21:9 Monitors, anyone?
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So these monstrous monitors have been coming down in price as of late, and I've been looking into them a lot, and here's what I've found;Most of these beasts are running in 2560 x 1080, also known as WFHD (Wide Full High Definition), and others in a 3440 x 1440 flavor. These are high resolution, perfect for daily use, gaming, and media enjoyment. At this aspect ratio, you've got a ton of screen real-estate, and the PPI of these screens tends to be anywhere from 87ppi all the way up to 140ppi, which are all just fine, even if you're within 12" of your monitor.
A lot of films nowadays are actually shot in 21:9 (the ratio that theaters display in), and have been rescaled to 16:9, but with this monitor, you can view them in all their widescreen, movie theater glory. Refresh rates are all 60hz, but the 3440 x 1440 panels require DVI-D or Display port to run at 60hz, as HDMI will only support 50hz at max bandwidth, which may cause some artifacting as well.
Here, we have ONLY IPS and AH-IPS panels. This means fantastic viewing angles, vibrant and accurate color reproduction, but also some rather high GTG times, and high input lag. GTG is 5ms on a lot of them, but upwards of 14 is common. The input lag is anywhere between a normal 20ms, all the way up to a very high 100ms, depending on the monitor.
As far as productivity goes, these are a fantastic choice. Picture-By-Picture, Picture-In-Picture, Dual-Input, WindowSnapping, and MultisourceInput are widespread here, and the pixel density and resolution offer a "Sweet Spot", where standard 16:9 UI's and Text Scaling is still perfectly usable. For gaming, these make for an interesting experience. They're decently hard to drive, but not quite as hard as a standard 1440p monitor, whereas the 3440 x 1440 ones are respectively slightly easier to drive than 4K. A lot of games offer support for this Aspect Ratio, but just as many do not.
When it works, it's an incredibly immersive and beautiful experience, but support for it is spotty. Any 16:9 content that cannot upscale to 21:9 will display at native resolution, and will just leave black bars on either side, so it's perfectly usable for all content. To run one for media consumption/creation, you're going to want decent integrated graphics with around 8GB of RAM, or a discrete GPU. For gaming, a discrete GPU is needed, even for light use.
Prices here vary from $350 all the way up to $1,400, and there's a whole range of brands and levels to choose from. The standard sizes are 25", 29", and 34". So, if you're considering more than one monitor, give one of these a look! Excellent pricing on most, decent availability, and lots of functionality.
Thanks for the read, and cheers to anyone who's interested now
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Use. Paragraphs.
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I have to agree - I stopped reading 3 lines in because my eyes just started to cross, and this is something I'm interested in as a way to get rid of having two screens on my desk with a bezel in the middle.
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I did use paragraph breaks... I typed this all on mobile, perhaps that had something to do with it. I'll break it up in a few.
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@Dashrender, @ajstringham, there
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Actually planning on grabbing one of these.
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that seems like a lot of money for a monitor. but you have fun w/ that.
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@Hubtech but it will be a high quality display for many years to come.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@Hubtech but it will be a high quality display for many years to come.
Yeah man, if it makes you happy, get it!
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@Hubtech but it will be a high quality display for many years to come.
you mean 3-5 years which tends to be the average life span? I've spent more on ones before but they were broadcast monitors, used for making money.
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@thecreativeone91 So long as 4:3, 5:4, 16:9, 16:10, and 21:9 monitors continue to be supported, this can encompass and perform well with any of these standards. And the markets are slow to change. I don't think 16:9 will be going anywhere for a while, and 21:9 is growing in popularity. It's early enough in it's lifecycle that one of these monitors will be very useful for probably upwards of 5 years. After all, people still use VGA, and that came out in 1987. And I'm not super picky for displays, I'll be coming from dual 21" 1280 x 1024 monitors. So I'll most likely get around 8 years of use before I feel the need to upgrade again, unless some huge paradigm shift happens in the display peripheral world.
