BenQ RD280UA: a 3:2 aspect ratio "programming monitor" | Hacker News Reader

BenQ RD280UA: a 3:2 aspect ratio "programming monitor"

benq.com

50 pointsLorenDB61 comments

60hz :( There's no going back once you're used to high refresh rates. Especially with a monitor like this which you might want to use in either orientation, 60hz panels are prone to jelly scrolling* when rotated 90 degrees from their native upright position due to the way that LCDs scan the image out line-by-line.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWKb_khoFzw

It's surprising what a higher refresh let's you do. I noticed I was scrolling through output and logs much faster because I wasn't afraid of missing what I'm looking for. The opposite is pair programming remotely having to go extra slow.

For pair programming I recommend VSCode Live Share extension. So much better than screen share and dictating code changes.

Depends, I have the 32 inch 6k dell and the lg ergo, both are 60hz and have no issues. Mind you, I specifically use these two monitors for work whereas I do have a 240hz 4k Oled connected to my gaming pc next to it.

The initial 60hz feel is jarring but you quickly get used to it. At least that's the case for me.

To me it feels more like a sliding scale on a monitor (30 hz sucks 60 hz is usable, 120 hz is awesome and beyond that I notice nothing but I also don't game) I have a dual 43" 4k setup at 60 hz right now for work, once those age out in a few years I will definitely be trying for 120 hz. The smaller the screen the higher the hz is that feels like it sucks.

What can you recommend?

4K 27-32" monitors at 144hz or better are a commodity at this point, just get whatever is currently cheapest and has RTINGS seal of approval. LGs are generally a safe choice.

If you are a Mac user then you have to compromise though, 4K at those sizes isn't dense enough to meet Apples ~220dpi Retina standard, and the monitors that do meet that standard are all limited to 60hz (and hideously expensive). You either have to deal with Apples janky fractional DPI scaling, or put up with 60hz for now.

Fully agree with the last part. If you are a Mac user, just get an Apple Studio Display. It's Retina, the integration with macOS is top-notch, and the speakers are pretty good. Initially the camera was not great (as pointed out by early reviews), but subsequent firmware updates have made it much better. Oh and it actually gets regular firmware updates and fixes -- it runs on Apple Silicon and uses a stripped-down iOS.

It is a nice monitor... but I would certainly hope so for what it costs. $1600+ for a non-HDR LCD monitor is pretty eye-watering when OLED monitors are arriving at <$1200 now. If you need Retina then you don't have much of a choice though, I know.

I am probably a bigger Apple critic than most, but I genuinely don’t understand the commonly stated sentiment that Apple is bad at fractional scaling. I’ve been running 27” 4K monitors at “looks like 1440p” scaling on my MBPs for years, and I literally cannot tell the difference in quality between the built in display and my monitors. Is there some particular app or use case where it’s more noticeable?

It’s likely the built-in display is also fractionally scaling. IIRC it has been that way by default for several generations of MBP now.

Duh, I hadn’t ever considered that possibility. Thanks! I’ll set it to 2x if so, and see if I can notice a difference.

Apple only supports pixel-perfect rendering at 1x or 2x scales, if you choose anything inbetween then they render at a non-native resolution then resample the result to fit the displays actual resolution. That has two effects, the scaling means the results aren't as sharp as they could be, and the oversampled rendering means there's a performance overhead (in your case the GPU is actually rendering 5K internally, which is then scaled down to 4K). The latter was more of an issue with Intel Macs, the Apple Silicon GPUs are generally beefy and efficient enough to take it in stride.

If you don't notice it then that's fine, but some people do, particularly if they are used to Windows' pixel-perfect fractional scaling.

Yeah, I understand how it works, I just don’t notice any real-world difference. I never saw any evidence that Intel Macs were slower at it either; I think that part is just an oft-repeated myth.

However, another reply said the built-in display is likely fractionally scaled as well; I hadn’t considered that at all, so I’ll have to set it to 2x if so, and see if I notice a difference.

Even on an Intel Mac with a discrete GPU, fractional scaling is rarely a problem. I typically run my trashcan Mac Pro (low-end D300 GPUs) at 4K/1440p, and only a few problems come to mind:

• Microsoft Remote Desktop (with "Optimize for Retina displays" enabled and RDP host settings optimized for quality) is usable and looks good, but things that rapidly change large sections of the display, like dragging windows around, have noticeable lag. Though this lag is generally only reduced, not eliminated, at native resolutions, so changing modes in this case is rarely worthwhile, and the Windows applications I use most (Visual Studio, JetBrains Rider, and Windows Terminal) run well enough that I choose to work via 1440p-like Remote Desktop 99% of the time even when a local connection is only a KVM switch away.

• Playing back 60 FPS videos in mpv with high quality presets and scaling algorithms drops frames. Default settings and lower frame rate videos both work fine, and in light of Retina superscaling, the quality difference is negligible, so I change mpv settings rather than scaling settings in this case.

• While not a performance problem, displays from OSes designed with pixel-perfect rendering in mind (e.g., classic Mac OS, NeXTSTEP) look bad at higher-than-VGA resolutions. The only scenario where I typically switch to another scaling mode is when emulating these.

I don't like < 120Hz on a phone screen, but I don't mind as much on a computer. I think touch interaction makes lower refresh rates unnatural. On a computer screen I am much more annoyed if the density is less than 200 PPI, since the fonts, etc. become jagged.

Ideally I'd have both (5k 27" 144Hz or 6k 32" 144Hz), but such a screen from a reputable brand seems to be a unicorn. Then I prefer higher PPI over higher refresh rate.

Looks like the Huawei Mateview panel to me.

The aspect ratio and unusually high resolution are nice, but the monitor is crushed between cheaper 4k60 displays, higher resolution 5k60 displays, and 4k144hz monitors that go for around the same price.

I do think the built-in bias light is VERY nice, although I don't think most people would understand why they'd want that, the things I understand about eyestrain mean that I generally try to have some sort of bias lighting solution but they're all fairly awkward.

https://consumer.huawei.com/ca/monitors/mateview/

Thought about the Mateview as well. How great it would be if only they chose 5k horizontal resolution instead of 4k. Pixel density would be perfect and it would be better than most 5k monitors for coding.

Given the somewhat inconsistent HiDPI-support in a lot of the sorts of tools you need to be able to use in coding, choosing to use a 4K monitor is brave.

Is this a linux thing? Can’t think of any real issue on mac.

Haven't had any issues on Linux either. I guess ymmv.

Last time I tried an hdpi display on linux it was not good. But that was a couple years ago so I assumed things would probably be much better now. Was curious if it is still bad.

It's slowly getting better, and depending on what you're doing you may or may not run into issues, but it's still leagues behind e.g. Windows 10.

You don't have to use HiDPI with 4K. I use a 4K display at 100% scale so everything just fits beautifully on it as if it was 4 monitors without borders.

This is a 28" monitor though.

What do you still use without HiDPI support? It's been a long time since most of the market moved from <110ppi monitors. There's enormous quantities of 1080p 14" laptops, those are almost as HiDPI as this.

Linux still has pretty sketchy HiDPI support. It's marginally better on Wayland than X, but then you can kiss NVidia (and CUDA) good-bye.

You can get it relatively consistent, but will still end up with a few older applications rendering at native resolutions (sometimes partially, where the text is fine but icons are too small).

Most distributions also don't offer any universal way of configuring DPI scaling. I think Ubuntu does, but last time I checked they were almost alone in that.

Like contemporary Linux has HiDPI support in the same sense Kdenlive is a video editor. It's technically true but leaves a lot to be desired.

Plus a waste of computing resources and energy that is better spent elsewhere rather than pointless eye candy.

For me, if you spend your life reading and writing prose or code, text rendering quality is surely paramount. I’m curious what you think the energy should be spent on instead.

Compiling? Staying cool and not turning on the fan? Avoiding unnecessary waste?

Really anything rather than a thing that has only drawbacks.

As far as readability goes... can't see a difference with monospace text, maybe even worse as fonts tend to be thinner and need adjustments. Maybe a little better with proportional text on websites and documents.

Text legibility is paramount, not rendering quality. Monochrome bitmap fonts are extremely legible once you're used to them, and they don't need 4K displays. Vector fonts with high-quality hinting and antialiasing disabled are almost as good.

It costs almost nothing to your GPU to render fonts in high quality with subpixel antialiasing. Especially when you can cache the rendered glyphs in a texture for reuse.

It costs you sharpness.

What tools are you thinking of? My impression in Windows is any code written to UI standards of the last 10 years or so works on HiDPI. (Ironically this does not include the Nullsoft installer a lot of tools distribute with. But while the installer scales badly the tool once installed is fine.)

I think the best monitor for productivity is the Microsoft Surface Studio.

- 28"

- 3:2 aspect ratio

- 4500x3000 pixels

- and it comes with a stylus!

Now before all the programmers say that touch screens suck, let me say that 99% of the time I use mouse and keyboard. But the 1% use cases where I do want a stylus (eg. annotating a screenshot, signing a contract, making a quick sketch of some process) are so worth it.

I wish someone would build a standalone display like that.

It's not touchscreen, but the other day I bought a Wacom drawing tablet from 2003 at a flea market. I go home, plug it into my Linux machine, and I get a full-fat settings menu letting me configure everything for my brand-new Wayland session.

These tablets are sweet. I also have one for some basic drawing.

Whenever I see “programming monitor” I hope it’ll be another 5K+ high DPI display to compete with LG Ultrafine 5K, but here the horizontal resolution is <4000 pixels. People go on about 120hz displays but I really think 5k is much more important for programming where reading and writing text is the whole game.

Reading and writing text is perfectly fine on a full-hd display if you have subpixel antialiasing. The only platform where 4k is barely enough is macos since they deliberately decided to remove subpixel hinting when they introduced hidpi displays.

I go blind when I look at a lower ppi display at this point. With or without subpixel AA. Weird how you get used to something.

Or just disable antialiasing altogether. Generally you'll want to enable full hinting too. Quality depends on the font. I use the DejaVu fonts because they look good like this. I'd actually prefer bitmap fonts everywhere, but this is almost as good.

5k is only necessary if you use a Mac IMO, because of MacOS's blurry fractional scaling.

4k at 27 inches is great on Windows and KDE with Wayland.

I commend them for making a developer-focused monitor, but anything less than 200 PPI makes me sad. If I'm staring at text all day, it'd better be crisp. The number of good Retina displays is so small. Back when I had to buy a new display I relented, I just got the Apple Studio Display, even though it is effectively the old 27" 5K iMac minus the Mac. At least it doesn't have many reported build quality issues (LG UltraFine 5K) or insane backlight bleed/uniformity issues (some Dell 6k 32" display, I forgot the model number).

Previous discussion about the RD280U model without the arm:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40385371

I use this monitor for gaming and programming. My laptop is USB-C, and my desktop is obviously HDMI/USB-A. The KVM let's me switch between those 2 and use the same keyboard and mouse. Plus it's ultra-wide 1440p and 144hz.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16824012043R?Item=N82E168240120...

I see 3:2 and I think of my Framework laptop. Haven't owned it too long, and the 3:2 was entirely new to me. I love it, though it's strange

Here's xrandr for this baby, and afaik, only the main resolution is actually 3:2

    2256x1504     60.00
    1920x1200     60.00
    1920x1080     60.00
    1600x1200     60.00
    1680x1050     60.00
    1280x1024     60.00
    1440x900      60.00
    1280x800      60.00
    1280x720      60.00
    1024x768      60.00
    800x600       60.00
    640x480       60.00

600+USD for 60hz

cool HN is for spam now :(

I hate to be "that guy" but this was also my reaction when seeing this. Nobody but programmers are probably willing to spend $600 of their hard earned money on an HDR10 IPS panel...

Then again, I'd wager there is a nonzero percentage of the Hacker News audience reading our comment thread propped-up on their thousand-dollar monitor stand. Fools and their money, as the old saying goes.

It's the same panel as a Huawei Mateview? I have two, it's one of the best monitors of all time. The only downside is the lack of a VESA mount (and the steep price, but slightly cheaper than this).

The extra strip of pixels below really makes all the difference, 3:2 is so much better than 16:9 for actual work, be it programming or general office work.

Couldn't care less about the 60Hz refresh rate, really makes zero difference for development and web browsing.

Question for the experts here :) How much better is, regarding eyestrain, to go to a 27' 4k monitor instead of a 27' 1440p one? What about refresh rate, does it help with that as well?

not sure, more vertical estate would be nice when working on the ugly Allman styled code but does this fit two buffers side by side?

Man, unless it's 4:3 and glows with P1 or P3 phosphor, it's not really a programming monitor to me.

You will get rasterburn.

Too bad their 24 inches monitor for programmers has such low resolution. I’m keeping my 4k 24”.

I would have gotten this over the LG Dual Up had it been available.

Sounds interesting, but their page appears to be broken for mobile. They have something hijacking the scroll behavior making it near impossible to actually read anything about this.

Why do web devs constantly have the need to break decades of UI convention?

Stop blaming devs for UX and marketing goofs

60hz limits on displays should be a crime in 2024. At least hit 90hz, or preferably 120hz.

Yeah, it always baffled me we still are using 60 Hz with modern connectors after getting accustomed to 100+ Hz in early 2000s with D-SUB.

The Nokia CRT my dad owned in 1997 could hit over 180hz at 640x480!!

maybe because 60 Hz on LCD doesn't make your eyes bleed like anything less than 85Hz on CRT does?

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