My son asked if he can have a curved monitor for this Christmas. They seem a little pricy though. I’m thinking about a 27" screen as there isn;t that much room for it.
So what’s important when choosing one and where can I skimp?
Why? Get a 24" 4K curved screen. He’ll love it, and it won’t break the bank.
$150. Considered one of the best curved displays out there.
But if you don’t mind the space or (slight) additional cost, here is the 27" version of that, also getting very good reviews. $180*.
*I have to admit, I thought the 27" would be a lot more than that. That’s my recommendation.
As far as I can tell, the usual rules apply in terms of what you want to look for. You want a fast response monitor for gaming, and one with a great picture of course. The above is a very fast 4ms response time, fantastic for gaming, and the colors should be really great on it out of the box (though I suspect better with tweaking).
Make sure it has inputs compatible with what video cards you are using (HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.).
Here is a 32" by the way, $230. Also a 4ms response time.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D3BDXQA/ref=psdc_1292115011_t5_B01CX26WIG
Heh, 24 or 27 will be quite enough. Should I worry about getting higher resolution screen?
In fact, if you go above 27" I’d highly recommend 1440p, or even 4K. Actually at 27" I kind of recommend 1440p (that’s what I have at that size and I love it) but it depends on factors like eye sight and distance to your display. If you are sitting directly in front of it 1440p @27" rocks hard, but 1080p @27" is also totally fine, especially if you tend to sit a little further away and don’t have the best eye sight.
Agreed. 1440 rocks at 27” if you’ve got the hardware to drive it (I have a 1070]
I just went 1440p myself on a 27 inch and it’s amazing. So, so gorgeous.
Yeah, I feel like 27" @1440p is the sweet spot for doing anything on PC, from watching streaming content to playing video games, and it doesn’t require a beastly card to “mostly sort of” pull it off like 4K gaming does.
Weirdly, I see on my YouTube suggestions that Linus did a video talking about 1080p vs 1440p vs 4K and came down on the side of 1440p (for gaming) as well. I agree - I’ve done 4K gaming on my PS4 Pro and with my PC as well, and I also prefer 1440p for gaming/motion at higher refresh rates. It’s a good watch.
On a personal note, however, I still feel like 60fps is super smooth and works great, so if you can get 4K @60fps that’s totally going to be a good experience. But I tend to play more RPG/Strategy games and not quite as much fast paced FPS stuff (though I do love me some Doom or Wolfenstein from time to time).
Silly question - how far are you supposed to sit away from various size monitors? The 27" samsung linked above looks pretty great, but I suspect I don’t need more than my 24" because of the distance I sit from it (which is good, because then I can stay at 1080p and my 1060GTX lasts longer).
Any reasons I should use HDMI over DisplayPort in modern PC/monitor these days? My monitor has USB-C and thunderbold in the USB-C drives display through DisplayPort, so I would like to connect the PC/GTX1060 through HDMI instead.
I think the fancier monitors with the really high frame rates require use of a certain port for those features. But aside from that,not that I know of.
Yeah, I think if I need Freesync or G-Sync, I need DP, but if I am not using these high frame rates, HDMI should be as good as DP. How about resolution? Modern HDMI can scale high res?
Those aren’t just about high frame rates though, like people seem to think. To me, g-sync is every bit or more valuable at lower frame rates.
I have no idea how far away you are supposed to sit, but I’ve got a 27" IPS 1440p Viewsonic (that I love). I’ve had it almost 6 years, and I just measured now. My eyes are from 24" to 30" away from it, and it hasn’t caused any eye strain at all, no matter how many hours I sit in front of it. Well actually, it did, until I turned the brightness down from the factory preset of 100% to 18% two days after I got it, which is perfect for me (on that particular monitor).
For some reason, some monitors come from the factory set at 100%, which in my case was crazy-bright, and caused eye strain quite rapidly; a few minutes in my case. If you ever feel like your eyes are burning from staring at the monitor, turn the brightness down until it’s comfortable, or do like I did, and find a website that specifies the optimal brightness setting for your monitor. I got my proper setting from reading a review at TFT Central, where they actually measured the amount of light emanating from the screen. Turning down the brightness had the added benefit of eliminating backlight bleed as well.
EDIT: I edited out the link to TFT Central, as I’m getting a “not secure” warning in the url bar. Does anyone know if TFT Central is still an okay place to go? I haven’t been there in several years…They used to have awesome, detailed reviews.
Yes yes one for each eye!
HDMI can’t go above 1920*1200 30hz iirc, you just bought that television to use with your pc, it may exceed that.
HDMI 2.0, which released in 2013, can do 4k@60hz with a 24-bit color depth. HDMI 2.1 can do 4K@120hz, HDR, etc.
Oh! Thank you. I checked the manual and I have 2x HDMI 2.0 and one DisplayPort 1.2. Nice!
This isn’t a specific response to anyone, but I just picked up this monitor earlier this week (a marketplace vendor had it new for $350 plus tax, no shipping charge, but Amazon’s now selling it for only a bit more directly):
and can highly recommend it so far.
The Wirecutter is currently recommending something else as best 4K monitor, but there’s no sign they ever tested this model and this is by most accounts the updated version of their previous pick (an older LG monitor without the HDR) and even better than that. This is also cheaper than their current pick and the only advantage that monitor appears to have are a couple of USB ports and a slightly longer warranty. Woo? I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this hit their top tier once it does enter the mix.
It’s got gorgeous colors, excellent viewing angles (it is IPS, after all), has a very convenient and well designed onscreen display (and supplementary software that lets you make additional changes like screen splits and per-application automatic mode switching), a very smartly designed stand that is very adjustable, HDCP 2.2 support (so you can do native 4K streaming and potentially 4K blurays), HDR10 (albeit I haven’t found this terribly useful so far), etc. Love it.
Personally I highly recommend 4K for gaming - I think the beauty it brings is much more important than maintaining 60+ fps, and you’d be surprised how many games can do perfectly adequate framerate (if not necessarily 60) on a 1080, or even a 970 (which is what I had when I first switched to 4K). But even if you don’t want to risk that with the latest games, 4K monitors downscale to 1080p without fuss for those games and then you can enjoy the expanded resolution for day to day use, media, and older games. It is so worth it. And then when you do make the plunge (perhaps when there’s another generation of graphics cards that can consistently do 60+ in 4K), all you need is the new card, not that -and- a new monitor.
If it had gsync instead of freesync I would probably cave and buy it. But 4k gaming sounds like it would benefit immensely from it and I can’t see buying AMD anytime soon.
Then again I can’t see buying Nvidia anytime soon either. Ug.