“Asus has just announced the cure for the common 20-something-inch 1080p display: a small TV-sized 31.5-inch monitor with a massive resolution of 3840×2160. Engadget reports that the Asus PQ321 display, which uses IGZO technology to reduce energy usage and thickness, includes DisplayPort and dual-HDMI input, integrated speakers, and an adjustable stand.” The dread of 1366 and 1080p is being removed. Finally.
It is still an inferior “HD” (16:9) resolution.
I want 16:10, god damn it… I wish the screen manufacturers would quit going cheap on the damn vertical space. :/
3840×2400 or no sale!
I need 3 of them on a mount so I can go 11520×2400 for video editing movies or 7200×3840 for everything else.
It’s over 40cm in height, not what I’d call “cheap on the vertical space” !
16:9 is a crappy ratio for notebooks, but it makes perfect sense for very large desktop screens.
no, it doesn’t
I own a 27″ tft with a 2560×1440 resolution, and I still miss 4:3 screens
16:9 was just a cheap way to increase the nominal size, without delivering more physical area
smashit,
“16:9 was just a cheap way to increase the nominal size, without delivering more physical area”
When my old monitor died, I already knew that I wanted a 4:3 21in flat screen, but there wasn’t a single new 4:3 for sale at our local computer stores. I ended up getting 16:9 due to the lack of choice, but I wasn’t happy about it. Widescreens might be ok for movies, but I don’t like them at all for the predominantly vertical document / source code editing I need to do. When I browse full screen most websites just can’t make good use of those extra horizontal pixels. More often than not the extra horizontal pixels become useless white-space around a fixed width static content area. Expanding the content by zooming just exacerbates the lack of vertical pixels.
Huh. Not one commenter here so far likes 16:9 displays. I happen to like having lots of vertical space, it feels more natural to me than 4:3 displays. I don’t really if it’s 16:9 or 16:10, it is such a small difference in thend, but I would hate having to go back for the more rectangular shapes.
WereCatf,
“Huh. Not one commenter here so far likes 16:9 displays. I happen to like having lots of vertical space, it feels more natural to me than 4:3 displays. I don’t really if it’s 16:9 or 16:10, it is such a small difference in thend,”
Hmm, the way I’m reading this doesn’t make sense to me: you like vertical space, yet you don’t like the 4:3 display and prefer the widescreen aspect ratios?
” but I would hate having to go back for the more rectangular shapes.”
I have no idea what this means
But I’m going to guess you meant that you liked horizontal space instead.
For me it’s no so much a preference for one shape or another, rather it’s just that I like having an aspect ratio that more closely matches the content I work with. If I worked with very wide content, I’d prefer an equally wide screen.
This is how osnews looks to me in full screen:
http://i.imgur.com/ZebhozC.png
This is the norm rather than the exception not only for web pages but PDF’s, word processing, programming, ssh, viewing photos (esp portrait), etc.
So here’s my question to widescreen fans: What do you do to actually make use the horizontal space? I can see the benefit for opening up multiple windows side by side, but I prefer having dual monitors for this. Anyway I’m under the impression that most users run their programs full screen and I’d have to guess that they are accustomed to having lots of empty space on their widescreens like me.
I was still half-asleep when I wrote that, I obviously meant horizontal. Sorry for the confusion.
Yes, I usually have 4-10 windows open at all times due to constantly doing something, and I like to have the windows sized so that I can fit 3-5 simultaneously on the screen. Also, I rather have one large display than multiple smaller ones as there is no way of using the physical space between the displays.
These are my opinions as well. It’s nice to be able to have terminals taking up one half of the screen, browser, email, or whatever taking up the other half. With all the awesome hardware at our fingertips these days, why on earth would we stick to running single tasks full screen? That’s one of the things that really bothers me with some of the more ‘modern’ designs of operating systems. So many tablet / phone interfaces want to make the application take the full screen, which is a slide back to single tasking Macs/Atari STs in the 80s. The only time I want a single task to take the whole screen is either a movie or a video game, (most of which utilize the wide screen display properly, unlike websites, documents, etc). Even on my Amiga, I tend to not make applications full screen unless it creates a screen of it’s own. The Amiga OS was genius for doing it’s multitasking that way..anyhow that’s a bit off topic.
Fact is, Widescreen displays are great for multi-tasking and video content. A lot of people don’t multitask very well, if at all. I only can because I have ADD or something and my focus likes to bounce around a lot..
Oops, wanted to add an edit of “Rotate your display, if you don’t like it wide!” I have two monitors at work, that I can rotate. It’s AWESOME for web browsing, but sucks for my usual day to day work (which usually consists of terminals, web browser with 100+tabs, VM displays, etc.)
Edited 2013-06-01 15:28 UTC
I have a Magic 23″ 4:3 1600×1200 LCD monitor. Have to turn the head to follow mouse or look at something on the other side of the screen. Makes me giggle all time
A 32″ screen would be a killer !
BTW, try the portrait orientation, one of my screen is in portrait mode to display Total Commander, PDF, MSDN or some source code. Mais work is on the 23″ because large enough and can put two columns side by side : diff, debug with watches, etc…
Agree about internet browsing.
Kochise
Kochise,
“BTW, try the portrait orientation, one of my screen is in portrait mode to display Total Commander, PDF, MSDN or some source code.”
I frequently would like more vertical space for editing, but I’m not sure if a 9:16 orientation could be overshooting a bit
Alas I don’t have a rotatable screen, and haven’t tried it, but it’s a fair point.
“Mais work is on the 23″ because large enough and can put two columns side by side : diff, debug with watches, etc…”
Yes, IDEs are a great example. Assuming you have an MDI-style interface or multi-window workflow, I can see the value. This is how I try to make use of my widescreen as well in the software that’s flexible enough to allow moving controls to the sides.
My widescreen laptop is too small to open up two windows side by side, so the extra width is usually wasted on full screen apps. So while more pixels are helpful, they’re just in the wrong direction.
Edited 2013-06-01 07:33 UTC
Franckly, essaye a second screen, you’ll never come back. You can attach a second or even a third on your laptop (VGA + HDMI). I have my main computer (old VIA C7 @ 2 GHz under XP) with 3 screens : one on the mini-ITX board, two on a Pny Geforce FX 5200 dual VGA, with one in portrait mode.
Result screen is on integrated VGA head, code and debug on the PCI video card.
Kochise
As a glad 16:10 25 inch Asus monitor owner, I can see why.
16:9 is not wide enough.
I need ultra wide. My next monitor will be 2:1 or more.
viton,
“I need ultra wide. My next monitor will be 2:1 or more.”
Do you have some niche requirement? Uness you want to emulate a dual monitor setup using a single monitor, then I don’t understand what you’d want it for.
you need this:
http://www.dell.com/ed/business/p/dell-u2913wm/pd
awesome monitor! I want one but I don’t have the money lol
I can’t agree more! I was at our local hospital the other day. They all had 4:3 LCD monitors. I forgot how nice it is to have so much vertical space. Please bring back the 4:3 ratio too!!
“The dread of 1366 and 1080p is being removed. Finally.”
Finally? Apple has had a 27″ 2560×1600 monitor for years, now.
Apple…
The world doesn’t sum up to Apple.
Kochise
But then again the Apple Cinema display is a very nice high end display that uses a standard connection that allows it to be used with any computer you have.
For a very long time it was about the best screen for the money you could get if you wanted a very high res screen, whilst the PC world stagnated at 1920×1080 and then started regressing to 1366×768.
The PC used to lead the high res display market, the 3840×2400 IBM T220 came out in 2001, it shouldn’t have taken 12 years for us to get a slightly lower resolution with a much lower DPI and a less ideal aspect ratio to market.
What? The Apple Cinema display is a decent screen, but far from alone at 2560×1440, and not really of outstanding quality at its price. Not now, not ever. And while the PC world might have stagnated at 1080p, your “regression” to 1366×768 was in a different format: laptops.
Laptops and low end desktop LCDs that come with most comps. I’d rather take a 1280×800 or 1280×1024 over 1366×768.
The 30″ Cinema was 2560×1600 not 1440, thats significantly more space, especially if you had the glory to have 2 of those monsters on your desk. Yeah, at that time even the beastly 8800 Ultra couldn’t adequately power them for gaming. It also has a better color gamut then most of the screens on the market, which is important if you do any kind of photo or video editing.
Now though the ones I used a good 6 years ago are more then likely outclassed in gamut by high end IPS panels that have started coming out over the last year or so.
Most low-end laptops came with 1024×768. Even Apple’s iBooks were 1024×768 till the bitter end. More expensive models had a great variety, I’ll give you that. As for the 30″ Apple Cinema, it’s not nearly unique, and wasn’t then either. Dell had a 30″, HP had one, LG had one. They still do.
What?!? Apple’s 27″ offerings are of the 2560×1440 persuasion. Maybe you were thinking about the old, circa 2005, 30″ CinemaHD Display?
RT.
You are correct. I was thinking of the old one, not the current Thunderbolt model. My bad.
Now we need cheap video cards able to fill all those pixels. Preferably without fans.
I am still undecided between this monitor and the 21:9 from LG.
Been there for a while actually: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-High-End-G…
Even Intel’s HD Graphics decelerators can handle screens with a resolution as high as 4096×4096 and all AMD GPUs since the HD6000 series support resolutions up to 16000×16000.
All current high end cards from the last 2 generations will pull this resolution and still stay above 30FPS minimum no matter the game or settings since they are so powerful that the only way to max them out is to go to 5760×1920 at least. If you have trouble drop the anti-aliasing down, the higher DPI of the screen makes it less necessary to the point of irrelevance. anisotropic filtering though is very cheap and still makes a difference for objects in the distance so that they don’t just blend together and become flat instead of having depth like real objects would.
These are the screens the top end cards have been waiting for.
Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/asus-brings-4k-to-your-deskt…) says the following:
If you can afford a 2000-5000$ 4K display, its very unlikely that you’ll be stupid enough to connect it to a cheap IGP such as Intel HD / AMD IGP. I would imagine most most people will either buy a professional card or buy a high-end discrete card.
– Gilboa
Edited 2013-06-01 07:32 UTC
4K/QFHD displays start in the $1300-1500 range depending on if theres a sale. Just look up the Korean makes like the Seiki SE50UY04, which is 50″, which is actually right in line with a 1080p TV of that size.
I think you’d be surprised by the number of uses there are for a large high resolution display that aren’t gaming related, some may be a but on the absurd side like all the TVs being used as bulletin boards at colleges.
Edited 2013-06-01 08:09 UTC
(Mid/High-end) computer displays were always and most likely always will be *far* more expensive than T.V. due to the different requirements. E.g. color management, uniformity, text display, etc.
Its true that in the long run, 4K computer display will go mainstream and reaching T.V like prices (at somewhat smaller package), but it’ll take a couple of years for it to happen, and by then, IGPs will be 4K capable
BTW, even if you are willing to settle for a low-end 50″ 4K display for 1500$, saving the 200-300$ required to get a decent 4K/60 capable discrete card isn’t a wise choice…
– Gilboa
I would like a 23″ display with at least 4096*3072 pixels, but sadly nobody is going to make those.
Why 4096, you might ask… well, because every web page nowadays seems to have been designed like there’s nothing but 1024*768. Actually, as a programmer I’ve been told to do pages that fixed width.
The problem with a FHD display is that it isn’t enough to show two pages side by side, while a 2048-wide display can. 4096 is a “retina” version of it, and being used to my MBP Retina, I don’t want anything less.
But it looks like we have to cope with this idiotic situation.
There was the legendary IBM T221 which did 3840×2400 on a 22.2″ LCD. Unfortunately it is out of production.
And then we design Websites for Phones with 320 px width . . . LOL
Now we must design for 320 px to 3840 px and it must look good on all displays!
I will reserve a place in psychiatry soon.
Also known as the Galaxy Note 3.
1080p is already more screen resolution than I need. I can imagine that as I get older and my eye sight goes people will be calling for larger and larger screen resolutions with ever shrinking text. This is one area where I’ll resist the push by tech enthusiasts for the newest and ‘best.’