What monitor specs do you look for?

[bopper]

Requirements: 32", 4k, cheap but not junk. I'm 90% sure I want standard 16:9 and not an odd, wide size.

I've done nearly all my research on rtings.com and I'm not sure what specs are important and what isn't. This will be a work monitor so I figure lag and refresh rate are pretty much arbitrary. IPS is generally better at color and viewing angle. VA is better at black/gray uniformity and contrast. In an office, but in a lit office that may be of no concern. I refined this list by price, size, and resolution. I've read all the writeups so I'm not just going off these numbers. The list is sorted by "office usage"... that seems to be a well thought out rating for what I'm looking for.

Here are my picks. This is a quick list of the atributes that I deemed important. I've done several hours of reading on this cause I thought I was going to have to drop >$500 on a monitor, but that Dell and LG look like a bargain. It seems just as good as the as the other two but with a little worse viewing angles (plus the dell is curved which is pretty hip). Those have half the refresh rate which I guess contributes to the price difference.

My picks:
1- Gigabyte M32U: IPS panel, with "mediocre" contrast, "decent" and "very good" horizontal and vertical viewing angle, "great" gray and "passable" black uniformity
2- Gigabyte M32UC: VA panel with "good" contrast, "okay" and "mediocre" horizontal and vertical viewing angle, "great" gray and "decent" black uniformity
3- Dell S3221QS: VA panel with "great" contrast, "mediocre" and "sub-par" horizontal and vertical viewing angle, "excellent" and "mediocre" gray and black uniformity
3- LG 32UL500-W: VA panel with "good" contrast, "Adequate" and "mediocre" horizontal and vertical viewing angle, "excellent" and "decent" gray and black uniformity

 

[Intel_man]

Personally, IPS > VA.

 

[bopper]

Personally, IPS > VA.

Until I started reading about my new monitor, I thought IPS was the only thing out there and everything else went extinct like the plasma screen. I imagine rtings has some kind of bias as far as what they review (I believe most are voted in by viewers). It seems odd that there's not a bigger price spread for 4k 32" monitors. there's only a couple lines not shown in the screenshot.

I just looked up my TV (Hisense U6G). Besides the buggy interface, the VA screen is not good. Bad color, blacks, and bleed in dark scenes when it's dark. It got high marks on rtings though.

 

[Intel_man]

bleed in dark scenes when it's dark.

IPS will have that problem too... there's a few monitors that have local array dimming but the amount of zones typically on monitors are kind of low, so the experience is meh.

Apart from going to an OLED for the deep blacks, mini-led lit panels are the way to go if you really get annoyed by the glow.

 

[bopper]

IPS will have that problem too... there's a few monitors that have local array dimming but the amount of zones typically on monitors are kind of low, so the experience is meh.

Apart from going to an OLED for the deep blacks, mini-led lit panels are the way to go if you really get annoyed by the glow.

My tv has local dimming, but it’s a bit clumsy. That’s in a pitch black room and very dynamic scenes though.

I think there’s different kinds of lighting like edge lit and such. I’ll have to check that out.

My laptop’s oled screen is astounding. Wouldn’t want that for work though. There’s some serious burn in possibility there.

 

[bopper]

Personally, IPS > VA.

I'll agree with you. I got the Dell for 330 and it's not astounding. I think IPS should be a requirement. A buddy at work has an IPS Sceptre (they're on the cheap side?) and it's quite good for boring office use. it has a nearly infinite viewing angle and it. This dell is fine for office use but I have complaints. The bottom of the screen seems to darken in the last inch or so. There's also a spotlight effect. When you're staring directly into a pixel, it looks different than the pixels beside it. That makes something of a 4" circle in the middle of your viewing area. This is only on darker screens. Viewing angles on it are just fine, so I think I'll kinda ignore those comments in reviews in the future. Or maybe my previous comment says that that's important. Anyway... don't get a VA. Maybe don't pay double for an IPS, but find a good one.

 

[bopper]

Where is this halo affect coming from? I don't think I see it on my OLED screen so I'm guesing that it's the monitor doing it. It seems like this wouldn't be an issue though. All those pixels should be getting a black signal right? On the other hand, this is a screenshot so it captured the actual signal being sent to the monitor. So is this an internety bandwidthy artifact?

 

[Intel_man]

That's just youtube doing weird stuff to the background of the page. Put it in theatre mode and you won't get that.