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On 4/8/2018 at 8:14 AM, BJRobinson said:

After 35+ yrs of building landscapes, my eyes aren't use to looking at a monitor all day now that I am doing design full time.

I would love some suggestions on a new monitor.

I have just upgraded my PC with Z370 HD3 motherboard and nvidia Quadpro P400.

Cheers

Bernard 

The only quibble I have with this is that smaller 4K screens have scaling issues.  Even on my 27" home 4K - I have to scale the UI up in order to see anything at all.

At the office, I have a 40" 4K screen which is my favorite.  No scaling - and still VERY sharp -- even compared to my 1080HD smaller side monitor. 

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41 minutes ago, Tom Klaber said:

At the office, I have a 40" 4K screen which is my favorite.  No scaling - and still VERY sharp -- even compared to my 1080HD smaller side monitor. 

 

Agreed.  I felt like a ridiculous  ordering a 43" 4K monitor, but it's a real game changer.

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4 hours ago, Tom Klaber said:

 

The only quibble I have with this is that smaller 4K screens have scaling issues.  Even on my 27" home 4K - I have to scale the UI up in order to see anything at all.

At the office, I have a 40" 4K screen which is my favorite.  No scaling - and still VERY sharp -- even compared to my 1080HD smaller side monitor. 

 

Excuse my ignorance as I am new. What do you mean by scale the UI on the screen?

 

So I should be using a 40" monitor? That's the size of my TV! It would be like sitting in the front row at the pictures wouldn't it?

 

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13 hours ago, BJRobinson said:

 

Excuse my ignorance as I am new. What do you mean by scale the UI on the screen?

 

So I should be using a 40" monitor? That's the size of my TV! It would be like sitting in the front row at the pictures wouldn't it?

 

 

So typically - the more pixels - the more things you can fit on your screen.  So in rough terms - a 4K screen has 4 times the screen real-estate compared to an HD screen - so it could potentially show 4 times the amount of stuff.   The other side of that though, is that (assuming the two screens are the same size) everything is 4 times smaller on the 4k screen - which at 17", 21", 23", or even 27" is functionally too small.  To counter this - in the screen settings (In windows) - there is a scaling factor that scales the UI - so I run my 27" screen at 125% and my 17" 4k screen at 150%.  This scaling does cause some issues - especially if you are moving from one scaling set-up to another.

 

In the end - if you scale up - all you have done is provide yourself a sharper image - so the only time you should upgrade to a smaller 4K screen is if you feel the screen you have now is fuzzy - or not sharp enough.  

 

A 40" 4k screen, on the other hand, is big enough, where you do not have to scale up.  It is also sharp enough to sit close to - which in the end really does give you the opportunity to utilize 4 times the screen real estate compared to an HD screen.  

 

It is big.  Deeper desks will work better for a 40" screen - as you do want to be a little further away than typical.  You will feel silly for about an hour - then wonder why this is not standard - especially considering that they tend to be significantly less expensive than other purpose-built monitors.  If I had my druthers - I would want a 38" 4K screen - but alas - they do not exist.  Samsung makes a 40"  - but most are going to be 43".  

 

Things to note:  These are TVs - so they refresh rate is likely not going to be good enough for high frame rate gaming.  Plenty fine for moving a mouse in VW.  The color accuracy is also not going to be as precise as a purpose-built pro-monitor.  So if you are a pro-photographer - this would not work for you.  But neither of these are issues when it comes to everyday drafting, model building, or rendering.

 

 

Edited by Tom Klaber
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10 hours ago, Tom Klaber said:

 

So typically - the more pixels - the more things you can fit on your screen.  So in rough terms - a 4K screen has 4 times the screen real-estate compared to an HD screen - so it could potentially show 4 times the amount of stuff.   The other side of that though, is that (assuming the two screens are the same size) everything is 4 times smaller on the 4k screen - which at 17", 21", 23", or even 27" is functionally too small.  To counter this - in the screen settings (In windows) - there is a scaling factor that scales the UI - so I run my 27" screen at 125% and my 17" 4k screen at 150%.  This scaling does cause some issues - especially if you are moving from one scaling set-up to another.

 

In the end - if you scale up - all you have done is provide yourself a sharper image - so the only time you should upgrade to a smaller 4K screen is if you feel the screen you have now is fuzzy - or not sharp enough.  

 

A 40" 4k screen, on the other hand, is big enough, where you do not have to scale up.  It is also sharp enough to sit close to - which in the end really does give you the opportunity to utilize 4 times the screen real estate compared to an HD screen.  

 

It is big.  Deeper desks will work better for a 40" screen - as you do want to be a little further away than typical.  You will feel silly for about an hour - then wonder why this is not standard - especially considering that they tend to be significantly less expensive than other purpose-built monitors.  If I had my druthers - I would want a 38" 4K screen - but alas - they do not exist.  Samsung makes a 40"  - but most are going to be 43".  

 

Things to note:  These are TVs - so they refresh rate is likely not going to be good enough for high frame rate gaming.  Plenty fine for moving a mouse in VW.  The color accuracy is also not going to be as precise as a purpose-built pro-monitor.  So if you are a pro-photographer - this would not work for you.  But neither of these are issues when it comes to everyday drafting, model building, or rendering.

 

 

Thanks Tom. Appreciate you taking the time to explain.

 

I am currently using a 24" and was going to a 27". I think the 27 will do me fine for the type of work I am doing. It's domestic. I could see the benefits for larger scale commercial projects though.

 

Cheers

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13 hours ago, BJRobinson said:

Thanks Tom. Appreciate you taking the time to explain.

 

I am currently using a 24" and was going to a 27". I think the 27 will do me fine for the type of work I am doing. It's domestic. I could see the benefits for larger scale commercial projects though.

 

Cheers

 

I do residential/domestic too.  The benefits of more screen real estate are building type agnostic. :)  That said - I also am forced to use my 17" laptop for days on end when I travel, my 27" when I work from home, and my 40" when I am at the office.  The work always gets done - you adjust.  The real reason I jumped to 40" was that it was $150 cheaper than the 27" monoprice 4k.   

 

Good luck!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Televisions are really not suited for use as computer displays outside of using them as large displays in conference rooms, so I would recommend researching dedicated computer display that are designed for 2 to 3-foot viewing distances. Having read this thread, I would recommend something like the Dell P2715Q, which I use as an external display for my 27-inch iMac Retina 5K at work. A 27-inch display is the sweet spot for large displays and this model is currently on sale for just under $400; it was $600 on sale when I purchased mine back in 2015. Dell has a number of 27-inch “4K” displays available, but for the price and quality, the P2715Q is an excellent display with which I have firsthand experience. Also, unlike any HD or UHD television, many Dell displays have an IPS panel, so there is no color shift or loss of contrast as your line of site shifts away from the center of the display. (Televisions and cheap computer displays typically use TN panels, so there is a considerable shift in color, brightness, and contrast the more off center you are from the display.)

 

I am currently evaluating Vectorworks 2018 on my home computer which is the same as what I have at work, a 27-inch iMac Retina 5K. At 5120 × 2880, the 5K display of the iMac is 4 times the wide quad-HD (WQHD) resolution that was typical of higher-end 27-inch displays prior to the widespread availability of the ultra-high resolution displays over the past 3 years. I assume that you may not be too familiar with display and television resolution standards, but officially high definition (HD) is 1280 × 720 (720p), what most people typically associate with as HDTV (1080i/1080p) is Full HD with a resolution of 1920 × 1080, and what most people egregiously refer to as 4K due to false marketing claims from manufacturers is actually Ultra HD or UHD with a resolution of 3840 × 2160. True 4K resolution is a theater standard set by DCI and the resolution is 4096 × 2160; the name is actually derived from the horizontal resolution that is 4 times 1K (1024) pixels across; so UHD televisions and displays would actually be 3.75K.

 

As Tom mentioned, scaling can be an issue with Windows-based systems. As a Mac user, I have no issues with scaling as OS X/macOS have automatically handled scaling the UI to screen size based on resolution for years now. For instance, on my iMac, icons, windows, text, etc., all render on-screen at the same size as they would have been on older 27-inch iMacs with WQHD resolution, but because my display has 4 times the resolution, those same objects appear much sharper. Manual scaling has been a feature of Windows from as far back a Windows Vista/Windows 7 if not Windows XP. I have not used Windows 10—I run Windows 8.1 in virtualization on my work computer to be compatible with our clients in the federal government—, but from everything I have read, Microsoft has made considerable inroads into catching up with macOS with regard to automatically scaling screen elements on ultra hi-res displays in Windows 10, so you should not have to worry about going into the display settings and forcing the issue.

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53 minutes ago, mdawson69 said:

Having read this thread, I would recommend something like the Dell P2715Q,


I use this as well, excellent monitor. My main one here in the office is a Samsung U28E590D which I would also personally recommend.

In addition to some of the above mentions, any new monitor should be capable of 60Hz refresh. Often a lot of TVs can only do 30-40, which is fine for most media but when gaming or drafting you can really notice the lack in framerate. Sometimes the monitor will require a Displayport connection in order to hit 60hz refresh at 4K resolution, and will simply drop to 30hz if you have it connected via some of the older HDMI revisions.

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2 hours ago, mdawson69 said:

Televisions are really not suited for use as computer displays outside of using them as large displays in conference rooms, so I would recommend researching dedicated computer display that are designed for 2 to 3-foot viewing distances. 

1

 

1 hour ago, JimW said:


In addition to some of the above mentions, any new monitor should be capable of 60Hz refresh. Often a lot of TVs can only do 30-40, which is fine for most media but when gaming or drafting you can really notice the lack in framerate.

2

Its was not my intention to become this vocal proponent of absurdly large screens - but I guess here we are.  (I fought (and won) this battle with phones - people called me crazy - but now everybody is rocking 5.5"+ screens.)

 

So to quibble with you two: 
What allows you to sit closer to a screen is pixel density. A 40" 4K is extremely sharp - even at desk distance.  So I think it is fine to debate the relative use or comfort of a screen that large - but they are definitely suitable for the use.

 

Refresh rate, brightness, and color accuracy are all things to look out for - but even that $280 screen I posted has a 60Hz refresh rate - so while you need to be careful - this is not a specification that is going to be hard to achieve. 

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1 minute ago, JimW said:

Apologies! I didn't mean to downplay TVs as a screen, my father uses one that way and loves it. My only callout was to the refresh rate which more and more on modern TVs is 60 or higher and thus perfectly fine in my opinion.


Haha.
Apologies??  Oh, my - do I need to work on my tone.  While I hold firmly held opinions about monitor size - and only have this one venue to express them - please know - that I welcome and enjoy the debate - and I am almost beyond being offended in the context of monitor size preference. 

 

@JimW - Glad to see you back -you have been quiet. 

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8 minutes ago, Tom Klaber said:

 

Its was not my intention to become this vocal proponent of absurdly large screens - but I guess here we are.  (I fought (and won) this battle with phones - people called me crazy - but now everybody is rocking 5.5"+ screens.)

 

So to quibble with you two: 
What allows you to sit closer to a screen is pixel density. A 40" 4K is extremely sharp - even at desk distance.  So I think it is fine to debate the relative use or comfort of a screen that large - but they are definitely suitable for the use.

 

Actually, I have no issue with absurdly large screens—and really, is there such a thing ;)—and was not arguing against them. My point was that Bernard should consider a dedicated computer display over a television; although ultimately it comes down to his preference. Dedicated computer displays are available in the 30+ to 40-inch range, but the selection is far slimmer than displays in the 20 to 30-inch range. Now that IPS panels are more commonplace than they were in the past—at least amongst Dell’s offerings and Apple has been using IPS panels near exclusively since the early 2000s—, dedicated computer displays are much better than any HD/UHD television for computer use.

 

The exception to this rule are true LED TVs as they do not require backlighting and, therefore, do not suffer from the off-angle color shift issues evident with televisions that have fluorescent or LED backlighting. As I noted in my previous post, using a television as a computer display is often the better choice in environments where you have a need for very large displays, as dedicated computer displays larger than 40-inches are rare to nonexistent.

 

I also need to correct something that JimW mentioned, as I think he may be conflating a few things. Back in the days of CRTs computer displays and televisions were effectively different devices. In the US, television broadcasts followed the NTSC standard of an interlaced image at ≈30 fps. Thus, old tube televisions had to have a refresh rate of at least 60Hz and there was little reason to exceed that. Also, televisions did not have pixels in the sense that we tend to think about them now, but NTSC televisions had an effective resolution fixed at 640 × 480. Due to overscan in analog TV the viewable resolution as actually less. CRT computer displays were progressive scan devices that typically had a recommended resolution with a 60 Hz refresh rate, but unlike TVs, computer displays could work with a range of resolutions. Often, one or two higher resolutions could be displayed at reduced refresh rates and several lower resolutions could be displayed at higher refresh rates with the former case having the caveat of the screen image appearing to be fuzzy.

 

With the advent of flat panel displays and the conversion to digital television, excepting their inputs computer displays and TVs became more similar. All modern televisions are progressive scan like computer displays and computer displays are now standardized at a fixed refresh rate of 60 Hz like TVs. In fact, higher end TVs are more likely to have refresh rates of 120 Hz or more. If I recall correctly, gaming displays may also have higher refresh rates, but I never have a need to look into such displays, so I am not sure.

 

The case where computer displays fall short of 60 Hz is typically due to limitations in connector technology. Higher resolution requires more bandwidth and while most computer display connectors that are currently readily available can handle transmitting a signal for UHD and 4K displays, they do not have enough for 5K, let alone 8K, displays. The way display manufacturers and computers work around this is two-fold. In order to retain a 60 Hz refresh rate, OEMs can design their displays to get the required bandwidth by using two Displayport 1.2 cables. So if your computer has two DP ports—I have not seen cases of two HDMI ports being used and it may not be supported—, you would use both to drive the one display. Barring that method, an OEM may produce a 5K display that has or reduces its refresh rate to 30 Hz so that the display can be driven with a single HDMI or Displayport 1.2 cable.

 

Displayport 1.3 has more bandwidth, but has yet to be widely adopted. In fact, Intel dropped the ball on including the DP 1.3 protocol in the Thunderbolt 3 interface as they originally planned, but because Thunderbolt 3 has considerable bandwidth it can drive a 5K display on a single cable. Unfortunately, Apple is the only computer company that supports Thunderbolt-driven displays, so other than the LG model developed for Apple, the Thunderbolt display market is nonexistent.

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Can't resist to chime on this discussion with my own experiences :)

 

I'm using two 2K monitors at the moment as a compromise (when I got them the 4K monitors were still way more pricey and most graphics cards could not handle two 4K monitors well enough). The reason is that I want my working area on one screen and palettes and/or review documents to be on the second screen to keep clutter to a minimum. Having both on a single 4K monitor (compared to two 2K monitors) is not that practical anyway for me given the kind of drawings I do and there are connectivity things to be aware of.

 

Large 4k/8K TV screens can be useful as monitors for getting as much real estate on a screen as possible without things getting too small on screen. I've used them for presentation purposes or even work on them live during review meetings with decent results. They can cost considerably less than an equivalent computer monitor, so that is a good reason to get one.  If you do, make sure you can properly adjust the colours if you want to get realistic colours as TV screens tend to be somewhat oversaturated compared to computer monitors and may have a different colour balance.  If you are working on your laptop connected to a TV screen and then also look at your laptop screen the colour differences can sometimes be quite large. Computer monitors usually can be colour calibrated to correct for colour casts etc., but don't expect this to be the norm for TV screens though it is becoming possible on more and more  screens by now, so you may want to look for that if it matters (e.g. for aerial photos etc.)

 

With regard to connections... HDMI connections need to be at least HDMI 2.0 and preferably HDMI 2.1 but Displayport 1.2 or higher is preferred for now for computer monitors. DVI cannot properly handle two 2K monitors at all, let alone higher resolutions. HDMI connections I have used so far often were of a bit less quality than Displayport connections (i.e. sharpness was generally better through a Displayport connection than a HDMI connection on the same monitor).

As mentioned above, viewing distance is a factor, but ergonomic positioning is too. You really need to have sufficient viewing distance to avoid wear on your neck and shoulder if you sit behind the monitor for most of the day. I'd rather go for two smaller monitors with sufficient resolution (even if that less than 4K) than a single large one for purely ergonomic reasons. (I'd go for a two monitor setup anyway, even if it would be 4K for each monitor).

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  • 2 weeks later...

so after reading all this, I'm still even more undecided whether to go for a 28" or up to a 40". I have a 28" at work but now working 3/5 days remotely from home so needing something there as well, $600 NZD for a 28"4k or if i went with a 40" monitor or TV looking at about $1000. Just wondering if the 40 is going to be to big, but the 28 feels to small... Which makes you think why not go for a 32", well a 4k 32 seems to be even more expensive then a 40" at about $1400...

 

another week gone by with no new monitor, ha.

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Over in New Zealand, TV wise there is only 1 40" out there, the next step up is 43" which may be too big.

 

40" TV - https://magnessbenrow.co.nz/panasonic-th40ex730z-40-4k-uhd-led-smart-tv

40" Monitor - https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MONPHS3375788/Philips-BDM4037UW75-Business-Curved-Monitor-UHD-4K
 - https://www.mightyape.co.nz/product/40-aoc-uhd-60hz-5ms-curved-monitor-with-10-bit-colour/26852252

 

The Philips monitor though has had some bad reviews about Ghosting otherwise I almost purchased it a couple of months ago. Just found the AOC counterpart though so that could be an option if I go large. 

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