LG’s new 16:18 monitor | Hacker News Reader

LG’s new 16:18 monitor

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124 pointstosh131 comments

I just wish there was anyone making good 4:3 monitors with modern panels that do not cost an arm and a leg. 4:3 is still my preferred screen ratio without a doubt for everything except watching movies, all current wide screen rations feel to vertically squashed for me, I always end up with half the screen unused and wishing I had a decimeter height more.

So I'm probably buying one of these if the price is not too outrageous, it seems like it's close enough to 4:3 to capture the same feeling.

I don't quite feel for 4:3 aficionados, looking back on my monitor progression there were the 4:3 CRTs (probably something like 1280x960), the 5:4 LCD with 1280x1024 pixels, then the horrible 1680x1050 16:10 LCD (shoulda gotten 1920x1200 one..), and now finally 2560x1440 16:9 display that I still use.

What I notice is that despite aspect ratios becoming wider, the monitors have pretty consistently also become taller in absolute measure. What I don't understand is why I'd ever want 1920x1440 (4:3) monitor over 2560x1440 (16:9) one, unless I'm really space constrained

> What I don't understand is why I'd ever want 1920x1440 (4:3) monitor over 2560x1440 (16:9) one, unless I'm really space constrained

For me, for monitors and PC work, it comes down to OS UX. Sure, I can have all of my windows display at 4:3 with gaps either side, or on one side, but: (a) configuring that to be persistent is a pain, and (b) whatever fills that gap is either wasteful (empty space) or distracting.

The default on the other hand is to have anything maximised span the full width, which means that unless I'm reading a well-designed webpage (or reader mode), I'm inevitably straining to traverse a much bigger horizontal context with my eyes all day long.

Yes, 2560x1920 would be by far the preferred option of all 3, but if I need to choose between 2560x1440 and 1920x1440, the latter is a worthwhile compromise.

> What I notice is that despite aspect ratios becoming wider, the monitors have pretty consistently also become taller in absolute measure.

Dell 3007WFP and the Apple Cinema HD display were both ~16" tall. They're over 15 years old now. They were a expensive at the time, but they're still taller than most modern 16:9 and "27:9" displays available now.

>What I don't understand is why I'd ever want 1920x1440 (4:3) monitor over 2560x1440 (16:9) one, unless I'm really space constrained

I want a 4k 4:3 screen. If you're going to dream, why not dream big? 3840x2880 please. I have a CRT that syncs to 2560x1920 and I already enjoy it for a few odd things.

Modern 31.5" 16:9 (common 4k size) are essentially as tall as 30" 16:10 of yore.

That's true, it's just a nuisance to set UI scale on them. 1.5x works, but feels like 1440p and everything isn't that much sharper. 1x is like using FHD on a small laptop where you need to squint for everything, and 2x is just two big.

I run two 2560 × 1440 monitors, which are 16:9, but each nicely splits into two square-ish (1280 × 1440) displays. While not quite 4:3, it's close in the experience. I tile using FancyZones and run most applications in this setup.

Though you can technically do it, I found most things just don't work well with a 1080 monitor in this mode: 960 wide just isn't enough. Even a lot of websites don't really work properly, and a lot go into mobile layout.

This was a good combo of screen space, usability and price.

Full screen movies or games are still 16:9 (supposedly there are/were issues with 32:9 with a lot of games), and I like that I can play a game or movie and still have the other screen showing something. I can also RDP to my work laptop in full-screen on one monitor, and seamlessly work across both - so much simpler than dual-monitor KVM chaos, or dealing with audio- or webcam-over-network issues.

(Edit: re-worded from incorrectly saying 1280 × 1440 is 4:3)

1280x1440 is not at all close to a 4:3 ratio. For starters, 1280 is a smaller number than 1440.

It looks like you were using "4:3" to simply mean "closer to square than typical widescreen aspect ratios", which is pretty confusing.

Yes, I guess I just meant "squareish". That's embarrassing. I'll try to edit my post to reflect that.

> Though you can technically do it, I found most things just don't work well with a 1080 monitor in this mode: 960 wide just isn't enough. Even a lot of websites don't really work properly, and a lot go into mobile layout.

I have found similar. This is why for a cheap portrait monitor I usually recommend older IPS monitors that are available in 1920x1200 or 1600x1200.

So much of screen real estate is wasted in 16:9. I have vertical taskbars on my monitors because I would benefit more from the space available in Y-axis than on X-axis most of the time.

My current setup at home and work¹ is a ~24" 16:9 1920x1080 but spun to portrait. There are a number of monitors out there that support this, failing that get one with standard vesa fixings and get a stand/arm you can attach it to that way around. These each stand beside a ~32" 16:9 2560x1440 screen².

Sometimes the big landscape screen gets used as just that, sometimes as effectively two portrait screens³⁴. The tall one is very nice for reading documents/mail/HN/… and such, though a little thin occasionally⁵ so 16:10 would be nicer. The main Windows taskbar lives on the tall screen⁶. Not an optimal setup when sat down⁷ I find, but as I stand most of the time and it works really well for me like that, limitations when seated isn't a big issue.

[1] I gave up asking and just brought my own in, along with the standing desk I'd been asking about for years

[2] almost the same dot pitch as the other screen, so no need to faf with scaling to get things to look sufficiently similar on them

[3] when doing that I effectively have three tall thin screens - one at 1080x1920 two at 1280x1440 (about 13:16).

[4] in fact the Samsung one supports pretending to be two monitors that way using two inputs, one for each side, though I use the OS-/app-level positioning instead so I can nudge one side wider in some contexts

[5] some web designs assume you have more than 1080 pixels in width if you have more than 1024, in fact some just assume 1280+ full-stop (less a little in case some uses with 1280 have their taskbars on the side). For instance Google's right bar gets ~⅓ cut off for instance when searching for things that make it appear, and a number of online stores lose current basket information (that they put on a column at on the right) unless I scroll or move to the other screen

[6] top here, bottom at home, the difference due to how the monitor stand heights work out and the limits of my work space at home meaning the two screens line up differently in the two locations

[7] it is hard to find a comfortable position where I'm not craning my neck a little or forcing myself to set _too_ straight up

The whole reason we switched to 16:9 is for more real estate for side-by-side apps. Perhaps with the age of insane ads embedded with everything, that extra vertical space is more important.

Not sure I agree with that.

> The whole reason we switched to 16:9 is for more real estate for side-by-side apps.

The whole reason of switching to 16:9 is because TVs did and it’s cheaper for the manufacturers, AND they can advertise the same (or larger) diagonal for less square inches.

When monitors went from 4:3 to 16:9, tv's were going to 16:10.

That’s not really correct. TV went straight from 4:3 SDTV (NTSC/PAL) to 16:9 HDTV. There is no 16:10 TV (signal) aspect ratio. It’s true that there were a few "HD ready" LCD TVs with 16:10 aspect ratio (1680x1050 resolution), but those were never dominant and didn’t precede 16:9 TVs (which were already there in CRT/Plasma/RPTV times). Computer monitors on the other hand went from 4:3 and 5:4 to 16:10 in the mid-2000s, and then to 16:9 from ~2010 on, after 16:9 had already been well-established on TVs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16:10_aspect_ratio

Indeed I flipped which was 16:9 and which was 16:10 in my head.

What TVs were ever 16:10?

I got these flipped, monitors went 16:10, then changed to 16:9

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/16:10_aspect_ratio

So when did TVs go to 16:9?

When HDTV became a thing. Mid-late 90s?

It took a long time to really become mainstream, TV broadcast was firmly 4:3 until roughly the mid-2000s, and 16:9 TVs were expensive until LCD TVs became cheap. There was a long interim period were 16:9 was mainly a DVD aspect ratio you watched on 4:3 TVs with black bars.

One of the many reasons I won't upgrade to windows 11 anytime soon, you can't move the task bar. Vertical bar wastes far less valuable space.

This was for me the most baffling regression of "upgrading" from Windows 10.

Thank goodness I have an XPS13 with a 16:10 LCD. Now the fixed horizontal bar makes it feel like a 16:9 again. I tried auto-hiding the task bar but that just made other things behave weirdly.

I assume you mean with out messing with the registry[1]. Disclaimer I have not tried this.

[1]: https://www.minitool.com/news/how-to-move-windows-11-taskbar...

I'm returning a newly purchased 12.9" iPad Pro because the user experience is so awkward. Content is too small, the viewing area is too large, and the balance is awful on the $300 keyboard stand. I might swap for the 11".

I have a 39" 4k that I divide like you've described, two full width terminals on either side in pillar box framing my work area.

The 4:3 display is also why I initially considered a Framework laptop, but after exploring their performance and limitations, I'd rather just buy the panel and cyberdeck it for a fifth of the cost.

I just hide both dock/taskbar and menubar and use a tiling window manager to switch between split and full screen.

Dock and menubar are waste of space for 99% of the time that you're using your computer.

Most of this year I was using two 1200x1920 panels in portrait, making a 32” 5:4 display (with a gutter like a book). A pretty nice setup.

But now I have a 32” 4k display. The prettier fonts and extra window placement flexibility are nice, and I didn’t really use all the vertical space I had.

I upgraded my gaming rig's monitors 3 weeks ago, and I'm using the old ones in my home office: 2x 24" 1920x1200 monitors in portrait. The old office monitors had cheap stands and didn't rotate. I can't say that it's a no-brainer upgrade, but I'm OK with it.

Did you find any solutions for tiling windows vertically?

Windows 10 definantly does not do this well.

FancyZones (part of Microsoft PowerToys) works well for me. I also like the fact that it's first-party, free and open-source:

Project page: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys

FancyZones docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/powertoys/fancyzone...

I just downloaded it..

Why does Microsoft not promote this more?

I may not need to use Linux now for a while

On macOS I use hammerspoon to define window positioning keyboard shortcuts. With my 4k monitor I can place windows in a 4x2 grid, or 4 columns (both similar layouts to my two-screen setup), or 3 columns, or left half / right half / middle half (with two narrow columns either side).

On Linux I use i3wm, but I have not yet configured it for my 4k setup.

I use Divvy[1]. It also works on MacOS. I use gTile on Linux. The combination lets me use the same keyboard short cuts (or close enough) on all 3 OSes.

Check out WindowGrid: http://windowgrid.net/

Why do you prefer 4:3 ratio when 3:2 ratio is the closest to human field of view ratio?

The perimetry of human vision is a bit more complex than that. It varies by person, but each eye sees a bit of an odd shaped blob[0]. It'd be hard to generalize to several decimal places exactly what aspect ratio rectangle best fills it.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_field#/media/File:Traqu...

You can buy 5:4/4:3 and 1:1 ratio monitors still the issue is that these are often found in various medical imaging categories and so are priced accordingly.

The “cheapest” of these is probably the EV2730Q-BK which is a 1920x1920 monitor and it’s priced around £700/€800 in Europe, it does come with a 10bit LUT and high grade IPS panel but it’s still 1920x1920 and 60hz only at a pretty steep price.

My understanding was that for LCDs the 4:3 and 5:4 panels were more expensive to make due to them having more pixels per inch of diagonal than 16:9. So it is reasonable for them to be more expensive for the same inch diagonal.

edit: instead of down voting, please tell my why my understanding is wrong.

There aren't very many 4:3 and 5:4 panels available at all beyond 17" these days. You can get largish 1:1 panels for crazy prices though. There's also the posibility of buying a whole 16:9 panel and having it cut to size, but that's not cheap and I'm not sure it's sane either.

A premium would be fine (we'd surely be grumbling still), but no availability is sad. I'm 60% sure the 1up arcade kits are so small because they're scaled to the largest 4:3 monitor they can get.

For me 21:9 is the ideal resolution right now. It can be split in 2 or 3 screens side-by-side and it still works well. A single 4:3 doesn't really give a lot of flexibility in the same way and bezels are annoying.

I still use a Samsung 21 1600x1200 LCD as a secondary display. Wish I had more. Unfortunately 16:9 is here to stay thanks to TV's being the lowest common denominator. Though I'd happily look in to these 16:18 displays as long s they're affordable. More vertical pixels is what I miss most about 4:3.

I also use a 21" 1600x1200 with a Samsung PVA panel as a second display, the vertical height lines up nicely with a 27" widescreen. It's kinda fascinating to see how the PVA panel, which is like 20 year old tech, has no issues keeping up with a modern IPS display, and even has lower viewing angle shift, no backlight bleed, far better contrast and hence deeper blacks. The only teeny tiny problem is that it's visibly slow, even for a 60 Hz TFT.

> The only teeny tiny problem is that it's visibly slow, even for a 60 Hz TFT.

If it really bugs you, basically all scalers (brainbox for the LCD display signal) can handle 75-85Hz, since that was part of the VESA crt spec back then. Many of them will accept a higher frequency signal if you toodle around in your GPU settings a bit.

Can't fix the slow response times, but it still helps a fair bit with making general work feel smoother and snappier.

I spent a lot on CRT monitors (Nanao, Sony Trinitron) for work and then was was an early adopter of desktop LCD with DVI digital connections. I was so happy to get pixel perfect addressing and no analog softness, ghosting, or flicker. I remember going from 1600x1200 to 1920x1200 and easily accepting the idea that this was a bonus screen area to the side, not some sort of compromise.

Then, I was bitter when everything became 1920x1080 and feeling constrained by the limited vertical pixels. However, I am now quite happy with 28 inch 4k (3840x2160) on a desktop, rarely making any window full height nor full width. I even dragged home a second 4k monitor from the office at the start of the COVID WFH era, but never bothered to set it up properly. It just doesn't seem like I need that much screen area.

I still feel constrained by a laptop 14 inch 1920x1080, and my work style changes. I prefer to go back to the desktop for "real" work and mostly use the laptop for more basic communication or browsing when I don't want to stay in the home office.

4:3 is 16:12, so this can be considered as a 4:3 monitor that's taller by one-third.

I heard Microsoft had plans about launching a Surface Studio monitor last year, but can't find if that actually happened. It is my ideal ratio and size monitor.

This 16:18 is 1.125, which is pretty close to 4:3's 1.2.

18:16 is 1.125:1, but 4:3 is 1.33:1

Dont know what I was thinking. Thanks for the correction.

This new format sounds interesting. I personally have been using a fairly cheap 48" 4K TV as my primary desktop monitor for a number of years, as that combination is effectively like a 2x2 arrangement of normal sized 1080p monitors.

It works well, except that it was basically impossible at the time to find a graphics card that could drive it reliably at 60Hz (I tried both a Radeon R9 270X and an nVidia 1060, both of which were newly released at the time). The 1060 is better in that it actually manages 60Hz, but only in YUV422 mode (which is mostly fine as I primarily do black-and-white code editing) and if I want to avoid YUV fringing, I need to run at 30Hz. The Radeon required me to use an external DP-to-HDMI adapter, which worked, but then I hit driver redraw issues, so I stopped using it within about a week.

But in any case, the biggest problem with a set-up like this is that it's so hard to go back to using a small monitor afterwards. Even dual-screen feels cramped afterwards!

I use a 42" monitor and it's never worked as well as I wanted it to.

I wanted to have 16 windows open at once so I could see all the spreadsheets, text files, folders, pictures relevant to the legal matters I was working on. The 3840 x 2160 pixels lets me do it, but there are drawbacks and limitations:

1. Only the windows in the center of the screen are easy to perceive. I have to turn my neck or my eyes to bring the other windows into my attention, or sit further away from the whole screen, as if I had a smaller monitor.

2. The Mac menu is all the way up the top left. That makes using any app in any window that isn't top left difficult because I have to keep sending the mouse away long distance.

A friend got something instead which is better: Two very wide and not very tall monitors, which he arranges vertically stacked. What makes this so successful is that each monitor has its own menu.

I wish I could accomplish the same thing by telling OSX to split the screen horizontally across the middle so I had two menu's too.

I'm using a 55" 4k Curved TV (which they've unfortunately stopped selling) and it really helps with the "only the center window is easy to perceive". I'd previously used a small 42" 4K TV that was flat and the only way I could really use the corner "windows" was when I was using it on my standing desk to I could lean left or right.

The other thing that's absolutely essential for using these larger format monitors is window management software and in general a more keyboard/macros focused workflow.

> The other thing that's absolutely essential for using these larger format monitors is window management software and in general a more keyboard/macros focused workflow.

I've also found a few tweaks to make it much easier with clicking on tiny things far away with the mouse.

The AltDrag[0] software on windows is godsend. Instead of trying to click menu bars, window edge, or other small targets, you just click anywhere on the window while holding alt. It's built into many linux DEs, but I'm glad to have it on windows too.

Windows also has a (slightly odd) focus-follows-mouse setting built in. This is nice to have less random clicking on windows to bring to the foreground, but has a second, handier function. When you alt-tab to a window with it enabled, it also brings your cursor too the window. Means you never lose your cursor at the wrong end of the monitor(s) switching between windows.

The last trick is probably the simplest, but makes the biggest improvement. I always set my cursor size to be very big so I can see it in my periphery.

Any specific changes you've found useful with your setup? [0] https://stefansundin.github.io/altdrag/

I really found Divvy for Window Management to be great. A lot of the other window managers seemed really fixed in what they could set where Divvy let you build your own grid and boxes.

https://mizage.com/divvy/

I want to emphasize the other comment:

> The other thing that's absolutely essential for using these larger format monitors is window management software and in general a more keyboard/macros focused workflow.

My 4k 39" screen really, really drove me to use keyboard shortcuts. By default on Windows, hitting Windows+Number will take you to the 1st/2nd/3rd/etc program in your taskbar. I use AutoHotKey to take this further: CapsLock+Number and CapsLock+F1-F12 also take me to predetermined programs. I install websites as Chrome apps (chrome://apps/) in order to make going to Gmail/Calendar/Github faster. (I use 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to hide the labels so they don't take over my taskbar.) I also use this script: https://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/79338-simple-window-p... which makes window management (resizing, centering, moving, etc) much easier. I also use Vimium and this program https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck - now my hands almost never leave the keyboard.

I encourage you to spend some time optimizing your setup. It really, really pays off. The powerboard on my TV-monitor has broken 3x now - and each time I've repaired it/replaced the part because I like my setup so much.

I'm using a 43" LG monitor and it works pretty well, though I do find that something in-between 28" and 43" would have been better, but most of the wider ones are ultrawide rather than 16:9. I also have a 28" 4k and it's weird that using the middle 28" of the 43" in 2560x1440 with huge black matte feels so much more spacious.

For pairing it's hard to find the right window/font size as it's typically displays as 27" for the other person. Zoom/meet's are pretty good though, can clearly see faces and what's presented.

> The Mac menu is all the way up the top left. That makes using any app in any window that isn't top left difficult because I have to keep sending the mouse away long distance.

You might want to check out Menuwhere:

https://manytricks.com/menuwhere/

I started using it after deciding to minimalize my desktop and hide my menu bar by default and put my dock on the right, since the monitor is wider than it is tall.

I've wanted to do a similar thing, but I wonder: don't you end up sitting too far from the screen, so that the perceived text size is smaller than on the regular 24" screens?

I have a 32" screen and if I sit as close to it as a 24", the sides don't look so great any more because of the angle. So I have to push it back, but then I have to increase the text. While with two screens, you can set the second one at an angle, which alleviates this problem. I expect the curved screens to do the same, though I've never tried one.

> do black-and-white code editing

You've piqued my curiosity. No syntax highlighting?

I guess yes I do, although I've never really been that bothered by syntax highlighting, so I don't use it as much as most. When I do use it, it'll be subtle e.g. change from black to dark blue, or similar. But I also do a lot of my work in the shell, and while I like colour in things like a git diff, I don't care either way for syntax highlighting in code other than liking a grey for comments so it doesn't draw my attention away from the code.

However, actually I guess even syntax highlighting doesn't make too much difference if your background colour is black or white, because that still works well for mapping into YUV where the chrominance can be whatever the syntax highlighting is using and the background is either full brightness (white) or no brightness (black). Even black on white with red underlining can be done with the same chrominance.

The real problem, and what I really meant, is when you have things with e.g. red text on a green background, which just turns into an illegible mess when using YUV 420 (also my bad, the monitor actually does 420 not 422) because the chrominance is different, but the intensity is approximately equal.

So, for almost everything it works well. Youtube videos, code editing, text editing, etc. are all fine, but for some pathological use cases it looks terrible.

I’ve experimented with this a few times. I find at least some degree of color and style differentiation helps (e.g., comments, string constants). For this I liked the Tao themes for emacs. It was completely fine. I moved back to various color themes just as a change of pace, like changing the wallpaper.

I've been using a 43" 4k curved tv for a while, and I love it. The biggest problem is that it's driven at 30Hz, but as I use it only for coding I don't care much.

Does the tv not support 60hz, or have you just not found the correct display adapter setup?

What I found is that the TVs support HDMI 2.0, but at least a few years ago even the high-end graphics cards only did HDMI 1.4, and so couldn't drive at both 4K and 60Hz, even though they were able to support the same over DisplayPort. Fortunately, dongles are relatively cheap, so this shouldn't be an issue.

The problem I had using such a dongle is that there seemed to be bugs in the Radeon driver, unrelated to the graphics mode, where it wouldn't always redraw the contents of some windows, and if you dragged the window around, the left-over garbage was moved around. And for some reason, these problems didn't affect either 4K at 30Hz or 1080p at 60Hz. In the end, I just switched to nVidia and put up with possible YUV fringing effects instead. I'm sure in the maybe 5 years since then, that the bug has been fixed now.

I think it doesn't support more than HDMI 1.4, which means 30Hz @ 4k.

Aren't TVs too glossy to be used as monitors?

I'm still a fan of the 16:10 format (1920x1200, 2560x1600, 3840x2400). Has anyone seen any new desktop monitors in this format? (I know it's unlikely, but one can always hope...)

Dell's newest is the P2421 (near the low end in terms of cost, at least - I believe they've got a 30" for roughly a thousand dollars). I have three U2415 monitors that I've been very happy with, and the P2421 seems to be the recent evolution of that model.

The P2421 suffers from same dilemma as legacy 16:10 displays: they're still just single-link WUXGA.

Furthermore, it's not a UltraSharp series display, which suggests (at a minimum) no proper color calibration out of the box...perhaps not just a personal nit given desktop productivity users tend to use them in multi-display setups almost exclusively. A decade-ish ago when the U2412M was in production, shit color calibration was a particularly egregious trend that Dell eventually corrected with their U2415 offering. Now the best they have to offer is U2421E, which eliminates the bottom bezel (nice for portrait mode users) and throws a USB-C hub on, but still no progress on the native resolution front and panel quality is reported to be inferior to its U2415 predecessor.

So I'm also stuck with U2415 for now, but I'd really like to see if coding on higher resolution displays truly squares with all the hype. Might have switched to 16:9 a while ago, but the substantial loss of vertical coupled with excessive horizontal when working in CAD has been a showstopper for me.

> panel quality is reported to be inferior to its U2415 predecessor

Ah, that's disappointing. Those monitors fill a nice niche.

I remember buying monitors 20 years ago, and I remember what stuff cost back then, so I don't complain too much (we've got a lot of bargains) and I accept that "you get what you pay for." The disappointing thing is the nonsensical nature of monitor pricing. It tends to be a pretty bimodal distribution and it often takes some research to figure out why something is cheap or expensive.

I used to prefer 16:10 too, but increasing ppi/size makes using 16:9 displays a non-problem for me (24" 1200 -> 27" 4k). 16:10 / 2:3 still matters a lot at laptop sizes though.

This would be my preferred choice as well, but I haven't seen anything new coming to market, especially bigger diagonal/higher resolution.

It's not exactly what I was looking for, but I'm tempted to try Huawei 28.2 2:3 monitor if I get a chance

16:10 has had a resurgence for 21-24" monitors (for generic office use), but unfortunately not for larger sizes. I’m still hanging on to a 27" 16:10 Dell monitor from 2008.

Lenovo ThinkVision. I have two 24", each in 1920x1200 as setup, I am satisfied with the quality but I must confess that I am just coding and doing little graphical work.

What model?

I just browsed through Lenovo's display offerings and didn't see a single 16:10 aspect ratio display listed anywhere.

This one: https://www.lenovo.com/de/de/accessories-and-monitors/monito...

I see, thanks for clarifying.

In the US market[1], it appears to be a discontinued model.

[1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/moni...

Dell usually sell those..

No mention of refresh rates, per usual.

I’d like to have a stern word with whatever marketing suit deemed refresh rates in excess of 60 to be a premium feature that only the gaming segment cares about.

Even if this monitor is strictly for editing professionals, there are GoPros and Iphones that shoot @ 120 fps. So I still fail to see why this is not a more important selling point?

A daily driver with a high refresh rate (120+) is like cocaine or calamari: once you’ve had the good stuff, reverting back to the “floor” starts to seem downright offensive.

>Even if this monitor is strictly for editing professionals, there are GoPros and Iphones that shoot @ 120 fps. So I still fail to see why this is not a more important selling point?

Probably because people use these 120fps to deliver slow motion in regular 24fps/30fps/etc timelines, so they have no need to watch/edit them as 120fps...

Why wouldn’t an editor want to view the final deliverable in 120fps, if that was an option?

I understand there’s no need for it, but have you seen the size of the latest F-150?

To quote Jack Nicholson playing Frank Costello in the Departed:

“I haven't needed the money since I took Archie's milk money in the third grade.

Tell you the truth, I don't need pussy any more either...but I like it.”

Because increasing the display's frame rate makes zero difference on a S&H display for movie playback unless one of the combinations has jank: If you go from viewing 24 fps content on a 60 fps display it's janky, going to a 120 fps or 144 fps display fixes that jank because frames divide evenly. If you watch 30 fps content, it looks almost exactly the same on a 60 fps and a 120 fps display (but going to 144 fps would introduce jank).

Interesting. So if everything is all the same and it doesn’t matter at all, then why have fps in excess of 60? Just because?

> it looks almost exactly the same

What is “exactly the same” to you? And does it mean the same to me? And can we measure it?

> So if everything is all the same and it doesn’t matter at all, then why have fps in excess of 60? Just because?

That is not at all what I said.

> What is “exactly the same” to you?

The different scanout speeds can probably be used to produce slightly differently looking images for 30 fps content on 30/60/120 fps displays. In practice I don't think you'd be able to notice the difference between 60 and 120 fps scanout for 30 fps content.

The GP comment is specifically refering to monitors used for working with video that's presumably already recorded at <=60FPS. That might be an edge case for general users, but for the people forking big bucks for monitors, it's all they care about.

>Just because?

With regards to display, for gamers, smoother scrolling and UI, and (for video) as an additional marketing specs-box checkmark for suckers. With regards to capture, for dropping in a lower fps timeline to get slow motion.

Every high refresh rate LCD that I've seen advertised also has variable refresh rate support. As long as a multiple of the framerate is within the monitor's range, there shouldn't be jank.

Browsers don't use VRR even in fullscreen. But yes - that's the correct and by far best solution on S&H displays and would make it a complete non-issue for all common frame rates (24, 25, 30, 50, 60); alas, software.

>Why wouldn’t an editor want to view the final deliverable in 120fps, if that was an option? I understand there’s no need for it

Well, because "no need, but let's add it in case some outlier is interested" is hardly the way to design mass market products (or even high-end, professional products for that matter). It's more for designing custom rigs, than anything that needs to make money...

> A daily driver with a high refresh rate (120+) is like cocaine or calamari: once you’ve had the good stuff, reverting back to the “floor” starts to seem downright offensive.

I have one such device. Someone could switch between the refresh rates and I would be unable to identify which one is set for what I do. I don't doubt there is a difference, but I'm not going to notice it with how I currently use it.

If you can’t notice your mouse pointer stuttering from one monitor to the next, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Maybe one day you will, or maybe you won’t, or maybe you don’t care. And there’s no right or wrong answer so no shade here.

To me, the difference is beyond obvious and the nefarious bit with the refresh discussion is that this take is sometimes met with incredulity.

And maybe this whole thing is more like an accessibility issue like colorblind options rather than something the general market will actually care about.

Also an under-discussed issue in the refresh rate discourse is how snappy your machine is. If you’re using a ten year old think pad well then maybe that’s it?

You might not notice if you… don't ever scroll anything, I guess?

> 'Even if this monitor is strictly for editing professionals, there are GoPros and Iphones that shoot @ 120 fps. So I still fail to see why this is not a more important selling point?'

While this may be true, almost no one is editing video in 120fps. At most, creators are editing and exporting at 60fps, but 24/30fps tend to be the standard.

Isnt the whole point of the 120fps on your phone/gopro to slow it down 4x to 30fps for that smooth slow motion effect?

I wonder why they couldn't go just a bit wider to make it 2880x2880 (1:1 and the same number of pixels as 4K), instead of 2560x2880.

Actually I wonderd similar. However I guess the resolution comes straight from the marketing department since 16:18 is 16:9+9 which is, as already kinda mentioned in the article, 2x 16:9 screens stacked on top of each other.

I imagine it comes straight from the technical department. I suspect this is literally two 16:9 panels stacked on top of each other.

And worse, it’s 2 x 1440p panels, instead of 2 x 4K panels.

This is a poke in the eye for “retina” users.

I figured the same

If you're desperate for a more-square monitor, Eizo has made a true square (1920x1920, equal to 2560x1440) monitor for some years now, the EV2730Q (https://www.eizo.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/) I think its pixel density is around 140 pixels/inch, so the retina folks won't like it, but if you value real estate over sharpness, you can use all of the available pixels without scaling. (It'll even do 2048x2048, but the scaling makes everything a bit blurry.)

Emacs is amazing.

The EV2730Q runs $1429 in December 2021; if this new LG monitor can be had for that or less, it could be a big success.

EDIT: Scratch that, square monitors will never be more than a niche, enthusiast product, so "big success" is wrong. But maybe, having LG behind it, it'll make more people aware of the choice.

Now, for the counterpoint: Dell makes a 43-inch 4K monitor, the U4320Q (https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-43-4k-u...). The prices vary over time, but for $959 as I write this, you get essentially two EV2730Q monitors mounted side-by-side. A better deal, but it's a huge monitor, way too big for my tiny setup. And I keep hearing complaints that a monitor that large requires more head movement to see everything.

Edit: I have to say, I'm surprised that LG would venture into monitors like this. I had despaired that Eizo would be the only one willing to make a niche product like a square monitor, but I'm glad to see LG doing so, and making a higher-resolution one to boot.

All I want is a non-thunderbolt HiDPI display (5K @ 27" is the perfect display, IMO).

Why has HiDPI has stagnated outside of the apple ecosystem?

I wonder about this too.

After using a HiDPI display for the last 3 years I would never willingly go back.

And while I'm no particular fan of larger monitors, it seems that a lot of software just assumes it these days. So I would expect 5K @ 27" and 6K @ 30-some inches to be everywhere these days (I guess 4K @ 24" as well).

I guess it's just a matter of being somewhat too expensive to go mainstream, where either a large screen with lower-res or smaller hires screen is much cheaper and "good enough".

How would you connect such a beast to your graphics card? If I understand, thunderbolt is the only connect standard with enough bandwidth, or maybe USB-C would work?

Dell has a new 32” 8K monitor that connects via two display ports.

DisplayPort works fine for 5K

HDMI 2.1? I've yet to see a computer which supports it though. Even the latest macbooks don't support it - which is one of their biggest downsides. Why include port that's outdated in the moment when you put it?

Because vast majority of people using the port won’t be using a 5k screen, and those that do can afford a USBC to DP cable.

USB C is generally DP Alt mode.

What doesn't generally work, is HDMI 2.1 to DP - see "Maximum Supported Resolution on Any MacBook via This Adapter is 4K@60Hz" https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-48Gbps-Adapter-Supporti...

There are some nice 4K@27 monitors. Slightly lower DPI than 5K@27 but i’ve been really happy with my S2721.

You can still find 4K 24” monitors. A pair of those stacked blows this LG 16:18 away for reading quality. A modern Macbook Pro can drive 4 of them.

I'm using the Dell 5K on Linux. It is annoying to set up (works OK with nvidia) but after setup has been working beautifully.

I get 5120x2880, the same vertical resolution as this new LG monitor, but with more horizontal real estate.

I use it with 4 x long (tall) terminal windows.

5K @ 27" used to be a thing around five years ago but those monitors have largely died off.

I prefer 3:2 ratio. Apparently it's the closest to human field of view.

3:2 is very close to a 16:10.

I'm still waiting for a matte OLED monitor.

138 PPI :-(

I’d love this format if it was a hidpi display.

What counts as hidpi?

I have 20/20 vision, and normally sit with my eyes approximately 3 feet away from my monitor (based on a rough measurement just now). My 27" 4K monitor has ~160 PPI, and I cannot discern individual pixels until my nose is around 1.25 feet away from the screen. My old 24" 1080p monitor has 92.5 PPI, and I remember being able to see individual pixels at the normal sitting distance.

Subjectively, my 4k monitor is a big upgrade; you won't hear me arguing that PPI doesn't matter. Based on my ballpark measurements, though, 138 PPI seems like plenty, as long as your monitor isn't right up in your face.

I’m not sure of the scientific background. But, HiDPI displays on Macs have spoiled me with text rendering that is so sharp that I cannot bear to work with low(er) resolution displays anymore. I always attributed this “sharpness of text” trait to the high DPI that Apple displays tend to have. Hence my disappointment with the new LG monitor.

Update: I played around with font settings, and if I disable antialiasing then I think am able to see individual pixels around the curves of letters. I say "think" because I can definitely pick out the sharp edges, but I'm not sure if I can identify the specific pixel. It becomes especially apparent (no longer a single pixel, I think) if you change the display scaling to 2x or 3x.

I'm not a font expert, and I stopped myself from going down a rabbit hole, here. So I'm not really sure if this is a fault of the monitor, the renderer, the font itself, or some other piece I'm not aware of. Are there fonts which are designed for display on ~150 PPI screens, which don't need antialiasing so much? I know MacOS doesn't do subpixel rendering, but I assume it does some form of antialiasing? Or does it use a higher DPI font as I was speculating about?

Overall, the experiment has convinced me that there is some benefit to higher PPI. I maintain that my ideal monitor would be something like a 16:9, 40 inch¹, 8k monitor. I'd run things at 2x scaling to avoid fractional scaling headaches. The increased screen size would leave the size of everything after scaling slightly smaller than on a standard 24 inch, 1080p sceen. And the 200+ PPI would keep everything looking crisp at that size (I find the extra pixels from 4k makes text legible at slightly smaller sizes).

[1]: I'm not sure that's the exact right size, I need to re-do my calculations for how large I want stuff to be at 2x scaling.

note that macos eschews the subpixel rendering strategies other major vendors use to increase sharpness and legibility at reasonable DPI

I am not sure how to parse your sentence, because I don't know whether your "reasonable" means low or high. It could be

1. Other major vendors use subpixel rendering strategies to increase sharpness and legibility at reasonable DPI. MacOS eschews these strategies.

2. Other major vendors use subpixel rendering strategies. MacOS eschews these strategies to increase sharpness and legibility at reasonable DPI.

That is sad news. I have a Linux Desktop that emits not so sharp text on my 1440p monitor. I always attributed to that bad text rendering to the low DPI monitor. I was hoping that one day I could buy a hidpi monitor that would make my Linux desktop as friendly to my eyes as my MacBook Pro. Looks like not anytime soon :-(

I meant that (imo) Windows's 'ClearType' hinting is sharp and easy to read at lower DPI-- Linux font rendering can be configured as 'hintslight' for MacOS-style blurry-but-preserving-font-shape, or 'hintfull' for MSWin-style aggressively-snap-to-grid-for-sharpness-and-legibility.

There is ofcourse more that can be misconfigured, but if you've got blurry fonts on Linux, there's a good chance changing the hintstyle to hintfull could tighten things up.

Glad to brag that I am as productive on my 12” Thinkpad screen as I was on multi 27” monitors. I’ve 3D printed a foldable stand for my laptop to keep it at optimal height (got bad back) and distance from my eyes.

Poor bloke, having to work on January 1st. Is it 2018 or 2024 though?

Is it just me or from the pictures does it not look like a 16:18 ratio? Maybe it's the perspective of the photos but it looks much less square than that.

The monitor has a PPI of about 140, FYI.

What is "vertical split view function that lets users see more in one glance."?

Now, they just need to make really, really advanced research and in the future release the most advanced ratio:

20:15

And people would love it...

For realz, I long after a taller monitor...

It might just because I grew up with a 4:3 but I think that aspect ratio really hits the spot for work - for movies and stuff 16:9 is frankly better..

And I prefer 16:9 on laptops too due to the shallower base it allows..

300 nits no thank you

reduced major first / minor first ratios, for reference:

16:18: 1.125 / 0.888

4:5: 1.2 / 0.8

16:10: 1.6 / 0.625

16:9: 1.778 / 0.563

2.38: 2.38 / 0.42

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