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Comment by sinstein | Hacker News Reader

I got a 2K monitor (4K was too expensive) for this very reason.

Standard 1080p monitors seem so bad with text, and once you plop them next to an MBP Retina screen the difference is extremely pronounced,

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I can't look into your wallet but the price difference between 4K and 2K is now so small that for our new office I bought 4K screens for everybody. Skimping on tools that you use every day for 8 hours is tough on the system in the longer run.

It depends a lot on where are you from and how experienced you are (which translates to how much money do you earn).

A tip from country where the price difference matters: Look for a TV, not PC monitor. They're often cheaper while having the same ports to connect it to a computer. But beware - some of them have always-on overscan which means you will get blurry effect and cropped picture. Make sure you can disable that (look for overscan, PC mode or something like that) before buying. Testing it on laptop before buying seems to be a good idea too - my mother's TV has option to disable overscan, but only on old VGA input. On HDMI it is always on anyway.

I'm not angry at you, but at the TV manufacturers...

Why the hell do we need overscan for anything that isn't an actual analog TV signal?

IIRC even digital streams sometimes include extra stuff on the edges for various technical reasons, with the assumption that the TV will hide it.

There is a circle of hell waiting for people who do that.

I picked up a 4k TV (Vizio D40u-D1) as a monitor after quite a bit of research a year ago and I'm quite happy with it. It's a bit large at 40", but all I had to do was adapt to thinking of it as multiple floating screens, and treat it as such, given I have the equivalent of four 1080p screens... using almost the same amount of area.

My browser always occupies the lower left quadrant, and event at 1/4 of the total screen it's still 1080p, or maybe a little more since I eyeballed it and didn't dock it there. It's easy enough to make any terminal larger and then I'm essentially gaining the same benefit of high pixel density.

I wanted to make sure the TV I got supported 60Hz at 4k, and had low input lag (for when I play games occasionally), so I found rtings.com[1] to be invaluable. Using a TV as a monitor has it's quirks (I turn it on separately with the remote on the desk because it's easiest), but at just over $400 when I bought it on sale ($500 now[2]) for a 40" 4k monitor that has 13ms input lag, I'm not sure how I could have done better.

Edit: Had the amazon price wrong, was looking at the 1080p one.

1: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/d-series-4k-2016

2: https://www.amazon.com/VIZIO-D40-D1-Class-Array-Smart/dp/B01...

Personally I’ve been opting for 2560x1440 for 27” and will continue to do so until 5k 27” has become the standard. 4K feels like an awkward compromise with its inability to render at 2x 2560x1440.

1440p is an awkward compromise with it's inability to render at 2x the dominant 1080p content. 5K if ever will become standart resolution wouldn't last long as "the next big thing" will be 8K and it's not so far in the future.

edit: typo

1080p IS 2K, though; 1080p is 1920x1080, and 1920 is 5% less than 2K (and the 4K screens are actually 3840, which is 5% less than 4K)

"2K" is usually used to describe 2560x1440 or similar monitors. I find these ideal personally. I don't notice much difference much from higher resolution than that, gaming at 4K requires high end hardware, and scaling between different resolution monitors is a pain.

1440p seems like a good sweet spot between the two. But yes, 2K is a silly name for it.

The term "2K" came from the film industry and meant 2048x1080 (cropped to 1998x1080 for a 1.85:1 aspect ratio) . When 1920x1080 started to show up these where generally grouped in under the "2K" banner. I've never heard anyone use the term 2K when discussing 2560x1440 monitors.

I'd personally just avoid using film spec terms for TV and computers and just stick to the old FullHD, Ultra Wide, UltraHD terms. Film tech is always a bit of an island doing their own thing for encoding, captions, hardware, etc.

Attaching terms like "2K" to a computer screen invokes legacy compatibility horror feelings for me.

Neither have I.

For displays, <value>i and <value>p are used to indicate vertical resolution. For displays, <value>k is used to indicate approximate horizontal resolution. I've not seen any other usage.

For projectors, especially theater projectors, I have seen 2K used to refer to 2048 horizontal resolution, and 4K used to indicate 4096 horizontal resolution. Projectors do not have the same aspect ratio as monitors, however. DCI 2K is 2048x1080, while "2K" Full HD is 1920x1080. DCI 4K is 4096x2160, while UHD 4K is 3840x2160.

For film, 2k & 4K describe the horizontal resolution as you state, but the vertical resolution is determined by the aspect ratio (1.85, 2.35, 2.40, etc). HD & UHD are fixed to a 1.78/16x9 aspect ratio which explains the difference in widths.

Yes, but any recent film (in the US at least) should be following DCI resolutions if they want to work on a digital projector. The native resolution for 2K DCI is 2048x1080. If there's a different aspect ratio for a 2K film, then either the horizontal resolution will be 2048 or the vertical resolution with be 1080. Thus, 1.85:1 is 1998x1080, and 2.39:1 is 2048x858. Obviously, you can do something else if you want, but then it's not 2K DCI. It may be outside the digital projector's native display resolution. It would be like pushing a 1440p movie to a 1080p monitor. It's going to look weird even if it has the correct aspect ratio because of mandatory down scaling the monitor has to do.

You can't really have a 2K film whose resolution is larger than 2048x1080 if you're following the DCI spec, and AFAIK the DCI spec is the only spec that actually uses the name "2K" as the official name for the resolution. That's the only point I'm making.

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