G'day Bit-Tech, Can someone please make this happen: Ultrawide curved IPS / VA / Quantum Dot, HDR panel with 75+Hz refresh rate, 1440p or 1600p, 34+inches with G-sync. I mean, there are monitors that do most of the above, but not all together! It can't be that hard. I've got the money...please let me spend it!
That's the trouble with tech - it's always just around the corner. I've been putting off buying a monitor for ages now, maybe it's time to just bite the bullet. To be honest, I could cope quite happily without HDR, but even then I can't find the right one!
While I would buy one of those the moment they become available, I fear it simply won't happen this decade. HDR is nowhere near common yet even in 16:9 screens. Quantum Dot in an ultrawide? There is precisely one. There are still only four ultrawides capable of going past 60hz (and two of them are oc'd) Both Samsung and LG (who are the leaders in the feature complete ultrawide race) seem intent on denying us G-Sync.
We're only on the cusp of the HDR revolution now. It's as important as the jump from SD to HD imo - more than the jump to 4K in terms of visual IQ. But it also requires everything in the stack of technologies to support it to work properly. I've not seen it on Windows at this point, only TVs and Android. And even then it only works best with local dimming like Dolby Vision and Samsung just launched HDR10+ alternative for its TVs. Or, OLED, which doesn't need the backlight. Personally I'd stick to 16:9 rather than super wide's for compatibility sake. We'll have 27-32" HDR 4K OLED within a year and IMO OLED is worth it more than super wide. G-Sync is always enabled at the behest of Nvidia, who qualify every panel. If they don't think it fits the quality/speed to match their desired results, they won't validate it. In comparison FreeSync is an open standard that's just switched on in the scaler chip and 'supported' by the OLED, MVA/IPS/TN LCD. Horses for courses.
And worse than that, companies haven't settled on which HDR standard to use, for example Samsung and Amazon have teamed up on a new one recently: https://www.techpowerup.com/232568/samsung-amazon-unveil-yet-another-hdr-standard The Samsung CF791 is the undisputed God of 34" Ultrawides, now go count the G-Sync monitors from Samsung regardless of aspect ratio, size and such... the result of that only allows one conclusion: Samsung is not even trying to get G-Sync. Which in return means the best Ultrawide is doomed to not get a G-Sync version, ever. Which further means we have to wait for other manufacturers to play catch up first and hope they try for it. The Samsung CF791 is native 100hz, has a much better looking design and costs significantly less. G-Sync isn't worth several hundred quid.
If only it didn't have horrendous flickering outside of its measly 80-100Hz Freesync range. It's remarkable how nobody can manage a solid large ultrawide display - they'd clean up the whole segment if they could.
The monitor market is the most discombobulated POS ever. You always end up sacrificing at least something, and it sucks.
Still the best among the three beyond 60hz 34" choices, the Asus one has marmite styling and an absurd price and the Acer is well, from Acer. But yes, it is unfortunately still far from perfect, which is why I'm sticking with my not even curved slow poke refresh rate el-cheapo AOC.
My AOC Q3277PQU, given that I don't care about having a higher refresh rate, is everything I want it to be. Maybe I'm easily pleased...
I think the issue is that the ultrawides cost as much as the rest of my entire computer would - for that kind of money, it's hard to tolerate the failings that practically every unit has! If they didn't cost an arm and a leg, it would be a lot easier to be forgiving of the odd problem here and there.
Monitors are different from other components in complexity. A CPU is basically performance, yes TDP is important, but for the most part it is measured by performance. Same with most other components. Monitors in addition to size, have panel type, response times, refresh rates, black levels, color range, color accuracy, calibration, brightness. Now we have HRD, G-sync/freesync, Quantum Dot, ultra wide, curved. It is impossible to get everything. You can get a near perfect picture with a professional monitor but it won't have a the repsonse time, refresh rate, ultra wide, curved G-sync/freesync. You can get a gaming monitor and go for speed over accuracy and calibration. Unfortunately it is necessary to balance between accuracy, speed and price. I don't think things will improve much before OLED come out. Though, I've heard that LCD tech is catching up.
Well it seems like there a few folk in my boat! Yeah, I've been hovering over this one for the past year, but I keep hearing about the new native 100Hz panel that is about to update the ASUS and ACER models. Apparently late 17... Yep, it's a beaut. Just waiting for it with G-sync... Nailed it. This is the reason I haven't upgraded yet - it's a lot of money to spend for something that isn't quite right (for me) yet. I think the (nearly!) perfect monitor is coming, as I said - you can get all the features now, just not all in the same package! Anyway, I decided to cut my losses for now and get a new Samsung SUHD TV to go with my PS4 and occasional PC gaming. It seems to work beautifully with RTS style games, but I'm still not convinced it's good enough for FPS compared to my ancient, laggy Dell.
Another problem is a divergence in supported technologies for Monitors vs TV. Monitors seem to focus on faster refresh panels, curved displays and a variety resolutions with all features chosen seem to cater to gaming based needs (and professional) using Display port standard while TV's are focusing on HDR and colours etc @ 1080p or 4K over HDMI standards with decent but not stellar response times. While there is some overlap and technologies are available to both sections, there seems to be trade offs made when supporting one feature over another.
While not wide screen, the Dell 4K UP3017Q OLED is a good start. Hopefully this will trickle down to more affordable options over the next 2 years. Diagonal size/resolution - 30”/Ultra HD 4K 3840 x 2160 Panel technology - OLED Color depth - 1.07 billion Color gamut - 100% AdobeRGB, 97.8% DCI-P3 Contrast ratio (typical) - 100,000:1 Response time - 0.1 ms Connectivity - USB Type-C with power delivery (Thunderbolt 3) How will this work with a desktop GPU?
Meanwhile in Korea they've stuffed 15 OLED Monitors in an elevator: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/19/architecture/lotte-world-tower-fastest-double-elevator/index.html (just need to click through the pictures). In other words, I now want an elevator rather than a monitor hooked up to my PC
