Another 30" thread....

So, I'm considering taking the plunge and replacing my 245bw. It's an old, uncalibrated 24" TN with amazingly low input lag. I've never really complained about the monitor and have been quite happy with it. I say this to identify where I am on the "how senstive to X are you" questions.

When I bought the monitor I played lots of FPS, but now not so much. I still play lots video games, but just not twitch games as much. So I don't want ghosting, insane overshoot, or insane input lag. So I've pretty much said I want a Zr30W, right? I'm not so sure.

In the past year, I've picked up digital photography photo editing. After getting some cheap prints done, I realized I need a calibrated monitor, and something better than this TN panel. So fuck me, I'm now asking for a perfect gaming and photo editing monitor, that most say doesn't exist.

So I'm trying to sort through this, and frankly, I just don't keep up with monitors that much. So I need some help. My requirements are below:

30" 2560x1600. (I know the 27" are out pacing the 30", but I don't want a 27".)
Good (not great) gaming performance
Decent Color reproduction for photo editing
Calibratable
Don't think I want a wide gamut, but could be talked into it.

What am I describing? I.e. what should I limit my search to and go read more about? Or are there really still no decent jack of all trade 30"s these days?

NEC PA302W. The rest of the 30" are easily beaten by the 300$ Qnix QX2710.

The HP ZR30W uses a grainy matte coating (all matte CCFL back-lit 30" do), lacks color controls & color space emulation. Add 150-250$ to the price of the ZR30W for an X-Rite colorimeter (150$ Colormunkie or 250$ i1 display 3) since it will need to be calibrated to be useful for photo editing.

The ZR30W can't display colors properly unless used with color managed applications, so you will need to know how to use color managed programs & control your workload to use the ZR30W's wide gamut properly. Google Wide Gamut.

You can waste 1000$+ on a ZR30W or get a far superior 27" with a non-grainy matte coating, better black levels, proper colors for consumer media (games, movies, internet, most photos) & a colorimeter and still likely have money to spare while also avoid having to do a ton of research.

The 30" sector is just totally trash right now IMO. When you factor in the low quality and then the price they just are not worth it. Better to go 27" or go TV. I been looking at the 30" too but for a $1000 or more and you only get average quality at best? Just not worth it. So I'm looking into TVs more and more because I want something bigger than 27". Its frustrating but it is what it is. That new LG 31" 4k model has my interest peaked. I'm keeping an eye on it as well as some other TVs. As for the 30" monitors I think the only thing we can hope for is that 2014 brings us something better.

As nice as the PA302W would be, it's probably more than I'm willing to pay. If I can't get anything better than the 27" koreans without paying for the PA302 maybe I should start seriously considering a 3x 27" Korean build then... Sucks no one is willing to make a quality 30.

There are plenty of high quality, standard gamut, non-korean 1440p monitors. I'm excluding models (1440p Asus, LG, Phillips) which use LED PWM Dimming since it may cause health issues. & Dell's since their products are plagued by quality control issues & all 2013 models suffer obvious overshoot ghosting.

The Qnix may use PWM & has a poor stand.

BenQ BL2710PT
Eizo EV2736W The Eizo is overpriced (200$+ more expensive vs. BenQ & Eizo) in North America and is not worth the extra $ given how similar these three are.
Viewsonic VP2770

Wide Gamut

NEC PA272W 1550$ with the SpectraView Kit=Hardware Calibration=huge advantage vs. competitors
Viewsonic VP2772 950-1000$

The NEC's can be hardware calibrated & will offer awesome sRGB & Adobe RGB color accuracy out of the box and when calibrated. The VP2772 just came out and has not been reviewed but it will likely be much better than the Dell U2713H & Asus PA279Q, both of which suffer from obvious overshoot ghosting. If you don't plan on shooting+printing Adobe RGB pictures then I wouldn't bother with a wide gamut monitor.

I don't plan on going to Adobe RGB. While I will print some of my pictures, the vast majority of them will be consumed on the web, so I'll work in sRGB.

The wide gamut issues you will run into on a 30" can possibly be corrected if you are running a Radeon card.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...t-S-IPS-LCDs&p=4153716&viewfull=1#post4153716

It doesn't really seem to be documented or explained anywhere, so no idea if it is truly doing an sRGB conversion or what. But I have a ZR30w and that EDID setting is the only way I can tolerate it.

austinpike said:

The wide gamut issues you will run into on a 30" can possibly be corrected if you are running a Radeon card.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...t-S-IPS-LCDs&p=4153716&viewfull=1#post4153716

It doesn't really seem to be documented or explained anywhere, so no idea if it is truly doing an sRGB conversion or what. But I have a ZR30w and that EDID setting is the only way I can tolerate it.

Click to expand...

There was a thread on this a while back on this forum. It indeed does this, and it works really well. I'm using it on my 3 x Dell 3007wfp-hc's.

If you're an intense FPS gamer, do not buy a 30". The input lag will be very noticeable, I could tell how long it took to pull out a dead ringer in TF2. If you're a BF3 sniper though, that's a whole different story.

Quicksilver_ said:

If you're an intense FPS gamer, do not buy a 30". The input lag will be very noticeable, I could tell how long it took to pull out a dead ringer in TF2. If you're a BF3 sniper though, that's a whole different story.

Click to expand...

Mostly agree. If you get a 30" without a scaler, it's pretty good, but nothing like a 120Hz monitor. Though sniping I prefer to run 3 x 30"rs in portrait, as the scene now gets rendered at 2560p. You can see very far away and it's crisp.