Yes, so often I ask if the seller can provide a "perfect" display, that is, without any artifacts on the display. This adds 100-200 CNY to the price.
There's a Chinese panel manufacturer called BOE that makes products competitive with some of the lower-end Samsung / LG panels.
I got one 15.6" 2160p external display with a BOE panel that offers 100% sRGB coverage. I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitude laptop display.
Now if anyone can find a source of 55" 4K OLED panels, that would be the one ultimate display. Combine it with a VBO driver board and it becomes better than any smart TVs.
>I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitude laptop display.
And outside of a few occupations that might actually require pixel-perfect colour, what does this matter? Is this like the audiophile world, where people argue about seemingly subjective things that no else cares about?
The customer interprets colours differently than you, the customer sees colours differently than you, and the customer is using a monitor that almost assuredly displays the colours differently than yours. And the world continues to turn.
I don't think the audiophile comparison makes really sense here (and I like to mock audiophiles more than most) simply because display technology still has a long way to go before it reaches the level of audio when it comes to "bang for your buck".
CD quality audio is less than 1 megabit per second per channel, uncompressed. HDR (10 bits per component) 4K60fps 4:2:2 video is around 10Gbit per second of data.
Of course data bandwidth is only a small part of the problem of correctly reproducing an analog signal, but it gives you the orders of magnitude we're dealing with.
I currently use a cheap ASUS 4K display. It's more good enough for coding, but I wouldn't trust it for any sort of graphical work. The viewing angle is pretty bad, so depending on what part of the screen I'm looking at I see colors differently, and some gradients become more or less visible depending on which part of the screen they're on. Contrast is pretty bad, making even some videogame display poorly: depending on the location and time of day contrast seems always too high or too low.
You can buy a good sub $100 pair of earphones and a sub $50 DAAC and they'll be good enough to do 99% of any audiophile work you could ever want to do reliably. If you want to do serious graphics work without having to constantly adjust for your display you'll have to go for something a lot more expensive than an entry-level monitor.
These differences are very clearly noticeable. I upgraded many years ago from a 72% sRGB to a 99% sRGB Dell IPS and everything looked much better. I just got the LG 27GN950 which is 95% DCI P3... I was mainly getting it for the 4k/144 with the P3 as a nice bonus (I already had 4k/60 on the Dell). Looking at the Dell, I was thinking that P3 might be nice to have but it wouldn't really matter much aside from photo editing - the colors on the Dell already looked great.
I just unboxed the new monitor 2 days ago. The richer color was immediately noticeable, and when I looked at some random photos I took with my phone recently I was blown away by just how red and green and yellow/blue things were. Like a completely new realm of color.
It's one of those things that you can't appreciate until you experience it (same going from the original 72% to 99% sRGB).
The Dell was $450 for 4k, 2.5 years ago. The new LG was $800, but you can find 60fps P3 4k monitors for around $500 these days iirc. If you're on Hacker News you probably use your computer a lot. Unless you're running low on cash, upgrading to a great monitor is worth it.
Seconded. I have 2 LG 27GN950-B's on my desk, and love the 27" 4K HDR @ 144Hz experience (at least on Catalina. Big Sur has completely broken DSC and will only do HDR @ 60, non-HDR @ 95).
monitor image quality is quite a bit more objective than what audiophiles look for in high end audio equipment. sRGB defines a specific physical color that ought to be displayed for each RGB sequence. if you can get a very accurate display for <$1000 just by doing a bit of research, why wouldn't you?
A similar thing to audiophile is that better quality doesn't always mean improve QoL for just a consumer (not designer or similar use). Sometimes I think that it's happy if I satisfied with $100 headphones or cheap laptop display quality.
> And outside of a few occupations that might actually require pixel-perfect colour, what does this matter? Is this like the audiophile world, where people argue about seemingly subjective things that no else cares about?
I'm a color blind person and even I can see a color difference between cheap displays that I have at work and an old EIZO one that I bought years ago at home.
I can more accurately diffrentiate between different colors/shades on my EIZO panel.
I enjoy having a high quality display for all kinds of reasons. Better comfort while programming, accurate colour representation while looking at photos, having a good sense of what things might look like for others (accurate colour means you might be the middle ground of your users experiences, inaccurate colour means you can’t be sure at all), and otherwise, if I’m going to spend a lot on something I’ll own for half a decade I would prefer to get something accurate. The price difference isn’t sufficient enough to justify saving a little bit to have a poor colour experience.
> accurate colour means you might be the middle ground of your users experiences, inaccurate colour means you can’t be sure at all
Having a setup with multiple cheap monitors is imho really underrated for design and development. Moving something between screens and seeing clear contrast disappear, or see pleasing color choices turn ugly can be eye opening.
Agreed! Back when I was in music school, they brought in Tony Bonjiovi[0], a well-known record producer at the time. He talked about how the ultimate test of any recording was to copy it to a cassette, take it out to the engineer's Camaro with 1 broken speaker and see how it sounded there. If it sounded good there, it would sound great anywhere else.
There's a Chinese panel manufacturer called BOE that makes products competitive with some of the lower-end Samsung / LG panels.
I got one 15.6" 2160p external display with a BOE panel that offers 100% sRGB coverage. I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitude laptop display.
Now if anyone can find a source of 55" 4K OLED panels, that would be the one ultimate display. Combine it with a VBO driver board and it becomes better than any smart TVs.