27" 1440p QHD or 32" 4k monitor?

Currently I am using a 23" monitor, Dell U2311H. I am looking a new monitor to replace my current one. Mainly use for

1) Work (office)

2) Photo editing with lightroom (need good colour accuracy)

3) Light Gaming (i can settle with 60hz but why not 144hz)

1 problem with my current monitor is, I cant display all information that i need in Facebook Ad Manager or spreadsheet in one screen. Or when I do side by side, comparison, I need some scrolling.

My nose to monitor is about 2ft.

I make a cupboard for the size of the 32" and 27". 32 inches seem very big for a viewing distance of 2ft and i need some head turning. 27" seem ideal. However, some said you only look at a section of the screen for a time, you might not need to turn your head that often.

Any comment? Am i missing out some advantages of 4k 32" ?

Currently the model that i shortlisted are

Benq -pd3200U - 4k
Benq - pd2710QC - 1440p

Acer Predator XB271HU -1440p 144hz

I used a Nvdia GTX 950, so if i buy a 4k screen, I will need to set the game setting is 1080p.

Thanks

pah8000 said:

Currently I am using a 23" monitor, Dell U2311H. I am looking a new monitor to replace my current one. Mainly use for

1) Work (office)

2) Photo editing with lightroom (need good colour accuracy)

3) Light Gaming (i can settle with 60hz but why not 144hz)

1 problem with my current monitor is, I cant display all information that i need in Facebook Ad Manager or spreadsheet in one screen. Or when I do side by side, comparison, I need some scrolling.

Click to expand...

I can only submit that my Acer 28" 4k monitor is ideal for viewing/editing multiple documents. Naturally, the screen has to be quite close to see all the detail, but it's a dream compared to trying to use dual monitors.

It's not the latest technology, but is good enough for photo work, although we mostly use it for windowed Web, MS-Word, and sometimes MS-Excel, all at the same time.

If you do get a large monitor, look for one that has a readily adjustable pillar stand for adjusting the vertical height. Even better would be an add-on articulated support system, but that would be added expense.

A 27 inch 4k monitor seems optimal to me at normal nose to monitor distances for everything except gaming. WIndows 10 mostly scales ok to 4k, the taskbar and a few older programs excepted, user input is required. If you are stuck on Win 7 I would not go to 4k but 4k could drive a Win 7 user to their senses.

A 27 inch 4k panel is to my eyes, since I have been using one for many years, optimal for normal use at normal nose to monitor distances. You might be surprised at what you have been missing looking at your images at 1080 resolution. If 8k monitors, and the GPUs to support them, become a reality in my lifetime I would get one if I could afford one just for that reason.

Most 4k panels are sRGB, some claim full RGB. This is not simply a case of more is better but I leave that to you if you have not seen such monitors side by side. If wider gamut is your primary concern I would stick with 2k monitors with full Adobe RGB. I have a 4k sRGB and a 1080 wider gamut panel side by side calibrated to the same brightness--I work primarily on the 4k because for me resolution trumps what turn out to be minor gamut differences (turning down the brightness obscures differences in gamut).

Your GPU can drive a 4k screen if it has display port output but seems suboptimal even for 1080 gaming. Low frame rate 1080 gaming scaled up to a 4k panel is not exactly eye candy. That now ancient 950 will not do well with games even at 2k but currently prices for GPUs have come down to near normal, something to consider, but only uber GPUs can drive a 4k monitor for gaming.

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

pah8000 said:

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

Click to expand...

If you're concerned about small text at 4K on a 27" consider trying a 40" 4K monitor, or 4K TV set. A TV does come with more choices and setup complexity, though.

pah8000 said:

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

Click to expand...

Win10 can be scaled to get the text comfortably readable. It usually defaults to 150% for 4k.

Austinian said:

pah8000 said:

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

Click to expand...

If you're concerned about small text at 4K on a 27" consider trying a 40" 4K monitor, or 4K TV set. A TV does come with more choices and setup complexity, though.

Click to expand...

Yes, I have a 50" TV with 4k HDR

WryCuda said:

pah8000 said:

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

Click to expand...

Win10 can be scaled to get the text comfortably readable. It usually defaults to 150% for 4k.

Click to expand...

Is it a big different between 2k and 4k at 27"?

pah8000 said:

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

Click to expand...

I'm using a 14" 4K monitor (Lenovo Yoga 920) right now and text looks glorious. Win 10 scales almost everything just fine. I use 250% scaling.

I'm just setting up a 14" 1080P Win 10 travel laptop and text scaling is gnarlier. I set scaling at 125% and old programs that aren't high DPI aware have really blurry text. (Text blurring with the same programs is barely noticeable on my 14" 4K screen.) The blurry programs are just old Notepad replacements so I'm sure I can find a modern Notepad replacement. (I edit a lot of ASCII config files so I need a small, light, Notepad replacement. Notepad++ is high DPI aware but isn't tiny and light. If you aren't editing config files hundreds of times a day, this is a non-issue.)

I also just installed a 27" 1440P monitor as my secondary monitor on my Win 7 desktop machine (I was told that Win 7 doesn't handle text scaling well so no 4K on that machine.) Text scaled at 100% looks fine. The pitch is a bit finer than on my 24" 1920x1200 NEC PA241W that is my primary monitor, but it isn't a big deal.

I really like 4K on my 14" monitor. With Win 10 you can have 4K on any size monitor you like.

Wayne

pah8000 said:

WryCuda said:

pah8000 said:

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

Click to expand...

Win10 can be scaled to get the text comfortably readable. It usually defaults to 150% for 4k.

Click to expand...

Is it a big different between 2k and 4k at 27"?

Click to expand...

Well, I only have experience with 1920x1080 (2k) at 24" vs. 3840x2160 (4k) at 28" and it's like chalk and cheese. Mind you, the 2k screen is mainly used for running the server or word processing and it's perfectly satisfactory for that. My wife uses the other computer with 4k screen for graphics or for on-line marking of student work. For the latter job, the large, hi res. screen is invaluable...

Typically, there will be a web site to access student assignments/exams, an MS-word document with a marking scheme, another MS-Word document for the actual marking, and, in the case of exams, another window for an Excel spreadsheet to enter the results.

The same screen is also very handy for researching old documents on-line. There's an on-line facility called "Trove" which is viewed as several windows (Primary scanned document, OCR version, Destination MS-Word document). Again, the large monitor is the right tool for the job, particularly when the OCR requires confirmation by closely examining the sometimes fuzzy scanned text.

These big 4k screens don't have the impressive close-up appearance of iPad Retina displays, since they have about half the pixel pitch, but at the normal viewing distance, the images seem to be "etched" onto the screen. Even to my old eyes, 2k screens have visible pixels and I certainly wouldn't want run 2k at 28".

Trove

WryCuda said:

pah8000 said:

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

Click to expand...

Win10 can be scaled to get the text comfortably readable. It usually defaults to 150% for 4k.

Click to expand...

So, I should go with a 27" 4k monitor?

If i scale, does that mean I will get something like 27" 1440p?

I don't really understand the term scaling.

pah8000 said:

WryCuda said:

pah8000 said:

What about the text? I heard the text will be small for 4k in 27" due to dpi. Some say best go with 32" at least for a 4k resolution. I main use with be for office and spreadsheet. Occasional will use it to edit photo. So, colour have to accurate. Not necessarily have wide gamut.

I used Windows 10

Click to expand...

Win10 can be scaled to get the text comfortably readable. It usually defaults to 150% for 4k.

Click to expand...

So, I should go with a 27" 4k monitor?

If i scale, does that mean I will get something like 27" 1440p?

I don't really understand the term scaling.

Click to expand...

My 28" was only US$400, so not a major outlay. The demo display in the shop looked fine to me and I have been delighted with the performance over the last 12 months.

Here's the display dialogue for the 14" notebook computer that I'm using at the moment; it's only 1366x768, so the recommended scaling is 100%. For larger screens, the recommendation is usually 150%, and I find that's OK.

I believe that this should be self-explanatory, and there are some more options under "Advanced scaling settings".

Thanks.

Isn't it when I scale 4K to 150% , it is equivalent to 100% 1440p?

If so, what is the benefit of a 4k monitor?

pah8000 said:

Thanks.

Isn't it when I scale 4K to 150% , it is equivalent to 100% 1440p?

If so, what is the benefit of a 4k monitor?

Click to expand...

You are correct, scaling the 4k monitor at 150% will make the textual elements the same size as those on the 1440p, since 3840x2160 and 2560x1440 differ by a factor of 1.5x in both dimensions.

The difference will be that the elements are rendered using a greater number of pixels on the 4k screen, so should look a bit smoother. As I mentioned before, the more pixels the better when you are looking for high detail in 3 or 4 windowed applications that are running simultaneously.

Both options are OK, so make your choice.

My preference for the 4k screen is because 3840x2160 is a forthcoming TV standard, also that resolution most closely matches the real-world capabilities of many camera/lens combinations (roughly 8MPixels).

Guys that are heavily into video prefer even greater numbers of pixels so that they can run 4k video in a windowed application. Some Apple monitors are good enough for this (if your pockets are deep enough).

I have a 40" UHD TV (3840x2160) that I sometimes use for displaying my images (cropped to 16:9 aspect ratio), and they definitely look better than when displayed on the 50" HD TV (1920x1080) in another part of the house, independent of the viewing distance.

Purely FYI, only a few Australian TV broadcast channels are HD, but when viewed on the 4k screen, they look better than you would expect, because of the very good "upscaling" firmware of the TV.

WryCuda said:

pah8000 said:

Thanks.

Isn't it when I scale 4K to 150% , it is equivalent to 100% 1440p?

If so, what is the benefit of a 4k monitor?

Click to expand...

You are correct, scaling the 4k monitor at 150% will make the textual elements the same size as those on the 1440p, since 3840x2160 and 2560x1440 differ by a factor of 1.5x in both dimensions.

The difference will be that the elements are rendered using a greater number of pixels on the 4k screen, so should look a bit smoother. As I mentioned before, the more pixels the better when you are looking for high detail in 3 or 4 windowed applications that are running simultaneously.

Both options are OK, so make your choice.

My preference for the 4k screen is because 3840x2160 is a forthcoming TV standard, also that resolution most closely matches the real-world capabilities of many camera/lens combinations (roughly 8MPixels).

Guys that are heavily into video prefer even greater numbers of pixels so that they can run 4k video in a windowed application. Some Apple monitors are good enough for this (if your pockets are deep enough).

I have a 40" UHD TV (3840x2160) that I sometimes use for displaying my images (cropped to 16:9 aspect ratio), and they definitely look better than when displayed on the 50" HD TV (1920x1080) in another part of the house, independent of the viewing distance.

Purely FYI, only a few Australian TV broadcast channels are HD, but when viewed on the 4k screen, they look better than you would expect, because of the very good "upscaling" firmware of the TV.

Click to expand...

Ok, I am getting a Acer Predator XB321HK, only about $634 in an online store in my country.

pah8000 said:

Ok, I am getting a Acer Predator XB321HK, only about $634 in an online store in my country.

Click to expand...

Yes, it gets good reviews. Let us know how it works out for you.

I have been impressed with the quality of Acer gear. In addition to my 28" monitor, I have a couple of Win10 notebooks that have run flawlessly for the past 12 months or so. Past experience with Acer has also been good.

BTW, "Acer" is the botanical name for the maple. I guess the implication is that it's a solid product that might sell well in Northern America. A maple tree could also be mistaken for a large "Apple" tree. :-D

WryCuda said:

pah8000 said:

Ok, I am getting a Acer Predator XB321HK, only about $634 in an online store in my country.

Click to expand...

Yes, it gets good reviews. Let us know how it works out for you.

I have been impressed with the quality of Acer gear. In addition to my 28" monitor, I have a couple of Win10 notebooks that have run flawlessly for the past 12 months or so. Past experience with Acer has also been good.

BTW, "Acer" is the botanical name for the maple. I guess the implication is that it's a solid product that might sell well in Northern America. A maple tree could also be mistaken for a large "Apple" tree. :-D

Click to expand...

It is really good screen. Worst all the money.

At first i think it will be too big but after i get used to it. I love this size.