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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#521

Post by josho »

runawaybottle wrote: post #462
josho wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an LG ultrafine 5k, and a cheap BenQ 4k. The difference is night and day. I hate the BenQ* and will dump it as soon a I can. My suggestion is to hold off until you can save up and buy one of the suggested displays when it's in your budget. * The BenQ has a matte finish which effectively blurs everything, e.g. it's like it reduces the resolution by 10-20%. The colors are not accurate to my macbook display, desp…

1200 feels like a lot to spend on a monitor.

Agreed. I should have also mentioned that I bought my LG as a refurbished unit which made the purchase easier to stomach.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#522

Post by quicklime »

The author says that you don't need to choose between 4K and 120Hz, because there are "reasonably priced" monitors on the market that have both. But their recommended monitor ($900) seems a lot more expensive than a 4K 60Hz monitor (which is around $300-$400 when I search on Amazon).

The author also says (they think) that you need the discrete graphics card in a MacBook to take advantage of a 120 Hz display, and that the integrated Intel Iris graphics won't do.

I was actually shopping around for a new MacBook earlier today, and noticed that the 13" MacBook Pros only come with integrated GPUs, and you have to get the 16" MBP if you want discrete graphics. So if you like the portability that a 13" laptop has, this might not be a good tradeoff (not to mention that the 16" one costs $400 to $800 more than the top-spec 13" one).

I totally agree with the stuff they say about rendering fonts on 4k screens, but I don't think I'd be willing to take the hit in portability, or shell out an extra $700+, to get 120 Hz.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#523

Post by madeofpalk »

mulmen wrote: post #492
bonestamp2 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first Maybe we can get to the bottom of this. What is your use case? I ask because as long as I plug them into the same ports it remembers how I arranged them previously (2018 macbook pro 15"). I haven't had to arrange them in over a year... even remembered when updating to latest operating system. Occasional…

MacOS cannot drive one 5120x1440 display using Intel display hardware. It will happily drive two displays at 2560x1440. The monitor had multiple inputs so by putting it in PBP mode I was able to drive one input as USB-C and another as HDMI through a dock converter. This means the wakeup was not in sync. MacOS would see one monitor, arrange everything on that then realize there was a second one and fail to move anythi…

> MacOS cannot drive one 5120x1440 display using Intel display hardware.

For other readers, this is not technically correct. The 2020 13” MacBook Pro can drive the Pro Display XDR with its integrated Intel graphics.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#524

Post by ashtonbaker »

jasonlotito wrote: post #431
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you used a 4K display? I'll go one step further: I used the LG 27" 5K Display for two whole years before returning to a 34" Ultrawide with a more typical DPI. Obviously I preferred the pixel density and image quality of the high-DPI screen, but I find myself more productive on the 34" Ultrawide with a regular DPI. (FWIW, LG now has a newer pseudo-5K Ultrawide that strikes a balance between the two). I look for…

Just want to second the use of an ultrawide (3440x1440). It's such a better experience all around. I can't go back to a non-ultrawide monitor.

I also have 3440x1440 on my Dell monitor at home, and I love it.

My work monitor is a really nice 27" 4k LG monitor, which a coworker picked out. He's a real monitor specs nerd and made a lot of assertions like the OP. The scaling issues are endless and really bother me, and I don't notice the higher PPI at all. I much prefer the ultrawide Dell - it gives me a feeling that I don't even need to maximize my windows and I can still have lots of space.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#527

Post by sly010 »

I concur with everything said, but it is still a bit unclear to me who is this article targeting. What is the takeaway? "Anyone who can afford a $1500 monitor should have one, so poor font designers don't have to break their back manually hinting fonts anymore"? Isn't that a bit like solving poverty by moving to a better neighborhood?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#528

Post by madeofpalk »

quicklime wrote: post #522

The author says that you don't need to choose between 4K and 120Hz, because there are "reasonably priced" monitors on the market that have both. But their recommended monitor ($900) seems a lot more expensive than a 4K 60Hz monitor (which is around $300-$400 when I search on Amazon). The author also says (they think) that you need the discrete graphics card in a MacBook to take advantage of a 120 Hz display, and that…

For what it’s worth, the latest 13” MacBook Pro (with integrated intel graphics) can power the 6016x3384 Pro Display XHR at 60Hz.

I am unsure what refresh rates it can achieve with a lower resolution.

But really as someone who made the jump from 60Hz to 120Hz, I wouldn’t bother unless you’re gaming. I accidentally was running my monitor locked to 60Hz and when I fixed it, I barely noticed the difference - it was only really when playing FPS that I noticed.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#529

Post by mdorazio »

errantspark wrote: post #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.

> 144Hz

That's your problem right there. Most people, myself included, are perfectly fine at 60Hz since we don't do competitive FPS gaming. At that refresh rate, my 2070 is perfectly happy to render games in 4k and I really don't notice any significant difference compared to 120Hz. If > 60Hz is really important to you, it's going to be another generation of video cards before single-card gaming can handle it well (probably the 3000 series cards will be capable).

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#530

Post by tomaskafka »

gruez wrote: post #368
Dylan16807 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 bit color support in graphics cards only became available around 2015. That's off by a decade. > 256 color monitors Is that a thing that exists? > We've only switched to 10 bit because of HDR. You can get clear banding on an 8 bit output, and 10 bit displays are used at the high end. 10-bit HDR isn't immune to banding, since most of the increased coding space goes into expanding the range. There's a good reason…

>That's off by a decade. mainstream support, at least. 10 bit HDR support for AMD cards was introduced with Fiji (2015), and Nvidia was introduced with Maxwell (2014)

2002. I remember this. Matrox was one of major GPU players at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_Parhelia
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