# What monitor????



## ScottyP (Jan 17, 2015)

I am finding it hard to get my head around which monitor to buy. I cannot spend more than $800, and if i can get away with it I would like to keep it to more like $500.

I guess I need an IPS monitor. (Right?) 
I do not want a huge one; a 24 is fine, probably perfect. A 27 would be the very largest I would want. 
A refresh rate that is not so slow I can't use it for the occasional computer game would be nice. 
I have a pretty new NVidia video card (GTX 770), but I think it will NOT do 10 bit color per channel; only the Quad Pro cards do. (right?) 

I really want one that can be properly calibrated. I have a Spider Cal but I am not any expert at using it.

I found one that seems good but some people say some units emit a "squealing" sound that is bad. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/974400-REG/asus_pa249q_24_led_backlit_ips.html

Any recommendations? Thanks.


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## Jim Saunders (Jan 17, 2015)

I have an LG 27EA33, it's probably out of production but it'd be a good deal if you can find one used. In my experience with Win7 and NVidia display adapters, connecting via DVI rather than HDMI gives better results when calibrating a display.

Jim


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## Ryan85 (Jan 17, 2015)

If your primary use for the moniter is photo editing I'd recommend a Nec. Yes you defiently want a ips panel. On a budget I'd consider the dell ultra sharps.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Jan 17, 2015)

Dell UP2414Q

UHD is amazing! It's like getting instant, free 20" 8MP prints!

It has wide gamut, IPS, internal high bit programmable LUT, programmable screen uniformity compensation, it doesn't even use PWM at all to drive the LED backlight but expensive direct current methods, and did I say it's an 8MP display?

And the price is really good now, I think $750.

The 24" UHD from NEC is only EA+ series not full PA series and it costs a ton more.


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## Thorix (Jan 17, 2015)

Ryan85 said:


> If your primary use for the moniter is photo editing I'd recommend a Nec. Yes you defiently want a ips panel. On a budget I'd consider the dell ultra sharps.



+1
I have a DELL Ultrasharp 27" and I am very happy with it. It was praised for correct color rendition ex-factory, and indeed I do portrait-prints on a Pixma Pro-1 with correct and natural colors, without color adjustment.


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## hovland (Jan 17, 2015)

What about this 4K monitor from Asus, PB279Q ?
http://www.asus.com/Monitors_Projectors/PB279Q/
Asus claims 100% sRGB and 10-bit color.


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## wsmith96 (Jan 17, 2015)

I use HP's z series displays. They are the workstation class monitors. Never had a problem with them.
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/zdisplays.html?jumpid=reg_r1002_usen_c-001_title_r0001


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## Dylan777 (Jan 17, 2015)

Extremely happy with this LG: http://www.lg.com/us/commercial/lcd-computer-monitors/lg-27MB85Z-B 

To control the ambient light, I made a monitor hood myself: http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=23884.msg467631#msg467631


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## YuengLinger (Jan 17, 2015)

Super happy with Dell's U2713hm. Excellent IQ all around, including viewing angles. Great warranty. Easy to tilt, swivel, and adjust height.

Terrific for photo-editing, and my prints on an Epson 3880 are so close to what I see on the screen I cross my fingers everytime fearing it's all too good to be true. I do calibrate with a Spyder4Pro.

Ordered directly from Dell, as I have a superstition that the ones they ship are cherry picked. No evidence other than web chatter. Frequent discounts with free or nearly-free shipping, and they will, repeat, they will bargain!


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## gjones5252 (Jan 17, 2015)

Just bought two dell u2414h
It's ips, great refresh, multiple usb3 ports and come with a display port cable(I am a macpro user) 
I did calibrate it but it was very near where I would have been able to do with just in monitor settings
Let me know if you have any questions


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## zim (Jan 17, 2015)

Is there actually any issues with backlight bleed and image burn with the Dell UP2414Q ?

I ask because I read a review where comments were left inferring these were big issues, it looks such a great panel though.

Of course it is the interweb though! So would be good to here from those hear that actually use it

Thanks
Regards


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## ScottyP (Jan 17, 2015)

I wonder about the Dell UP 2414Q also. I looked it up on B&H after someone above recommended it. There was one weird comment/review from someone that said it makes the text appear so tiny that they only use the monitor for photo editing. 

Why would that be, and is it nonsense? Supposedly if you set the text size super large to compensate it then messes up on website layouts.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Jan 17, 2015)

zim said:


> Is there actually any issues with backlight bleed and image burn with the Dell UP2414Q ?
> 
> I ask because I read a review where comments were left inferring these were big issues, it looks such a great panel though.
> 
> ...



At least with my copy absolutely none at all. My UP2414Q fully matches my NEC PA241W in every way in terms of performance at worst and is better for offering 4x the resolution and having a much nicer, much less intrusive new IPS AG coating and actually even a slightly wider gamut too due to the GB-r LED backlight as opposed to WGCCFL backlighting.

The only things worse about it are that calibrations can only be stored internally (no idea why it won't write to file and then load into the displays as needed to give unlimited choices) and the calibration takes considerably longer.

I'm sure it's possible to get a bad copy of anything though. My first NEC PA241W had backlight bleed strongly on the whole upper top left/center (which also actually subtly spread over the entire screen and made the lowest black level measure twice as high as my second copy)!


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Jan 17, 2015)

ScottyP said:


> I wonder about the Dell UP 2414Q also. I looked it up on B&H after someone above recommended it. There was one weird comment/review from someone that said it makes the text appear so tiny that they only use the monitor for photo editing.
> 
> Why would that be, and is it nonsense? Supposedly if you set the text size super large to compensate it then messes up on website layouts.



Actually websites are one scenario where you don't run into any small text or formatting issues ever (with the one exception being Chrome which is a terrible browser which also recently broke color management again, all they care about it trying to win meaningless speed tests on blog comparisons, Chrome appears to force one to either interpolate everything, even text, up from 1920x1080 or leave text tiny; Firefox, IE and Safari have no such issues at all) whether it's MAC OS or Windows Vista or newer. You just set 200% scaling in the OS for Windows or HiDPI for MAC and you incredible text that is 4x crisper than before with everything placed exactly as before, there are no formatting issues whatsoever. It just places every last thing in the exact same place as before but simply renders 4x crisper text and interpolates images up 2x in each direction (images might look a trace softer on the web due to that interpolation though) unless it's a rare site that has HiDPI support and gives you ultra high res images.

But it's awesome to browse websites and have all of the text look like it's not computery digital text but like you are reading text out of a book/magazine. Text looks so much better on webpages.

There are programs where the alignment ends up a but off in Windows, but mostly they are still usable and, if you must, you can tell the OS to render them as if they were 1920x1080 and then interpolate up, that's a bit fuzzy due to interpolation but it lets you get things not super small if the normal 200% without interpolation ends up misformatting so badly that it's unusable. With what I use it's not really been any issue for me other than Photoshop CS6 (the new, rental model, which I hate and have so far refused to fall for Photoshop CC scales 200% fine) leaving non-menu text and icons super small, but I live with it, I know where all the icons are and just lean in for a second if I need to see that stuff better. Lightroom scales 200% UI fine on MAC or Windows. On MAC even Photoshop CS6 scales HiDPI UI fine.

Windows 7 and 8 scale the desktop itself better than Vista (which spaces icons too far apart and does a sloppy job of the desktop itself's scaling). MAC OS scales all fine if you set HiDPI mode. On some MACs you need to run pre-Mavericks and hack the OS to enable HiDPI options because Apple seems to want to trick people into getting new hardware or something. But I was able to unlock HW support for UHD 30HZ (30Hz isn't ideal, but all I use my MAC Mini for it's fine enough, my main box is my Windows box, I just do App development on the MAC Mini really) and full OS HiDPI scaling even on my older Mac MINI through OS hacking (they seem to have locked out the hack on Mavericks so I have not upgrade to Mavericks or later yet).


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## zim (Jan 18, 2015)

Thanks LTLRI, appreciate the info. Checking prices there is surprisingly little difference between web and local shop so it would be a good buy and try situation.

The real problem I've got is a head and heart situation. I'm in a similar situation as the OP so his question was very well timed but my head is saying upgrade monitor and colour management my heart is saying get those two lenses you want.... :-[

Ah choices choices, its all fun though ;D


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## pwp (Jan 18, 2015)

ScottyP said:


> I wonder about the Dell UP 2414Q also. I looked it up on B&H after someone above recommended it. There was one weird comment/review from someone that said it makes the text appear so tiny that they only use the monitor for photo editing.
> 
> Why would that be, and is it nonsense? Supposedly if you set the text size super large to compensate it then messes up on website layouts.



Tiny text? Try Ctrl+ on the PC or Cmd+ on the Mac.
I also routinely install https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/nosquint/
NoSquint allows you to adjust the text-only and full-page (both text and images) zoom levels as well as color settings both globally (for all sites) and per site. Most up-to-date sites will scale properly, as well as detecting and optimising for IOS.

FWIW I also have had great experience with calibrated Dell UltraSharp panels. In the studio we have a few 24 inch, two 27 inch and two 30 inch Dells. We do color critical work and they're all perfectly fine. The recent buys have all been the U-class Dell panels.

-pw


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Jan 18, 2015)

zim said:


> Thanks LTLRI, appreciate the info. Checking prices there is surprisingly little difference between web and local shop so it would be a good buy and try situation.
> 
> The real problem I've got is a head and heart situation. I'm in a similar situation as the OP so his question was very well timed but my head is saying upgrade monitor and colour management my heart is saying get those two lenses you want.... :-[
> 
> Ah choices choices, its all fun though ;D



All I can say is upgrading to UHD (with my UP2414Q purchase) was the best photo purchase I've made in years. UHD vs HD is just a night and day difference in experience. Who has the time or money to print most shots and 8MP vs 2MP is one heck of a difference for viewing.


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## dslrdummy (Jan 18, 2015)

I just bought the P2415Q which is the same res as the UP2414Q but cheaper. Very happy with it so far. Connected to the MBP it's like having two retina displays.


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## Skirball (Jan 20, 2015)

How is the user experience with the UHD displays? As far as lag and refresh rate. I read some articles last year that a lot of computers would choke on all the data, needing special cords, GPU, etc. Didn't know if that's still applicable or if things have changed.

I've got a pretty good desktop at home (Haswell 4770k, 16gb, SSD, etc), no GPU but I'd get one. I just want to make sure that I can still quickly sort through photos in LR and quickly kick them to PS. The higher resolution just isn't worth it if it slows me down.

Any of you have the P2715Q?


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## MonkeyB (Jan 21, 2015)

i'm going through this process right now, myself.

i picked up a UHD/4K samsung 28" TN panel to try out the look and feel. i will be returning it because my macbook pro retina 13" can only drive 4K at 52Hz (with a hack). there is significant lagging over HDMI and DP at the supported 4K 30Hz rate. and the TN panel with no tilt/swivel sucks. however, the scaling on OS X with 4K displays (HiDPI) is magnificent. if you have the HW to drive a 4K, then go for it.

i'm going to order a newly released QHD 1440p 25" Dell U2515H ultra sharp with a decent 117 dpi, IPS, sRGB color tuning, and tilt/swivel - $499. it is not available yet at the major retailers in the US, but can be shipped from Dell tomorrow. i feel this will complement my macbook nicely and give a very similar experience to the retina display. 

i somewhat regret not opting for the 15" MBP which can drive 4K at 60Hz, but i usually refresh laptops every 2.5 to 3 years anyway. i do like the smaller 13" portable overall.

hope this helps with your searching. BenQ is also bringing a 24" QHD display to market in a few months, i think.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Jan 22, 2015)

Skirball said:


> How is the user experience with the UHD displays? As far as lag and refresh rate. I read some articles last year that a lot of computers would choke on all the data, needing special cords, GPU, etc. Didn't know if that's still applicable or if things have changed.
> 
> I've got a pretty good desktop at home (Haswell 4770k, 16gb, SSD, etc), no GPU but I'd get one. I just want to make sure that I can still quickly sort through photos in LR and quickly kick them to PS. The higher resolution just isn't worth it if it slows me down.
> 
> Any of you have the P2715Q?



I have i7 3770, 32GB, W7 64bit, GTX670 and it runs perfectly fine. Heck, even most of my games actually manage 30fps+ even at 4k. 

Most Windows boxes that can drive 4k, can do so at full 60Hz (a few might only have HDMI/DVI out and those would be stuck at 30Hz unless you got a new card, but you can find pretty cheap cards that have DisplayPort 1.2 these days (they might not run stuff like games well at 4k at all though)).

A number of MACs are locked into 30Hz only.


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## MonkeyB (Jan 22, 2015)

if you have a Mac and want to use 4K, then see this: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202856

you can use display port on a 13" Retina MBP and configure switchresx to get 52Hz refresh rate.


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## pjn0629 (Mar 20, 2015)

ScottyP said:


> I am finding it hard to get my head around which monitor to buy. I cannot spend more than $800, and if i can get away with it I would like to keep it to more like $500.
> 
> I guess I need an IPS monitor. (Right?)
> I do not want a huge one; a 24 is fine, probably perfect. A 27 would be the very largest I would want.
> ...



I was in the same boat as you (on size) and i was on the same budget kick too, but ended up way underspending. 

I ended up going with a dell U2515, was like $400, not 4K because my graphics card can't push 4K at 60fps, so I decided to hold off on the 4k thing for a bit. Although, I don't think you'll have a problem with that since your post says you have a real graphics card. 

There's that dell 24" 4K that they make, which looks really great on paper, but I haven't seen one in person. ATMO the 25" is a nice middle ground, and once calibrated looks great. So i'd expect the 4k version to be the same

Just posed the full story in another thread: http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=25147.msg505338#msg505338


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