Monitor for work

QM4TY

Hello guys,

I would like buy a bigger monitor, right now i  use Ugee 19'' wich is great but the resolution and workspace is just too small
I'm, Hobbist and mostly i use Maya (right now i would like switch to Modo or Blender) Photoshop, Substance Painter,
And i tright now i need your help
I have small budget something around 200£ and i have 3 option

The First one wich is also my favoirt is Lenovo L24Q-10:
IPS 23,8'' QHD monitor 100% sRGB, 1.07 billion colours . I find it for £149.99(Black Friday Deal), More Details Blow
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/accessories-and-monitors/monitors/home/L24q-10-23-8inch-QHD-MonitorHDMI%2BDP/p/65CFGAC3UK

The Secound one is LG 29WK500 :
IPS 29'', UltraWide 2560 x 1080, 99% sRGB 16.7M colours, the lowest price i found is £172,
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/accessories-and-monitors/monitors/home/L24q-10-23-8inch-QHD-MonitorHDMI%2BDP/p/65CFGAC3UK

and the last one is Acer EB321H :
IPS 31,5'', QHD, 16.7M colours, price £180
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/GB/content/model/UM.JE1EE.A01

What will be best or maybe you can offer something better.

thomasp

2560x1440p in a 24 inch package is packed. You'll need very good eyes to handle that, else you might get some serious eyestrain (or headaches, twitching eyelids, ....) from trying to focus too hard. Text and icons will display very tiny. Personally I find interfaces in that res pretty small on a 27" screen. I usually scale up the fonts somewhat to compensate. Not all applications allow for this though.

The second one has a vertical res of 1080. Very wide - which might be great to store palettes but a little low a vertical resolution for the kind of interfaces we deal with. 1200+ should be the aim, else you better not have horizontal UI elements steal your viewport real estate. Maya in particular has lots of these by default and I don't think they can be turned into vertical elements either.

The third option is the best in terms of size/resolution.

I'd be hesitant at these prices though - color reproduction and viewing angles might not be to your liking. The larger the display, the more noticeable these tend to get when even a slight shift of the head appears to produce a different shade of color on the screen in front of you.

Make sure to check reviews for these points and ideally try to check a monitor in person and play with the onscreen controls for color adjustment.

As a hobbyist you might not need a pro display but it better not be something that's mainly just large and cheap.

If you need to keep the cost down, perhaps it would be worth it to look at the 2nd hand market too and try to move upmarket in terms of monitor models. I don't think these LED monitors wear out much if at all over a typical few years of office use.

QM4TY

Thanks @thomasp
Very useful and funny advices especially about 2nd monitor
The biggest problem for me is that i don't know what will be moust useful for me i mean aspect between size and resolution
The 27'' Full HD will be ok or that size it's too big for that resoultion ?
For me the most important thing is to get more workspace because like i write before right now i use 19'' 1440x900 

thomasp

I think you could be conservative and go for a 24 inch display at 1920x1200 - and perhaps keep your current screen as a secondary? Assuming they are still making these displays (at the very least it should be easy to find them 2nd hand) then these have a good balance of size and pixel density.

27" inch and larger is something you have to try out to see how well you like it. A quality screen will be fine for sure - but probably outside your price range. As I said - there are displays where the colors shift like mad as soon as you move your head. Also some have incredibly funky colors or brightness/contrast levels you can't easily tone down. Might be acceptable for a gamer but not for work.

huffer

Regarding high dpi monitors, I use DPI scaling in windows for my 25 inch 1440p monitor, and the scaling is finally usable! Actually resizes windows correctly - no problems with it and the high dpi makes thing sharp.

poopipe

Scaling is pretty good on windows 10 so I wouldn't be too worried about high dpi. 27" at 4k works fine for me and I'm old.

I'd absolutely agree that money is better spent on quality than size/resolution.   Poor colour reproduction and narrow view angles will really mess with your artwork and a good quality screen will last a long time (for example, I just retired a 13year old Samsung) 

LG are producing some really nice kit at pretty competitive prices these days. Might be worth seeing what they have to offer at your budget. 

PolyHertz

thomasp said:

I think you could be conservative and go for a 24 inch display at 1920x1200

I have a Dell screen with those specs and good color accuracy. I have no complaints.