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Comment by MetaCosm | Hacker News Reader

> Today, you can still buy a 30-inch 2560x1600 display for over $1,000. Or you can get a 39-inch 3840x2160 display for $500. This choice is not even fair.

Yes, you can buy a wonderful, physically adjustable, mountable, color calibrated, blissful contrast, delightful brightness control monitor with a great matte finish like the Dell 3014... or you can buy an absolutely awful 30hz, locked in place, blue tinted, horrible uniformity, terrible brightness, awful contrast, with horrible black levels and really -- just horrific to work on 4K "tv". I speak from first hand experience, it is absolutely one of the worst panels I have ever had the misfortune to stare at vim on.

The colors are so awful that literally, some of my favorite themes (seoul256) where ENTIRELY unusable, just a greymush of nothingness. With bright spots and dark spots to make reading code even harder. So, I tried a black background theme... only to be horrified with the black level.

I agree with the author there is no comparison, obviously almost anything beats the Seiki. Hell, most review sites won't even recommend it as a TV, let alone a monitor.

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Thank you for the reality-check. I really do appreciate it and hope anyone reading my words reads yours as counterpoint.

I had tried to be fair-handed with my judgment of the Seiki but I admit that my desire for large form-factor displays coupled with Seiki delivering one that I can actually afford clouds my judgment some. I want high-quality large displays and the incumbent manufacturers have left me in the cold for a decade.

Not that it matters, but one area where I spoil myself is in monitors. I spend what I can afford (and then some, admittedly) on monitors in lieu of other luxuries. I own five 30" monitors, three of which are Dell U3011s. I love those monitors. As you point out, they ship from the factory with great color, a matte screen, and of course inputs that don't disappoint.

But on the flip-side, the 30" "professional" LCD monitor as exemplified by the Dell U3011 and U3014 has not decreased in price substantially since I picked up my first Dell 3007WFP, what was it, eight years ago?

Maybe it's telling that I have not yet replaced one of my home Dell monitors with a Seiki. But when my wife's Dell 30" died, we decided to give the Seiki a try. As I've said, the Seiki has several downsides. The 30Hz lag is foremost. It's noticeable and frustrating. But the screen size and delight of having so many pixels in a single display is so compelling. Also, after applying the Seiki firmware update, the backlight can be adjusted, allowing for better calibration.

It's not a perfect monitor. It's not even a great monitor. It's a good monitor and it does the thing I value most: give me pixels with which to see and interact with information quickly. As a programmer on a budget, it's my favorite monitor currently available. I really hope that competition heats up and better monitors are on the horizon. I will bite at opportunities to get large, high-DPI, high-quality, high-speed displays.

But for now, I personally would not buy the Dell 30" unless they severely cut the price. I'm keeping my eye on that because I am hopeful the new competition could start moving the higher-end prices downward, and that will make me happy.

(Incidentally, the U3014 is presently $1,600 at Newegg [1]. I could barely stomach the ~$1,000 price of 30-inch monitors eight years ago. In 2014, I can't bring myself to spend $1,600 for 2560x1600.)

[1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA25V0U169...

First of all, you can get the U3014 for around $1100, less on sale. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00C2RPW8O/ref=dp_olp... ... additionally, it is a "professional" monitor (X-Rite tie in, factory calibrated, etc) and will likely maintain a premium price as corporations are the target customers.

Secondly, the Seiki is not a "good" monitor. It isn't even a "good" TV. The only thing Seiki has is pixel density and cheapness, it is awful in every other measurable way, without a doubt one of the worst panels I have ever purchased. I can't fathom how you can justify calling it "good". Excluding resolution -- can you even name a single thing you like about it, that you think is a cut above?

You can get a number of wonderful 27" inch (2560x1440+) in that same price point. With good inputs, colors, refresh rates, adjustability, brightness, yada, yada. They go as cheap as $350 now, but you can get GREAT ones (really great, not just pixel density) for around $500.

Questions: (1) How many hours do you spend really working on the Seiki... not your wife, not on the phone, not at home on your wonderful Dell monitors, not walking around, not just in the office, how many legitimate hours to you spend USING the Seiki? (2) Why do choose for your developers, why not given them a budget of X to buy whatever they want?

Good to hear that the Dell prices have not actually increased to $1,600. I was a bit shocked by that when I searched at Newegg. Still, it's exceedingly frustrating that the price of a 30" professional monitor has been locked at $1,100 since they were introduced in 2005 (or was it even earlier?).

I suppose you and I just disagree on what is good and what is not. I've personally used the Seiki for the past few days. We just got them this week. I value the quantity of pixels and price a little more than color accuracy, balance, and uniformity. I want even better specs. I want 60Hz most of all. But given the balance of priorities, I personally think the scale tips toward size and resolution to maximize my own productivity. 60 Hz though, I'll take it in a heartbeat.

The blog entry is just my opinion and I understand your opinion is strongly opposed. That's fine.

Answers: (1) A total of about 6 hours a day for the past few days. They just arrived. Key quality of life improvements have been using the firmware patch to allow the backlight to be dimmed and using dark color schemes. Most of us were using dark color schemes already since we prefer those at any resolution. (2) I'm not going to bother answering this in detail. From the reactions I've seen, we're very happy with the upgrade.

Seiki has a lot of room for improvement. I take it your opinion is that they have a huge amount of improving to do. I really want the whole desktop display market to improve dramatically. It has been stagnant for so long that I really treasure these recent developments. As much as I acknowledge this display's weaknesses, I see it as a harbinger of some long overdue innovation. For that alone I am very happy.

I'd like to chime in as another Seiki user. I've been working on projects for 3-4 month with the Seiki and I end up using it 12-14 hrs on many days. I run it at full 2160p but have increased my Win8 res to 120%.

This is my problem. Pixel density is great if you have 20/20 vision.

I'm really happy with 1080p on 27" IPS (LG). People would probably think I'm mad. Just as I would consider myself mad looking at a blueish display all day long.

> I'm not going to bother answering this in detail. From the reactions I've seen, we're very happy with the upgrade.

Detail? This answer has cost you more words than the obvious two picks: "We made a vote","I made a gamble"

> Secondly, the Seiki is not a "good" monitor. It isn't even a "good" TV. The only thing Seiki has is pixel density and cheapness, it is awful in every other measurable way, without a doubt one of the worst panels I have ever purchased. I can't fathom how you can justify calling it "good". Excluding resolution -- can you even name a single thing you like about it, that you think is a cut above?

Do you have an ax to grind, or is this just typical HN pedantry?

The reviews on Amazon for this display is a solid 4.0 from 200+ reviews -- hardly the shite quality you seem to be suggesting. Given that the thesis of the article is that this would be great for programmers (i.e. not designers or the color obsessed), the fervor to which you're arguing the point seems misplaced.

The man used two physical calibration devices on the monitor. I think that means he values color reproduction much higher than the average buyer.

CNet compared the 50inch model to a 50 inch 720p plasma, and came to the conclusion that the plasma was a better tv. The review was more focused on using it as a television, but it appears that product is low quality. http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57599449-221/budget-tv-...

> You can get a number of wonderful 27" inch (2560x1440+) in that same price point. With good inputs, colors, refresh rates, adjustability, brightness, yada, yada. They go as cheap as $350 now, but you can get GREAT ones (really great, not just pixel density) for around $500.

Where can I find these?

... Everywhere? There are literally 41 under $500 at 2560x1440 or 2560x1600 on Newegg right now. The QNIX was already linked in this thread by someone else (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2RY0X598...)

I was looking for your opinions on some great options, not trying to pick a fight.

Then why didn't you say that?

How is that "trying to pick a fight"?

> They go as cheap as $350 now, but you can get GREAT ones (really great, not just pixel density) for around $500.

Are there any for $500 that are better than the $300 ones?

I agree the colors are a mess..... until you spend an hour or so calibrating. I did over the last two days since I bought one, and it has the same look, color wise, as my rMBP now

(I own the 39" Seiki)

I tried calibrated it with both X-Rite and Spyder (both physical calibration devices) -- neither could get it anywhere near "average". It just swings all over the place. Also, calibration can't fix horrible blacks, uneven brightness and the finish.

What equipment did you use? Can you post your pre/post scores? I have NEVER met anyone who has been able to actually calibrate it into even "average" ranges. I realize that X-Rite and Spyder are "consumer grade" calibration devices, but they are all I have access to.

I didn't even use a device, I just eyeballed it. For my uses of Sublime Text, Chrome and Textual, colors are great. No qualms.

And now I'm pretty sure I'm out of my league.

>I tried calibrated it with both X-Rite and Spyder (both physical calibration devices) -- neither could get it anywhere near "average". It just swings all over the place. Also, calibration can't fix horrible blacks, uneven brightness and the finish.

If you don't mind me asking, which version of Spyder did you try?

Edit/Disclaimer: (I work for the company that produces it)

4PRO.

The fact that you have access to two physical calibration devices makes me discount your opinion massively, FWIW. It means you're not really in the market for a programming monitor, but for design or some other thing where color is important.

I don't care for calibration at all, really. What I do care about is that all my monitors, when I have multiple monitors, have similar performance across the gamut. To the point that I lived with what in retrospect was an extremely out of whack 2407WFP for 6 years to match a cheap Acer until the Acer died. I only noticed how bad it was when the U2813HM that replaced the Acer was sitting alongside. Resetting to factory defaults pretty much fixed that.

Sad to say, for many programmers and other people who aren't AV types, the step up in resolution—plus the saving of over $500—is likely worth the dodgy colour and brightness. Many won't even really notice the badness. That said, some of the $600-ish mystery-meat 2560×1600 displays apparently have good display quality and so may be a stronger alternative to the Seiki.

At $500, there are FAR better monitors. Bad contrast, bad brightness, bad everything. If you buy your programmers this, buy them a years supply of pills to deal with the headaches it will induce.

Again, this isn't like a "bad for picky art professionals" type of bad. Just awful, I wouldn't even sell it to anyone I knew personally because I knew it would come back to bite me.

At $500, there are FAR better monitors.

You keep repeating this as if it is some magic mantra. You have not defined any what "better" really means in manner that can be quantified and compared without introducing subjective opinions of a user.

Also, care to link to these "better" monitors, including sellers that sell these for the $500 price, as well as non-subjective reviews?

Better monitors very easily be objectively conceived. Latency, refresh rate, contrast ratio, brightness, input options, are all easily measured.

"Better" monitors are easily found through a simple search, and how do you exactly determine a review to be "non-subjective"?

http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/ http://thewirecutter.com/leaderboard/tvs/ http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/a-great-27-inch-lcd-monitor...

What latency is better than what brightness?

I can see where you going with that, and I'll agree it's subjective, as to which suits your needs, but I think you can find TV's that are all around better.

Better monitors in terms of brightness, color and other monitor-specific features. But not in resolution. And personally I really don't understand who in their right mind might want this kind of insane resolution for a TV. The resolution only makes sense for a monitor.

Fix the issues, turn this thing into a monitor, and corner the market for big monitors.

If it was 60Hz I would certainly consider it right now. But 30Hz is really killing it, the other issues are no big deal for programming work. I've programmed using cheap LCD screens since the early '00s that were horrible 6-bit TN panels with only very few different shades of gray. Still not an issue at all.

I'll wait for the Think Vision Pro 2840m for $799 in April though.

I have 2 of these, and they have been 12 kinds of awesome:

http://www.amazon.com/Nixeus-27-Inch-Resolution-2560x1440-NX...

Adjustable (height and rotation) stand, pack in dual-link DVI cable, all 4 major inputs.

I am definitely an amateur when it comes to display calibration, but I'm pickier than your average bear and these have acceptable picture quality when dialed in

Thanks for pointing this out -- the article seemed to completely overlooked the panel quality and configurability.

I'm personally really looking forward to a proper UHD/4K over 30" that does 144hz with GSync, which I can use as my main desktop monitor. It'll finally be a reason to upgrade from my old Dell Ultrasharp.

The Asus PQ321Q is almost there, it's just limited to 60hz.

You will be waiting a very long time. UHD@144Hz requires 40Gbit/sec of bandwidth. DisplayPort 1.3 (which is not generally available yet), only supplies 25Gbit. HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2 are 14 & 17, respectively.

http://emsai.net/projects/widescreen/bandwidth/

This Asus ProArt series is also incredible.

There's absolutely no difference from 60Hz to anything above it.

For a counterpoint: http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_5.html

Citing: http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html and: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

The human eye's ability to detect change exceeds 200 fps, though "fps" isn't really a good match for how the eyes process information, which is highly dependent upon the scene in question.

Yes, there is. I have side-by-side 60Hz and 120Hz monitors, and window dragging for example on the 120Hz one is much much smoother (I had to buy a gaming mouse, because most normal mice won't update at more than 100Hz I think). And movies don't have this jerky motion where 60Hz doesn't quite exactly divide with 24 fps that movies use.

Well, in my day, when you moved a window all the computer showed was a grey square - no fps issues there.

Sorry, had to say it.

I started with zx-spectrum and was also very happy with whatever was there :) But baby steps towards moving pictures that are indistinguishable from reality.. Eh, I'm just very picky. Ever noticed that the top side of a moving window moves before the bottom side on most LCD displays?

Haha, good one. Isn't trolling against the rules here though?

Admittedly 30 Hz sucks and the colors are not up to par with an IPS panel, but overall the Seiki offer a great deal for the price.

The brightness is great (only terrible if you like it really low), the 112 pixel density is higher than on 2x23 inch monitors, for example;

The colors can be calibrated from within the OS so it's not as much of an issue;

And as the black levels - if you found them horrible, it may be because you were using an nVidia card on Windows - the drivers are set to limited RGB range (because it thinks it's connected to a TV), giving you horrible black levels (and colors).

I spent a month wondering why my brand new monitors look like crap when every review said they were the best bang for the buck :-D.

Or maybe you just got a bad panel and/or the new revisions were improved...

30 Hz is awful. The brightness problem is blow out and bleed. It is "very bright" it is so bright that when doing any sort of calibration the whites bleed on everything. The contrast ratio is good due to the excessive brightness, which means the blacks still suck. Horrible highlights and horrible shadows.

The calibration you can do in the OS is limited, as I said, I have two different sets of hardware equipment for calibration and I still couldn't make it less than horrible. The display is just ick (as expected at that price point) -- every color is signifigantly off out of the box, and trying to fix it even with physical calibration devices is a lost cause. You can't get it anywhere near "normal".

I tried the TV against multiple forms of input -- from Windows to OS-X to Ubuntu to QNX(I used to build command center software, which ran on TVs on top of QNX, so I have my own stack that is tested against TVs). From nVidia, to ATI, to Intel. I also tried it as a simple TV (my fallback so I didn't have to sell it) -- it even looked like crap as a TV... even with external upscaling to 4k.

I purchased mine (and used it for about a month before I was able to sell it on Craigslist) just about as soon as you could get one in the US. I doubt any radical changes have taken place since then, I have read of none outside of the price dropping. It is still generally reviewed as a poor TV and worse monitor.

Dells 4k 28" should be available in just a few weeks -- wait for that, don't purchase this lemon.

Excessive backlight bleed - could be that you got a real lemon...

Manufacturers do have frequent revisions on the panels - for example LG's e-IPS panels had 6 revisions (or more), each pretty different, initially with backlight bleed and ghosting problems, then AFRC and brightness changes (it varies a lot between revisions) and the bad reviews went to Dell, Asus, Acer and other display manufacturers...

Well -- at the time (way back in 2013, when it was signifigantly more expensive) -- the reviews echoed what I saw -- just Google around for them. Due to the number of reviews matching my personal experience (blown out brightness, bad color accuracy, unable to get it calibrated to good norms, etc) -- I was delighted to sell it off for what I paid for it.

I can't prove without access to a modern panel that they didn't get exponentially and magically better. But, I find that unlikely. They are fighting for cheapest slot.

But who knows, maybe it is the best panel in the universe now! Maybe the extra $3000 people are dropping on Sharp and Dell 4k panels is all markup! But, I suspect not.

There is apparently a firmware patch from Seiki to make the backlight adjustable. I don't think I'd do graphics work on it that requires absolute color-accuracy--the 30Hz would already be too painful with a wacom anyway.

What I'd like to know is if the viewing angles are so bad that you see different colors, inverted colors etc. just while sitting at a desk with it (since it is so large you are at pretty big angles from pixels on the edges).

Any IPS panel is better (even the cheap $200 ones) than TN, but from what you're describing it sounds like the worst TV/monitor in the world :-). I've got an old Samsung LED TV that still has acceptable contrast/black levels, surely a new panel can't be that bad unless it's defect...

For a workstation, how is 30Hz refresh a problem? I could understand that wouldn't be ideal for gaming, but if your daily use is that if reading static text that doesn't move around, is it really a problem. If this were a CRT, I'd agree with you, but as an LCD panel, I don't understand why the lower refresh rate is a problem. It isn't as though the screen will flicker.

Go try it now. Connect your laptop to your tv, set the refresh rate to 30hz. Your mouse will become extremely "laggy" (e.g. unresponsive), all 60fps animations like dragging windows around, scrolling will become stuttered, etc.

Just the productivity decrease alone makes this monitor extremely expensive in the end, despite its price.

No need for a TV set, some (most?) computer monitors can display 30 Hz, it only needs to be enabled using "custom resolution" or similar setting in drivers.

I just tried:

- Dragging windows - not an issue, but maybe I am used to it from times when having window contents displayed during dragging lagged much more due to cpu/gpu power.

- Scrolling - it is slower, but with clickless scroll wheel and smooth scrolling it was not too noticeable.

But, oh god, the mouse cursor movement... It was like working through a high latency VNC.

It increases the latency for displaying the mouse pointer, so you may find it harder to quickly and accurately move your mouse.

Reports indicate that the Dell 4k 28" will be 30Hz @ 4k also :(

The Lenovo Thinkvision Pro 2840m and Asus PB287Q have both been announced (60Hz @ 4k, US$799), but you might have to wait a couple of months for release.

> I doubt any radical changes have taken place since then, I have read of none outside of the price dropping.

Didn't the article mention something about a firmware patch to fix the backlight brightness?

(I appreciate your calibrated review/opinions btw)

Alternatively, you could buy a nice 27" 2560x1440 Qnix QX2710 (http://www.2560x1440monitor.com/index.php?route=product/prod...), which has an excellent Samsung PLS panel and can often be overclocked to 120Hz.

I like the "Up to 5 dead pixels" on the product image. Makes it sound like a feature, "5 Dead Pixels in every monitor, guaranteed!"

You can find retailers that sell "Pixel Perfect" models with none, but you pay a decent premium for it.

Well -- or just find a "no questions asked" retailer.

At work I have dual 30" Dell monitors, which I use with a tiling window manager (I use awesome [1]). To see the far right/left sides I almost have to roll the chair left or right so I tend to keep editor windows and browser windows where I'm actually reading text in my central field of vision, and keep other windows on the outer margins. Also they do consume nearly all my desk space, so sometimes I think a single larger monitor might be better.

1: http://awesome.naquadah.org/

I switched my dual monitor orientation to a primary 27" (iMac) running 2560x1440, with my secondary 24" running 1200x1920 in portrait orientation. It is, at first, disorientating to have the two monitors eschew but once you get used to it, the reduction in straight from looking far left or right out weighs the strange look. The added benefit is that you get 1920 pixels of vertical resolution for those times that you want to display long blocks of text without scrolling. Admittedly, I use that far less than I use it tiled with windows arranged over-under.

Eschew or askew?

Askew. Typed that on my iPad, so there are a couple of typos. Corrected 'eschew' and 'straight':

"It is, at first, disorientating to have the two monitors askew but once you get used to it, the reduction in strain from looking far left or right out weighs the strange look.

Not that I've tried it, but dual 30" seems like it'd be a bit much for me. Or the OP's dream 50". There's only so much you can focus on at a time, and only so far you can turn your head to change focus, though I guess depending on what you do you might want more areas of focus. 3 window columns seems to be where I'm most comfortable, but I've never tried a display bigger than 1x30". I do keep a 'dashboard' on a smaller side monitor that I can turn to look at as necessary though.

You don't focus on everything at once. Secondary windows can be viewed peripherally -- for instance you can tail a log, and your peripheral vision will notice motion. The other benefit is multiple windows as an alternative to alt-tab. Moving your eyes slightly is a lot easier than pressing alt-tab -- it's can be done without concious thought, so it doesn't interrupt your "zone".

A friend of mine swears by those little cheap USB monitors as little mini log viewers.

Interesting. I found I got a lot more productive when I switched from a large monitor with multiple windows to a smaller monitor with a single window switched via keyboard. And that was specifically because it was faster and required less thought to flip through windows than to remember where the window I wanted to look at was and to move my eyes to it.

However, I have poor eyesight and very poor peripheral vision, so that might have something to do with it. If I'm trying to watch for movement out of the corner of my eye I frequently get false positives from visual aberrations.

You're exaggerating. Why?

I had a 3014 at work and I stopped using it because it was terrible with Mac OS X. It had this thing where it would blue tint a box around any sustained motion on the screen, like a video being played. It also came out of the box blue tinted and with the sharpness cranked up. So while the Seido might not be great, the 3014 is no panacea either.

There's some hacking that has to go on at the OS level with OSX to have any monitor > 27 inches. The trouble lies in that the operating system wants to natively believe that you're actually using a TV, not a monitor.

To get it working you need to fool the OS into thinking that it's a monitor again: http://embdev.net/topic/284710#3027030

Note that's only for DisplayPort. I use DualLink DVI to my large screens, and it works great without any hacks.

>with a great matte finish

Isn't that an oxymoron? Why would you want an intentionally blurry screen?

So you can see what is on the screen. I used to have best Dell 27" and the Apple Thunderbolt 27" display side by side (the ones I had used the exact same panel).

The Apple was glossy and the Dell was matte. If you peer at the Dell, you can see the matte coating -- but everything was nevertheless much more readable for most of the day due to the glare from the glossy screen (it was an office with a lot of natural light). Only at twilight did the Apple provide superior visibility.

So matte finishes are extremely helpful in some circumstances (depending on the lighting and type of room), and some matte finishes are a lot better than others.

Aren't there low-reflectivity glossy screens now? For example, on my Nexus 4, I can barely see my reflection when the screen is dark, although a lamp or window in the right direction is visible (but not so much that it overpowers the backlight).

Seems like just fixing your lighting situation would be preferable to having a blurry display.

Well, I suppose I could have asked the company to re-partition their office without so many windows and get rid of their skylights to accommodate my glossy display.

But I figured it would be easier to just use a display with a good matte coating.

Then again, I am one of the people who used to always pay the extra $50 for the matte screen option on my MacBook Pros, back when Apple offered that option.

Lots of natural light is my ideal lighting situation. I just bought a dell 27" IPS with matte finish for $650 cdn. over all the Korean monitors specifically for the matte finish.

>to stare at vim on

Well, there's your problem right there...

ahahah wp sir wp

>>>/g/

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