In the market for a gaming and work monitor [expert advice needed]

[Chaoss]

So I've had the LG 34UC88 for about a year now, it's a great monitor and being able to run it at 75hz is also great (AMD GPU) however I've started getting back into gaming professionally (FPS games, specifically Quake Champions) and I'm beginning to find the response times on this display to be a drag.

I'm one of those weird people that can pick up if there's an extra 1ms of latency so as you can imagine it's a big problem. Now I'm sure your thinking "get one of the new 240hz e-sports monitors" and I would, except I also use my computer for graphics design and game development for work. Now you can see my problem. I need a display that has next to no motion blur, insane response times, high enough resolution and great colour reproduction. I'd ideally like something a bit bigger than my current display as my eyes aren't all that great, 32" or greater. I'm open to either 21:9 or 16:9 and must be higher than 2560x1440 and have a refresh rate of AT LEAST 90hz. Any recommendation or should I wait?

 

[eddiew]

The annoying answer here is that if you're really serious about both colours and speed, you need two different screens for the two different tasks.

The lowest response times of 1ms are all TN panels, and you just can't have accurate colour reproduction from them. You can get 144Hz IPS screens with ~5ms I think, but not with colour accuracy certification. With a hardware calibrator you might be able to get them pretty well tuned, but afaik there's no manufacturers offering them pre-calibrated or stating the typical accuracy.

For the professional screen, I'd always recommend checking out the Dell Ultrasharp range, as they're usually factory calibrated for 99% sRGB, and some cover the Adobe RGB gamut as well. There's a price premium, especially at 30 and 32", but they are really good for colour quality. And they never die.

That all said, if you're doing graphics and game dev, the two screens is not a bad way to go. Sure, you might have a beautiful colour calibrated monitor, but most of the world doesn't. It's useful to know what your output looks like in the real world as well as in an ideal world

 

[Chaoss]

The annoying answer here is that if you're really serious about both colours and speed, you need two different screens for the two different tasks.

The lowest response times of 1ms are all TN panels, and you just can't have accurate colour reproduction from them. You can get 144Hz IPS screens with ~5ms I think, but not with colour accuracy certification. With a hardware calibrator you might be able to get them pretty well tuned, but afaik there's no manufacturers offering them pre-calibrated or stating the typical accuracy.

For the professional screen, I'd always recommend checking out the Dell Ultrasharp range, as they're usually factory calibrated for 99% sRGB, and some cover the Adobe RGB gamut as well. There's a price premium, especially at 30 and 32", but they are really good for colour quality. And they never die.

That all said, if you're doing graphics and game dev, the two screens is not a bad way to go. Sure, you might have a beautiful colour calibrated monitor, but most of the world doesn't. It's useful to know what your output looks like in the real world as well as in an ideal world

That's true, I should also include that the display will need to cover at least 95% of the DCI-P3 and at least 90% Rec.2020 colorspaces

 

[eddiew]

That's true, I should also include that the display will need to cover at least 95% of the DCI-P3 and at least 90% Rec.2020 colorspaces

I don't even know what those colour spaces are, but I'm pretty darn sure you won't find them in a gaming monitor unless they are subsets of sRGB

Dell's 32" up3216q covers "100% REC 709 and 87% DCI-P3 in addition to 99.5% Adobe RGB and 100% sRGB" and that's about the most professional thing I know of. Eizo have one that does 93% of DCI-P3, and even NEC's £4200 model doesn't list greater coverage. You may be asking for something that doesn't exist, at least not in street-level hardware

 

[wunkley]

As mentioned there really is no single monitor that has it all as yet. It's 2 or bust unfortunately bud.

I do my photography work on a 32" 4k IPS Dell UP3216Q as mentioned above. Really great screen. Unless you do work for major film post production or something, I wouldn't get too bogged down by it being a few percent off what you think you need.

I do my gaming on a Acer x34 IPS 3440x1440 100hz superwide. Really great screen. However if you're a twitch gamer and really obsessed with response times and the like, you neeed to get a fast TN screen still. I had the original TN rog swift before the x34 and it is noticeably smoother and snappier. But, cinematic superwide, no viewing angle issues and IPS colour trumps all that for me personally.

Not cheap obviously to have separate screens for each task, but you get what you pay for....

 

[Chaoss]

As mentioned there really is no single monitor that has it all as yet. It's 2 or bust unfortunately bud.

I do my photography work on a 32" 4k IPS Dell UP3216Q as mentioned above. Really great screen. Unless you do work for major film post production or something, I wouldn't get too bogged down by it being a few percent off what you think you need.

I do my gaming on a Acer x34 IPS 3440x1440 100hz superwide. Really great screen. However if you're a twitch gamer and really obsessed with response times and the like, you neeed to get a fast TN screen still. I had the original TN rog swift before the x34 and it is noticeably smoother and snappier. But, cinematic superwide, no viewing angle issues and IPS colour trumps all that for me personally.

Not cheap obviously to have separate screens for each task, but you get what you pay for....

Yeh I was worried about this, and yeh I am a bit of a twitch gamer :/ I guess I'll have to just get 2 displays