Follow-up on 4K displays for programmers | Hacker News Reader

Follow-up on 4K displays for programmers

tiamat.tsotech.com

75 pointsjfrankamp56 comments

Bizarrely I've actually found that having a large single display makes me less productive as a programmer as too much head movement is required to see everything and I prefer to focus on a single file at time to keep everything mindful.

In the cases that I do need to compare two files side by side at the same time or have documentation open I have a secondary monitor for the additional window.

I've also learned that having a monitor that has the correct dpi ratio verses screen resolution verses screen size is more important than cramming the most number of pixels into a specific screen size. Especially if you want to avoid eye strain.

FWIW, I have the same experience. I work with a 19" next to my 15" MBP, and I really only look at the MBP for things like "oh there is a new email", and then if it requires a lot of looking, I pull it onto the larger screen. I am sure that there are all kinds of ways that I could optimize this so that I use both monitors (I'm open to suggestions), but I keep coming back to the single monitor plus "occasional other stuff".

That said, I much prefer having the two monitors to only using the MBP...

> I've also learned that having a monitor that has the correct dpi ratio verses screen resolution verses screen size is more important than cramming the most number of pixels into a specific screen size. Especially if you want to avoid eye strain.

Definitely. The "retina" fad of higher and higher resolutions, combined with bigger screen sizes, means that you can get plenty of tiny text on a screen, but that doesn't mean you can comfortably read it at a good viewing distance. So you turn the font size up... and wonder why you need such a high DPI since you'd just be seeing the same amount of text as before.

I prefer multiple monitors over one huge one, since I can position them so they're all easy to see and a relatively constant distance from my eyes (i.e. in an arc). One huge flat surface means that looking at the corners requires large head movements since that distance increases much more.

I totally agree about multiple angled monitors being more comfortable and practical than a single large display, but there is value to a high DPI display even if you increase your scaling. Everything is clearer. (Well, text and anything that includes high-res images, anyway.) That makes it more comfortable to real/look at, even at the same or slightly smaller size.

The point of "retina" displays is not to fit more content onto the screen, but to remove the pixelation of the screen in order to make it more like paper: the "retina" devices from Apple render content at exactly the same "font size" as the "non-retina" devices, the fonts are simply crisper.

> So you turn the font size up... and wonder why you need such a high DPI since you'd just be seeing the same amount of text as before.

Coincidentally, I was thinking about this in a different context today.

One advantage of a larger monitor + big fonts over a smaller monitor with small fonts is that viewing distance is greater in the former. A larger viewing distance is easier on the eyes and optical system, in my layman opinion. The parallax error is less and the focusing muscles in the eye fatigue less.

Exactly on the density. This is why I'm interested in the 39 or even the 50" 4k tvs. The 50" ones are the size of a desk, and with a standing desk I think it'd be pretty great. I'm waiting to get work to buy one for a wallboard first before paying for it myself though. And then there are those 2 U2714's that I have. Man those are gorgeous.

Using a tiling window manager like Awesome, etc, you can have recent screens show up in the sweet spot and everything else pops back to the periphery over time, etc. And have different behaviors for different virtual screens or pops a window out to floating mode any time.

4K is great, but two problems: it's not "Retina" resolution at 32" (and definitely not at 39", though that's too big for a monitor), and the display ports that exist today do not support it well at all.

DisplayPort 1.2 can do it, if the monitor pretends it's two half-size monitors next to each other. This causes major problems for OSes, though I did eventually manage to work around it on Linux. (On an nVidia card, enable Xinerama. Due to a bug, this turns Xinerama and RandR off, making the window manager think you only have one monitor. Perfection.)

HDMI 1.4 can do it, but only at 30Hz, which is ugly. It's actually not unusable, but you'll be aware of what's going on.

As for the resolution issue: you're still not getting very good density. Your phone can do 440ppi. The Chromebook Pixel is 240ppi. 32" at 4k is 140ppi. Mind you, it looks great at 200%, but things are a little big. (I ended up liking this and my normal monitors now run at 125%.)

You really want 8K for a big monitor.

You also want 120Hz refresh, if only so that movies play each frame at a constant speed. 24 doesn't divide 60 (or 30!), but it does divide 120.

So until there is some transport layer that can do 8K at 120Hz, we're taking a step backwards. (4K at 120Hz is fine for TVs, though. Perhaps even HD is enough there.)

> So until there is some transport layer that can do 8K at 120Hz, we're taking a step backwards

Author here. I certainly do want 8K (or even more) on the desktop, but I disagree that the current crop of 4K displays are a step backwards versus recent history. Until these displays became available, we had a 7+ year stagnation where 2560x1600 was the pinnacle of semi-affordable desktop computing displays. Finally, after this years-long agony of lethargy, we have vendors selling televisions that in many ways exceed the capabilities of our desktop monitors.

I write this comment from my home workstation, which is equipped with three Dell U3011 30" monitors. I love these monitors. But each of them cost me $1,100 and that's the same price I paid for my first 30" monitor several years prior, a Dell 3007WFP. The pricing is asinine. But because I am satisfied with this configuration, I'll be waiting for a 60Hz 4K for my home workstation. If I were using a lesser configuration, I'd seriously consider dropping $500 (or at times, <$400) at Amazon to get a Seiki to tide me over until the second or third-generation 4K displays, or better, arrive.

I think you and I agree on just about everything except that point. I rejoice that there is something stirring in the display industry, even if it's coming from the television side of the aisle. I hope the display manufacturers feel encouraged to move as rapidly as possible on the desktop computing side. I'm trying to get the message out to them in my own way. :)

I have an Asus PQ321, and I will agree with you: the LCD panel is a huge step forward. But we shouldn't look at that and say the problem is solved, we need to be developing the next generation.

What I see limiting progress is the link layer between the GPU and the LCD panel. 4K@60Hz requires about 15Gbps of bandwidth. 8K will require 60Gbps. 8K@120, which is what I want, will require 120Gbps. We need a standard for that, so when panels become affordable, you can just buy one and hook it up. In the mean time, you have to suffer with text that's not quite as clear as what you get on your laptop or phone, and with video that "judders".

>In the mean time, you have to suffer with text that's not quite as clear as what you get on your laptop or phone

This is really noticeable when you have been working on your desktop screen for some time, then pick up your phone or tablet to read something. You get this instant: "Wow! This is SO much sharper" feeling. Then after reading on that device for 5 minutes you get used to it and don't explicitly experience it as sharp anymore.

But then you go back to working on your desktop screen and you get the opposite experience: "Wow! This IS fuzzy! WTF!?"

I totally agree that we need display manufacturers to keep innovating and pushing forward. I'm not certain what I wrote that implied I am satisfied. I am the furthest thing from satisfied with desktop displays. The other rants on my blog should establish that if you have the stomach to read more ranting. :)

I very much want high-DPI in my desktop display. I've repeatedly echoed the point made by henk53 elsewhere in this thread that holding a modern mobile device up to a desktop display shows how divergent the technologies have become.

All that said, I value usable real-estate foremost. So for now, I want my 4K display to be about 40 inches. I don't want to zoom. While I would certainly like high-clarity text and user interface controls, if I am forced to choose between that and real-estate, as I am presently, I will go with real-estate without hesitation.

Both, though? I am sold, where do I send my money?

You inspired me to write a quick follow-up: http://tiamat.tsotech.com/ideal-desktop-displays

Hopefully Intel can help. Still experimental but at least we are discussing 800Gbps cables. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/intels...

You know some of us don't care about having retina density display. I just want tons of big ass text. I'm mid thirties and still have very good vision but I'd rather have super easy reading of large text on a gigantic ass monitor with tons of pixels than super crisp anti-aliased fonts on my normal sized monitor. Hell, i've considered one of the 50" tvs for my desktop and just standing slightly further back.

In general with these monitors I can stand back in a more comfortable position than lean forward like I did when I was 24 with my ~2500x???? 30" crt I had back then. Sure I could get tons of stuff on that screen but I can get more on a bigger one here.

In fact I remember what I really wanted back then was that same resolution on my 12' projector image. That would have been amazing.

I run my 4K monitor at 200% scaling, and I can still see font aliasing artifacts. You definitely can't turn antialiasing off yet, even on a "retina" display. We still have a ways to go before computer terminals are as readable as papaer.

I'd say 8k would be the minimum for that.

Unfortunately on many sites with a supposed tech savvy public "everyone" will start to yell that it's just a conspiracy of vendors and that even 4K is nonsense because your eyes can't possibly see it. They'll show fancy graphs and link to wikipedia articles that supposedly prove that 4k, let alone 8k on desktop screen sizes (roughly 20" to 30") is completely nonsense.

Maybe vendors are picking up some of these sentiments and maybe this is in part holding back progress.

I find this luddite attitude offensive. I think that display technology should follow the path to eventually making the view look like any other material in nature, that means achieving the size of the pixel = size of the molecule - isn't that the pinnacle of video technology?

If that pixel then also reflects light like most materials, then yes indeed, it would be the holy grail.

But for the next couple of hundred years or so I think we'll be more than happy with 32k~64k displays or something in that range.

Displays with pixels the size of molecules would effectively be a kind of real-time matter duplicator. Bound to happen one day, but not today ;)

I have an Asus PQ321Q (4k @ 32") and it's what I've always wanted in a monitor. It fills my field of view and text is both legible and crisp at its native resolution. I can drive it with my retina MacBook Pro at 60Hz in Windows, and going back to my old Dell 30" monitors is painful. My only wish is that OS X would get its act together and support DisplayPort MST (and 60Hz). Windows on the same hardware in BootCamp does.

8k for the same price would be fine, but it's not needed at all.

Couldn't agree more. 32" is a great monitor size.

60 Hz is working in 10.9.3 dev previews, from what I've read

>My only wish is that OS X would get its act together and support DisplayPort MST (and 60Hz).

Judging by the latest beta, 10.9.3 will enable 60Hz on 2013 Retina MBPs.

I wonder if the 39" makes you crane your neck too much. It's a lot of pixels, but a lot of physical space and movement required as well.

The Dell 28" 4k monitor (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&c...) seems like a better option to me. Has anyone tried one out?

I haven't, but I just read some of the reviews on that link and it does not sound good.

This doesn't seem very good:

   Panel Type, Surface: TN

   Viewing Angle: (160° vertical / 170° horizontal)

I think 39" is an awesome size for a monitor.

First up, I'll say I'm really not bothered about pixel density on a desktop machine. I love Retina on my laptop, but I never notice it's not there on my iMac - it's too far away from my face.

39" lets you do the wonderful thing I do with my secondary monitor right now - push secondary applications off to the side.

I imagine what I'd do with this amount of space is have my text editor and a browser window roughly in the middle, and have terminal, Git, chat, etc peppered all around the outside. Even with a 27" I'm constantly hitting the sides right now. My main monitor can't do more than text editor + browser effectively.

You get loads more productivity from additional space, I think for two reasons: less app switching, and being able to see EVERYTHING you're working on. Like taking over a fresh desk when you need to knuckle down on a task. In action films, when it gets serious, they go to a clean desk and unroll a giant map. Having a huge screen is the same thing.

I imagine in a few years programmers and geek types will have, maybe, a 60" curved display that takes up most of the desk.

I haven't tried the 28" monitor because it suffers from the 30hz problem as well, so instead I got the 24" Ultrasharp (~$200 more on amazon) and it's amazing. It supports DisplayPort 1.2 so it can do 60hz. It supports HDMI as well, but not the newer version so you are limited to 30hz if you want to use HDMI.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HALPPM0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

Question for folks who have 4k resolution on a smaller screen (like 28"). Isn't most text (like text on websites) IMPOSSIBLY SMALL to read? My laptop has 1080p res and is 15 inches, and my goodness I can't read anything without Ctrl +'ing in Chrome until things are at least scaled at 125% (I generally use the web at 150% though). 15 * 4 = 60... (as 1080p * 4 ~= 4k), that means I'd need easily 80+ inch screen to be using 4k screens. How in the heck would you deal with things with 4k on a 28" screen?

I actually run mine at 1920 x 1080 @ 2x so that everything is super crisp. I have a retina macbook and it was just painful looking at my other monitors.

But now you have less content on screen than a 27" monitor.

Wouldn't a 1920 x 1080 display of the same size be more suitable then?

He can still individually address all the pixels, but targets each "pixel" to be 4 physical pixels. If the software can deal with that, like web browsers can, then you get twice as much clarity. (Try turning Chrome up to 200% default zoom. You'll notice that most websites ship assets that individually address every pixel in this new configuration. Things are the same physical size as they would be on a panel with half the resolution, but with twice the clarity. It's quite nice, even for programming.)

You don't need to increase the screen size, but the font size/dpi setting.

I suspect that's probably the sweet spot for me, as well. I'm on 24" at the moment...it's an awful ViewSonic 1080P thing. I'm hesitant to buy another cheap monitor (it replaced a much more expensive Dell which got broken from falling while driving in my motorhome)...so this is probably more my style. I have limited table real estate (alongside my quite large audio monitors), and 39" would probably not even fit, even if I did want a monitor that big.

I'm liking 32" as a monitor size. I think 35" would be fine. 30" feels too small now, though.

Don't know if you noticed but the pictures from the articles are for standing desks. You naturally are a bit further back from screens when standing.

There was a comment in the article about tiling window managers and Windows. I used to have to use Windows for work, and I missed my tiling window manager. As it turns out, bug.n[0] is a pretty decent TWM for Windows. I was using Windows XP, so I'm not sure of how well it works on newer versions.

[0] https://code.google.com/p/bugn/

Fences [1]. And while we're at it, also recommend DisplayFusion [2]. It allows you to replicate toolbars across multiple monitors, plus a bunch of other customizations.

[1] http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/ [2] https://www.displayfusion.com/

Some notes on driving the Seiki 4K with a 1st generation MacBook Pro Retina.

50” is too big for desktop, better with multiple monitors that surround you. 39” is ok, but scaling has been an issue: text is sharp at 4K and 1080p. But, non power of two scaling looks really blurry. At 4K, text is too small, and at 1080p, text is a bit large. When compared to retina, fonts look uneven, so I wind up coding on the MBP and use the 4K for Skype, email, etc.

Getting full 4K native between OSX and Seiki required some fiddling with SwitchResX. This was back in January and perhaps the drivers have been improved? Was underwhelmed until I got full 4K going. And then: Wow! Breathtaking! Too bad my first generation Mac Book Pro retina can only drive the 4K at 15hz, newer model MBP should work at 30hz.

With SwitchResX, I can drive the Seiki at 1080p60 and 1080p50, which is useful for previewing visual music pieces at different refresh rates. So, am generally pleased with the Seiki for working with media, though I haven’t done much work with gradients and skin tones. MMV.

I just moved continents again (about a month ago) and naturally brought my desktop... sans screen. I spent a day in a large Chinese computer market and finally settled on the 27" Philips 274E (~US$290) for its thin black low-gloss bevel and perceived clarity. I do a lot of work with photos, and it doesn't disappoint at 1920x1080. Even 27" is too big for me... Amazon says the Seikis are 39"... not something I'd enjoy.

Having tried both, I also see multi-screen setups at superfluous, though useful in horrible office environments for removing distractions (people moving in the background, random cheap ceiling light glare, etc... anyone else think the window glare in the article image must be horrible?) Instead of multiple screens, I use compiz-fusion (though this seemed to be dying at last check) to spin my screen between eight separate desktop spaces ctrl+alt+left/right. I also concur with other posters that full screen terminals for meditative focus are ideal. Thankfully I just hit a single extra function button I mapped on the keyboard to spin one up, alt+enter for full screen, ctrl+plus/minus to scale text as my eyesight/subject demand at the time. Not having to use the mouse is nice. I use a wacom tablet which travels everywhere with me for 90% of my mousing tasks as I've found it to reduce finger and wrist strain from clicking.

I think the writer maybe mistaking frame rate(screen refresh rate in hz) for latency (time between graphics card outputting and screen displaying in ms) these are very different. Computer monitors have a low latency and tv's usually have a high latency (some have a game mode which turns off some image processing to get back some precious reaction time) our eyes and brains are fooled for motion at as low as 24 hz (film motion pictures)

If there is motion blur, yes, your brain sees motion with 24 fields per second. Without motion blur, not so much. Try gaming at 24fps and then at 60fps. You will notice the difference.

I've never seen 120fps, so I can't tell you if that helps. But if you're playing back 24fps source material (movies) and 30/60fps source material (TV), then you need 120Hz refresh at a minimum, just to be able to display each frame for the correct amount of time.

Motion blur is an artifact caused by fast motion recoreded with a slow shutter speed on camera equipment or a full screen shader effect found in modern games. A monitor or tv will not be the cause of motion blur. Whilst your correct that there is a perceiveable difference between 30 and 60 hz whilst gaming it would be negligible and the most likely cause of the "this isn't right" feeling due to latency.

TVs can cause motion blur when they are doing cross frame interpolation to "smooth" the image which many high refresh rate TVs do now a days.

(edit) averaging -> interpolation

That's what I'm saying. When you watch a movie, each field (frame) is blurred. When you move your mouse, there is no motion blur on the pointer, so you need more frames per second to convince your brain that you're not looking at a very fast slideshow.

Personally I find too much vertical screen size to be taxing. This actually surprised me at first. I was using 2x24" for some time, and bemoaned the shift from 16x10 to 16x9, since I found the vertical size extremely useful for common tasks like reading documents. I briefly upgrading to three 30" (U3014), but found they were just too tall. To be comfortable I had to have them far enough away that they weren't particularly comfortable even at 1.25x scaling, so I was essentially wasting the extra space. I "downgraded" to 3x27" (BenQ BL2710 - fantastic monitor) and love them. The horizontal real estate is great, since I can angle the side monitors to still be relatively close, and can keep the primary workspace on the main screen. I certainly wouldn't be against 4k for added clarity/sharpness, but I can't see preferring a single 4k display, of any size or quality, to three 27".

The solution is to move the monitor farther away and adjust the scaling accordingly.

Yes, but then what's the point of having the larger monitor?

4k at 27" seems to be the sweet spot for people who aren't blind. In addition, instead of window managers get 2 or 3 smaller high resolution screens. Multi monitor is the easiest producitivity boost for programmers.

At my company everyone gets 2 monitors. We started with 19" in 2006. Moved to 24" after a fire and insurance replacement and then have upgraded to 27" primaries as sales and new machines were ordered.

After 7 years of multi monitor usage with a team of 12 people I can safely say that bigger is not always better. More desktops to work with are a boost. Pixel density is nice, but the OS by default handles multi monitor much better than any window manager and you can do things like one horizontal and one vertical.

> In addition, instead of window managers get 2 or 3 smaller high resolution screens.

Disclaimer: I haven't used a 4k display.) It seems to me that unless you have a decent window manager, working on a 4k display will bring it's own set of (small) productivity hurdles. For example, Windows 7's DWM without any additional software works Well Enough on two/three smaller monitors, but how usable is it at 4k resolutions? Do you have to spend tons of time dragging windows around?

We had one of these in the office, and I hate to say this, but it was TOO big. Everyone who used it developed eye pain after a few hours - it's taxing to have that many bright pixels glaring at you all day. We ended up sticking with thunderbolt displays for everyone.

What would be a good upgrade path for my 2x 24 ? Id like to get more realestate instead of just more crispness though, so i am thinking about 2x 32 inch to run at native res. Or maybe just go with 2x 27" 2560x in the meantime until prices and technology catch up.

There are 28" 4K Samsung displays on eBay if you are willing to wait for delivery from South Korea.

Works out around 600 GBP with VAT. So around $750 for US customers.

Just spent way too long a time drooling over that Dell 31.5 inch 4K monitor!

Get the Asus one. The Dell supposedly has many very major problems.

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