[Xeoncross]

I really wish more people wanted screens that looked as good as their cellphone.

Bright, sharp text, great color. We've had the great Apple Studio Display for years now, it's about time others came to fix some of it's short-comings like 27" size, 60hz and lack of HDMI ports for use with other systems.

So many of us have to stare at a screen for hours every day and having one that reduces strain on my eyes is well worth $1-3k if they'd just make them.

[MBCook]

The company I work at gives all new developers a pair of 1080p displays that could have come right out of 2010.

It amazes me, and it’s so sad. They have no idea what they’re missing. I’m sure high PPI would pay off fast in eye strain. And it’s not like monitors need replacement yearly. Tons of time to recoup that small cost.

I’m not arguing for $2k 37” monitors, just better than $200 ones.

[wolvoleo]

Even $200 will already buy a 4K 27" (LG). Which aren't even bad. I swear by HiDPI as well but my work is the same. 1080p displays and really bad contrast screens too. Definitely not TN (they're not that bad) and not VA (they tend to have way better contrast than IPS). Probably just bottom barrel IPS.

[m463]

Just about every company does something like this.

At one point in my career, I just started buying my own monitors and bringing them into work.

I remember when ~19 or 20" was the norm, and I bought a dell 30" 2560x1600 monitor. Best $1400 I ever spent, used it for years and years.

(I still have it although I retired it a few years back because it uses something called dual-link DVI which is not easily supported anymore)

I think if you are an engineer, you should dive headlong into what you are. Be proactive and get the tools you need. Don't wait for some management signoff that never comes while you suffer daily, and are worse at your job.

[bostonfinance]

I work for a white-shoe law firm in Boston. I and most of my peers have total compensation approaching $500k.

And we have 1280x1024 monitors from the 00s, and we're not allowed to have anything better, even out of our own pockets, because "that's what we use here".

[indemnity]

So you work at the same company I do? They just “upgraded” us to curved Dell UltraWides with a PPI of 110.

Unsurprisingly this is not a motivating factor to come back to the office, given I have a 220 PPI 6K at home.

[hulitu]

> I’m sure high PPI would pay off fast in eye strain.

But we have gray on gray, to compensate. One even has a choice. Do you want light or dark eye strain ?

[r_lee]

penny pinching on some monitors for the devs that cost a fortune...

:(

[lazylizard]

the old monitors still work. its a waste to throw them away. something like that?

[nospice]

I don't think people care all that much about phones. It's just that phones are power-constrained, so manufacturers wanted to move to OLEDs to save on backlight; and because the displays are small, the tech was easier to roll out there than on 6k 32-inch monitors.

But premium displays exist. IPS displays on higher-end laptops, such as ThinkPads, are great - we're talking stuff like 14" 3840x2160, 100% Adobe RGB. The main problem is just that people want to buy truly gigantic panels on the cheap, and there are trade-offs that come with that. But do you really need 2x32" to code?

[sharkjacobs]

The other thing about phones is that you have your old phone with you when you buy a new one, so without even really meaning to you're probably doing a side by side direct comparison and improvements to display technology are a much bigger sales motivator.

[simonw]

Most people, including people who work professionally with computers, spend more time per day looking at their phones than they do at their screens.

I expect people are VERY sensitive to mobile phone screen quality, to the point that it's a big factor in phone choice.

[formerly_proven]

Outside Thinkpads IPS is basically the cheap/default option on laptops, with OLED being the premium choice. With Thinkpads TN without sRGB coverage is the cheap/default option, with IPS being the premium choice.

[futuraperdita]

Which ThinkPad has a 14" 4K 100% Adobe RGB compliant IPS display?

[throwaway85825]

A fast color e ink would be possible but development would be very expensive for an unknown market. Would be a perfect anti eye strain second monitor though.

[elcritch]

Dasung looks to be getting there!

[CGMthrowaway]

Is there a shortlist of top of the line utilitarian monitors that you can just buy, without researching or being some niche gamer?* Something similar to LG G-series TV's. Seems like Apple Studio, Dell UltraSharp are on that list. Any others?

*Struggling for words, but I'm looking more for the expedient solution rather than the "craft beer" or "audiophile" solution.

[skirmish]

Keep in mind that normal OLEDs are quite bad for typical development tasks: lots of text with high contrast. Here is an example that would be unbearable for me: [1]. For text, IPS rules so far. For video and games, definitely OLED.

[1] https://www.savanozin.com/projects/qod

[throwaway85825]

Many monitors use the same panels with only firmware differences. The panel technology IPS/VA/OLED/WOLED is what you shop for.

If you're a gamer QDOLED is best. If you do office work just get whatever is high resolution and makes text sharp.

[Rastonbury]

If you truly don't want to research use rtings best monitor for X articles and find your budget and buy that one, if you feel the need to compare further pop the model numbers into your favourite LLM

[BoredomIsFun]

32uq850 would be my choice if I were in Europe.

[seanmcdirmid]

I have 27" 5K monitors at home since I WFH. One reason I don't really want to RTO is because these monitors aren't standard yet even if they have been out for more than a decade now (and my FAANG employer won't spring for the good stuff). That and my mechanical keyboard would never work in an open office :P.

[skocznymroczny]

Isn't the main difference glossy vs matte? With glossy you get usually bright great color and that's what you get on cellphones and Macbooks as well. For some reason matte is still the preference when it comes to monitors and you can't escape their muted color palette.

[xnx]

> matte is still the preference when it comes to monitors

The larger screen size of a monitor is more likely to reflect lights than a mobile phone screen.

[tracker1]

I have trouble making out details on my 45" UWQHD (3440x1440) displays... so I don't see much point.. maybe slightly easier to read typefaces... I am already zooming 25% in most of the time.

On the plus side, I can comfortably fit my editor on half the screen and my browser on the other half.

[acchow]

Most people run in some hiDPI mode so text doesn’t become tiny

But 1440p on a 45” is not good PPI. That could be why you’re struggling to see text clearly

[John23832]

I would love the apple studio display if the framerate wasn't actually crap.

Even doing programming, 60hz is not enough man.

Plus more peripheral ports.

[nozzlegear]

I have a Studio Display and would also love if it had a much higher refresh rate, but only because I play WoW on it. Why isn't 60hz enough for programming? I don't think I notice the refresh rate at all when not playing a video game or watching videos.

[brcmthrowaway]

1-3k is 52 weeks of groceries for some people.

[Xeoncross]

It seems rather silly to assume all people universally have the same needs, desires, and expenses. We don't live in the world of The Giver. I can accept that firefighters need a truck much more advanced and expensive than I ever will. It would be odd to compare that expense to how many pizza's I order each year.

[TacticalCoder]

> So many of us have to stare at a screen for hours every day and having one that reduces strain on my eyes is well worth $1-3k if they'd just make them.

I'm 53 y/o and didn't have glasses until 52. And at 53 I only use them sporadically. For example atm I'm typing this without my glasses. I can still work at my computer without glasses.

And yet I spent 10 hours a day in front of computer screens since I was a kid nearly every day of my life (don't worry, I did my share of MX bike, skateboarding, bicycling, tennis, etc.).

You know the biggest eye-relief for me? Not using anti-aliased font. No matter the DPI. Crisp, sharp, pixel-perfect font only for me. Zero AA.

So a 110 / 120 ppi screen is perfect for me.

Not if you do use anti-aliased font (and most people do), I understand the appeal of smaller pixels, for more subtle AA.

But yup: pixel perfect programming font, no anti-aliasing.

38" ultra-wide, curved, monitor. Same monitor since 2017 and it's my dream. My wife OTOH prefers a three monitors setup.

So: people have different preferences and that is fine. To each his own bad tastes.

[stefanfisk]

Which font do you prefer for code?

[eikenberry]

We do, but many of us also want to play a game on occasion and GPUs can barely just handle 4k these days, let alone 6k+.

[accrual]

Anecdata but I played games at 4K on a 4GHz Haswell (2013) + 1080 Ti (2017). Definitely faster at 2K but 4K was servicable. It's probably less true now that I'm 1+ years away from the hardware, but 4K gameplay is surprisingly accessible for modest hardware IMO.

[jofzar]

So good news, there is a fair amount of monitors coming soon which are super high resolution that offer a "dual mode" which is lower resolution that has higher refresh rate. They are pretty cool.

[Mean_Mystic]

That’s not really true. I tried out 5K which would reasonably be quite heavy, but honestly with a DLSS it’s super viable. If you get the gaming versions of these displays, they also have dual modes and in that mode a 6K display is going to be less heavy to run than a 4K one and a 5K display is going to be 1440p.

[indemnity]

I game at 6K… I don’t play shooters so it’s fine. I turn off VSync, get 100FPS+ in my game of choice (WoW, admittedly and oldish engine). 4090 GPU.

[account42]

Upscaling tech has come a long way so games can run at lower internal resolutions than your monitor without looking complete crap on a LCD.

[flowardnut]

some of these newer monitors support a lower native resolution as well, usually with a faster refresh rate. it's a nice feature