Drowning in reading on 27" panels...

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vengence

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I'm looking to replace my 245BW. For a long time I thought I'd replace it with a 30", but after making a thread a while back and pretty much getting told they just don't compare with the 27" panels out there, I went back to the drawing board. So I'm going to get back on the research wagon and try to figure out what I want. Clearly a 27" is in my future. I'd like to keep it around 400$, but I could spend mid 600 if it was justified. So I guess the next question is use cases:

1) Photo editing for the web as end destination. 90% of what I edit ends up on the web, so my understanding is I don't want a wide gamut. Additionally, if my reading is correct, most print labs only print sRBG so it really won't matter.

2) Gaming. I don't game as much as I use to, but I still game, and I don't want ghosting or input lag if avoidable. I'd give up some color accuracy to get this. I'm not going to overclock the monitor, 60Hz is enough for me.

3) Web browsing. Yep, do a lot of this, but not really seeing how much of an impact this would have on a monitor choice.

I'd like high contrast ratio, and I'd like to have black, blacks.

I don't need a scaler or an OSD. I do need something that I can calibrate with something like a spyderpro.

I've been trying to read, but so many of the high rated stuff seems to be wide gamut. And then there's widly varying information on inports from "They're like having a threesome with supermodels" to "they'll rape your mom and eat your socks".

Can someone point my in which direction I should start narrowing my search?
 
CRT...
Seriously. Until we get OLED or LightBoost IPS, you're not going to get photo editing + no blur, etc.

They're not 27", though. What you want, doesn't exist.
Get two LCDs, or get a CRT.
 
Panasonic ZT60 television would be the best bet for black blacks and decent sub 1ms CRT-like blur free gaming. In fact I read the blacks are so good they can't be reliably measured.
LCD is a complete no go for black blacks and CRT-like motion.:(
 
Panmaster said:
Panasonic ZT60 television would be the best bet for black blacks and decent sub 1ms CRT-like blur free gaming.(
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Unfortunately that stuff doesn't make it actually good for gaming as it still has EXTREMELY bad input lag(though not bad for a TV, almost every TV ever made has bad input lag) by PC monitor standards. People call 20-30ms "bad" in the PC monitor business, and the ZT60 has >40ms in game mode.
 
vengence said:
I'd like to keep it around 400$, but I could spend mid 600 if it was justified. So I guess the next question is use cases:
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At $400 there really isn't anything good other than the korean imports, like a Qnix QX2710. You say you're not interested in overclocking, but these do still have low motion blur and some of the lowest input lag. Blacks are LCD blacks, if you ask me there isn't much (visual) difference between 1000:1 contrast ratios and 800:1, and that's the range you're looking at for all the decent models using IPS/PLS/etc technology.

Higher up in the price range, there's BenQ BL2710PT and Viewsonic VP2770, both of which are excellent, and which will likely have better screen uniformity than a Qnix unless you get very very lucky panel-wise. The Viewsonic is above your price range, however. These also both have slightly worse input lag than the Qnixes, however, they're still under 20ms(viewsonic wins on input lag, though, by about 10ms) which I would generally consider "totally fine". Honestly if you're happy with 60hz, I doubt you'll have any issues with input lag on this level anyway.

If you want to get beyond regular LCD blacks, there's some VA panel 27" BenQ monitors that are 3000:1 but I believe they're all 1080p. Plus the Eizo FG2421 at 24", obviously. I'm not aware of any 1440p monitors that are capable of matching these in terms of contrast, and they do have their own issues like gamma uniformity and viewing angle quirks. If contrast is more important to you than resolution, it might be worth looking at these.

I might be missing a few models, I'm sure NCX will chime in if he's around. Relative to your old model, I think you'd be pretty happy with any of the above. Obviously they're not perfect, but until 30" 3840x2160 240hz OLEDs exist at the $200 price point, nobody on this forum is going to call a monitor "good enough" :p
 
Sancus said:
At $400 there really isn't anything good other than the korean imports, like a Qnix QX2710. You say you're not interested in overclocking, but these do still have low motion blur and some of the lowest input lag. Blacks are LCD blacks, if you ask me there isn't much (visual) difference between 1000:1 contrast ratios and 800:1, and that's the range you're looking at for all the decent models using IPS/PLS/etc technology.

Higher up in the price range, there's BenQ BL2710PT and Viewsonic VP2770, both of which are excellent, and which will likely have better screen uniformity than a Qnix unless you get very very lucky panel-wise. The Viewsonic is above your price range, however. These also both have slightly worse input lag than the Qnixes, however, they're still under 20ms(viewsonic wins on input lag, though, by about 10ms) which I would generally consider "totally fine". Honestly if you're happy with 60hz, I doubt you'll have any issues with input lag on this level anyway.

If you want to get beyond regular LCD blacks, there's some VA panel 27" BenQ monitors that are 3000:1 but I believe they're all 1080p. Plus the Eizo FG2421 at 24", obviously. I'm not aware of any 1440p monitors that are capable of matching these in terms of contrast, and they do have their own issues like gamma uniformity and viewing angle quirks. If contrast is more important to you than resolution, it might be worth looking at these.

I might be missing a few models, I'm sure NCX will chime in if he's around. Relative to your old model, I think you'd be pretty happy with any of the above. Obviously they're not perfect, but until 30" 3840x2160 240hz OLEDs exist at the $200 price point, nobody on this forum is going to call a monitor "good enough" :p
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Thank you. Seriously, thank you. This is EXACTLY the kind of information I need. Hopefully NCX will chime in as well. I'm not willing to give up resolution for contrast. I'll take a deeper look at the three panels you suggested, it's going to make my search a lot easier.
 
vengence said:
Thank you. Seriously, thank you. This is EXACTLY the kind of information I need. Hopefully NCX will chime in as well. I'm not willing to give up resolution for contrast. I'll take a deeper look at the three panels you suggested, it's going to make my search a lot easier.
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I have been following NCX's reviews and threads for a little while now because I was also searching for a high quality 27-inch monitor. NCX actually maintains a very helpful "recommended list" of 27-inch 1440p monitors. I don't have the link, but if you search around on these forums you should be able to find it.

The top name-brand monitors NCX (and other review sites) often recommend are the Eizo EV2736W, BenQ BL2710PT, and the Viewsonic VP2770. I don't know much about the Korean monitors, so I won't even try to make recommendations there. Take a look at NCX's reviews of the three monitors above. Of those three, the BenQ tends to be the cheapest (in the United States at least) so it may offer great value for the money considering it keeps up with the Viewsonic and the Eizo for the most part. I've heard only good things. The Eizo is the most expensive and above your price range. The Viewsonic's price tends to land somewhere in the middle (again, this is all in the United States).

As always, purchase from a place where you can easily make exchanges if you get a bad unit. All manufactures have some units that slip through quality control and come with dead pixels, bad backlight bleed, and other issues. So you'll want a place where you can easily exchange it if that happens.
 
Serenity_Horizon said:
I have been following NCX's reviews and threads for a little while now because I was also searching for a high quality 27-inch monitor. NCX actually maintains a very helpful "recommended list" of 27-inch 1440p monitors. I don't have the link, but if you search around on these forums you should be able to find it.

The top name-brand monitors NCX (and other review sites) often recommend are the Eizo EV2736W, BenQ BL2710PT, and the Viewsonic VP2770. I don't know much about the Korean monitors, so I won't even try to make recommendations there. Take a look at NCX's reviews of the three monitors above. Of those three, the BenQ tends to be the cheapest (in the United States at least) so it may offer great value for the money considering it keeps up with the Viewsonic and the Eizo for the most part. I've heard only good things. The Eizo is the most expensive and above your price range. The Viewsonic's price tends to land somewhere in the middle (again, this is all in the United States).

As always, purchase from a place where you can easily make exchanges if you get a bad unit. All manufactures have some units that slip through quality control and come with dead pixels, bad backlight bleed, and other issues. So you'll want a place where you can easily exchange it if that happens.
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Thanks, the Eizo is above my price point. By the time I start getting into those price points, I'd rather take two of the Korean I think. I'll look through the BenQ as it seems to be inside my price point. Listening to some of NCX's review on it it seems there are some quirks, but perhaps not enough to turn me away.



NCX, I assume the blacks in the standard mode of the BenQ after calibration are going to be better than their Korean counter parts such as a Qnix QX2710, is that right?
 
vengence said:
NCX, I assume the blacks in the standard mode of the BenQ after calibration are going to be better than their Korean counter parts such as a Qnix QX2710, is that right?
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Depends on how much back-light bleeding each monitor has since highly visible light bleeding ruins dark scenes/black levels (my matte Qnix had so much light bleeding it took me a few months to realize it is glow free). I've tested 9 Korean monitors and 5/9 didn't have any back-light bleeding, and 2/5 of the light bleeding free monitors had worse blacks (1x lower measured contrast and 1x lacked proper brightness controls) than my BL2710PT's Standard Mode. The name brand monitors suffer from light bleeding just as often as the Korean monitors...
 
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Thanks NCX. The more I research the more I'm convinced monitor reviews can drive people to analysis paralysis very easily...
 
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