[Discuss] 4K monitors

[mark at buttery.org (Shirley Márquez Dúlcey)]

It's a bit bigger than 24", but two 28" UHD (aka "4K", actually
3840x2160) monitors (Dell for $699 and Lenovo for $799) were announced
at CES. Lenovo also announced something that is a 28" UHD monitor plus
an Android touchscreen device ($1199). Not sure exactly when they will
be available. Dell already has a 24" UHD monitor but it's a lot more
expensive than the new 28" model.

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 11:58 PM, Robert Krawitz <rlk at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 23:37:06 -0500, Tom Metro wrote:
>> In this blog posting the author makes the case that 4K resolution is
>> hardly needed for TVs, but makes for a great monitor for programmers:
>>
>> So will your next display be 4K? Have you upgraded already? Does it play
>> well with Linux?
>
> If I could find a decent 24" display that's 4K I'd go for it.  If I
> could find a 16:10 (3840x2400) 17" panel that I could retrofit into my
> laptop, I'd go for it.  If the price weren't outrageous.
>
>> The author said that the ideal size for a computer monitor was 50" in
>> his opinion. Do you feel that a screen that big actually gains you
>> something? Beyond a certain size, when you are sitting only a few feet
>> from the display, large portions of the display end up only being in
>> your peripheral view.
>
> 50" is way too big when you're that close.  If you're 2' away from the
> monitor, a 24" monitor subtends an angle of 60 degrees -- 30 degrees
> off-axis in each direction -- which is reasonable.  A 50" monitor would
> be something more than 90 degrees.
>
>> While you can of course move your eyes to focus on other parts, you may
>> find that the small pitch text you work with in your code editor that
>> works great when it is front-and-center, now is too small when it is off
>> in the far corners of the screen.
>>
>> There is always good use for more screen space, but given the above, the
>> high resolution across the full 39" inches might be wasted. Even the
>> cost premium of using one big screen instead of multiple screens may not
>> be justified, if you are only doing detailed work on a small portion of
>> the screen space. Though if the premium isn't much, it's hard to be the
>> cool factor of a giant display.
>
> Multiple screens have disadvantages, though:
>
> 1) The gap between the screens
>
> 2) A typical 2-monitor display increases horizontal resolution, but not
>    vertical
>
> 3) The dot pitch is the same as with a conventional display
>
> If I had a screen with twice the resolution, I might not be able to use
> the 6x10 fixed font that I currently use in emacs, but 7x12, 8x13, or
> 9x15 might be perfectly usable.  They would be smaller than 6x10 on my
> existing 1920x1200 displays, but more detailed, making for better
> readability.  In practice, I'd go for the smallest font I could halfway
> comfortably read, and just hope that I don't lose the remaining
> nearsightedness in my left eye too quickly (my eyes differ a fair bit,
> so I use my left eye for near vision and my right eye for distance
> vision).
>
> --
> Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>
>
> MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 5 straight men's hoops tourney
> Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
> Member of the League for Programming Freedom  --  http://ProgFree.org
> Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net
>
> "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
> --Eric Crampton
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