Ask HN: What do you look for in a work monitor? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you look for in a work monitor?

17 pointsAbstractH2442 comments

I’m going to need new ones this year and I’m not sure what things to optimize for if I’m not a gamer

* High-ish DPI is desirable. 27" 4K displays are a good start and look pretty sharp at 150% scaling. 5K screens were still pretty overpriced last time I looked, and there weren't many options available, but you can use them at 200% comfortably. Avoid monitors that would require you to use fractional scaling if you're running NVIDIA on Linux

* even for non-gaming uses, high refresh rates are comfortable, IMO. 120hz or higher is fine. Going higher has diminishing returns.

* OLED panels are desirable.

* if you're making a multi-monitor setup, avoid introducing displays that require different levels of scaling. You'll avoid headaches, though KDE improved that drastically in recent years.

Is it even possible to have 5K, 120 Hz and HiDPI together? I also want all three, but the last time I checked, literally the only 5K 120 Hz monitor you could buy was Dell’s 40-inch curved UltraSharp. Which does look nice and has gotten rave reviews, but 5K at 40” just seems too low density for what I want, and there’s literally no other 5K 120Hz monitor out there, unless I’m overlooking something.

I’ve been carefully watching CES hoping someone would announce another one, but so far no dice - Dell did bump their 27- and 32-inch 4K UltraSharps to 120Hz, which is a welcome development, but if you want more than 4K you’re still out of luck.

EDIT: The next hope if that doesn’t happen is that Apple refreshes their 5K and 6K displays with 120Hz when they update the Mac Studio, which is supposedly happening this spring. It would be a logical time for it now that the latest Macs have Thunderbolt 5 (TB4 literally didn’t have enough bandwidth to do 5K@120, much less 6K), but so far there don’t seem to be rumors to this effect, and historically Apple waits a very long time between monitor updates.

Why the high dpi? Especially if scaling up anyways. I've never understood that trend

Going from 2k / 27" to 4k / 27" screens severely reduced my eye strain after a long day of code-staring. Both were IPS panels so I can only attribute it to the incredibly sharp text rendering.

I see, I never had any trouble with eye strain at all.

Yeah.. Exacly this. I recently started to look for monitor, and dug up site with DPI etc. That high DPI monitors annoys me a lot, its actually very hard to get anything w/ Pixel Size larger than 300um. Smaller pixel put a lot of strain on my old eyes... And upscaling really suxx.. unless you do 200% with means you need to buy expensive gear like 150um pixel size.. and upscale x2...

It just looks better. Text specifically will look much crispier in a 4K 27" monitor at 150% scaling than a 1440p 27" monitor at 100% scale, despite both having the same working space.

USB-C with power delivery.

I love being able to plug a single cable into the laptop and everything work, and not have a bulky docking station on my desk.

You should probably say what kind of work you do. A photographer has different needs than an journalist.

For me:

* 40 inch 21:9 aspect ratio. 34 is too small and 43 and above are too big

* QHD i.e. 3440 X 1440 resolution - why? Because it renders the programming fonts perfectly - many will complain about pixelation but for me it just seems perfect. This translates to a PPI of approx. 93 which is the same as for a 24 inch FHD monitor. Scaling spoils it for me

* Curve - not too less nor too aggressive - LG OLED is 800R which is way too much - on the other hand 2300R is too less - I think 1800 is ideal

* 60 Hz or more refresh rate

* Accurate color reproduction

* Matte finish / antiglare

Sadly, a curved monitor with the above specs does not exist. The only one as I mentioned is the LG OLED which has a far too aggressive a curve. There are some lesser known brands which come as flat which I currently use but I wish there was one that met all of the above.

Even outside of gaming, people's needs are going to vary a great deal. Some people are sensitive to refresh rates, some people really need great color reproduction, etc.

But since you asked what I optimize for... I'm cheap, and tend to opt for inexpensive, no-frills, but reliable 4K monitors. I have several Philips 278E 27-inch 4K monitors. I don't see these on Amazon any more, so maybe this model has been discontinued, but they ran about $250 USD or so. I use a couple on my main workstation for coding, my wife has a couple (that are secondary to an Apple Studio Display), and I have a floating one for the workbench. I find this model to be a sweet spot for my needs. They aren't as beautiful as an Apple display, but they're sufficient.

Potential cons include no camera (I have a separate camera on top, although it sometimes obscures some of the display due to narrow bezels), lousy speakers (I use headsets), and they seem oddly sensitive to electrical fields in the environment (for example, they'll turn off momentarily if I static shock myself on something nearby).

I love ultrawides rather than the standard 16:9s. You can put two windows side by side and each is still usable.

I stopped doing the multi-monitor thing in favor of a single gently curved ultrawide. Coupled it with some window positioning shortcuts/gestures and it’s a dream for me

I’ve had a 28” 4K from LG for four years, and I this year just got a 27” 5K from Samsung. High PPI makes text/code look better. I’ll eventually ditch the 28” 4K for something better (like a 32” 6K or 8K). I really don’t have any other requirements for a work monitor other than modern display PPI.

Running on Mac though, if Linux or windows the choices might be different.

I'm actually planning to buy one too. I agree with most of the comments about 120Hz refresh, But I disagree about 4k (not enough content) and this is more personal my last monitor was 32" and it was a huge pain to travel with and I don't have a mansion to be far away from the monitor... so I think I'm aiming this time for 24".

I hate monitor are so bloody expensive

Size: after working for a bit with ultrawides, I love them for code-related tasks and document editing.

Resolution: as high as possible, screen real estate is probably the most important factor to me. I need space for open editors showing as many lines as possible, many files open side-by-side, sometimes documentation right beside what I'm working on, multiple documents open side-by-side, etc.

Everything else is just parfumerie, refresh rates don't bother me nor extremely high DPI since whenever possible I will cram more resolution instead of using more pixels to display less content in a prettier way.

- 27" or higher.

- 4K or higher.

- 1440p effective resolution or higher.

- 120 hz or higher.

- ~160 dpi or higher. Note that some people here are going to rage about non-integer scaling and they're right. But I'm older with less than 20/20 vision and an Apple Silicon device, so it looks sharp enough to me and I don't have any performance issues under any circumstances.

If you want a more stringent look at monitor's, check out Niki Tonsky's posts: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/

What is "effective resolution" and what is the difference between that and the other resolution requirement?

So, I might have my terminology wrong, but here's what I mean:

I currently have a 27" 4K monitor connected to my Mac.

It's 4K, so my actual resolution is 3840x2160.

However, in my System Settings, I have my effective resolution set to 2560x1440.

macOS automatically scales the interface to make text and elements more readable. A 4K monitor (3840x2160) scaled to 150% would appear as 2560x1440 with a dot pitch of about 163.18 PPI, resulting in a pretty sharp image. PPI is "pixels-per-inch" AKA "pixel density". The higher the PPI, the sharper the image.

If I had a 1440p monitor set to 1440p resolution, my PPI would be about 108 PPI, which is much less sharp than 163 PPI.

Caveat: All the stuff I said before about non-integer scaling.

This is handy tool to explore PPI and monitor sizes: https://www.sven.de/dpi/

I look for non fire sale prices and non bleeding edge prices.

Things going for 150-200 is old tech. Things in the $500+ is fomo new tech.

Exactly 350-400 is the correct price for a balance of new and legacy tech (best value).

It’s the only way to not get screwed on something that takes up real estate, hard to resell/ship.

This is a niche coding monitor I’m considering: https://www.amazon.com/BenQ-RD280U-Programming-Fine-Coated-E...

* size (>=32", preferably ultrawide, currently using 38" UW)

* resolution (I am fine with >=1440p)

* USB-C or Thunderbolt with sufficient power to charge notebooks, so you only need to connect one cable to your notebook

* at least 4 USB ports (so keyboard, mouse, camera, speakerphone can be connected to monitor and it acts as a switch when using more than one notebooks)

* viewing angle / display type (image should look the same no matter which angle - but shouldn't be a problem in the price range of monitors that fulfill the previous points)

I bought a Samsung Odyssey G9 on a whim when visiting a Microcenter. It's a 49" 5120x1440 32:9 display, essentially two 1440p screens combined. You can use it as a single screen or use picture-in-picture to split the screen (50:50 and 70:30). For gaming stuff it's also 240hz with Gsync/Freesync and supports HDR.

I have it on a VESA mount. I love it, I typically use two screens anyway and now I get a seamless screen without bezels and half the cables I'd otherwise need.

I just buy whatever Apple sells. I would get the Pro Display XDR but it's too expensive and the Studio one is still great. It has good DPI and colors, good size, power over USB-C (so I just have one wire on my desk) and most importantly when you rotate the display it switches between portrait/landscape automatically with an accelerometer. And I like not having to research dozens of different models.

They're ridiculously expensive though. You can get like 75% of the features/quality for a third of the price. They're nice if you're made of money, but totally out of reach for normal people.

I use an older Samsung 49” odyssey. It’s a bit of a meme monitor. I like the single screen to arrange windows. For things like spreadsheets you can resize it see practically everything if you need.

It’s always fun trying to screen share. You can only share windows, otherwise people will see the entire universe.

Isn't that just a 1440p monitor?

The new one is actually dual 4k (only one on the market) but obviously has quite a price tag: https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/gaming/57-odys...

5120x1440p if it's the same monitor i have.

Hi, I am using 2x LG DualUp monitors on factory stands in side-by-side mode. Great for coding, ops and browsing, not great for watching videos and gaming due to proportions and 60Hz refresh rate. I have switched from 1st gen 49" Samsung G9, which was very good but lacked vertical space.

When I last refreshed, a couple years ago, I knew I wanted 32-ish inch 4K displays and then looked for something solid on sale. I ended up with a pair of Dell displays, I got the S3221QS. Largely, since I was purchasing myself, I optimized for price, within those parameters.

I've been using a Phillips BDM4065UC (40" 4K) for a few years now. It's really nice. I don't want to go back to a smaller screen. If I ever need to replace it, I would try to save and get something comparable.

This cable is letting me run it at 60Hz from my MBP: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4DB8MLL

my current one is 4k at 32" with USB DP with at least 90W for my laptop DP1.4 for my desktop KVM switch

I use QD-OLED because I am also gaming, but I don't see a reason to go that way if it's only for work, modern IPS is perfectly fine and at least every now and then you won't end up stuck for minutes waiting for OLED care to finish

Over 200 DPI is non-negotiable.

Integrated webcam and speakers are a near-must.

High refresh is a nice to have.

I don't care for high refresh rates or high DPI, but:

- matte surface

- effective* vertical res >= 1200 px (*: meaning that, for instance, 1440 with 2.0 scaling counts as 720 px only).

- ability to rotate (not a must, but nice to have).

The highest PPI with the highest text clarity and the highest refresh rate I can get. 27-32"

OLED and HDR are nice, but I don't do anything at work that requires them, and burn-in is still a concern.

Make sure your computer supports it/them.

I had this very issue. My old computers don't support the 4K monitor I bought (or at least, at a respectable resolution, and not stretched 1080p)

I'm gucci with 1440p, 60hz and 27". Two of them.

I have a 165hz screen at home and don't notice much when coding.

I always look for an integrated usb-c / thunderbolt Dock. Really convenient to have only one cable

Ideally minimum 30 inch, 16:10 ratio and OLED (I'm not worried about burn-in personally).

5k resolution, >= 220 ppi. Everything else is secondary.

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