The monitor market is sorely lacking

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One of my monitors has become noticeably discoloured after 10 years of constant use, so I've been keeping my eye out for a new one. However nearly every new monitor I see is 27", and a lot of the rarer 32" ones are only 1440p. To try to quantify my frustration with this, I gathered some basic statistics about the size and resolution of monitors available to buy on OCUK. This isn't a criticism of them, or any retailer, as they can only sell what is available. The fault lies with manufacturers who are unwilling to take the risk of selling anything outside their established safe zone of profit.

I played around a bit trying to visualize the problem, and came up with this chart:

monitors.svg


I only included 16:9 monitors otherwise there would be too many variables to show. There are loads of 27" monitors in all three common resolutions, especially 1440p. There are at least a few other of the smaller sizes up to 32" in various resolutions, and a sprinkling of 4k monitors in the larger sizes above 42", but there are two gaping holes: Medium size monitors (the pink area between 32-42") don't exist at all, and neither are there any large high PPI monitors (the yellow area, which would require a resolution above 4k). Something in the orange area where those two overlap would be nice, but I doubt I'll see a monitor like that any time soon.

And that's only looking at size and resoltion. You can bet that anything that might appear in those gaps would be lacking something else important somewhow, or be horrendously overpriced. Anyone else struggle to find an ideal monitor?
 
I'd argue that once you're over a certain size/price point you're better off going with a TV.

42" is OLED territory.

55" + you can get some very decent FALD TV's with good HDR and high refresh/low latency game modes for better prices than many of the mid-high end monitors out there.

I also feel that the best "monitor" prices right now outside of the entry level are utrawide OLED's, you can pick up a 34" for a little over £500 right now from the likes of AoC and Phillips.
 
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Monitors are improving year on year now at a decent rate, you do pay more for the privilege of Display Port inputs + Higher refresh rate panel.

Like TV's the best monitor is always the next one, with the incremental performance improvements adding up, year on year.

HDR Brightness/impact still not good enough on 95% of monitors for my liking, so I often end up playing in SDR (depending on the implementation and the game)
 
I think a 26" 16:10 2304x1440 might be a slight improvement.
16:10 monitors are also in short supply. In smaller sizes especially, the extra vertical space is useful. There was a time some years ago when there were multiple aspect ratios available, but then everything collapsed down to 16:9, with just a few ultrawides being added recently, and nothing taller.

I'd argue that once you're over a certain size/price point you're better off going with a TV.
It's annoying that TVs can be better and cheaper than monitors. I wouldn't be against buying one to use as a monitor, but they have the same gaps in size/resolution as in my chart.
 
16:10 monitors are also in short supply. In smaller sizes especially, the extra vertical space is useful. There was a time some years ago when there were multiple aspect ratios available, but then everything collapsed down to 16:9, with just a few ultrawides being added recently, and nothing taller.
Yeah I was a clinger to 16:10 back in the day at 1920x1200. But 1440p height at 16:9 is perfectly fine. And I realised in Blizzard games I was at a disadvantage, they stretch the height and cut off the sides so you have reduced visibility range vs 16:9.
 
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1920x1200 was king back in the day. I don't think 16:10 really has a place with 1440 and 2160 being widely available nowadays. There was that weird period where 1440 was a premium resolution and 16:10 had died off though. That period was poor for monitors.

In the present, I use a 27" 1440 and it works great. I'd go 4k if I could have 120+ FPS consistently but that's hard to achieve without insane GPU cost.
 
Not sure I really agree with this, the way I see things right now I think we are in a better place for monitors than we have ever been, OLED tech is getting more affordable and better, it is available in more sizes and resolutions than ever before, 5K monitors do exist, mini LED backlit monitors are a thing, decent IPS panels are cheaper than ever, ultrawide and super ultrawide has more choice than ever added to the fact that I think most people, me included would say that 32" IS quite a big monitor and 4K is high PPI ...unless it's on something TV sized.

I have a few monitors myself, a 32" 4K gen 3 OLED, 34" ultrawide 1440P gen 1 OLED, a 28" 4K IPS and a 32" 1440P IPS. In terms of how tall the monitor is on my 80cm deep desk, I feel 32" is the limit for me, any more and it just dominates too much of my vision with a wall of light, I have tried it with my 55" LG C1 OLED TV to see what that's like and it's not for me.
 
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What I want to know is what happened to 38” ultrawide sizes. I picked one up b-grade a little bit ago because you just can’t buy a decent one new and I kept thinking 34” is just missing a bit of height!
 
I'm still waiting for a 24" 1440p/4k OLED monitor. :D I have multiple 24" 1440p TN and IPS monitors but the TN has crap colours and the glow on the IPS bothers me a lot. 27" is too big I sit in close for mouse/kb games.

Apparently Samsung has a 24" 1440p OLED coming out Q1 next year so hopefully that works out well.
 
I moved to a 32” 6k monitor recently and it feels kinda ideal from a size and res point of view.

Surprised how well my 5080 can drive it at native res, and there’s always the option of integer scaling at 1440p-ish.
 
I moved to a 32” 6k monitor recently and it feels kinda ideal from a size and res point of view.

Surprised how well my 5080 can drive it at native res, and there’s always the option of integer scaling at 1440p-ish.
How does it feel when looking at things on it? I didn't realise 32" 6k was available.
 
How does it feel when looking at things on it? I didn't realise 32" 6k was available.
Well, with my middle-aged eyes it's pin-sharp, can't see individual pixels at all, like a modern smartphone.

There are a few 6k monitors that came out this year, an Asus and a BenQ, and an LG one coming soon I think.

I have the Kuycon G32P, which uses an LG panel on a glossy display (it's basically a chinese knockoff of the Apple Studio Display XDR, and rather good).
 
Kuycon G32P
I just spotted the LG UltraFine 32U990A today, which I presume is based on the same panel. Though it's a bit smaller than what I've been hoping to find, it's interesting because 6144 x 3456 @ 200% scaling is exactly the same effective resolution as 2840 x 2160 @ 125%, so I should be able to move things between monitors without weird changes in size. I'm not sure if I want to get another 60Hz monitor though, as a higher refresh rate is much nicer even for normal things like web browsing.
 
I moved to a 32” 6k monitor recently and it feels kinda ideal from a size and res point of view.

Surprised how well my 5080 can drive it at native res, and there’s always the option of integer scaling at 1440p-ish.
Which monitor is this? And does windows do scaling like macos?
 
Which monitor is this? And does windows do scaling like macos?
There's a few different 6k monitors around. I have the Kuycon G32p.

Scaling on windows is better than MacOS, as you get more control. I adjust the scaling on windows between 200% and 125% depending on how much real estate I need. 125% gives a huge amount of space for stuff like video editing, although I go to 150/175% for coding.
 
There's a few different 6k monitors around. I have the Kuycon G32p.

Scaling on windows is better than MacOS, as you get more control. I adjust the scaling on windows between 200% and 125% depending on how much real estate I need. 125% gives a huge amount of space for stuff like video editing, although I go to 150/175% for coding.
Nice, I didn't even realise the market for monitoes changing like this. I just need a monitor that can do it all (game, office work ect).
 
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