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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#511

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…

Completely agree! Went from a mediocre 2x1440p to high quality 2 x 4K, then back to a pair of equal quality 2x1440p. I would also add, when it comes to 4K and, for example, MacBooks, things fall apart quickly in my opinion. Cables, adapters/dongles/docking stations just must match up for everything to work in proper 60fps, and it gets worse if you have two external displays. As for my home set up, also stayed at 25"…

By equal quality 2x1440p monitors are we talking Eizo quality or Dell UltraSharp quality?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#512
post #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…

I have a Dell P2715Q and I'm happy with it. I haven't tried anything with a higher resolution or DPI, but I can't see any individual pixels on the Dell, so for the moment, it's good enough for me.

I can't go back to sub-4k though. Looking at a 24" 1920x1080 monitor tweaks my brain. Pixels ahoy. It's jarring. I'm not the kind of person who cares about superficial things or style or brand at all, but I just can't get comfortable with sub-4k anymore.

Be very wary of Apple monitors. If you can, try one out in the environment you intend to use it in, before you commit. Apple displays are highly reflective. The glare is obscene. The display quality is great, but I can't deal with the eye strain. It's like there's a mirror glaze on top. They used to offer a matte option, but I don't believe they do anymore. It's painful.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#514
Offtopic, I really like how the twitter post has been embedded as a screenshot and not using twitter's scripts.

Even if that means that I can't click any link in a tweet; I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

I prefer the UX (and especially: fast load times) of an image to the one of a script. Also, an image means fewer requests and fewer potential privacy issues.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#515
post #459

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…

FWIW, switching between resolutions in my favorite desktop environment, Xfce, is two steps: # This affects every GTK app. xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Xft/DPI -s 144 The second step is going to about:config in Firefox, and setting layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to a higher value than 1.0. I really need to write an extension to do that in one click. What is really tricky, though, it's having two monitors with different DP…

Even Win10 struggles when you move windows between different DPI domains. Apps will slide in HUGE or tiny until you get past the midway point. And when the system goes to sleep everything can go to hell. You can come back to small message windows being blown up to huge sizes or windows crushed down to a tiny square. You can forget about laying out your icons perfectly on your desktop too, they'll get rearranged all the time. Even more fun when you remote into a high DPI display with a low DPI display. It actually works pretty well, but stuff will get shrunk or blown up randomly when you to back to the high DPI display.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#516
Talks about 4k at 120hz without mentioning that this usually sacrifices chroma, making text unreadable. Fine for games, but not for coding. No mention of Display Stream Compression. No mention of the importance of panel type (IPS vs VA vs TN). No mention of the various HDR standards (and especially how HDR400 isn't really HDR). Suggests getting a 5k, 6k, or 8k monitor while also insisting you get a 120hz display (it's going to be one or the other for the next couple of years). Suggests monitors whose adaptive sync feature only works on Nvidia GPUs.

The author seems to know a lot about font rendering but he doesn't seem to know that much about monitors despite having VERY strong opinions about them.

I suggest people wait till the new year before a big monitor purchase. EVE Spectrum is slated for Q4 of this year. If it delivers on its promises, it'll be the best value for what you get. And if it doesn't, you can fall back on the ROG XG27UQ or its contemporaries - assuming your GPU can support DSC, 4K, and 120hz.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#517
Or you can just use pixel fonts (which imo look better than subpixel-aa fonts on 4k anyway) and donate the difference in monitor costs to [optimal virtue signalling charity]. Gaming on a 4k monitor sucks also, I don't know what kind of supercomputers people are running but my meager 1080Ti can't peg any of the relevant games to 144Hz at 4k.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#518
I'm currently using a Sony 43" 4K TV [1] as my monitor. It supports uncompressed 4:4:4 chroma subsampling [2] which makes for a huge impact on visual quality. It's also quite inexpensive. I find that the height of the monitor is about as big as I can tolerate. I certainly wouldn't mind higher resolution, but that doesn't exist at this size.

LG now has a 48" OLED TV [3] that supports a 120Hz refresh rate. I'm looking forward to trying that out. Either that or the new Samsung Odyssey G9 ultrawide [4] which is about the same price. It's also 240Hz but with VA pixels (which apparently aren't that bad). The G9 will be better on the vertical axis (not too tall) given its size. The extreme curvature is also interesting - not sure about that yet.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Sony-KD43X720E-43-Inch-Ultra-Smart/dp...

[2] https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/chroma-subsampling

[3] https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-oled48cxpub-oled-4k-tv

[4] https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/gaming/49--ody...

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#519
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal way of organizing 3 monitors: 1. Main screen. For the code editor, intense web browsing, etc. 2. Secondary screen. For debugging visuals (since I work on web stuff, it usually hosts a Chromium window; for a mobile dev, I imagine it would be an emulator/simulator), documentation referencing (with the code editor open on the main screen), etc. 3. Third screen. For all comms-related things: MS Teams/Outlook/…

To clarify, my beef is with Atwood's opinion (and similar opinions) that you must use a three monitor setup, otherwise you're doing something wrong. Of course I understand for many devs this setup works, in which case more power to them! I just dislike being told unless I follow these fads I'm a subpar developer. I don't own a mechanical keyboard or a three monitor setup. I don't own a 4K monitor (I suppose I eventua…

> my beef is with Atwood's opinion (and similar opinions) that you must use a three monitor setup

It's weird to me to specify the number of monitors given how they come in a vast range of shapes and sizes.

For example, my dream setup used to be a single 55" curved 8K monitor. That's the rough equivalent of a 2x2 grid of 27" 4K monitors (I currently have two 27" 4K side by side in landscape @ 1:1 scaling).

The only problem with my so-called dream set up though is I don't think my computer glasses, which are sharp only for surfaces between a range of 21" to 27" would allow me to see everything sharp from corner to corner on that monitor, which sucks.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#520
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…

> The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking.

The author, Nikita, did exactly mention that point, mid page of the article under the heading of "Get a monitor".

   Let me express an opinion. This is my blog, after all. 
So yeah, opinionated piece, no big deal. And I happens to agree with him.
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