[bertwert]

You're sure about that...Are you willing to put your 27" 4K monitor at the same distance as your laptop screen?

Sorry to be such a nag, but until recently I made my living at a computer where elements such as screen real estate, screen distance, and scaling were critical to being able to finish a shift with minimum stress to eyes, neck, and torso. (FWIW, I had a variable height desk and worked some days standing up.) That has made me picky about my personal choices and what I might suggest for others.


Steve

(...had three 27" 1080p side-by-side too...CentOS...)

Not a nag at all Steve, definitely important to think about!

I recently had killer back pain (online classes, so I'm spending over 8 hours a day at the computer), and switched to a standing/variable desk. Proper heights and distances for everything - makes a world of difference. Currently my laptop display is about 26" away - which seems pretty reasonable distance for a larger monitor as well.

[gatorguy]

Good to hear. All my workspace stuff I've played with zooms in nicely enough, experimenting right now...



Aha. It's pretty easy to magnify specific applications too without system wide scaling too

Yeah I know but why stuff money in savings when you can buy another photography tool?

[stevebrot]

And most folk who post sensibly to the web wont post much larger anyway.

You bring up an interesting consideration, that being that smaller images are less likely to be pirated. Nothing I post to Flickr is displayed or available to view at greater than 1600 pixels on the long side (probably too generous) and nothing I share here is greater than 1024 horizontal or 800 vertical.

Steve

(...yes, I have seen my stuff featured other than where I intended...)

[gatorguy]

You bring up an interesting consideration, that being that smaller images are less likely to be pirated. Nothing I post to Flickr is displayed or available to view at greater than 1600 pixels on the long side (probably too generous) and nothing I share here is greater than 1024 horizontal or 800 vertical.

Steve

(...yes, I have seen my stuff featured other than where I intended...)

I'm lucky enough not to be that good. My stuff stays where I put it.

[Class A]

In addition to making sure that the monitor has an IPS panel, I'd make sure that it offers a hardware LUT (otherwise calibration/profiling will occur via the graphics card, resulting in a loss of tonal values), and covers colour gamuts of interest to you. Some monitors do not even full cover the rather small sRGB space.

[bertwert]

In addition to making sure that the monitor has an IPS panel, I'd make sure that it offers a hardware LUT (otherwise calibration/profiling will occur via the graphics card, resulting in a loss of tonal values), and covers colour gamuts of interest to you. Some monitors do not even full cover the rather small sRGB space.

Indeed points to think about.



Thanks everyone for your input, I think I'm going to go ahead and give it a go.

[JPT]

Thanks for all the insights about monitors. I'm going to go ahead and order one at the weekend.

To be honest, I can hardly fail to be impressed when I do my big upgrade next week. I'll be going from a 2010 MacBook Air to a M1 MacBook Pro and from no monitor at all to a mid-range 24" one. It's long overdue. I'm totally astonished how long I was able to keep that Air without feeling the need to upgrade. When I bought it, I considered it a stop-gap computer until I could afford a better one, but I just kept on using it. Obviously, my need for power is quite low compared to some others.

When I form an opinion of the monitor, I'll add to this thread for the sake of completeness.

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Last edited by JPT; 01-07-2021 at 07:11 PM.

[bertwert]

Well, I picked up the monitor yesterday. My first impression was the huge screen size with tons of space. Played with a little bit of photo editing, but mainly school work so far, and I can safely say, I can now have multiple projects open and visible at once, and still be just as productive (ie, procrastinating and doing something else!).
Overall, I really like it so far.

[JPT]

I took delivery of the Asus PA248QV the other day. It's a 24.1 inch model with 1920x1200 resolution. Using it with a late 2020 M1 MacBook Pro 13.

I was thinking about an Eizo business oriented version, but when I started to look at other brands I realized I could get a more creator oriented model from other makers. So I wasn't really coming from the photographer perspective when buying. It was more a secondary concern.

The monitor's design is quite clean (squared-off, not swooping curves) with easy height adjustment. It was nice that both DisplayPort and HDMI cables were included, along with the power cable and a UBS cable to connect the built-in USB hub.

So far I have been impressed with the colors out of the box. I'm not going to go to the trouble of calibration, but I think it is more accurate than other monitors I've used. When doing work, I'm making materials according to the corporate color palette. The colors are just as they appear in professionally printed brochures, So I think it's reasonably accurate. When I look at my photos, they look vivid without being exaggerated. I'm not sure what makes this the case, but I can see more clearly whether they were under or over exposed. The screen has a huge number of profiles and adjustments. The one I'm most glad of for work is the 5-level blue light adjustment.

The pixel density is not so high, so this is not a monitor that gives you a ton of space on the screen. For most applications you still only have space for one window on screen. I haven't noticed problems with text clarity mentioned by the previous poster. Perhaps my Mac's font aliasing is just done differently, but the Windows PC I use for work was fine too.

I wasn't expecting good sound out of the speakers, which is just as well, because it's awful. That's what headphones are for.

[normhead]

Well, I picked up the monitor yesterday. My first impression was the huge screen size with tons of space. Played with a little bit of photo editing, but mainly school work so far, and I can safely say, I can now have multiple projects open and visible at once, and still be just as productive (ie, procrastinating and doing something else!).
Overall, I really like it so far.

It's great for real estate, but sometimes you lose the mouse cursor...

[bertwert]

It's great for real estate, but sometimes you lose the mouse cursor...

Haha, indeed, and my cursor auto hides after 5 seconds, so doubly so!