6 ms·

I am tempted to do this, at least as a FU to the monitor industry. There is so little innovation in monitor tech! Why are monitors so expensive and old tech com

• linsomniac 4y ago
  One thing I noticed about my 46" LG 4K monitor, which was "cheap" at $600-ish (edit: looked it up: $720) 3-4 years ago, is that it really isn't designed for viewing at desk distances. On my desk, as far back as it'll go, the viewing angle puts the backlight not exactly behind the pixels, so the left/right have 4-6 pixels and the bottom has ~10-15 pixels that are unlit. I use it for a bunch of terminals, so part of the left column of text and the entire bottom line, or my status bar, were unreadable. Thankfully my window manager had an unsupported feature that let me "pretend" that those areas didn't exist. So what I learned is that TV-oriented panels aren't just directly usable on the desktop. However, I was more recently able to pick up a couple 32" Dell 4K displays for $300-ish each, and they are glorious! That was on a big year-end sale.
  • copperx 4y ago
    For 32", wouldn't you need an 6-8k display to get Retina-quality text? I believe that's why 32" 4k displays aren't usable for coding, unless you're ok with low resolution text.
    • opan 4y ago
      It helps if you use bitmap fonts. They look crisp and clean at small sizes and lower resolutions. They make other fonts look blurry by comparison. The trend of scaling seems to largely be because of people using those blurry fonts. I'd rather have crisp fonts and more screen real estate than have to deal with scaling and end up with as much space as before.
      • copperx 4y ago
        Do you have any suggestions for bitmap fonts?
        • opan 4y ago
          Terminus is a classic. I think it's a few decades old. I typically use it at 9pt on low DPI displays, but have gone up to 14 or 16 on large displays viewed from far away like a TV. tewi (8pt?) is another nice one. Scientifica is decent. If you need big font sizes, one of the only options is spleen. It gets rather large. I think OpenBSD uses spleen.
    • FpUser 4y ago
      >"32" 4k displays aren't usable for coding" I use my 32" 4K for just that at 100% scaling and totally happy. Fonts looks fine to me. Do not feel low res at all.
      • jamesliudotcc 4y ago
        I have Dell displays with those specs and at that price point. Probably the same display. They are fine for coding if you are not acclimated to "retina" smoothness for fonts. Since they are so cheap, I bought a second one so my wife. A giant screen is just as useful for legal work as for coding, it turns out. There are downsides. The colors aren't great. The blacks are just dreadfully light. Sometimes there are artifacts when I use the screen after it has been idle for a time, but the artifacts disappear quickly.
        • tomerbd 4y ago
          Do you use S3221QS with Mac?
        • linsomniac 4y ago
          The model on mine is S3221QS, I had looked earlier but couldn't find the order, but I remembered I have them plugged into the Dell support site. Looks like I paid $360 landed each for them.
        • FpUser 4y ago
          >"if you are not acclimated to "retina" smoothness for fonts" I am not using magnifying glass so for my eyes smoothness is just fine without "retina" prefix. >"The colors aren't great. The blacks are just dreadfully light" If you care so much about colors get real pro display. Just be prepared to second mortgage your house for that. For mere mortals (I mostly use 32" BenQ monitors) colors on are reasonably fine and so are blacks. No artifacts. I do not see Apple as superior in this department. Once again, if for some reason you need perfect colors / blacks / uniformity / whatnot Apple with its "retina" is not the one to go with. Try Eizo for example
    • samatman 4y ago
      Some of us get a larger monitor to see more text, others get a larger monitor to put further away and look at the same amount of text. Once your eyes turn forty, see which group you're in!
      • copperx 4y ago
        I still have a month to go before 40; I'll see which group I belong to then. However, right now, I can't tolerate screens with lower PPI than Retina.
        • bartvk 4y ago
          So what monitor do you use then?
          • copperx 4y ago
            A 24" 4k Dell monitor. Not perfect, because it has a moire pattern on white backgrounds because of the anti reflection coating.
            • samatman 4y ago
              So this part is pure trigonometry: how much further does a monitor like this have to sit on your desk, to have the same pixels-per-steradian as a 4k 27"? Yeah. That's what I mean. Just a little further away, same pixel density. It's nice.
              • copperx 4y ago
                On the other hand, brightness decreases 1/distance^2. You would need a brighter panel to achieve the same brightness at a farther distance.
            • bartvk 4y ago
              Ah interesting, thanks! On which "virtual resolution" do you set it? Or simply at 2X?
    • linsomniac 4y ago
      I dunno about Retina Quality text, that moniker isn't important to me. What is important to me is that I get the amount of text on the screen without it being all blocky. My previous Dell U3011 32" 2500x1600 display was a bit blocky. The 4K 32" is quite nice for my use. I will say that the difficulties I had getting dual 4K working in my setup make me glad I didn't try for something like 8K. In my case, I have a recent Dell XPS 15, but not quite recent enough. My docking station can't do 4K output. The next newer XPS 15 can. In the end I found that using two USB-C to HDMI cables, directly connected to the laptop, will do it, so that's good enough for me. Went from the 1-cable docking to 3, but I'm ok with that. I don't tend to move my laptop much these days.
      • copperx 4y ago
        The Retina moniker isn't important. Text becomes non-blocky at about 200 PPI. A 32" 4k monitor has 138 PPI, which is extremely blocky unless you're using 400% zoom.
    • bdcravens 4y ago
      I recently bought 4 32" monitors (2 for work, 2 for home), and I wasn't remotely interested in 4k. QHD is perfect, and if you get monitors where that's the max, pretty cheap. (Every 4k monitor I've had I always downscaled it)
    • jerlam 4y ago
      Outside of laptop monitors, there are only a handful of monitors that are "Retina-quality" (>220 ppi). It is very doubtful that programming is difficult or impossible on all other monitors. Most computers cannot also drive a 32" 220 ppi monitor.
      • copperx 4y ago
        That's true. It was really hard to find a 24" 4k monitor for my desktop. It's insane that people can tolerate lower PPIs after seeing a Retina-like screen. You can't go back.
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      32 inch 4K is perfectly fine. I recently switched to a Samsung CRG9 (I can only have one external display on this computer) and the resolution is pretty crappy compared to the 32 inch. But either one of them is perfectly fine for coding.
      • copperx 4y ago
        I don't trust people who say "it's fine" anymore. After a lot of tests with people I know, many young(!) acquaintances are not able to distinguish between 2k and 4k. People of my age can't sometimes distinguish the difference between HD and 4k on a monitor. And that's for static images. No one I know is able to notice the difference between motion interpolation on/off on a TV. This is going to sound dismissive and entitled, but I've learned that people's eyesight and visual processing is extremely bad in general.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • 411111111111111 4y ago
          If someone can't distinguish 4k and 2k on a 32" display then the image they're looking at has horrible quality. Its instantly visible as soon as you see any sharp edges / letters. 2k 32" is 80 dpi, that puts it at the same pixel density as fullhd on 24". That's perfectly usable but not particularly sharp at normal viewing distances
        • rootusrootus 4y ago
          I won't try to convince you if you don't want to be convinced, and from your perspective I'm just a rando on the 'net. I get that. But I have my 32in monitor above my CRG9 (I use the 4K screen for my work computer) and I somewhat regularly end up with the same text displayed on both at the same time. The CRG9 resolution is noticeably inferior to my 48 year old eyes. Which I have to tell you, don't have the acuity they once had. 20/20 the last time I tested, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's falling below that now. Getting old blows. The difference isn't too bothersome unless I'm bouncing back and forth between them. I get used to the lower resolution of the CRG9 pretty quickly and forget about it. And of course it's totally fine for coding.
  • jyxent 4y ago
    I think that is mainly due to being direct-lit backlight. I'm currently using a 43" Sony X800H, which is edge-lit, and the pixels are fully lit at my 2 1/2 - 3 foot viewing distance.
  • usefulcat 4y ago
    I also use a 40-something inch desktop monitor and I see slight viewing angle problems on the sides. For my use it would actually be better if it were slightly curved.
    • brokenmachine 4y ago
      IPS panels are much better than VA panels for that, but unfortunately have worse blacks. OLED is the way to go, but it's a bit spendy at the moment.
• Arubis 4y ago
  > Why are monitors so expensive and old tech compared to TVs? (“Smart”) TVs are subsidized by the push advertising and analytics crammed into their firmware.
  • Sujan 4y ago
    (Reputable) source?
    • blamazon 4y ago
      How about Vizio's Q4 earnings report? You can see that "Platform+" accounts for nearly twice as much profit as hardware in 2021. https://investors.vizio.com/investor-relations/default.aspx https://investors.vizio.com/investor-relations/default.aspx
      • davidgay 4y ago
        Because money is "funny" inside companies, and because there's no platform sales without hardware sales, I would think that the relevant metric from an external perspective is total revenue (The change in fraction of revenue over the years is probably interesting too).
    • SixDouble5321 4y ago
      Lol where have you been? There must be a dozen or so articles on HN in the last year alone.
    • MrVitaliy 4y ago
      https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/ https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-spent-3000-on-a-samsung-smart-tv-and-all-i-got-were-ads-and-unwanted-content/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-spent-3000-on-a-samsung-smar...
    • joezydeco 4y ago
      Bill Baxter (CTO, Vizio) Smart TVs continue to make money for the manufacture after the sale by providing data to viewer measurement and consumer research companies and through all of those apps they integrate in the TV’s smart functions and subsequent app usage. “This is a cutthroat industry,” Baxter went on to say. “It’s pretty ruthless. The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off the TV. I need to cover my costs.” http://cjni.com/smart-tvs-too-smart/ http://cjni.com/smart-tvs-too-smart/
• Stevvo 4y ago
  I think things are changing; at CES this year QD-OLED launched on both TVs and monitors simultaneously with the AW3423DW, and there are some 42 inch OLED monitors derived from TV panels.
  • Nursie 4y ago
    LG also seem to be launching a 32” 4K OLED monitor this year, but it’s really expensive.
• matsemann 4y ago
  > And prices seem artificially high I switched companies last year and was gonna return the screen they gave me to use for home office, and buy my own. I looked it up, and the screen had cost like 700 USD back in 2016. So I thought I for the same price, 5 years later, I would get a sweet upgrade. But no, basically same specs. Same panels, perhaps upgraded a bit, but not much had happened. Prices were the same, perhaps because of the pandemic. Luckily my previous company ended up gifting me the screen. My new company ended up giving me the "newer" version of the monitor at the office. Only difference I can see is that it now charges my laptop via usb-c. Neat, but not much innovation in those 5 years.
• NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Interesting. I find innovation in TV's to be opposite of my desired direction. Smarts that make them slower, wifi, ads, slowness,forced firmware updates, slowness, unfathomable picture controls and auto magic colour correction that's Gawd awful, unresponsiveness and slowness. So I'm more likely to use my monitor as a TV then to want to use tv as monitor. I'm also clinging to my 2008 46" lcd tv that just works, and am stunned by how often my father in law has to call for my help with his shiny 76" tv which is showing blue screen of death or mandatory update or things have moved or icons have changed or their version of Netflix / Disney / whatever app is borked or needs maintenance or no longer supported or just looks different... And slower. Always ever slower.... the slowness of response is astonishing. Reminds me of new cars where if last driver had volume set up max, you can't kill the radio or volume until car is done telling you about its disclaimers and boot up sequence and pretty animation. If you can't move in menus or mute instantly, than no thank you to innovation.
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    I think it would be shocking to todays people to see a TV from 20 years ago, before all that digital funkiness. Instant switching between channels.
    • rosndo 4y ago
      I certainly don’t miss switching channels. TV experience 20 years ago sucked. Now I can have all the content I could ever want immediately accessible via Plex, no need to fiddle with DVDs or gasp VHS tapes. Commercials? hah. Unskippable anti-piracy warnings? nope.
    • loonster 4y ago
      Imagine if they were exposed to a laser disk fast forward / skip. Gasp
      • rootusrootus 4y ago
        Or an old copper phone line before cellular ruined call quality.
• 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
  I'm far from an industry insider, but I think it could be LCD panel factories needing to be set up for specific sizes in conjunction with mainstream TV sizes going up rapidly over the past ~15 years. That is, the most-updated factories are the ones chasing the TV size trend, and monitors tend to get stuck with the output from the stragglers.
• bhauer 4y ago
  This reminds me of my rant about televisions versus monitors on my 2014 blog entry "4K is for Programmers." https://tiamat.tsotech.com/4k-is-for-programmers https://tiamat.tsotech.com/4k-is-for-programmers
• kayoone 4y ago
  hm I think the industry was stale for quite some time but lately it has picked up a lot. What exactly are you looking for? Today you have high refresh rates,4k or 5k screens, (curved) Ultrawide, Variable Refresh rates, low latencies. Comparing them with TVs is not entirely fair, as those usually are not great for displaying text unless you get a specific panel with good chroma subsampling and in terms of latency TVs are usually also pretty far behind Monitors. The really good TVs are equally as expensive.
• pronlover723 4y ago
  I'm am curious about USB-C vs others. My MBP takes 10-20 seconds to wake up on an external USB-C monitor. Is that a MacOS issue or a USB-C issue?
  • novok 4y ago
    The m1 macs are pretty much instant, might be an intel issue
    • somehnguy 4y ago
      Both my Intel & M1 macs wake up instantly with external usb-c monitor, might be a monitor issue.
  • infinityio 4y ago
    I haven't had this issue on Windows, the time to wake seems to be identical for usb c vs other connection methods?
  • culopatin 4y ago
    Your monitor.
• Nbox9 4y ago
  I really enjoy the 49” ultrawide 1000R format Samsung has been pioneering. It’s the size/resolution of two 27” 1440p monitors next to each other, has a buttery smooth refresh rate, and a curve that makes viewing more comfortable and natural. The new quantum dot displays are also very innovative.
  • metadat 4y ago
    What do you like about the qDots vs "regular" pixels?
    • thfuran 4y ago
      Samsung's newest qd displays are qdoled so you get extremely fast response time and very high contrast ratio and the dots give high color saturation so the color volume is very large. Brightness is also high (for an oled).
    • Nbox9 4y ago
      They are just an improvement on the OLED technology, with reduced burnin risk and brighter pixels being the largest improvement.
• grishka 4y ago
  Ever since I got the new MacBook Pro, I've wanted a monitor that would be its screen but 27" of it, in 5K resolution. But apparently I'm asking for something impossible. Or maybe Apple announces a "Studio Display XDR" next year? Who knows.
  • mh- 4y ago
    I've had an UltraFine 5K for around 4 years now. Is that not what you're asking for? edit: if you meant aesthetically, yeah, no, it's ugly plastic.
    • throwaway684936 4y ago
      The new Studio Display is the same panel as the UltraFine but ever-so-slightly brighter, and with a better shell.
    • grishka 4y ago
      I'd like a higher refresh rate (120 hz scrolling feels so much better) and, if at all possible, same HDR capabilities, or at least truer blacks. And preferably also glossy finish.
      • throwaway684936 4y ago
        Unfortunately, Apple uses Thunderbolt, and they're the only ones who do 5k/6k. We absolutely have the bandwidth for 5k120 over DisplayPort, but Apple insists on sticking to Thunderbolt.
        • opan 4y ago
          I thought thunderbolt used DP for video.
          • DiabloD3 4y ago
            Thunderbolt doesn't use DP for video when in Thunderbolt mode.
• thangalin 4y ago
  > affordable large monitor with 120Hz refresh rate This year, I went through four different monitors to find one that works. Stay away from IPS panels, they all suffer from "IPS glow", which is visible when using high contrast colours (i.e., a bright window on a dark desktop background will blast a translucent white "overlay" above and below the window). "Smart" 4K TVs are untrustworthy, IMO (e.g., Samsung is known for spying/spyware and inopportune ads, making them a hard pass). The ROG STRIX XG43UQ was the only display I could find that runs at 120 Hz, works with a KVM switch (IOGEAR 2-Port 4K DP), has a 16:9 aspect ratio, offers 4K resolution, uses a VESA 100 adapter, and is suitable for programming. The OS must be instructed to render using BGR instead of RGB, which Linux supports. The panel has some subtle horizontal glow in rare high-contrast situations, but it's nowhere as noticeable as IPS panels. Depending on your definition of affordable, it runs for about $1,300. https://rog.asus.com/ca-en/monitors/above-34-inches/rog-strix-xg43uq-model/ https://rog.asus.com/ca-en/monitors/above-34-inches/rog-stri...
  • mnkmnk 4y ago
    I can get a 2021 65 inch Samsung qled tv for $1k and it has 100% dci-p3 coverage compared to 90% of the monitor, has HDR and 120Hz refresh rate, has usable speakers, has a good remote to control it and is larger and cheaper. I don’t know the numbers, but I bet the contrast would also be better on the TV.
    • threeseed 4y ago
      On any Mac you won't be able to get 4K 120Hz if that TV just has HDMI. It only works on monitors/TVs that support DisplayPort.
    • opencl 4y ago
      Does the 4K 120Hz actually work properly? There are a lot of TVs that claim to support 4K 120Hz but actually display the signal at half vertical resolution as 3840x1080.
• ptero 4y ago
  My main monitor is Dell u3014, 60Hz. I had a Dell 3008 at work and replaced it with 3017 when it died, so I had this tech for over 10 years both at home and at work. What am I missing with 60Hz compared to 120Hz? Honest question. When I look at friends' office setups with latest curved 4k (or now 8k) monitors I do not see anything that I like more than my current monitor, so while we are generally not limited in workstation or monitor options at work I see no reason to upgrade.
  • Macha 4y ago
    Honestly for office worker/programming/professional use, high refresh rate doesn't make much difference. It's neat that windows are more legible while dragging or curse movement looks smoother, but I wouldn't buy high refresh rate if I wasn't also a gamer
  • Stevvo 4y ago
    If you don't feel you are missing anything without 120hz then don't try it. Once you go back to 60Hz you feel as soon as you move the mouse cursor; you can never be content at 60 again.
• kurthr 4y ago
  I assume you're looking for an LCD monitor... not OLED or something novel. I'm not sure why you would want 120Hz, that seems like the only challenge to a competative price. Most LCD materials have long response times (>5ms) so they tend to blur at high refresh rates. High refresh rates at high resolution are also a challenge and thus higher cost. If you're looking for 4k, it's also worth noting that most non-premium TVs will use 2subpixel (RGBG rather than RGBRGB) rendering for higher brightness ans lower cost whereas most monitors will use 3. There are also economies of scale to much larger glass >40" which aren't usually seen in monitors. I am surprised how relatively poor the color matching on many monitors is, however.
• lordnacho 4y ago
  I've seen trading firms do this. Why have 8 monitors when you can just have one giant screen? All you do with it is show some app, doesn't need to be special.
• bsder 4y ago
  The problem is that the monitors are only about gaming. In particular, I find the "1440" Y dimension resolution particularly infuriating. Yeah, I know the reason is that modern games make all the graphic cards left over that aren't being used for crypto die in horrible flaming balls of heat when you actually ask them to ... you know ... actually use the pixels on your monitor. GASP! The Horror! So, how can we fix this? I know! Let's make sure the monitors don't have enough pixels to cause the graphics cards grief. Brilliant!
  • Macha 4y ago
    1440p (and by extension 5k) have advantages from a productivity point of view too. In my experience, no OS really consistently supports fractional scaling, so if you want a good time you want to run at 1x or 2x. In terms of how much "stuff" you can fit onto a screen at a comfortable size on modern monitor sizes, that means you'll end up using 1x for 1080p/1440p and 2x for 4k/5k. 1440p@1x or 5k@2k let you fit more than 1080p@1x or 4k@2x while feeling plenty large enough with modern application design on a typical (24/27 inch) sized display.
• thrwawy283 4y ago
  The thing that really bothers me are all these "AI" technologies in my new LG oled tv that don't actually get used. All of them to reduce "crushed" images, correct color, improve blurriness in motion scenes, etc are only used when not using HDMI/PC hookup. My feeling is they're used when viewing things streamed on Netflix/Hulu/HBOMax/etc. But I spend most of my time using the TV as a computer monitor. I'm in a niche group, but this was my only option for large-format oled. I wish they did more with HDMI, even though HDMI is being phased out. I want to hook up my computer and have the computer gain an ethernet link from the TV, even though the TV is wirelessly connected to my router. The TV should be a "dock" that includes a 2nd monitor. I have a wireless controller reciever plugged into the USB port on the TV. I want that to give input to my computer from it. I also want my computer to charge while being hooked up to my TV. I think the only answer is this TV should have type-c and do all those things as a dock, but it's frustrating that we're 1 step behind. I wish I could watch a program, while showing my computer hdmi input picture-in-picture. Hell this thing has 4 HDMI inputs on the back, let me do each input to a quarter of the screen. Another niche use.. Don't even get me started on the ads. Doesn't make sense to keep the TV on when my computer is locked for long periods of time, so I generally come back, turn on the TV, and unlock the computer. First thing I see is fucking ads. Takes 2 clicks on the remote to dismiss but it colors my experience that they're always pushing another $30 or $40/month service when I first see things onscreen. They know you can't get this quality elsewhere so they're happy to push you ads. And the telemetry, my god. It's my $3k TV! Most TVs are still waiting to support the next hdmi standard so you can do 120fps & hdr simultaneously. The 2 things that did impress me were this LG tv supporting both Miracast and Airplay with /no/ hoops to jump through. It just worked. I do wish I could "cast" things to the TV, and that's like pushing a link to it where the TV navigates to that stream and plays. No other device has to stream or push the video to the TV, it does it itself in the Chomecast paradigm. That would be nice. </rambling>
  • stragies 4y ago
    When looking for Monitors with these options, I found the term "PBP" (Picture-Beside-Picture) useful for searching. LG has one, the 43UN700, which also has a serial port for controlling picture-input layout options, and sound-source. It has a mode for showing any4of6 inputs at the same time, and a bunch of layout options for any2of6 ( Top/Botton, Left/Right, Main/PiP) inputs. Sound output can only come from active sources, though. My only "software gripe" up to now. It comes with a ton of cables, but NOT the required RS232C (looks like audio-jack) adapter. Hrmpf.