Curved screens are about 2x the cost of non-curved screens. I think they’re way over-rated, mainly because they’re only curved along one axis.

If I were to buy something “curved”, I’d get a spherical curve, which nobody makes (yet).

A 55” TV as a monitor is equivalent to 4 x 27” HD monitors in a single panel. A truly awesome experience to behold!

A couple of years ago I got a Seiki 39” 4K TV on sale for around $350 and used it as a monitor with my MacBook Pro for quite a while. It does a great job. (I’d love to sell it if anybody is interested.)

My aging eyes don’t work well with things close-up, and a 39” 4K is roughly equivalent to 4 x 20” monitors. I can no longer look at 20” monitors for very long. Even 24” monitors are a challenge.

But I can look at 27” screens all day without fatigue. And I don’t even need my reading glasses much of the time.

So I recently upgraded to a mid-range 55” LG WebOS UJ6300 TV. Boy, what a nightmare it has been. (more on that shortly)

After I got it and had trouble making it work well, I dug around the interwebs for quite a while and managed to find a few blogs where people actually posted results of trying different 4K TVs as computer monitors.

Believe it or not, it seems like the low-end 4K TVs are far better suited for use as computer monitors than fancier ones.

My LG TV cost me around $850. I’ve seen them for $650 lately, but I would definitely NOT recommend LG TVs (or higher-end TVs) for use as a monitor.

The reason is … the fancier TVs have logic in them to “optimize” the picture and reduce flicker and artifacts and other weird stuff.

That is to say, they make motion videos (both HD and 4K) look AWESOME at 4K resolution. But computer monitors are anything BUT “motion videos”.

Besides that, this thing has so many frigging settings on it that it took me several sessions drilling through multiple settings and testing stuff before I got it to look halfway decent.

Just locking it in 4:4:4 mode is amazingly convoluted.

The screen on this LG is sharp as hell at 4K, but the colors are funky, and I’ve spent way too much time trying to fix them.

My suggestion is simple: go to Costco and buy the cheapest 4K 55” (or smaller if you prefer) TV that they have. I think it’s something like TLC brand with built-in Roku for around $425.

Try it out and if you don’t like it, take it back.

The Samsung 6300 is highly rated as a monitor as well, but I think it’s no longer being sold.

Do NOT get an LG TV for use as a monitor. However, if you want to watch movies on it in your living room, then it’s an EXCELLENT choice.

FWIW, there are 4K monitors now that are 27” and smaller. I might have been able to see them 15 years ago, but when your eyes start to “age-out”, it’s a lost cause.

I LOVE the real estate that a 4K display offers, and having the equivalent of 4 x 27” HD screens on one panel is perfect for my eyes today.

Yes, the edges are a few inches further away than the center, but my eyesight is fine for anything more than about 4’ away. So a curved screen would be of no particular benefit to me.

(Think of your typical desktop — do you need it to be curved to have stuff spread out? No! You simply grab what you need and pull it in front of you.)

-David Schwartz

On Nov 14, 2017, at 2:11 PM, der.hans <PLUGd@LuftHans.com> wrote:

moin moin,

I'm considering a wide, curved 4k monitor.

I'll be connecting to an HDMI port.

I'm currently using a 4k TV with text display issues. It was the best option at the time, but my eyes really, really want a better text display. I'm also finding that a wide flat display is less than ideal, hence the desire for curved.

Any recommendations for specific monitors? Places of acquisition?

I normally ignore black Friday sales, but this year many of them appear to be black November sales. That works better for me, if I'm going to change I need to do so before Thanksgiving as that's when silly season hits full swing for $dayjob.

ciao,

der.hans — # https://www.LuftHans.com https://www.PhxLinux.org # “Rock ‘n’ roll might not solve your problems, but it does let you dance # all over them.” — Pete Townsend --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list – PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss