Could you go from a 28" to a 23" monitor?

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BababooeyHTJ

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I'm really thinking about swapping out my 28" I-Inc for a 120hz 23" monitor. I love the size of the I-inc and I'm not so sure about being able to adjust to a 23" display. There are a couple of downsides to the I-inc and the size of the display does not help. There is a lot of color shift on this panel. In some games it can be hard to see what is going on in darker scenes in the top and bottom of the display. Thats not something that is always an issue but it happens, often enough.

I'm thinking about the Acer GD235HZ. The image quality should be better and I would love to try out 3dvision at some point so thats a plus as well. The downside the size. It's been a long time since I've used a monitor this small.
 
Quality trumps size, IMO. I went for both with a U3011, but in your case if you're not happy with the 28" go with the smaller better one.
 
You will not be happy downgrading in size regardless of the quality.
 
Myself, I love the 23" size the best. 120Hz is very nice, especially for FPS games. Is there a way to underscan your I-Inc to see if you can live with a 23" display?
 
Size is one of the least important attributes of a monitor, as long as:
1. Your eyesight is good.
2. The smaller monitor is the same resolution.
3. You're using the monitor on a desk and can move it a tad closer to compensate for the size change. Staying within say 1.25-3 feet of your eyes.

Having used a 30" 2560x1600 monitor for a few years now, I'd say large monitors are actually detrimental for some types of twitch gaming. 26+ inch displays can take up enough of the visual field at normal viewing distances, that you have to move your eyes to change focus from the center to an edge/corner and back again. Having to move your eyes adds effective display lag.

Though at least in the 30" case you somewhat make up for the increased lag with the increased resolution.

IMHO, assuming good vision, the only good reason to go above 24" for a 1920x(1080/1200) display is if you will often be viewing it from more than 3 feet away.

To sum up, if your vision is not the greatest, or if you often view your monitor from more than 3 feet away, then you'll miss the 28". Otherwise, you should be able to adjust to a 20-24 display with no great difficulty.
 
I currently use an LG 27" W2753V which is a very fast TN panel and really great for gaming.

However, I am now working from home and my 14" laptop screen looks goofy next to this giant monitor.

Also, I have been really wanting to go to Nvidia Surround and / or 3D so I have decided to buy 3 Alienware 2310 monitors and give the 27" LG to my wife (she loves it).

My desk is no quite large enough (48") to handle the monitors without overhang but I think all the stands will fit.

It's been a hard decision to go from a 27" to a 23" but I really want a triple screen setup and I think 27s would be so huge that doing work on them would be annoying.

I have a 2600k and dual 480s - I mostly play BC2 so I am curious to see how that works on 3 120hz screens. Currently all the settings are maxed but I could live with them turned down a little for the peripheral vision. I should be ordering these tomorrow if the sale price of $369 holds up. I am getting an additional discount so I should be just under $1000 for all 3 delivered. Can't wait.
 
I think I'm fairly qualified to comment on this: I currently own 30", 27" 3D, 23.6" 3D, 23" 3D, and 22" 2D monitors.

1. DPI is more important than physical size. 1080p at 27" is bigger, but less impressive to look at, than 1080p at 23". Fonts are grainy, ugly textures look uglier, basically you lose detail. This was my impression after working with higher DPI displays. Obviously, you don't want to go to the other extreme - 22" monitors are too small for gaming, in my opinion.

2. I own two of the Acer units you're talking about. At 23.6", they actually look noticeably bigger than the 23" Asus I have, though after taking some screen measurements, I think it's almost entirely because the bezel is bigger, particularly at the bottom. I would prefer a 1080p screen up 24", but the Acer is the closest thing and I'm selling mine off because I'd rather have the glossy Asus screen.

3. There is indeed such a thing as too big. In third-person games, a 30" is fine, but in FPS it's a very large canvas, and not always for the better. Also, it sounds counter-intuitive, but especially at 120hz, I sense the fluidity more easily with the 24" and the 23" 3D monitors compared with the 27".
 
The idea that smaller monitors can look smoother is interesting - when you think about tracking a target in a game, the transition from each displayed frame on a larger monitor is going to be more noticeable because everything is larger, including the "gaps" between frames.

Also, on a 27", I sometimes feel that while I can see everything in my peripheral vision, I almost have to look around on the screen to see what I am looking for. Only a very narrow range of your vision is high detail and on a large, close screen, I think it can be harder to - say - spot snipers in the brush on BC2.

You guys have me looking forward to this now.
 
I'm not too bothered by the low dpi on the 28". Its actually a plus at times especially in older pixel based games. The only real thing that bothers me with the I-inc is the color shift and that isn't really even noticeable all of the time.
 
DoubleTap said:
The idea that smaller monitors can look smoother is interesting - when you think about tracking a target in a game, the transition from each displayed frame on a larger monitor is going to be more noticeable because everything is larger, including the "gaps" between frames.

Also, on a 27", I sometimes feel that while I can see everything in my peripheral vision, I almost have to look around on the screen to see what I am looking for. Only a very narrow range of your vision is high detail and on a large, close screen, I think it can be harder to - say - spot snipers in the brush on BC2.

You guys have me looking forward to this now.
Click to expand...

on my quest for looking for a 30 inch monitor i almost pulled the trigger on one of these over the weekend. but that high resolution on a 22" was a pushing it. + i dont think my video card could handle that.
i would get a WQUXGA (3840×2400) on a 30" without question.






WUXGA (1920×1200)
 
204 dpi on a monitor is perfect for gaming, web, and word processing duties. My T221 is unfortunately sitting on a shelf right now, waiting for me to get a computer that works with it... (my current ThinkPad doesn't play nice).

The only thing is the frame rates and the slow response time... Not as big of a problem for RTSes or older FPSes in single player mode - but for typical non-gaming use it's mostly fine - the insane resolution and pixel pitch are more than worth the tradeoff.
 
Blackbeard Ben said:
204 dpi on a monitor is perfect for gaming, web, and word processing duties. My T221 is unfortunately sitting on a shelf right now, waiting for me to get a computer that works with it... (my current ThinkPad doesn't play nice).

The only thing is the frame rates and the slow response time... Not as big of a problem for RTSes or older FPSes in single player mode - but for typical non-gaming use it's mostly fine - the insane resolution and pixel pitch are more than worth the tradeoff.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't any modern eyefinity card work well with it?
 
suiken_2mieu said:
Wouldn't any modern eyefinity card work well with it?
Click to expand...

Hard to stick a discrete GPU card in my laptop...

Well, back with Windows XP nearly every reasonably modern card worked fine because scaling a la Eyefinity could be done just in the OS instead...

The problem with Eyefinity is I need four single-link DVI signals to get the full 41 Hz refresh rate out of my DG3. The DG5 is better in that one dual-link DVI and one single-link DVI connection is all that is needed to get the full 48 Hz refresh rate. On top of not having a desktop currently and there not being any Eyefinity 6 cards when I did have mine (there have been several previous non-Eyefinity cards with four DVI connections, including of course non-3D Matrox cards), the Eyefinity 6 cards are absurdly expensive and still require adapters to use. I'm not sure about how well they work now, but when I was building my desktop last year with a 5770 in it, the adapters sucked.

Anyway, my point is that if I had the money I'd buy a DG5 model anyway, since I could run it at 48 Hz just fine off of any Eyefinity-capable card.
 
That is a very interesting monitor - I don't have a use for it, but I can see why it would be useful for content generation.

I have been wondering lately - remember the Alienware triple DLP monitor that was supposed to be $9000? It was a seamless screen although low resolution.

Why doesn't a company try to do a 2X HD panel? 3840x1080 - two normal panels manufactured into one? This would give most of the benefit of a triple screen monitor but it would be fewer pixels and no bezel issues.

I know yields are always a concern in manufacturing, but it seems like dead/stuck pixels are fairly rare these days so I don't see a big yield problem. You could easily charge triple or quadruple the price for such a beast....

edit: now that I think about it, a double wide TN panel would create severe off angle issues so it would have to be IPS or have some amount of curve to the display which would make it cost a lot more.

Cue the "I want it to be 1200 high, IPS and with 120hz...." responses ;)
 
The other problem is that all the fabs are set up for 16:9 panels, with ever-fewer for 16:10 - having one for an odd aspect ratio would be very costly for a single monitor, especially one so wide.

In fact NEC actually produced a 32:10, 2880x900 monitor, the DRV43. It was $8000. A T221 was cheaper. Oh, and it was 15" deep front to back...

Now, if a manufacturer mounted two so the joint was only near-seamless rather than totally seamless (or is this what you meant to begin with?), that might work out to be more reasonable. I'm not sure I could go for a monitor that wide that's still flat, though.

Another possibility is the decent number of large format 2.37:1/21:9 (very close to cinemascope) displays being prototyped today - so that is perhaps the most likely of possible super-wide single monitors. There's supposed to be some large 2560x1080 displays out there but I'm not sure how many have been released.

I'd consider one for dedicated video gaming, but more vertical space really would be usable for everything else - unless such a monitor would go to 1440 vertical pixels or more. That's about the magic number for fitting full documents vertically, and I really would hate to see monitors go even wider first before we got to that vertical resolution. I'd get 3660x1440, that'd be nice. Well, except for photos. For photos a rotating 16:10 monitor or even a square monitor would be ideal.
 
I can tell you I did exactly what you are thinking of doing. I went from a 28 inch I-Inc to a Dell U2311, and let me tell you DON'T! Yes the screen looked better but it is very very hard to get used to such a small screen after using such a big screen...
 
I've been using a 32" TV sitting at arms length distance when gaming for 4 years now and there's no way I could downgrade to a 23-24". Thought about it many times but I know I'll be disappointed. Whenever I use a 22" with my laptop as a second display I want to cry.
 
Blackbeard Ben said:
The other problem is that all the fabs are set up for 16:9 panels, with ever-fewer for 16:10 - having one for an odd aspect ratio would be very costly for a single monitor, especially one so wide.

In fact NEC actually produced a 32:10, 2880x900 monitor, the DRV43. It was $8000. A T221 was cheaper. Oh, and it was 15" deep front to back...

Now, if a manufacturer mounted two so the joint was only near-seamless rather than totally seamless (or is this what you meant to begin with?), that might work out to be more reasonable. I'm not sure I could go for a monitor that wide that's still flat, though.

Another possibility is the decent number of large format 2.37:1/21:9 (very close to cinemascope) displays being prototyped today - so that is perhaps the most likely of possible super-wide single monitors. There's supposed to be some large 2560x1080 displays out there but I'm not sure how many have been released.

I'd consider one for dedicated video gaming, but more vertical space really would be usable for everything else - unless such a monitor would go to 1440 vertical pixels or more. That's about the magic number for fitting full documents vertically, and I really would hate to see monitors go even wider first before we got to that vertical resolution. I'd get 3660x1440, that'd be nice. Well, except for photos. For photos a rotating 16:10 monitor or even a square monitor would be ideal.
Click to expand...

http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/nec-alienware-curved-monitors-1378.shtml

The Alienware monitor I mentioned is a rebranded NEC that you mentioned. Interesting.

Those are DLP rear projection monitors - I am not sure why on earth they cost $8000-9000 but I don't think they sold many at all.

Two joined panels would create a very slight seam in the middle which would bother a lot of people. It would actually be a huge advantage on games like BC2 where no-scoping people takes practice
 
DoubleTap said:
http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/nec-alienware-curved-monitors-1378.shtml

The Alienware monitor I mentioned is a rebranded NEC that you mentioned. Interesting.

Those are DLP rear projection monitors - I am not sure why on earth they cost $8000-9000 but I don't think they sold many at all.

Two joined panels would create a very slight seam in the middle which would bother a lot of people. It would actually be a huge advantage on games like BC2 where no-scoping people takes practice
Click to expand...

I figured it was a DLP based on the depth - seems like an easier way to get the curve in.

Like I said, 21:9 is perhaps a more possible avenue in the near future - we know from experience that it's not too wide for an uncurved screen (yet I would suspect 32:9 is in most cases).

Curved displays, on the other hand... Once OLEDs get cheaper, it's almost a certainty that we'll see monitors like that.
 
I have a few monitors...iH282, Samsung 2370, Dell 2001FP.

I can tell you without doubt...I could never go back from my 28" to anything smaller. It's super fast, easy to read and you get used to it.

That being said, the 28" TN panel does have some detractors, such as less color quality (you see that with all TN panels though). If I were in it for quality, nothing beats my Dell 2001FP but it's just too darn small. Well, I take it back, the Dell 30" ips panels have the color quality...but they also have screen lag and blurring.
 
Just finished moving from the 30" and 27" to 3 x 23". Very happy. Once I'm "in the game" I don't really care what the monitor size is. I'm more concerned about PQ, smoothness (120 hz), and FOV of the game.
 
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