27" 1440p monitor choice for photo editing

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Kei

Kei

Kei

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Presently running a very old Dell 2408WFP A00 which is still working ok all bar the vertical lines when cold due to the panel tab connectors. My biggest bugbear with the dell has been the input lag. My primary usages are photo editing and non competitive gaming.

My requirements:
27" 2560x1440 only. No 1080 or 4K. (former is too low and the latter too high)
IPS or VA panels only, No TN
Response time around 8-10ms G2G and as low an input lag as possible (signal processing time)
60Hz is fine
Freesync would be nice but looks like it's uncommon
Wide gamut would also be nice but it seems to be extremely expensive
No more than £500

So far I've looked at the following:
Dell U2715H - Seems good, no freesync
Dell U2717H - Seems to be worse than the 2715 according to TFT central, still no freesync
Dell U2716D - Wide gamut version of 2715, no reviews cover input lag
Asus MG279Q - Too good to be true, QC issues seem to be a problem
Eizo EV2750 - Too expensive for what it is though I expect the quality ought to be very good
Viewsonic VP2768 - Again quite expensive for what it is, otherwise reviewed well
 
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MG279Q is pretty decent if you manage to find one without dead pixels and horrible BLB, so that's the one I would go for (just buy it from a store that accepts returns because chances are that you are going to be returning a few)!
 
Your title says you want a monitor for photo editing but your specifications are for a gaming monitor. If you really want a 24" monitor for photo editing, take a look at the 24" 4K Dell P2415Q.
 
My primary usage is photo editing, gaming is the secondary use. My preference is essentially to have something with the image quality that the dell has but with better motion handling. I've survived 9 years using the dell for gaming without any big problems. I have no need for super high refresh rates and definitely don't want 4K. I realise that not wanting 4k sounds odd, but, a lot of my software does not work with display scaling and having tried 4K on a 55" lcd OLED, I find the interface and text so small, I can barely use it.

I was given an old HP LP2475W last week which was broken. I've finally managed to repair it this morning so I'm going to run it for some time to see how it compares to the dell. Tft central show it as having superior responsiveness and less than half the input lag vs the dell. If I find that it is good enough, I'll know that any modern IPS display with similar or better motion handling should easily be good enough.
 
Repair on the hp didn't last long, needs a new conductive rubber block on one of the cathode tubes. It did however show a moderate improvement over the 2408 in motion performance. Seems that these newer IPS displays for the most part are better than the hp so almost any of them would probably be fine for my uses. I have put all of the test data together for the models with reviews on tft central and based on the stats, I'm leaning towards the dell u2715H. It has the lowest input lag and average deltaE on a default setting and the response times are about the average for IPS. There is the Viewsonic VP2768 which does seem to be slightly superior to the u2715H but it costs an extra £120
 
Although in reviews Dell can seem an attractive choice their unreliability makes them a poor choice.

Might I ask why you don't want a 4K monitor? What will run higher will run lower and when one day you do want to run 4K then you won't be able to when you want to.

This might meet your specs https://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/272P7VPTKEB_01/brilliance-4k-uhd-lcd-monitor-with-powersensor

Trouble is that it's as expensive as the 31.5" version so if you have the space then why not take the bigger one?

VA panel with 12 bit colour (10 bit + FRC) energy saving 5 year warranty what's not to like (apart from the price)
 
Primary reason for not wanting 4K is that I find it's too high a resolution, everything is too small without display scaling. Display scaling doesn't work with a lot of the applications that I still use. (avid and creative suite) My GTX780 3GB doesn't really have the power to play a lot of games at that resolution either. Sadly, a 30" screen is definitely not going to fit on my desk, 27" would be a tight squeeze.

I've never had any reliability issues with my older dell panels. (2408 and a 2407)
Psycho Sonny said:
VA panels are slower than IPS panels.
Click to expand...
That partly explains why my current 2408 (S-PVA) feels slow compared with the HP and iiyama IPS panels.
 
Well you could always buy the Dell U2715H 27" QHD panel for around £375 might suit your needs

VA is a panel favoured for photography because of the way it produces better blacks than any other technology (currently used on monitors). It's helped along by firmware which can (according to philips get the lag down to 5mS but at the cost of image quality.

I take pixel density a little like a large jug - what will hold more will hold less, so I take the view that it's future proofing, and you don't have to run it at full res until you need it.
 
wrenaudrey said:
That is literally it. The UP is higher cause it's "Professional" grade.
If you want the lowest input lag you're really looking at the 'gaming' monitors. Dell office/non-gaming monitors tend to have higher input lag than the 'gaming' monitors.
Look on tftcentral, im sure they have a table somewhere with input lags of monitors.
Click to expand...
Rather than hijacking the other thread, I'll put this in here.
Looking at tftcentral reviews is what I've done. Sadly they don't have any reviews for some of the panels I've been looking at. Essentially, I'm not bothered by the slower ips response times of 8-12ms, it's the signal processing lag that bothers me. I quite like the idea of the dell U2416D as it's a wide gamut display like the 2408WFP but there is nothing available on the input lag.

I've now properly repaired the HP LP2475w and had it running in tandem with the 2408 for a while and it definitely shows a marked improvement.
 
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TBH, I thought VA were pretty similar to IPS in terms of response time but VA had superior black levels at the expense of mild colour shifts at more oblique viewing angles.
 
As with the OP, I've also had a history of Dell LCDs - I used to have a Ultrasharp 2405WFP until it failed shortly after warranty expiry. I am currently making-do with a S2094W (the vertical colour shift is awful), but hope to find a monitor that is good for photo editing; I'd like decent Freesync support and I'm not in a rush.

The Asus MG279Q looks good on paper, but the quality issues are a concern. I wonder how the Acer XF270HUA stacks up?
Probably wishful thinking, but I wonder if BenQ might eventually have something akin to their SW2700PT but with Freesync 2.
 
Wide gamut is more than nice I have found, I have both a Dell U2515H and UP2516D and the D makes the H seem like a TN panel even though they are both IPS and makes it brilliant for a bit of RAW file editing in Lightroom.
 
The UP2716D looks interesting, the KVM feature is nice to have (although I already have one - one that's integrated into the screen makes for fewer button presses!) - for the price though I'd want Freesync.
 
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