Since a couple of years ago, I spent a year or so like this, with the TV resting on the desk directly.
It looked pretty nice, but it had some problems.
- The only actual 8K modes reported on the HDMI were some variant of YUV, it means you could not select what your OS considered an RGB mode
- Even using it at 4K, with the 55" TV a couple of feet from the back of the desk, my eyes could not keep all of it perfectly in focus.
- The power consumption was much higher than a typical ~30" monitor, and the amount of heat created was also significant. This became hard to deal with in summer.
Eventually I gave up on it and returned to a ~30" monitor.
All else being equal, a TV (i.e., TV-sized) unit generally has a broader set of use cases and longer useful lifecycle than a computer monitor for the original purchaser†, which could be argued makes good economical sense.
† in my experience, computer monitors can have a long useful life when factoring in the potentially long tail of "donor/hand-me-down" cases...
My wife asked me how much "huge monitors" cost. I told her 100 bucks on Craigslist. Indeed, we got her an old dumb 1080p LCD and she has been super happy with it. It mostly fills the wall of her little cubby hole in our office.
For my money, I have 2x 1080p 24” displays, and a third curved 32" 1080p display which is hooked to a KVM so I can game on it.
I like the 3 monitor setup because they are all at angles from each other, approximating a huge curved display. Plus, this was a cheap setup off woot.com parts.
I think monitors are like headphones. Unless you actually try the "better" ones, you don't have a clue what you're missing. I know because I had been saying "Dual 1080p 24" is all I will ever need." for a long time until I got a 4K 50". Now I can't imagine going back.
I usually use a pair of Sennheiser HD280s that I've had for over a decade. I've used some fancier headphones costing more than an order of magnitude more, from brands such as ZMF. After experiencing the high-end advantage, I'm still perfectly happy with the 280s. There are a few things I care about in a monitor, and DPI is nowhere on the list. Every monitor commercially available has more resolution than I care about. My number one concern is consistency across a wide viewing angle. Low latency, retina DPI, gamut accuracy, HDR, curved surface? I don't care about any of them. I have tried all of them.
May I ask at what configuration? I'm assuming at least one is vertical because I can't think of a way to set 2 43" monitors horizontally without breaking my neck.
I already use a 4K TV for a monitor. 8K would just push a need for a more expensive video card, while decreasing how well people can see when I share my screen. Even on a 4K, I need to blow it up to ridiculous zoom levels to make a screen-share readable to others.
I'm sure not everyone would run into that problem, but it is a fairly strong con to be aware of.
If you are on Linux, you can divide the entire screen into multiple virtual monitors and share only one of them. This has the benefit of giving you "private" monitors what won't be shared.
Another option could be to temporarily lower the resolution.
> TVs may have a different subpixel layout than monitors, so small text may suffer fringing. As of writing the Samsung VA and LG IPS panels such as the QN800A have a conventional RGB or BGR subpixel structure. One may also increase the font size or use hidpi scaling which will eliminate all pixel-level concerns.
I believe the discussion about text rendering is referring only to a line of very cheap TVs that do not in fact have RGB pixels. They have half RG and half GB. For "normal" video content, this is a surprisingly low quality drop. For high-contrast text it's total murder. You can see the stippling pattern as clear as day and it can easily render 8-10pt text literally illegible.
IT once accidentally bought such a TV and had it in a conference room. Took us a while to convince the relevant people that, yes, it is nominally working fine, it's not "broken" in the sense that it doesn't turn on or half the screen won't light up, but it was intolerable for Zoom screen shares.
But you need to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to end up with those screens. I doubt you could find something labelled a "monitor" that has that, and, well, if you're putting a $150 40" TV on to your computer... I mean... what did you expect?
(There are also low-end TVs that are still using some crappy LCD techs with bad viewing angles that may make them difficult to use up close, but I wouldn't call that a text rendering problem... those issues just wreck everything. I once had a laptop that when used on a lap, had zero viewing angles; if the vertical middle of the screen was correct, the top and bottom was extremely visibly color shifted. Even the cheapest store brand TVs don't seem to be that bad anymore, though.)
> I believe the discussion about text rendering is referring only to a line of very cheap TVs that do not in fact have RGB pixels.
It also comes up with very expensive OLED monitors, which do usually have true RGB or WRGB pixels, but their subpixels are usually not arranged in the standard horizontal RGB stripe which breaks most implementations of subpixel font rendering. With a sufficiently high pixel density it doesn't matter, but with the ~108ppi of a 27" 1440p OLED monitor the text rendering can be quite visibly worse than a 27" 1440p LCD.
From experience with a 55” 4K OLED as main monitor, I can attest that the length if the caveat list is not indicative of the total impact of the caveats. It’s more an indication of a thoughtful and thorough person writing the list.
I went with the LG CX model based on what I read on rtings.com
That’s a previous-generation model. I think all of the LG TVs are good.
There are / were technical caveats. I believe all of them are solved by M3 macs that have HDMI 2.1 ports. (M3 or M3 Pro or something? The ones advertised as 8K capable.) Out of the box, those will do 4K 120Hz HDR with variable refresh rate and full 444 color. This is what you want.
It is possible to get that going on older machines, except for VRR which is more of a nice-to-have anyway.
I have a 2018 Macbook Pro 15”. Disclaimer!: My setup was a “complexity pet”, a tinkering project; There are simpler ways to connect a 120Hz 4K HDR HDMI 2.1 display to a non-HDMI-2-1 mac. And! My tinkering project wasn’t only about getting the display working correctly. It was more about messing with eGPUs and virtualization and stuff. Definitely a long way round.
On my Intel mac, I use an AMD Radeon 6800 XT eGPU with Club3D or CableMatters DisplayPort-to-HDMI 2.1 adapters. Plus some EDID hacking which is easy to do.
EDID is how the display identifies itself to the OS. The EDID payload can be overridden on the OS side. Mostly it’s about copying the display’s EDID and deleting the entry that says the display can accept 4:2:0 color. Only then does macOS switch to 4:4:4 color. I also created a custom “modeline” with tighter timing to get 120Hz going fully.
—Please be assured that this was way more complex than it needed to be. It was for fun!
There are much easier ways to do this. Lots of forum posts on it. On the MacRumors forums iirc? User joevt is The Man.
And even then, what I wrote above is actually easy to do once you know it’s possible.
Mostly though you really want an M3 Mac that just has HDMI 2.1 and is ready to go.
There are/were also OLED gaming monitors available, such as from Alienware. Those have DisplayPort inputs and are ready to go with almost any older Mac. Might be able to find one for a price equivalent to a TV, idk.
That's simply too big a screen to be sitting right in front of.
I do agree on the basic idea of not running two monitors tho. I used to, and I got neck pains eventually.
My current setup is a single 32" curved QHD monitor and I wouldn't change it for the world. It's just the right size so you can see the whole screen at once, yet large enough to run 3 browsers side by side.
Also, I want to suggest people to learn about virtual desktops rather than wasting money on bizarrely huge screens or multi monitor setups.
55" is not too big. Maybe it's too big for you, but I've been using three 32" 4k screens in portrait for many years, combined they are essentially about the size of a 55" screen. I love it and anything less kind of sucks. No, virtual desktops are no substitute for having more screen size. I use virtual desktops on my massive screen(s) and I love that too.
The 3 32” screens are probably angled around you and the total aspect ratio is extreme widescreen (side to side panning, not vertical neck up down panning). The 3 screens are likely much much better ergonomically.
I'll never understand why some people think multi-monitors involves neck pain. It's a complete non-issue.
I have a chair with a headrest, my neck never has to move at all, I can see all parts of the screen just by scanning my eyes. Very rarely does my neck ever move and it's usually to see the 65" Tv a few feet over - and even then my chair has a swivel and if I'm watching the Tv more than the computer, my chair will swivel over, not my neck.
> I'll never understand why some people think multi-monitors involves neck pain. It's a complete non-issue.
I can only speak from my own experience, and from what I heard others expressing online over the years.
For me, it was absolutely real and I thought for a while I had some other medical condition.
My issue was that I spent too much time of the day reading of the monitor to my left, twisting my neck while doing it. After a few years I started getting worse and worse neck pains.
I have seen this confirmed many times since by others online.
So please be aware this is an issue, but I am happy that your body still haven't said no.
what are we talking about here, is your head twisted to face a monitor at 90 degrees or what? With my 55" equivalent screen setup the left and right monitors are about 10 degrees rotated from the main center screen, there's practically no rotating my neck at all. None. So I'm not sure what you're doing but if you're having to twist your neck to see your monitors, there's something not optimal about your setup. I have tons of screen real estate and never have to turn my neck.
If you have it setup right you can flip to the other desktop quick, see what you want and flip fast. I haven't seen a good virtual desktop implementation since around 1998 though, and have given up.
Easy to switch, easy to know what you have on each one. Easy to move windows to different desktops. I go years between trying them and always get frustrated by how poorly they work, but it has been so long since my last attempt that I don't remember exactly what annoyed me last time I tried.
That's a hell of a desk. And counter to the argument that "you could just have the one huge screen for entertainment AND work" because this is not a desk you can easily clear out from in front of the sofa when you stop working.
This is making me want to get some blackout curtains for my living room so I can go back to occasionally working with my laptop hooked to the projector, though. It's about the same resolution as my laptop but it's really nice to be focusing on something across the room for a change.
I use a 50" 4K TV as my monitor. It's mounted on a long TV mount that can bend at 3 points, one near the wall, one near the TV and one in the middle. Gives me great freedom. One warning to people who want to do the same: make sure your mount has a way to rotate (around the screen's surface normal) the TV as the weight of it will make it sag.
I upgraded recently, by buying a friends old Samsung Odyssey G9 49" curved monitor off him (he was emigrating). Before that I had 2 x 27" monitors, a setup I had used for ~10 years.
I honestly think the curve is essential when dealing with such a wide display. The alternative would be - as article states - to set it back a little and have a deeper desk so you can actually see the edge of the screen properly. I don't see the point in having a large screen with high pixel density if the edges are not actually easily visible to me without moving my head or body laterally.
The lack of bezels is great though - I'd definitely agree on that front, having 3 web browsers or editors open side by side suits me really well.
32" Odyssey G7 is the pick for me, I wouldn't mind an upgrade to the 4k version, but the 1440p version is more than good enough.
I also don't see the point in having a screen so big I have to move my head, or contrarily a screen so big that I have to push it back so the pixel density matters much less.
It’s different from person to person!, whether the curve is good or not.
I have a ruler flat 55” OLED TV as main monitor. It’s perfect for me. I’m like… 1-1.5 meters from it where I’m closest to it, haha. The edges are further away. It’s fine! – imo / ime.
(The need for the curve is also subtly different depending on how the panel was made. I tried a flat 43” IPS 4K monitor, expecting IPS to be good. And it wasn’t very good. The IPS features in that panel were large enough to affect viewing angle.)
> It’s different from person to person!, whether the curve is good or not.
The amount of curve also varies a lot between models so there's some nuance even within that. The curve might be as strong as 800R or as weak as 2300R depending on the monitor, where the number corresponds to the radius of the circle the panel follows in millimeters.
As weird as the aspect ratio can be on a curved ultrawide, I think it's also more natural and ergonomic to keep your head/eyes at a constant height and just move them side to side. With a monitor that has a lot of verticality you're gonna have to tilt your neck back more.
Low response time (i.e. time it takes for a pixel to change color) to reduce ghosting, and a high refresh rate up to 240 Hz.
These monitors are expensive and do not have very high resolution. If you're not a hardcore fast reflex gamer, and you spend a lot of time looking at text, then IMO it's better to buy a higher resolution monitor for less money.
4K gaming monitors do provide a reasonable middle-ground between "extremely fast but only 100-110ppi" and "extremely high res but only 60hz" now though. You can get 163ppi at 144hz without breaking the bank, which isn't quite retina by Apples definition, but it's good enough for me considering the benefit of high refresh rate.
I think at that point it’s not really conscious any more? It always takes me a little while to realize my monitor somehow went to 30hz, and that’s why I’m feeling something is off.
I'm guessing because it allows you to set the Field-of-Vision to be pretty wide?
I mostly play simulation games, particularly flying, and having a wider FoV makes things easier, until you're ready to go to the top step of using VR instead so you also get depth perception and essentially 360 FoV since you can rotate your head.
I wonder what the math would look like to properly render 3D scenes onto a curved display. Could it be accelerated as well as the regular matrix operations used for perspective projection onto planar screens?
During the pandemic I did try out my 4K TV as a game monitor. I had a combination of furniture so that I could sit rather close with my eyes approximately half way up the screen, with a keyboard and mouse in a reasonable position. Then, using an older FPS game I got it to where my laptop GPU could hit good frame rates and I adjusted the game's viewing angle to match how the screen fit my field of view.
It was deeply immersive in spite of me being so close I could "see the pixels". The only time I've felt more immersive was demoing Quake in a 3 wall + floor CAVE at a national lab decades ago.
> I wonder what the math would look like to properly render 3D scenes onto a curved display. Could it be accelerated as well as the regular matrix operations used for perspective projection onto planar screens?
The math is pretty simple to account for a curved viewport, even though I don't think any apps actually care about that. Most displays aren't curved enough to make it a meaningful difference.
We don't have fixed function pipelines anymore either so that could definitely be handled by hardware.
This used to be much more true, but almost all PC games support 21:9 now and 32:9 support pretty common too. "most games" screwed up is an exaggeration IMO. Even on games that don't officially scale, on PC they almost always have customizable FoV that gets the perspective correct again. Many modern games are even smart enough to rearrange the UI so that the critical info (health bars, ammo counts etc) is in the center of the display and not attached to the edges.
PC games have kinda been forced to support ultrawides whether they like it or not - the 21:9 class especially has exploded in popularity for gaming PCs.
I've gamed in 32:9 for years now - I wouldn't go back. The curve is not exaggerated enough to be a meaningful projection issue on most curved displays and games.
It's the curve that messes things up. It's just significantly more incorrect on wider displays. Many monitors are 1800R, and that's easily curved enough for the projection error to be quite pronounced at 32:9 using a planar projection.
Same, though I'm also on 49" (5120x1440). They're selling them for extra cheap on Amazon with extended (36mo) warranties because they're prone to breaking, but I had the Samsung contractors out here this month and they did a great job fixing mine that randomly died one day -- for free! If you're a chill soul, I'd say it's worth the risk.
I sound like a shill, so Samsung plz hmu. $999 for a beautiful OLED monitor that fits a terminal, a browser, and 4 (font size 8...) 100col text editor windows is a gamechanger.
I use mine for productivity only (I don't game at all) and it seems the consensus is OLED's no good for things like Kconsole/xterm (-style) windows and general text readability, though.
Modern TVs have decent input lag around 10 ms which is on par with professional monitors, but of course it will still be worse than gaming monitors. Lots of people game on their TVs. And most TVs have settings that disable postprocessing.
I actually kind of agree with this. For me, the more pixels the better (I'm sensitive to fuzzy text, and subpixel rendering makes it worse), but I'd really prefer just one monitor, not too big. 15-19" is fine, especially if it's 4:3. 1600x1200 on a 17" monitor would be really nice.
I guess. I think the important thing is getting the program in your head, not on the screen. If the code is too complicated to hold it all in your mind then more columns of crisp text will not save you.
I'm not a fan. Large ultra-wide curved screens are fantastic. With large flat screens that are meant to be viewed across the room, you get a distorted image when you sit up close. Your eyes have to focus further away as you look at things closer to the edge of your screen and the viewing angle for that part of the screen is different from the center of the screen. It also requires more effort for your eyes to look up and down rather than left and right. We're hard wired for that horizontal plane. This makes ultrawide screens a really comfortable option.
I almost bought an 8k 55" screen for use as a monitor, but I tested a 55" 4k screen for a week and the flatness is what turned me off to it. I've been using three 32" 4k screens in portrait, arranged in a "curved" config on my desk (2 monitors on each side are mounted at an angle), which I really like. But switching to a large single flat screen was not fun.
For me the holy grail of monitors is a 55" 8k curved screen. Not "ultrawide", I want the full width and height and I want it curved, with full 8k resolution. Maybe someday, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high.
I'm not the guy you asked but I have a similar opinion on flat screens. Personally I'd want spherical. ~15" tall and ~25" wide is about my limit for flat screens, anything beyond that I find that the corners/edges are too distant/distorted. My home setup is multiple independent 27" screens, which I like. My work setup is a single flat ultrawide (34" probably?), and I find myself physically leaning my head/body from side to side when I have two windows open next to each other. I have eye level a few inches from the top of the screen, and the lowest couple inches also seem distant/distorted.
After 15 years of having a desk job I find that I’m more sensitive to the position I sit in. My back feels a lot better if I have a single, regular sized screen right in front of me, instead of having additional screen estate on the sides or below (as with a laptop).
At the same time I use virtual desktops that I can switch with both keyboard and mouse.
The general advice is to have top of monitor at eye level, but it's been wrong advice for me personally. I now put the middle of the monitor at eye level. Keeps my head up and posture better. Leaning back instead of stooping.
Indeed. AIUI your head needs to be back, chin tucked in, which means looking down a bit. If you're looking level or up you're going to be sticking your head out a bit
The general advice provided to me, and relayed by me is eyes centered @ 2/3th of the screen.
The best advice received and relayed by me regarding posture might surprise you.
If you struggle with posture, stop caring about what other people might think about your posture. Changing/Tweaking posture all the time might look bad, but it also tends to mitigate the effects of being frozen in bad posture(!) The health impact is too significant to ignore.
Yeah I think the only ergonomic advice I believe anymore is that there does not exist a position that is ergonomic to sustain for more than a couple hours. Humans are not evolved to stay stationary, few mammals are really.
I do this too, though mostly out of necessity. I use a 27" screen a couple feet away. To get the top of the monitor level with my eyes I'd either have to lower it so the bottom of the monitor was almost flush with the desk (which my current monitor's stand won't do anyway), or get a taller chair/lower my desk, both of which would leave my legs rubbing up against the desk underside and my arms at an uncomfortable angle for typing.
Either I have an abnormally short torso, or that advice was written back when most people were using a 14" display.
I'm the same. I use a single 27" 4k monitor and use virtual desktops. The best upgrade for me though was getting a computer prescription for some glasses that I keep on my desk.
Sometimes I think about upgrading to a 5k monitor. The Apple Studio Display looks great, but I'm a Windows user and I'm guessing a lot of the nice features of that display are Mac-only.
There aren't a whole lot of options for 5k monitors. Other than Apple I think there's a Dell, but it's too wide. There's a Samsung but I've been burned by Samsung too many times. There's also an LG 5k monitor but it gets pretty weak reviews.
I've got the LG 5K and it's been totally dependably kick ass for the 4 years (i think) since I got it (from the Apple Store). Mostly using it on macOS but have used it with Windows and haven't tried with Linux.
> The Apple Studio Display looks great, but I'm a Windows user and I'm guessing a lot of the nice features of that display are Mac-only
I can possibly be of some help here. I have a Studio Display, however my work-provided machine is a Dell laptop and so that is what is connected to it most of the time.
Providing your machine can output video via Thunderbolt or USB-C, it will work. That is fairly common these days, though Windows machines capable of driving a 5120x2880 signal can be harder to come across, particularly in the corporate laptop world, though I don't know how much of a concern that is to you.
My last work machine maxed out at 4K which the Studio Display would happily scale up to full screen. I would describe it as substantially sharper than e.g. a 2560x1440 display of equivalent size, but still noticeably less sharp than the full native 5K (obviously). My current machine can do the full 5K, but the performance leaves a lot to be desired (however the thing is a turd anyway, too much corporate security crap bogging it down).
Speakers, camera, and microphone built into the display all work totally fine from Windows. What may be a total non-starter is that you need a Mac or iPad to change the brightness, because there's no physical controls on the display itself and Windows doesn't expose a way to control it. I am lucky/unlucky in that my home office does not get a huge amount of natural light, meaning I've been able to set it to a comfortable brightness from my Mac and then just leave it.
Overall it's a very nice monitor if you can work around the brightness thing. A possibly better contender though is the recent-ish 5K variant of the Asus ProArt[0]. I was using the 1440p version of the same monitor before I got the Studio Display, and I was very happy with it. Good colour reproduction, USB-C Power Delivery for one-cable laptop docking, and a far more adjustable stand than the SD. Worth a look.
There are several 5k to appear next year: Benq, ALogic, maybe somrthing else. There are also chinese noname 5k monitors which use panel rejects of ASD.
Same here. I only use and want a single monitor setup. I can alt-tab between windows faster and more comfortably than turning my head to another screen.
Also a dual/multiple setup bothers me for losing the mouse boundaries when it crosses to another screen - I'd rather have the mouse bounded on one screen for faster access to menu bars at the edges.
Agreed. To each their own, but the obsession with the biggest and/or most possible screens is something that is very hard for me to relate to. As soon as I am regularly craning my neck to see all of my screen real estate, it is no longer a positive in my life. I'm glad these solutions exist for people who enjoy them, but they are definitely not for me.
Same, I switched back to a single 27" screen last year. For me it's better to focus on one thing at a time especially since my eyes aren't the best, and I switch between virtual desktops with F1-F4 (or when I use my mac with the 3-finger swipe gesture).
MacOS also has ctrl+left/right for switching virtual desktops. The gesture can get a bit tedious if you're jumping across multiple desktops in one go. I don't think it's particularly ergonomic either.
I used a 32" non-curved 4k monitor for a few months once. At some point I realized that I was moving my head around a lot as the corners were at an awkward place. On 28" I don't have this.
So anything above 30-ish inches I would consider either curved (expensive for hidpi resolutions) or two/three 27" screens angled a bit.
I can't imagine how bad it would be on a 65" flat screen.
I'm not sure if they ever shipped it to any retail customers. I'm a JVC projector owner so I kinda follow JVC projector news. The higher end JVC PJs are used by Boeing for flight sims:
JVC accommodates that use case with things like extra chassis mounting points to allow the projector to be mounted securely in a dynamic environment. This looks like it may have been an early POC in native 8K for Boeing.
I reached out to JVC's simulation projector sales department directly and confirmed that this projector is not discontinued. It appears that Projector Central has incorrect information.
Note that it took a few weeks for JVC to get back to me.
For 1 and 2, I would say it totally boils down to personal preference an distance/size ratio. For 3, again, distance to the screen matters a lot.
The 4th one I've seen the most heated discussions about. In my opinion, highest you can afford (both money-wise and computational power-wise) is the most useful resolution. Even if you can't distinguish the individual pixels (aka screen door effect) aliasing is still an issue.
I use dual 27" 144kHz 4K monitors and am mostly pretty happy with my setup though I have considered moving to an Ultra Wide curved monitor, I'm just not sure if the OCD side of me would be bothered by the curvature.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, one of the advantages of using physically distinct monitors is that it's easier to send things into a full screen mode without affecting the other displays - I guess apps that support "borderless windows" are less of an issue.
Maybe there's some type of cross platform (Mac, Lennox, Windows) virtual display driver software that can allow you to create "picture in picture" virtualized monitors though?
My Dell monitor has a picture-by-picture mode which works very well to simulate 2 distinct displays. Each side uses its own video input. Many higher end monitors can do this, unsure how many TVs can.
>Unless I'm misunderstanding, one of the advantages of using physically distinct monitors is that it's easier to send things into a full screen mode without affecting the other displays - I guess apps that support "borderless windows" are less of an issue.
This is one of the reasons I stuck with two monitors instead of one long one when I upgraded a while back. I know there are workarounds and helper programs you can install and whatnot, but I like being able to drag something to the side and full screen it without any additional hoops. Plus the long monitor crowd tend to have things centered on the screen and then have small accessory areas to either side instead of two distinctly large screens. Plus resolution wise, unless you're going with a really wide monitor, you probably have more overall resolution with two screens, especially if price is a factor at all. Standalone 27" monitors are basically the standard and are priced accordingly.
That’s typical of tvs. The signal is delayed by a few seconds because for passive entertainment why not. You will likely have a mode for your tv that does no post processing and has minimal delay Often called pc or gaming mode. Look up “[your tv model] gaming mode”.
This is something I've wanted to do for a while! I wish Samsung still produced their 55" 8K displays-- 8k @ 55" gives you effectively the same PPI as a 27" 4K display. Maybe someday.
The proper monitor height is when the top third of the screen is at or slightly below your eye level when seated or standing upright. This positioning helps prevent neck strain and allows for a comfortable viewing angle.
The top third of a large TV will be much higher than that, which will cause long term discomfort.
That's why large monitors have much wider aspect than TVs.
Yep a huge monitor sounds good in theory but you end up with neck and eye strain from panning your head constantly unless you place it so far away that it’s effectively a regular monitor at a regular distance.
Would recommend a black background Vscode theme for an OLED. The black background with red accents looks beautiful, at least on my smaller XPS 15 4k OLED. I use Dobri Next Black with some customizations but it looks good by default as well.
Correct me if I'm wrong - in OLED monitors, a black pixel actually means a powered off pixel. So it's a good idea to use as much as black in static areas to prolong the monitor life.
Maybe if you put what your working on at the top of the screen and only looked at that one thing it would be a problem, but realistically you use a bigger screen the same way you'd use a bigger desk: you dont put what you're working on out of reach, you just have more room for the tools for what you're working on.
LG CX series are literally #1 recommendation on almost any article about getting TV for PC gaming and maybe some work, for many years. I don't think OP is honestly looking around.
Have you had issues with image retention? I also like the 43” 4K setup for some things, but these days it seems IPS screens in that size are not as easy to find, I’ve always been wary of OLED due to burn-in
Am I the only person who wants a monitor that's curved in both axes (left/right and up/down) so I can surround myself with a sphere of monitors, and then pivot on a gimbal?
it's around 100 degrees while humans can see more like 180 degrees (more if you move your eyes; I don't want to move my eyes, I want to gimbal my body to focus on a specific monitor) although outside the center of your vision, you don't have good "resolution". The Vision Pro would be like being inside the sphere, but with a big aperture blocking all the side monitors
I'd love to do this but always worried (probably incorrectly) that the energy output wouldn't feel great and result in faster fatigue or require more rest breaks.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 337 ms ] threadIt looked pretty nice, but it had some problems.
- The only actual 8K modes reported on the HDMI were some variant of YUV, it means you could not select what your OS considered an RGB mode
- Even using it at 4K, with the 55" TV a couple of feet from the back of the desk, my eyes could not keep all of it perfectly in focus.
- The power consumption was much higher than a typical ~30" monitor, and the amount of heat created was also significant. This became hard to deal with in summer.
Eventually I gave up on it and returned to a ~30" monitor.
All else being equal, a TV (i.e., TV-sized) unit generally has a broader set of use cases and longer useful lifecycle than a computer monitor for the original purchaser†, which could be argued makes good economical sense.
† in my experience, computer monitors can have a long useful life when factoring in the potentially long tail of "donor/hand-me-down" cases...
For my money, I have 2x 1080p 24” displays, and a third curved 32" 1080p display which is hooked to a KVM so I can game on it.
I like the 3 monitor setup because they are all at angles from each other, approximating a huge curved display. Plus, this was a cheap setup off woot.com parts.
1600x1200 on a 21" CRT was king. though.
Also, old stuff lacks shady smart features. Bonus!
I kid, of course. I wouldn't want to use it myself, but you do you.
I'm sure not everyone would run into that problem, but it is a fairly strong con to be aware of.
Another option could be to temporarily lower the resolution.
And if the solution is to sit further away, why not just get a smaller screen and sit closer?
> TVs may have a different subpixel layout than monitors, so small text may suffer fringing. As of writing the Samsung VA and LG IPS panels such as the QN800A have a conventional RGB or BGR subpixel structure. One may also increase the font size or use hidpi scaling which will eliminate all pixel-level concerns.
IT once accidentally bought such a TV and had it in a conference room. Took us a while to convince the relevant people that, yes, it is nominally working fine, it's not "broken" in the sense that it doesn't turn on or half the screen won't light up, but it was intolerable for Zoom screen shares.
But you need to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to end up with those screens. I doubt you could find something labelled a "monitor" that has that, and, well, if you're putting a $150 40" TV on to your computer... I mean... what did you expect?
(There are also low-end TVs that are still using some crappy LCD techs with bad viewing angles that may make them difficult to use up close, but I wouldn't call that a text rendering problem... those issues just wreck everything. I once had a laptop that when used on a lap, had zero viewing angles; if the vertical middle of the screen was correct, the top and bottom was extremely visibly color shifted. Even the cheapest store brand TVs don't seem to be that bad anymore, though.)
It also comes up with very expensive OLED monitors, which do usually have true RGB or WRGB pixels, but their subpixels are usually not arranged in the standard horizontal RGB stripe which breaks most implementations of subpixel font rendering. With a sufficiently high pixel density it doesn't matter, but with the ~108ppi of a 27" 1440p OLED monitor the text rendering can be quite visibly worse than a 27" 1440p LCD.
That’s a previous-generation model. I think all of the LG TVs are good.
There are / were technical caveats. I believe all of them are solved by M3 macs that have HDMI 2.1 ports. (M3 or M3 Pro or something? The ones advertised as 8K capable.) Out of the box, those will do 4K 120Hz HDR with variable refresh rate and full 444 color. This is what you want.
It is possible to get that going on older machines, except for VRR which is more of a nice-to-have anyway.
I have a 2018 Macbook Pro 15”. Disclaimer!: My setup was a “complexity pet”, a tinkering project; There are simpler ways to connect a 120Hz 4K HDR HDMI 2.1 display to a non-HDMI-2-1 mac. And! My tinkering project wasn’t only about getting the display working correctly. It was more about messing with eGPUs and virtualization and stuff. Definitely a long way round.
On my Intel mac, I use an AMD Radeon 6800 XT eGPU with Club3D or CableMatters DisplayPort-to-HDMI 2.1 adapters. Plus some EDID hacking which is easy to do.
EDID is how the display identifies itself to the OS. The EDID payload can be overridden on the OS side. Mostly it’s about copying the display’s EDID and deleting the entry that says the display can accept 4:2:0 color. Only then does macOS switch to 4:4:4 color. I also created a custom “modeline” with tighter timing to get 120Hz going fully.
—Please be assured that this was way more complex than it needed to be. It was for fun!
There are much easier ways to do this. Lots of forum posts on it. On the MacRumors forums iirc? User joevt is The Man.
And even then, what I wrote above is actually easy to do once you know it’s possible.
Mostly though you really want an M3 Mac that just has HDMI 2.1 and is ready to go.
There are/were also OLED gaming monitors available, such as from Alienware. Those have DisplayPort inputs and are ready to go with almost any older Mac. Might be able to find one for a price equivalent to a TV, idk.
I do agree on the basic idea of not running two monitors tho. I used to, and I got neck pains eventually.
My current setup is a single 32" curved QHD monitor and I wouldn't change it for the world. It's just the right size so you can see the whole screen at once, yet large enough to run 3 browsers side by side.
Also, I want to suggest people to learn about virtual desktops rather than wasting money on bizarrely huge screens or multi monitor setups.
I have a chair with a headrest, my neck never has to move at all, I can see all parts of the screen just by scanning my eyes. Very rarely does my neck ever move and it's usually to see the 65" Tv a few feet over - and even then my chair has a swivel and if I'm watching the Tv more than the computer, my chair will swivel over, not my neck.
My neck is just fine, thanks.
I can only speak from my own experience, and from what I heard others expressing online over the years.
For me, it was absolutely real and I thought for a while I had some other medical condition.
My issue was that I spent too much time of the day reading of the monitor to my left, twisting my neck while doing it. After a few years I started getting worse and worse neck pains.
I have seen this confirmed many times since by others online.
So please be aware this is an issue, but I am happy that your body still haven't said no.
If I want to have multiple things open and be able to glance at them at once, how would virtual desktops help with that?
This sounds a little condescending especially when the author is clearly a technically savvy user who uses a tiling window manager.
This is making me want to get some blackout curtains for my living room so I can go back to occasionally working with my laptop hooked to the projector, though. It's about the same resolution as my laptop but it's really nice to be focusing on something across the room for a change.
https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2017-12-11-dell-up3218k
https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-05-23-desk-setup
I honestly think the curve is essential when dealing with such a wide display. The alternative would be - as article states - to set it back a little and have a deeper desk so you can actually see the edge of the screen properly. I don't see the point in having a large screen with high pixel density if the edges are not actually easily visible to me without moving my head or body laterally.
The lack of bezels is great though - I'd definitely agree on that front, having 3 web browsers or editors open side by side suits me really well.
I also don't see the point in having a screen so big I have to move my head, or contrarily a screen so big that I have to push it back so the pixel density matters much less.
I have a ruler flat 55” OLED TV as main monitor. It’s perfect for me. I’m like… 1-1.5 meters from it where I’m closest to it, haha. The edges are further away. It’s fine! – imo / ime.
(The need for the curve is also subtly different depending on how the panel was made. I tried a flat 43” IPS 4K monitor, expecting IPS to be good. And it wasn’t very good. The IPS features in that panel were large enough to affect viewing angle.)
The amount of curve also varies a lot between models so there's some nuance even within that. The curve might be as strong as 800R or as weak as 2300R depending on the monitor, where the number corresponds to the radius of the circle the panel follows in millimeters.
These monitors are expensive and do not have very high resolution. If you're not a hardcore fast reflex gamer, and you spend a lot of time looking at text, then IMO it's better to buy a higher resolution monitor for less money.
Even 240Hz is usually enough for really good players. 480Hz is just for the 0.01% who can take advantage of it.
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Swift-Gaming-Monitor-PG32UCDP/dp...
https://www.amazon.com/LG-32GS95UE-Ultragear-DisplayHDR-Dis...
https://www.amazon.com/LG-32GS95UV-Ultragear-DisplayHDR-Dis...
https://www.amazon.com/Predator-Monitor-FreeSync-Premium-100...
If you want pixel density first and speed second then you should go for a 27" 4K instead.
I'm skeptical that any human can take advantage of that. Even 240Hz is stretching it.
I mostly play simulation games, particularly flying, and having a wider FoV makes things easier, until you're ready to go to the top step of using VR instead so you also get depth perception and essentially 360 FoV since you can rotate your head.
During the pandemic I did try out my 4K TV as a game monitor. I had a combination of furniture so that I could sit rather close with my eyes approximately half way up the screen, with a keyboard and mouse in a reasonable position. Then, using an older FPS game I got it to where my laptop GPU could hit good frame rates and I adjusted the game's viewing angle to match how the screen fit my field of view.
It was deeply immersive in spite of me being so close I could "see the pixels". The only time I've felt more immersive was demoing Quake in a 3 wall + floor CAVE at a national lab decades ago.
The math is pretty simple to account for a curved viewport, even though I don't think any apps actually care about that. Most displays aren't curved enough to make it a meaningful difference.
We don't have fixed function pipelines anymore either so that could definitely be handled by hardware.
PC games have kinda been forced to support ultrawides whether they like it or not - the 21:9 class especially has exploded in popularity for gaming PCs.
I've gamed in 32:9 for years now - I wouldn't go back. The curve is not exaggerated enough to be a meaningful projection issue on most curved displays and games.
Got it on a Samsung sale for ~$1500 IIRC, one of the best upgrades I'd ever done.
I sound like a shill, so Samsung plz hmu. $999 for a beautiful OLED monitor that fits a terminal, a browser, and 4 (font size 8...) 100col text editor windows is a gamechanger.
I use mine for productivity only (I don't game at all) and it seems the consensus is OLED's no good for things like Kconsole/xterm (-style) windows and general text readability, though.
I know I'm getting into old man yells at cloud territory here, but nobody needs this. Code on a 1024×600 netbook display, it will build character.
From the 90s on 1600x1200, 1920x1080, 2048x1536 were resolutions one could find on professional displays.
From the 2010s on resolutions increased tremendously and 3840x2160 became the norm for consumer and professional displays.
When working with code you essentially work with text. You just want a big canvas and crisp text, thus high resolution.
Where do you think those vi commands come from?
ed(1)
/old man yells at cloud
For me the holy grail of monitors is a 55" 8k curved screen. Not "ultrawide", I want the full width and height and I want it curved, with full 8k resolution. Maybe someday, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high.
At the same time I use virtual desktops that I can switch with both keyboard and mouse.
Either I have an abnormally short torso, or that advice was written back when most people were using a 14" display.
Now I put a monitor directly in front of me, and a secondary monitor on the side. No more neck pain.
Sometimes I think about upgrading to a 5k monitor. The Apple Studio Display looks great, but I'm a Windows user and I'm guessing a lot of the nice features of that display are Mac-only.
There aren't a whole lot of options for 5k monitors. Other than Apple I think there's a Dell, but it's too wide. There's a Samsung but I've been burned by Samsung too many times. There's also an LG 5k monitor but it gets pretty weak reviews.
I can possibly be of some help here. I have a Studio Display, however my work-provided machine is a Dell laptop and so that is what is connected to it most of the time.
Providing your machine can output video via Thunderbolt or USB-C, it will work. That is fairly common these days, though Windows machines capable of driving a 5120x2880 signal can be harder to come across, particularly in the corporate laptop world, though I don't know how much of a concern that is to you.
My last work machine maxed out at 4K which the Studio Display would happily scale up to full screen. I would describe it as substantially sharper than e.g. a 2560x1440 display of equivalent size, but still noticeably less sharp than the full native 5K (obviously). My current machine can do the full 5K, but the performance leaves a lot to be desired (however the thing is a turd anyway, too much corporate security crap bogging it down).
Speakers, camera, and microphone built into the display all work totally fine from Windows. What may be a total non-starter is that you need a Mac or iPad to change the brightness, because there's no physical controls on the display itself and Windows doesn't expose a way to control it. I am lucky/unlucky in that my home office does not get a huge amount of natural light, meaning I've been able to set it to a comfortable brightness from my Mac and then just leave it.
Overall it's a very nice monitor if you can work around the brightness thing. A possibly better contender though is the recent-ish 5K variant of the Asus ProArt[0]. I was using the 1440p version of the same monitor before I got the Studio Display, and I was very happy with it. Good colour reproduction, USB-C Power Delivery for one-cable laptop docking, and a far more adjustable stand than the SD. Worth a look.
[0] https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/monitors/proart/proar...
The ASUS one is pretty interesting and it's only $800.
Also a dual/multiple setup bothers me for losing the mouse boundaries when it crosses to another screen - I'd rather have the mouse bounded on one screen for faster access to menu bars at the edges.
So anything above 30-ish inches I would consider either curved (expensive for hidpi resolutions) or two/three 27" screens angled a bit.
I can't imagine how bad it would be on a 65" flat screen.
Getting 3 32" 4k monitors is still better than having a single point of failure. But also I'm extremely happy with my single Odyssey G9 55".
I bought a 30" monitor back in 2008 when that constituted a large monitor. It had a 12 month warranty and died after 13 months. :-(
I switched to 2 24-inch monitors which cost less, had more total pixels, and most importantly I no longer had that single point of failure.
Well that's not technically true...
https://www.jvc.com/usa/pro/projectors/dla-vs8000g/
But obviously not affordable.
https://www.projectorcentral.com/JVC-DLA-VS8000G.htm
I'm not sure if they ever shipped it to any retail customers. I'm a JVC projector owner so I kinda follow JVC projector news. The higher end JVC PJs are used by Boeing for flight sims:
https://www.boeing.com/defense/support/training/constant-res...
JVC accommodates that use case with things like extra chassis mounting points to allow the projector to be mounted securely in a dynamic environment. This looks like it may have been an early POC in native 8K for Boeing.
Note that it took a few weeks for JVC to get back to me.
1. At what size and resolution are flat screen monitors most useful?
2. At what size do curved screens start becoming useful?
3. What is the upper limit for useful screen sizes?
4. Is there an upper likit for useful resolutions?
The 4th one I've seen the most heated discussions about. In my opinion, highest you can afford (both money-wise and computational power-wise) is the most useful resolution. Even if you can't distinguish the individual pixels (aka screen door effect) aliasing is still an issue.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, one of the advantages of using physically distinct monitors is that it's easier to send things into a full screen mode without affecting the other displays - I guess apps that support "borderless windows" are less of an issue.
Maybe there's some type of cross platform (Mac, Lennox, Windows) virtual display driver software that can allow you to create "picture in picture" virtualized monitors though?
This is one of the reasons I stuck with two monitors instead of one long one when I upgraded a while back. I know there are workarounds and helper programs you can install and whatnot, but I like being able to drag something to the side and full screen it without any additional hoops. Plus the long monitor crowd tend to have things centered on the screen and then have small accessory areas to either side instead of two distinctly large screens. Plus resolution wise, unless you're going with a really wide monitor, you probably have more overall resolution with two screens, especially if price is a factor at all. Standalone 27" monitors are basically the standard and are priced accordingly.
I plug my TV directly into my laptop with a USBC -> HDMI cable. Docking stations often fall back to lower refresh rates.
The proper monitor height is when the top third of the screen is at or slightly below your eye level when seated or standing upright. This positioning helps prevent neck strain and allows for a comfortable viewing angle.
The top third of a large TV will be much higher than that, which will cause long term discomfort.
That's why large monitors have much wider aspect than TVs.
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/a1-oled
For anyone using a TV I recommend using https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay to properly scale the display.
> Doesn't support variable refresh rates or HDMI 2.1.
Unfortunately that makes it a deal breaker. The search continues
The trick for me was to wall-mount it and get a deep desk. I prefer to be at least 36" away from it.