Monitors over 1920 x 1080

[bald_pig]

I'm the rare person who prefers an absolute massive display it seems, my last monitor was a 48.5" Acer 4K display, and it was awesome. Just the right size to sit about 1.5 meters away from, nice 4K resolution and very immersive for gaming. My eyes aren't great so I prefer a large screen where I can sit a little bit further back from and not have to strain to see where things are.

Unfortunately my Acer 48.5" failed 2 weeks after the warranty ended, and I bought a 65" Hisense TV to replace it. Which was a) too big, 48.5" is the ideal size I think for me, and b) as it is a TV and not an actual Monitor, it has no Displayport and had all kinds of silly image processing nonsense on it that made the picture quality in Windows look garbage.

 

You could turn off most of the image processing in "game mode", but it still had this awful fake 10bit interlacing that meant every alternating row of pixels was slightly lighter or darker, giving you a banded appearance. From far away the colours did merge into one, but up close it just looked dreadful and you can't turn it off either. Most solid blocks of colour had this banded appearance, even in chroma 4:4:4, so the quality sucked. Luckily it failed 2 days after I bought it, so after being messed around for 6 weeks I'm about to get a full refund on the thing.

 

The problem is they no longer sell 48.5" computer monitors any more, so if you want a big PC monitor, you have to risk buying a TV. And the majority of TV's on the market are hopeless as PC monitors, even if RTNGS gives them a good review. RTNGS gave the Hisense a 9/10 as a PC monitor despite this trash interlacing, same with other displays - they gave an OLED a 9/10 yet I saw posts on Reddit showing how that OLED's RGBW pixel layout made Windows text in particular, look very ugly. I no longer trust TV RTNGS, it seems to test as a PC monitor, they plug in a PC, launch a game, and judge how good that looks - they don't judge how the unit actually performs as a PC monitor in Windows. (e.g. do they output 1:1 exactly as the PC outputs, which is all that is wanted)

 

The biggest actual monitors I can find are these trash 32" ultrawide displays, basically half of 4K if you are lucky. My friend swears by his 144hz 27" ultrawide, but I used it and could barely see what I was aiming at - what's the point of 144hz if what you are aiming at is 1 - 2 cm high??

I was tempted by the LG CX OLED, a 48.5" (or the 55" version actually) - it has a 120hz 4K panel - but OLED's are known for bad burn in for Windows, plus it has RGBW pixel layout which means text in Windows looks trash, and it has no DisplayPort so getting 120hz 4k at chroma 4:4:4 over HDMI is a nightmare (these TV's often use cheap chroma subsampling tricks to fake full 4k colour).

 

So at the moment if you want a good looking, large (42" or above) PC monitor, there isn't really anything good on the market at the moment for a decent (sub £1500) price. Even the expensive TV's have problems as monitors. So I am stuck on my ancient 32" Hanspree 1080P TV from 2010 until I can find something tolerable as a PC monitor again that doesn't have interlacing, subsampling, VA blacksmear (a lot of these TV's have VA panels with awful blacksmear, I'd much rather IPS, anyone who I've talked to who knows what they are talking about has despised large VA panels for gaming), I might be waiting 5 years by the sounds of it

 

Only LG are making 48" currently, so you can get a 48" monitor, but they aren't cheap!

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-aorus-48-fo48u-3840x2160-4k-120hz-1ms-freesync-hdr-hdmi-2.1-kvm-oled-gaming-monitor-mo-00p-gi.html?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_1_xJloLSnLKG8A2hyGbmKJkEO8wSUw7gVmpaNf8Jixs-1634121786-0-gqNtZGzNAqWjcnBszQl9

[Chaniel]

I use two 24" 1440p 144hz monitors at home (wanting to upgrade to 3). I find 24" 1440P to be perfect for both gaming and office work, 27" is a little too much for me personally but I like the extra space as I can just pin windows to the sides very simply. Gives me a lot of flexibility.

 

At work, I use 3 24" 1080p monitors.

 

For some office staff, we've given them 27" 1440p monitors as the work they're doing with Bromcom is a lot easier with the higher resolution than at 1080p (e.g. Attendance actually shows the full week on the screen without having to Zoom out in chrome...)

[slugshead]

27" 4k is the sweet spot for me

[mikes]

Only LG are making 48" currently, so you can get a 48" monitor, but they aren't cheap!

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-aorus-48-fo48u-3840x2160-4k-120hz-1ms-freesync-hdr-hdmi-2.1-kvm-oled-gaming-monitor-mo-00p-gi.html?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_1_xJloLSnLKG8A2hyGbmKJkEO8wSUw7gVmpaNf8Jixs-1634121786-0-gqNtZGzNAqWjcnBszQl9

 

That gigabyte panel looks great on the surface, but shame about the price and the RGBW. I am likely going to end up buying a 55" panel more than likely; apparently they are cheaper than 48.5" because they are cut from different parent panels or some other corporate reason. (But this might just mean they are cut from poorer quality panels!!) 55" would probably be my ideal size really, when I was using my 48.5" I imagined it being a little bigger and would have been happy with a 55" panel. 65" was just too big.

Unfortunately that Gigabyte panel has an RGBW pixel structure, like all OLEDs it seems, and this makes text and other UI elements in Windows look nasty. I haven't seen this particular display in person but I've seen other RGBW OLED's displaying Windows up close, and for my use case, it's basically unusable.

 

My Acer 48.5" was specifically sold as a PC monitor, they were making 42" and 48.5" PC monitors, it retailed for £799 but one day on Ebuyer it was on sale for £400 and I just had to buy it. It was a great panel with good colours (fake HDR only though) and no stupid post-processing; although the response time on the unit wasn't great and the overdrive wasn't great either as it could leave grey trails. But other than the not so great response times (grey to grey pixel changing), it was a great panel. 2 years 2 weeks after I'd bought it, I came home from work, woke my PC from sleep, and the monitor would not power on, I smelt that all too familiar smell of burning circuitry. I kinda wish I'd tried to file a warranty claim anyway, I was two weeks out of warranty but I should have claimed it failed 3 weeks ago while in warranty but I was too sick with covid Who knows wether it would have worked or not, anyway as they don't make that particular monitor any more perhaps they'd have just refunded me and I'd be in the same situation now trying to find a potentially decent TV as a monitor.

 

It's a shame as the 65" hisense TV I bought had fantastic response times despite getting mediocre reivews for it, and other than the disgusting interlacing the quality of the visuals were great apart from the darks; it's wierd TV RTNGS rated the TV as poor for motion, and yet I found the motion great. And it rated the PC monitor output quality as great, and I found it to be terrible due to the interlacing. (And yes it was the same IPS panel). I got my refund anyway, if the alternate line interlacing was a fault and not part of the design, I'd have been happy for amazon to issue me a replacement other than a refund, but there we go, I have many more hours now trying to decide what to buy.

Edited October 13, 2021 by mikes

[Alis_Klar]

Am I the only one that still prefers a pair of 4:3 monitors together. Obviously the more pixels the better but in terms of aspect ratio I just prefer I bit more height and a bit less width.

 

Yeah that's my setup. Although I have upgraded one of the pair to 19" 16:9 as lots of apps assume widescreen these days.

 

I need to try two widescreen monitors in vertical orientation some day but finding mounts is expensive.