Displays Which 27" or 30" Monitor?

Ok so thinking of changing my monitor setup, at the moment I've got an LG IPS, so I've been looking at the U2711 or U3011, or maybe even 3 of the LG IPS panel's, I did have a thread earlier asking a similar sort of question, the resounding response was 3 x 30"

Something which I would love to do, but I'm wondering if there are any alternative 27" or 30" monitor's people could point me in the direction of, I've heard of Ezio or Hazro, but really have no clue about them.

 

I think there is a HP ZR30 IPS monitor but I have no personal experience with it, and apparently it doesn't have a built in image scaler. Other than that as just a name... Dell seems to be very popular here, and for good reason. I've yet to see someone buy a Dell under recommendation here, then come back and say less than nice things about it (or the person who recommended it).
Hopefully someone can better advise you

 

Well we all know how good and reliable dell IPS monitors are. I think 27" is more than plenty. My vote is on U2711.

 

http://broadcastmonitors.co.uk/tvlogic-lum-560w/ One of those...?

 

They don't even have a price you have to fill out an application to find out??!! It's surely over 5k? Anyone know the price of that monitor that pete has so kindly advised trashcan on?

 

I don't recall the price off the top of my head, but if I'm remembering right, it was well into the five figures.

As for the original question, my choice in the 30" class would be the 3011 as LaCie no longer make a 30" panel. Eizo, I suspect, is probably a) out of your price range and b) probably not suitable for your application.

 

You will struggle to play games with 3x 27"/30" monitors. You will be playing with every game setting set to low, that it will look tedeous.

Now if I was you. I would be saving up for the 4k x2k monitors, which are due out 2012/13.
This is what I'm doing, and is going to need some serious power to run games.

If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, then the no brainer is to buy 2 more LG monitors. Your 3 580s will play every game maxed at 6030x1080, and it will look awesome!

 

Budget, budget, budget. What's yours? You can forget about Eizo 30" monitors unless you have £2K for their cheapest model... besides, Eizo is uber pro grade hardware; if somebody bought one purely for gaming, I might have to kill myself.

If it's just size you're after, then there are two choices IMO:

Dell U3011, which if you look around you can get for about £900 with full 3 year warranty.

You could also get the LG W3000H for £900 @ ebuyer, but I'm not sure about warranty as it is a discontinued product, hence the lower price to get rid of remaining stock.

There is also the HP ZR30W which is very nice but is also more expensive, about £1100, and the very attractively priced Hazro 30" seems to have vanished into thin air.

 

What's your budget, and what's your main use for it?

Are you going to be spending great deals of time working on large photographic images on a professional level? Pre press colour work? High end graphic design?

If not, the Eizo screens will be overkill. Also, will you also be buying a decent colorimeter/spectrophotometer to calibrate it? If again not, then definitely do not waste your time with very high end stuff. The advantage of the High end stuff like the Eizo SX and CG series monitors is that they have user programmable LUTs to calibrate them at 10 or 12 bit hardware level for accuracy. Without calibrating them you will not be taking advantage of any of the benefits they offer. If you ARE doing very high end graphics or photographic work, then budget for an extra £200 for a decent calibrator such as the LaCie Blue Eye Pro or X-Rite i1.

High End/Professional:

My first choice would be the Eizo CG303W. If you can still find a SX3031W snap it up, but they've been discontinued for a while now. The 3031 is a S-PVA screen, where the 303W is a IPS screen. A high end S-PVA screen can often equal or outperform a IPS screen in everything but viewing angle.

SX3031W - £1800.
CG303W - £2700

I'd also recommend the NEC Spectraview Reference 301W or PA301W (essentially the same, but one comes with it's own calibration hardware)

NEC PA301W - £1500
NEC Spectraview Reference 301W - £2300

So if you do want a proper high end professional screen that can be hardware calibrated, I'd be trying to get my hands on one of the last Eizo SX3031W or go for the NEC PA301W, as they are bargains at £1800 and £1500 respectively. There's also 27" (16:9) versions of these two screens as well that will save you a little (NEC PA271W and Eizo CG275W).

None of the above screens will be ideal for gaming, with the possible exception of the NEC PA301W and if you can still get it, the Eizo SX3031W. Neither are HDCP compliant, so Blu Ray will be scaled. Remember, these screens were built to do one thing - display images with as much accuracy as possible.

All the above screens are wide gamut, and will display at least 97% of the Adobe RGB1998 colourspace.

If you think you can just throw money at a high end screen like these and have the best screen around, think again, as they are built for a specific purpose. As an example, my Eizo is not HDCP compliant, so I can't watch blu ray at 1080p over DVI, and it doesn't support a 24frames per second signal so there is quite a lot of flicker when watching movies if the camera pans from left to right.

Unless you have a professional requirement that needs screens like this, you're probably wasting your cash, and if you are not going to invest in calibration you are definitely wasting your cash.


Prosumer/Mid Range:

These are built with a wider use in mind, are not capable of being calibrated at hardware level (but you can still calibrate them at the software/GPU level). Some are wide gamut, some are not. Think carefully also about what you do with your screen. If all you do is watch movies and TV, play games, surf the net, perhaps use Office applications once in a while and are not particularly obsessive about photography, then a wide gamut screen will give you no benefit whatsoever, and can actually cause you problems with over-saturated colours.

The first screen most people will recommend is the Dell U3011 or U2711. Not much to choose between them except price and size. The 30" 16:10 is well worth paying the extra for, as it makes a MASSIVE difference to both visible size of the screen, and productivity due to extra vertical resolution. Both screens are pre-calibrated at the factory for two modes - Adobe RGB and sRGB. While the accuracy of this calibration is not fantastic, they are still VERY useful things to have, because you can run the screens in sRGB mode most of the time when playing games, watching movies or just surfing, then switch to adobe RGB mode if you are going to use color managed applications such as Photoshop. Do not be tempted to run in Adobe RGB for daily use thinking you are getting more colour... you will actually be just looking at exaggerated and oversaturated colours most of the time.

Both screens are IPS using LG panels. Can't go wrong there. However, IPS screens of this size have one issue. If you use them in a dark or dimly lit environment, they do suffer from the dreaded IPS "black glow" something terrible.

Here's a vid of a high end 24" screen (NEC PA241W)showing what I mean.



While IPS gives the best viewing angles, this only really relates to how the colours remain stable across wide angles, but the black levels of IPS screens shift quite massively when you move around them. It's for this reason I got rid of my 30" Dell after 1 day. If you normally operate in a more brightly lit environment, you may not have an issue with this, and in all other respects both are superb screens.

One other thing with the U2711 and U3011 is the very aggressive anti-glare coating. It is very coarse and bright areas of the screen appear to sparkle when you move your head around. Again, I couldn't live with it, but others seem to have no problem. My advice would be do not buy either Dell screen unless you've seen this for yourself, because it made my experience with it a miserable one. If you can live with the IPS glow and sparkly/grainy anti-glare coating, both screens are good ones.

The HP ZR30w is a fantastic screen in every respect, but has one major drawback. It has no on screen display, and instead just has a button to select input, and a + and - button for backlight brightness. If you calibrate your screens, then this is irrelevant, but if not, this is a severe limitation, but despite this, it is a brilliant screen, and at around £900 a bargain. It's a wide gamut screen, HCDP compliant, uses a nice LG panel with smooth anti-glare. ...just that no OSD is a shame.

Another contender is the Hazro HZ27WB. Superb panel, wide gamut, fantastic image quality when you see it in real life, but the stand is a nightmare! This screen weighs a ton too thanks to a metal construction, not plastic. It's decently priced at around £800, but finding somewhere that sells it can be a challenge. I've used this screen and it's superb!

You can't really go wrong with the Dell screens though. If like most people the IPS glow and aggressive anti-glare isn't an issue, you will love either panel.

 

Interesting and very useful read their Pookeyhead

 

I think I want the U2410 for size and space reasons, but boy the 27" and 30" (Especially the latter) look very interesting.

At the moment, waiting on Dell coupons in the US.

Meantime, researching the 27", 30" options as well. Subscribing to this thread. Thanks Pookeyhead for the detailed info.