AOC's 21:9 Format, 29" IPS Display Put To the Test At 2560x1080 217
MojoKid writes "Ask any person who owns a dual-monitor setup and they'll likely tell you they couldn't fathom going back to a single display. But what if you could enjoy all the benefits of a dual-monitor configuration from a single monitor? Would you be game to reclaiming some desk space by trading in two panels for a single display? AOC aims to answer that question with its new 29-inch Q2963PM LCD monitor. Armed with an UltraWide IPS panel, this LED-backlit monitor boasts a 2560x1080 resolution with 21:9 aspect ratio, providing users with an extra wide panoramic view. With features like picture-in-picture (PIP) and picture-by-picture (PBP) built-in, workcaholics can multitask the night away from multiple video sources with plenty of horizontal real estate to play with. The funky aspect ratio limits the appeal of the Q2963PM for gamers currently; though if developers were to jump on board, a 21:9 monitor could offer a wider field-of-view of the action."
NOPE! (Score:5, Interesting)
I would still rather have two 1600x1200 displays.
Re:NOPE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or three 1900x1600 displays.
This hysteria to have as wide screen as possible is limiting the usefulness when it comes to business applications and software development.
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I'm pretty happy with one 2560x1600 display.
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You'll be happier with two...with three, you'll have to also buy wipes for the screens regularly...
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Most of my coworkers use one 27" 2560x1600 display, but some use two. They seem to like it.
(Nice to work for a place whose desktop provisioning policy is "tell us what you want").
Personally, I moved from two 1900x1200 displays to one 2560x1600. In theory, I lost some desktop real estate, but now I actually use the whole thing and it's .. divine.
Re:NOPE! (Score:5, Informative)
This hysteria to have as wide screen as possible is limiting the usefulness when it comes to business applications and software development.
For software development your screen(s) needs to horizontally span three pages: One page for docs, one page for your editor, and one page for testing/debugger. You want a vertical resolution to display at least a full page of documentation. If you are going to do all that on a single monitor, then 2560x1600 is common and cheap enough, so I don't see why anyone would settle for the 2560x1080 in TFA. 1080 is insufficient vertical res.
Re:NOPE! (Score:5, Insightful)
This hysteria to have as wide screen as possible is limiting the usefulness when it comes to business applications and software development.
For software development your screen(s) needs to horizontally span three pages: One page for docs, one page for your editor, and one page for testing/debugger. You want a vertical resolution to display at least a full page of documentation. If you are going to do all that on a single monitor, then 2560x1600 is common and cheap enough, so I don't see why anyone would settle for the 2560x1080 in TFA. 1080 is insufficient vertical res.
Dang, I don't know how i survived programming C on a CGA monitor back in the late 80's.
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This hysteria to have as wide screen as possible is limiting the usefulness when it comes to business applications and software development.
For software development your screen(s) needs to horizontally span three pages: One page for docs, one page for your editor, and one page for testing/debugger. You want a vertical resolution to display at least a full page of documentation. If you are going to do all that on a single monitor, then 2560x1600 is common and cheap enough, so I don't see why anyone would settle for the 2560x1080 in TFA. 1080 is insufficient vertical res.
Dang, I don't know how i survived programming C on a CGA monitor back in the late 80's.
What the GP meant to say is that modern developers need 3 windows open, an IDE, Google and the Clipboard.
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Three? I wish:
1: Rails Server output
2: Sinatra Server output
3: Editor - coffeescript
4: Editor - scss
5: Editor - Sinatra/Rails server
6: Editor - Tests
7: Browser - app
8: Browser - research
9: JS debugger
Number of monitors? 1. I cry at night.
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Scrolling.
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Dang, I don't know how i survived programming C on a CGA monitor back in the late 80's.
Yeah, yeah, and the folks enjoying their CGA monitors in the late 80's wondered how they survived coding on a dumb 24x80 terminal in the late 1970's, at which time they were wondering how they survived paper coding forms and keypunches in the late 1960's.
Guess what? You would've been more productive with a bigger (but especially taller) display back in the day. With a bigger monitor and a more modern IDE, you would've been more productive still.
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"Hello World!" was smaller back then.
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your... your... you...
I'm quite happy developing on one screen, thanks. But feel free to dictate what's best to everyone else.
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It's an American thing. We use you and your instead of one - just fill in 'one' in the correct form wherever you see 'you' or 'your' and so on.
Re:NOPE! (Score:5, Informative)
I can see a whole page in 1080 just fine.
You can see it a lot better at 1600. I pay my devs an average of $80k/year. Buying a better monitor makes sense even if they are only 0.1% more productive. Some studies have shown 10-20% productivity for doubling the available pixels. So buying better monitors is a total no-brainer.
2560x1600 monitors cost over $1000
You haven't been shopping lately. They are about $600 on Amazon. I pay a good dev that much in two days.
Re:NOPE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent informative.
This is something that is all too commonly ignored. When you're talking about the cost of equipment, it's worth keeping in mind whom it's for and what the relative value is. Abstracting the parent's statement a bit, if a dev is getting paid $x per week; the new equipment costs $x; and it will increase their productivity by more than the equivalent of one week over the lifetime of the equipment, it makes no sense NOT to buy it.
All the devs in my group have the highest quality equipment I could get them for exactly this reason - they type faster and more comfortably on good keyboards; they can see more at once on large high-resolution displays; and they don't have to wait for the computer to swap stuff in and out all the time by having a nice high amount of RAM. The equipment wasn't cheap, but when compared to the productivity gains by having it vs not having it, it was more financially sensible to have it (as well as the added benefit of not having devs that hate their work equipment; making for a happier, nicer workplace overall)
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You can see it a lot better at 1600. I pay my devs an average of $80k/year. Buying a better monitor makes sense even if they are only 0.1% more productive.
It doesn't. One percent, yes. 0.1%, no.
Re: NOPE! (Score:2)
More importantly - these 2560x1080 displays are not cheap either. They cost approximately the same as 2560x1440 displays (400-500$). And last time i checked 1440>1080. When i first heard of he LG 29" 21:9 panel, i was somewhat excited about some applications, but its price makes it totally obsolete.
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Depends how long your lines of code are. Spending a few hundred bucks to avoid splitting lines with a '\' is well worth it IMHO.
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Totally agree would mod you up to 6 if I could. I have a 27" iMac so 1440 high and I just though of losing ~30% of that screen height ... and cried. Not everything is for watching movies. My work I have a good setup a 24" vertical and a 22 horizontal. Still find when programming I have more things I'd like in the vertical orientation but nice to have the choice. They could still give you the choice here but the screens would be so narrow that chances are your IDE tools on the side will take up the remaining
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Is this ad...story.. a joke? I have two 1600x1200 20" (ie, 100dpi) monitors. How is this any better except perhaps eliminating the bezel? 72% of the resolution and at 95 dpi instead of 100. Try again.
I prefer the SEIKI 50" QHD Display (Score:2)
I used to have a triple U2410 Eyefinity display and I got sick of all the energy usage and bezels so I upgraded to a U3011.
Fast forward 2 years and I was frustrated nearly to the point of pulling out my hair because I just didn't have the screen real estate I needed...
I got the Seiki 50" at the beginning of May and I swear to god it was the best "monitor" purchase I've made in 15 years.
I can have /. open at what would be full screen on the U2410 and still be watching a BluRay in a ~39" window next to it.
-or
Fuck this wide bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
So-called "wide" screens are a scam to sell you more "inches" but actually a smaller area. That's actually a misnomer, they should be called short screens! The classic 4:3 ratio is better in every way.
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I'm willing to accept many ways, but not every way.
For entertainment, wider is significantly better except for splitscreen multiplayer. There's almost always much more important things happening along the horizon line roughly
For work, I'd take a 16:9 display in which I could comfortably put two programs side-by-side over a 4:3 display in which I could not, and I'd do it without hesitation.
For work 4:3 far superior (Score:5, Informative)
For work, I'd take a 16:9 display in which I could comfortably put two programs side-by-side over a 4:3 display
For work, I'd vastly rather have the extra few inches of screen at the bottom, since text scrolls up and down. You can still make things narrower (or overlap) to fit side by side, you can't fix height cropping.
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For work, I'd vastly rather have the extra few inches of screen at the bottom, since text scrolls up and down.
These days we need the width for more tabs. Overlapping windows turned out to be less efficient than tabs.
You can still make things narrower (or overlap) to fit side by side, you can't fix height cropping.
You can't fix horizontal cropping either. Text goes left to right, you need a certain minimum width for a window to be useful. 1920 pixels is barely enough for my code and debugger side-by-side.
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But with code it's often better to see more at once, which means more vertical height. I agree code wrapping is annoying, but that's when you simply overlap windows (or use tabs) and get more vertical view for each window.
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Rotate ("pivot") a 16:9 and you get something that is to narrow to be useful.
Re:For work 4:3 far superior (Score:4, Informative)
Rotate ("pivot") a 16:9 and you get something that is to narrow to be useful.
That's why I use 16:10.
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You can place the console below the other window with the extra height, since usually you only need to see a few lines of the console...
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Pivotable monitors in 16:9 at around 23 inches is like working in a mine shaft.
The "wide screen", when sideways is too narrow for document production work. But when horrizontal, too short for document production work.
4:3 above 19" is expensive and illusive.
This widescreen bullshit has really skewed everything away from usefulness.
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Pivotable monitors in 16:9 at around 23 inches is like working in a mine shaft.
Maybe, but imagine playing Caverns of Mars that way.
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For entertainment, wider is significantly better except for splitscreen multiplayer. There's almost always much more important things happening along the horizon line roughly
There's an element of chicken and egg to that, though. Films are shot with widescreen in mind because that's what everyone watches.
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For gaming I strongly prefer the old school 4:3. I like bigish screens in the neighborhood of 24". I had an asus VE series that was 24.6 inches and I'm close enough to my screen that it screwed with my peripharies. It was close enough and big enough that I think the edges were outside my "active" cone of vision.
It also just appeals to me a lot more in general. Maybe I'm just used to the square...but I like it better.
I'm using a TV from the RGB HD era...couldn't find anything in 4:3 with a res this high.
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True to a point, but I do very much like my 24" dual monitor setup with each at 16:9, 1920 x 1800 resolution. If I could get all that into one monitor, I'd still probably get 2 of 'em!
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The classic 4:3 ratio is better in every way.
Except where your content is widescreen.
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but 9:16 beats the pants off either...;)
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The classic 4:3 ratio is better in every way.
or 5:4, or 16:10... (notice a trend here?). 16:9, on the other hand, is shit for workspace; 21:9?! Please.
No it is to better match our eyes (Score:2)
You may have noticed that your eyes are laid out horizontal. You also may have noticed that you have a much wider horizontal FOV and vertical. That is the reason for wide screens, and why movies have been doing it for years and years.
Now that doesn't mean things should be as wide as possible, or that all monitors should be equally wide. Vertical space is useful. In general, the smaller, the more square they should be. Laptops would probably benefit from 4:3 screens in general. However when you have a nice l
QHD or WQXGA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever. I write code. I want more vertical space. Why would I bother with one of these when I could just get a QHD [2560x1440] for ~$650 or a WQXGA [2560x1600] for a couple hundred more? If I'm going to spend more than $400 on a monitor, I'm going to get one that scales nicely.
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2560x1440, 2560x1600 and 2560x1080 are the exact same amount of horizontal space.
If you can get 2 or 3 pages side by side on a 2560x1080 screen, you can also get in on a 2560x1600 screen.
And a 2560x1440 screen usually cost the same as a 2560x1080, so you pay the same for less pixels.
I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
My two 1080p monitors, side by side, give me a combined 3840x1080 pixels.
This is purporting to replace my setup, with 1/3 less pixels (or basically cutting 2/3 off of one of my monitors)? Really?
These days I feel more cramped vertically, and would rather have more pixels in that direction. Another failure from this monitor.
No thanks!
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Plug it in and their must have game sort of works and they are very happy.
If the new screen ups the res too much you need two new good video cards or hope one new really expensive card works well.
With two cards you are at the mercy of the game code, Windows, the driver and the hardware.
All you are doing is dropping the bezel for a usable bump in res that will still be ok for most users.
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Sad (Score:5, Informative)
2013: 2560x1080
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
2004: 42lbs
2013: 4lbs
2004: $4500
2013: $450
I can't say I mind the trade off.
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1080 is so 2005.
I'd rather have the extra vertical space.
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Yup, 2560x1440 for 350-450 on ebay, brand new, drop shipped from Korea, Got mine in 27 hours by fedex for 70 bux.
No dead pixel options also.
Cant wait for 4K.
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You are confused.
30" 2560x1600 LCD displays were released in 2004 [apple.com].
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I was lucky enought to inherit two from someone who quit his job. By inherit, I mean of course that I was quicker than the other guys. Don't get me wrong, they sere very nice to look at and use. However, compared to newer monitors:
(a) Quality much worse than my cheepie Korean IPS
(b) Substatially heavier
(c) Substantially hotter
(d) Sreen was un even (looked like burn in?)
(e) lower brightness
(f) lower contrast
(g) Much, much much much more expensive.
They have the same connectivity options as my really cheap Kor
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There are plenty of cheap 2560x1440 or 2560x1600 monitors on eBay. People say good things about them too.
Nope (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, I miss 5:4 and 4:3 monitors and want them back, because having to set up widescreens vertically defeats the point. two 4:3 monitors give me the horizontal area I want without consuming my entire desk, but it's difficult to find good ones at a reasonable price.
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Won't a vertical strip of black tape in the middle of a very wide monitor accomplish the same thing?
Why do we still count the diagonal? (Score:4, Informative)
The diagonal means something different depending on which aspect the screen has. We have 16:9, 16:10, 3:2 (Chromebok pixel) and 4:3, and now 2.37:1 and the angle of the diagonal is different on all of them. .. maybe the height of the screen.
How about using a metric that does not change, such as
This "29 inch screen" is only as large on the vertical as a 23 inch diagonal 16:9 screen. Both are 11" high.
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The correct measurement is the area: multiply width and height.
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It does, in fact it'd be an incentive to make square screens.
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Much the same way that 1280x720 is supposedly a higher resolution than 1024x768 and yet the former isn't supported properly in Windows 8 (Metro apps refuse to run, it complains that the resolution is too low).
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cause my desk is only so wide and 11 inches doesnt mean shit considering there is nothing above it
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How about using a metric that does not change, such as .. maybe the height of the screen.
In what sense does the height "not change"?
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Needs to be curved. (Score:5, Insightful)
I like to angle dual monitors to meet my eyes. You can't do that with this thing, so I consider it ergonomically inferior to just using two monitors.
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Manufacturers seriously missing the point (Score:2)
What screen size I liked (in inches) was directly related to the pixels I could use. Two monitors meant that I'd effectively doubled the pixels. The cool feature there was that I could put *two* pages of dead-tree text side-by-side. The drawback was (with windows at least) that the second monitor was always somewhat a gimp. A you-tube video or
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In 1985 I liked a 19" monitor because of the amount of information could be relayed. 1280x1024 was huge compared to the 13" monitor I had (800x640 or whatever).
Unlikely. VGA was introduced in 1987, and it only offered 640x480. Perhaps you meant to type 1995?
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I'll just note that, programming 3D FORTRAN in 1979, I built my own three-terminal setup (I built a three-way RS-422 switch) between the three terminals I had a total resolution of 3740x1024. I used one terminal for interacting with the mainframe, one to show the source, and one to display the 3D graphics output. All of these Tektronix terminals had their own memory so I could actually edit code in the edit buffer on that terminal, and all three maintained their view while I interacted with another.
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In regard to my other poster that criticized me for not knowing 1920 x 1080p was "Full HD"
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VGA was always a lowend tech, intended for at the time lowend machines.
Highend workstations from Sun, SGI etc were capable of much more in those days, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions [wikipedia.org] lists the sun-2 workstations as defaulting to 1152x900.
SGI IRIS 1000 was doing 1024x1024 in 1983 too according to http://www.sgistuff.net/hardware/systems/iris1000.html [sgistuff.net]
Not a suable replacement, sorry (Score:2)
>" But what if you could enjoy all the benefits of a dual-monitor configuration from a single monitor?"
Sorry but a 29" 2560x1080 is not a suitable replacement for my two 19" 4:3 1600x1200 monitors (3200x1200) on my Linux workstation. Not only do I get much more resolution but much more real-estate and I can angle the panels a bit to me so it is easier to see them both. I don't game or watch movies on it, so that part simply doesn't matter to me.
Maybe that product is a replacement for two tiny/cheesy 15
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A 29 inch super wide with less vertical pixels and the same horizontal as my existing 3x2560x1600 30 inch screens. Every time I see these new super wide formats it just seems like a ploy to pump up the diagonal measurement. 16x10 is ok 4x3 fits better with my vision so I assume others but I got tired of running 3 sun 19 inchers.
This is where windows 8 / 8.1 sucks (Score:2)
Start screen and full screen apps at not meant for screens this big.
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Start screen and full screen apps at not meant for screens this big.
In the desktop 8.1 is supposed to finally make text DPI scaling unclunky.
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to bad Calculator will be full screen.
http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/hands-windows-81-new-utility-apps [winsupersite.com]
Inaccurate documentation (Score:2)
Sitting on the underside of the stand are a pair of DisplayPorts. With the front of the panel facing you, the left DisplayPort serves as an input and the right is an output, which allows you to daisychain multiple monitors.
Uh... I looked at the photos and one is HDMI. The port that they claim is HDMI on the side of the stand? That's DisplayPort.
According to the AOC data sheet, it should have 2 HDMI ports total, but the product manual only shows 1. Something strange is afoot.
Bring back the IBM T221 ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, someone needs to start making these panels again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors [wikipedia.org]
Sometimes two heads are better than one (Score:2)
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Nope, again (Score:2)
I don't care unless there are at least 1200 pixels vertically. Come back when you have one that's 2800x1200.
Nope (Score:2)
Not sure how a single 2560x1080 21:9 display is better than my current 2560x1440 16:9 display. If I wanted more pixels, I could get a second monitor, and if that was too wide, you could do two 2560x1600 rotated on their sides.
Seiki 4k display (Score:3)
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This is true. The Seiki 4K is actually 4 smaller panels sandwiched together and you can see the splices. It has awful color and posterizing in dark areas. It has limited refresh which may or may not be a problem (but is a huge problem on OS X) and worst of all, it resamples producing imaging artifacts even when fed a proper resolution signal. It is not suitable for use as a computer monitor.
50" is also too large for the desktop. It's manageable but not ideal. 39" would be better but not if it suffers
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(a) It's a television and TVs don't use DVI, and
(b) DVI doesn't do 4K anyway.
Why it doesn't include DisplayPort is a better question. It would be nice if more OS'es would support 4K at 30Hz on the interface they DO provide but that's not their fault. What is their fault is the artifacting they produce on the signal they do receive.
Nice Price - NOT... (Score:2)
Says it has a $500 MSRP and 400.00 on the street...I guess that doesn't include the street the link has to Amazon which is pushing them for ~ $770.00 USD with shipping.
Better deal? Try this
http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/dell-ultrasharp-u2711-27-inch-lcd-monitor/18859.aspx [logicbuy.com]
Dell U27711 Monitor With 3 yr Advanced Exchange warranty for $549.00 USD with free shipping.
I paid nearly $1100.00 for my 1st one in July 2010 ... figured two more won't hurt. Now I just need a pair of Nvidia's nuclear reactors to push the
More lines ! (Score:2)
Why all this attention on extra width? It might be useful for spreadsheets and some drawings/photos but it is horrid for text. You cannot see much in the short textboxes, and perhaps that leads to microfocus (nitpicking) and flame-wars. Besides, long lines are hard to follow and read (40 char optimum).
Of course you can rotate to portrait (xrandr) and when time allows (home/work), I do! Personally, I find 1960x1080 to be a bit long(!) but 1600x1024 or 1960x1200 is fine.
But line-count has been slow to incr
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VGA is 480p, NTSC is 525i and PAL is 625i. And it hasn't been quite 30 years yet since VGA was the display hardware first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987.
But yeah, there hasn't been much progress on that front especially when compared to CPUs, GPUs, RAM, hard drives and hardware interfaces.
reduced fractions (Score:2)
Dual 2560x1440 (Score:2)
I just bought two 2560x1440 27" displays from monoprice. IPS, minimal backlight bleed, no dead or stuck pixels. Love 'em!
NOPE! (Score:2)
One of my 2 screens is larger than this one (2560x1600)!
I knew this would happen (Score:2)
Eventually we will have 100 inch monitors that are 1 pixel high. And people will still be blown away by the size.
The concept is interesting but I want my vertical space back. 1600x1200 is ideal, widescreen only came about when the HD scam started. PC monitors were initially 16:10 with some 16:9 but eventually the HD moniker was applied to screens with pathetically lower resolutions such as 1366x768. So as long as it qualified as "HD" then people thought it was the bees knees.
1920x1080 isn't the worst but he
DO NOT WANT (Score:2)
My two screens at work are at an angle to each other. If I could get a third screen, I'd put that one to the right of the middle one, at the opposite angle of the one on the left. I certainly wouldn't want one giant monitor all in a line.
I can also full-screen applications in each monitor. You couldn't do that if it was a single monitor. I don't need or want a 3-monitor-wide Firefox display, I want a one-monitor Firefox window and a one-monitor remote desktop and a one-monitor Visual Studio.
You can have my
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But it is faster to switch our attention between two tasks if the two programs are side-by-side than by pressing ALT+TAB to switch between them.