£500 Monitor Budget Dilema

myqee

myqee

myqee

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22 Sep 2007
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With a £500 budget limit, which of these monitor setups is better for a productivity and gaming rig:

1) A super-wide 21:9 1440p 34" monitor, or....

2) Two seperate screens about 24" to 27", one higher res (1440p / 4K?) display for productivity and the other a 1080p fast display for gaming.

The budget I have for the rest of he PC is £1,000 so maybe more suited to 1080p for reasonable fps gaming hence the second display above being 1080p. I use Photoshop & illustrator so a high res needs to be present in some way, but I also don't want the setup to get in the way of gaming.

Any sugestions on how to handle this dilema would be great! Thanks! :)
 
I hate to be "that guy" but I would consider £500 the budget for just the Photoshop/Illustrator screen... if you're serious about that, then you need to look at something with good colour accuracy, and that does tend to cost you. As ever, my advice ends up being to buy a Dell ^^;

For best colours, you could consider this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/dell...440-ips-widescreen-led-monitor-mo-089-de.html which has 100% Adobe RGB and the 6ms response seems reasonable for gaming :)

IIRC, the previous year's model https://www.overclockers.co.uk/dell...reen-led-monitor-midnight-grey-mo-080-de.html has lower input latency and makes for a slightly better twitch-gaming screen, but is only sRGB. On the other hand, it's a Dell professional model and is therefore a factory calibrated sRGB, so if you're working for screen only and don't need the wider gamut, it's a very viable option.

Worth double checking the differences twixt the two, but were my current 24" to die, I'd likely replace it with one of the above :)
 
Thanks for the info guys :)

What are your thoughts on the LG 27UD88-W 4K Monitor? It looks like this might be a good monitor for both gaming and productivity. While I use photoshop/illustrator a fair bit, I don't really require a super professional colour accurate monitor for the type of work I do, so a compromise in colour accuracy for a better gaming performance is ok for me. I'm also thinking one monitor for 500 quid is better than trying to squeeze two in for the budget (I can always get a second later I guess).

Thanks again! :)
 
Personally I think 4K at 27" is largely pointless. It's too high res to use without scaling for desktop use (which still doesn't work great in windows) and you'll end up having to use non-native res to game unless you have a top end system.

I'd prefer a 1440P panel.
 
I agree with Minstadave... 4k at 27" is very small pixels, Windows scales badly, and you have to spend a ton of cash on your graphics hardware. I don't even want 4k at 32" let alone 27". Best pixel density imho is between 24" 1200p and 27" 1440p.

But yeah, I think one expensive monitor will work out better than two cheap ones. Easy to add a cheap side-screen for youtube a little down the line if you want one, but definitely put your best money into the monitor you'll have most of your attention on :)
 
Thanks, it makes sense what you're both saying. I think I am just getting pulled in by the lure of having 4K! So really 1440p on one decent screen might be the sweet spot for me.
 
myqee said:
Thanks, it makes sense what you're both saying. I think I am just getting pulled in by the lure of having 4K! So really 1440p on one decent screen might be the sweet spot for me.
Click to expand...

If you've ever seen a 15.6" laptop screen with HD, you've probably thought that it requires zoom-eyes to comfortably use. 27" at 4k is even tinier... Maybe just my 2p, but 4k is oversold. It's not a benefit to an OS and software products designed for 90-100 dpi, and graphics hardware just isn't ready to power 8 megapixels. That and we have enough trouble getting a HD screen without a dead pixel :D
 
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