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Hi - I'm buying a new monitor and will probably go 27". It will be in my home and I use it for office work and general browsing, etc. I do some photography/editing and that's reason why I'm looking at a higher spec monitor. I don't think that I will need a 4K monitor and am considering 2K instead (like Dell U2717D).
4K seems to be all the rage and I'm just wondering if I'm missing or not considering something that might be important. I've heard of 4K having some issues with scaling or being too small with text, and so forth. Much of my work will be text, spreadsheets, etc. so I'm concerned about that. I'm sure I'd be thinking differently if I were a designer or I spent most of my time working with photos, but that's a small part (and hobby).
What am I not considering? Is there some major advantage to 4K that I'm not considering?
Thanks for any input.
PS. I don't game (on PC) and I don't watch movies on my monitor.
For video editing I have both a high end dell 4K and BENQ sw2700 pt.
You can calibrate both directly stored into the monitor (Hardware LUT) .This would be a prerequisite for me.
4K monitors are very flexible but generally have to be scaled 125% to be able to see text/icons when working. But at the same time you have a hell of a lot of space.
From what you say I would put the extra money into a higher quality 2560x1440 like the mentioned benq sw2700 pt.
For 4K I would generally be looking 32" and above.
Get a matte one too.
Photo editing for print or web (or both)?
A wide gamut monitor may be better for colour matching to print, though in wide mode it may make normal desktop applications, browser etc look over saturated.
If web, everyone in the world is still on sRGB (and badly calibrated monitors) and all OSes are aimed at sRGB. There's theoretically less benefit in wide gamut then, though you can shoot Adobe RGB etc, edit on a wide gamut monitor and use tools to approximate what it would look like in sRGB on the web. Just be prepared to be disappointed compared to what you shot and edited. On an sRGB monitor you can still shoot Adobe RGB etc and it will approximate the colours that aren't there. When converting to sRGB for web it still looks disappointing, so maybe it doesn't really matter. The wide monitor at least is more accurate to the source. If the source is sRGB, then there's no benefit really.
It would also depend on what you shoot. Predominately colours that aren't going to exceed the sRGB range then it's less relevant also.
Eizo CG class with built in calibration or CS class if the budget will not stretch to a CG. Size and dot pitch depends on what you mean by ‘editing’ though, for retouching the fine dot pitch of a 4K monitor means details viewed at 100% are to small to work on and at 200% you are interpolating the pixel so cannot judge sharpness, if it’s just viewing full screen and colour adjustments then go 4K. However I would go for a better monitor with a wide gamut colour space and panel uniformity than a low spec 4k of the same price.
You are the first person to reply to me, thank you very much. The benq sw2700pt you mentioned above, others also recommend it to me, but I think the screen of 27" is a bit small.
How about the same series of Benq SW320? I have seen a lot of monitors in this article, you can help me refer to it.
I think the benq 320 is a class even above the sw2700pt. (And is 4K)
So you want go far wrong at all.
You could nearly get two sw2700pt's for that though!
But yes a great monitor.