple in a long time, and boy is it not good. And I didn't cheap out, I thought I was getting a decent one, I read reviews and bought the one that was supposed to be good. Plainly, it looks like fucking shit.

Of course Apple is not the only one capable of making decent displays, but the baseline is surprisingly awful. People just use these things all day, it's amazing. For me, it isn't a big deal because this is not my main computer, I don't use it for hours at a time.

There's a line out there nowadays that hardware is amazing and software quality is in the gutter. I think they're still more closely matched than that, unfortunately.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#53

Post by duncanawoods » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

Aaronstotle wrote: post #18

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.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#54

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

That's a great, comprehensive article!

But I'm old, and most of the effort is wasted on me.

What I need, is real estate.

I have that. I use an ultrawide (5120 X 1440) monitor, broken into two screens (3440 X 1440, 1680 X 1440).

Works great.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#55

Post by dragosmocrii » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#56

Post by nsxwolf » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

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.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#57

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

adtac wrote: post #44

This is going to sound like I want to eat the cake and still have it, but I wish there was some sort of balance between real estate, sharpness, and affordability. A 24in 4K monitor without scaling makes text too small, but at 200%, it's no different from a 1080p monitor real estate-wise (even though text is much crisper). My current monitor, a 1440p 24in screen at 100%, serves all of my real estate needs, but leaves…

> 8K screens at 300% would offer similar, albeit slightly lower, real estate at even better text sharpness

5K @ 200% = 5120 / 2 = 2560

8K @ 300% = 7680 / 3 = 2560

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#58

Post by buserror » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

chromaton wrote: post #21

These monitors and most of the ones mentioned in the thread are tiny. Whatever happened to the dream of the full-wall display? I really like my 43" 4K LG monitor, but apparently this type of monitor is rarely produced these days. A quick Newegg search shows exactly 1 monitor with similar specs and it's more than twice the cost of what I paid for mine two years ago.

I use 232" 4K monitors side by side; Before that I had 230" 1920x1200 (not 1080p!) side by side too; to me it's sufficiently "a wall" that I put them about 80cm from me, each angled a bit inward.

Quite frankly anything bigger and you get a kink in your neck by having to move your head so much!

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#59

Post by pkamb » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

mastercheif wrote: post #12

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…

30" Cinema Display has better than 5k iMac resolution, but at 1x. 160 extra vertical pixels.

Still the best monitor around. $3000 MSRP now available used for $200-300.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#60

Post by liuliu » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #5

After going to 1440p, I cannot use 1080p monitors for programming as the text is too blurry. Honestly I don't see the need of 2160p on a monitor, it usually just causes display issues and it's a performance drain. For gaming/everyday use, 2k w/ a high refresh rate is the sweet spot imo.

I use a 32" monitor at 4K with 1x scaling. It is a productivity booster for me. More horizontal space is just much nicer to host debug sessions and jump between code sections. At the same time (of debugging), I can tile web browser to the other side and either do some lookups, or run a Jupyter notebook.