TVs vs Monitors: Overall quality

As I've mentioned in some of my other posts (and as I'm sure many of you can see), there's a huge migration towards TVs as primary displays here at [H]. I know that this is due to some negativity towards scaling, as well as the bang/buck ratio of TVs, with the immature state of 4K monitors taking up the rear.

I wanted to start a discussion about that last part. When looking solely at how things look on most 4K TVs today compared to most 4K monitors, which one wins out, and why.

I know that things like adaptive sync and motion blur will inevitably be brought into the discussion, (and that's all right since they do have to do with the pros and cons of each) try to focus on the pure quality of the image overall.

I don't think it's a huge difference unless you're gaming. If you're just working in Windows, surfing the web, or watching movies, it's probably fine to use a TV as a big monitor. But if you are gaming, TVs have double the input lag.

I personally think some people like the larger size of TVs because it gives them more workspace without having to squint. Other people like using display scaling in order to have the same amount of workspace as 1080p but with crisper text. I would say that the first group of people, the ones who want all that 4K work space to be usable at 91 PPI or so and don't mind having to sit close to a television and move their heads around, are the ones moving to televisions. The thing is, suppose you like the size of everything at 1080p on a 24" monitor. That's about 91 PPI. If you make a 4K monitor without increasing the size, you have to shrink all the pixels down to around 180 PPI. And you would need a 48" monitor to have all your workspace at the same 91 PPI you had with your 24" 1080p monitor.

I personally don't like 4K at all, because to me it involves a lot of undesirable tradeoffs, like processing four times the number of pixels and introducing scaling issues to 1080p content (especially after all my hard work in upgrading to 1080p versions of various kinds of equipment and better versions of videos so that I wouldn't have to deal with upscaling). In exchange, all you get is either a slightly sharper image if you look closely enough, or the equivalent of a borderless four 1080p monitor setup. Neither of those appeals to me... I was happy with the way movies and games looked at 720p, and I only appreciate 1080p because of the extra workspace on my desktop. I will probably be forced to buy a 4K monitor against my will at some point because there aren't as many high-end 1080p monitors as there used to be. I'd much rather use a brand-new GPU's muscle to run higher Hz or turn my games up to ultra settings, personally. Not just to run at roughly the same performance level with more pixels as I did before with less pixels.

Honestly, I was confronted with a similar situation already on my Surface Book, and I know pretty much how I would deal with it. I would probably end up buying a monitor about the same size as the one I have now, try turning up Windows scaling to 200% or something, end up being dissatisfied with what I see as a waste of resources to produce a slightly sharper image (because I'm not one of those Apple people that enjoys wasting pixels on small retina displays and faints at the sight of a pixel), and end up running everything in 1920x1080 resolution on my new 4K 24" monitor. Because ultimately, I like the PPI I have now, and I don't really want or have room for anything bigger than a 24" monitor. That basically means I'll end up running 1920x1080 no matter what, even if that's not the native resolution of whatever 24" monitor I buy in the future.

In general, people are choosing 4K TVs over 4K monitors because of price, availability and practicality. A 40"+ 4k TV will offer 110 or lower pixel per inch, allowing you to have the same density as a 20" 1080p monitor, which is MUCH more practical for desktop use than the 27-30" 4k MONITORS on the market with ridiculously tiny pixels. On top of that, a small (40" ish) 4K TV will cost less than a 30" 4K monitor, and there are a MUCH larger selection of smallish 4K TVs than there are 4k monitors out there.

I don't think there needs to be much discussion about the actual image quality. In short it is great on both, obviously depending on the make and model.

To me TVs as monitors are often inconvenient. They can have huge input lag unless running a game mode or they are so big you have to have either a very deep desk and great eyesight or move your head around. Depending on the panel tech chosen image retention might be an issue as most TVs are designed to have constant moving picture.

As it is 4K displays are problematic for desktop use. I feel the 27" monitors are a bit small for that res while TVs often only come at over 40" which to me is too big. If 27" is pretty ideal for 1440p then something like 30-35" would probably be spot on for 4K. You would still use scaling as better text rendering is the primary benefit of 4K but that should result in a pretty comfortable ratio of desktop space and filling your view.

KazeoHin said:

On top of that, a small (40" ish) 4K TV will cost less than a 30" 4K monitor, and there are a MUCH larger selection of smallish 4K TVs than there are 4k monitors out there.

Click to expand...

On the last point, most 4K TVs are junk. Only a few models offer full resolution RGB, reasonable lag, etc.

Luke M said:

On the last point, most 4K TVs are junk. Only a few models offer full resolution RGB, reasonable lag, etc.

Click to expand...

This is why I prefer 1080p monitors. 4K monitors tend to start at 27" inches, which is already a little too big for a lot of people's desks (including mine). But everything looks too small on reasonably-sized monitors, and sticking with 1080p spares me the awkwardness of trying to figure out what to do with the "extra" resolution that I can't really use for anything practical.

What I really want isn't four times the resolution of 1080p, what I want is a different aspect ratio than 16:9 that gives me more vertical height without making the monitor even wider than it already is. I already like switching to portrait mode when reading PDFs. I'd much rather see a monitor that's the same length across as my 24" 1920x1080, but just taller so I could have 1920x1440, or even 1920x1536. That would fill up the footprint of the existing 16:9 displays and give me more vertical resolution without taking up more desk space. That way, I could just use 1080p letterboxed for movies while still having them display at the full size of a 1080p monitor, but also have more vertical desktop real estate when working in Windows.

I understand why I had to endure a big resolution bump from 480i to 720p, and deal with all the scaling and growing pains of that... it was a huge improvement. I was reluctantly able to deal with the next bump from 720p to 1080p, even though I wasn't thrilled about it. But I do not understand how they can be any justification for being made to deal with this yet again. It feels like little more than a shakedown by manufacturers who know that most people will want to use their panels at native resolution just to avoid scaling, and thus force sales of more powerful hardware, new scalers, new cables, re-remastered native 4K Red-Ray discs, etc. And then they'll do it again with 8K, and 16K, and 32K. I'm half-surprised that a lot of 8K monitors aren't showing up already.

I have a Seiki 40 pro monitor 4k 4:4:4 that I've been using for almost two years now I think. I couldn't go back to a smaller monitor but the colors on this one have forced me to start searching and researching again. It seems like the tv's currently out there have much better color and new technologies such as hdr. The downside of the tv's as has been posted is the input lag. The seiki has pretty great low input lag and response time and is a true monitor. I also would much prefer a native displayport monitor as my Titan XP has 3 displayport outs and only 1 hdmi 2 out, which I use for the Vive. I'm hopeful that 2017 will bring some reductions in lag or new formats. The 2016 Sony 800d looks pretty promising but even with game mode on, its supposed to be like 30ms lag as I've read in other threads on [H].