ASUS MX279H 27-inch LED-Lit AH IPS Monitor

[rohcQaH]

Two things missing from the review: glossy or matte?
Considering the small frame, it it a good choice for multi-monitor setups, or would that obstruct important buttons or something?

I don't know why i should buy more than 1080p.
Watching videos? Does it make a difference?
Gaming? I don't want to buy a high end pc just to be able to play at ridiculous resolutions.
For daily work it wouldn't really make a difference, does it?

The only reason I use big screens is for daily work. They offer as much pixels as two separate monitors, but without the frames in between. For webdesign, code on the left, browser on the right. For latex, code on the left, pdf-viewer on the right. And in general, it allows a lot of multitasking without hiding any windows.

For videos it doesn't matter yet; I doubt you have any videos larger than FullHD. For gaming it is nice, but only if your GPU can keep up. Work is why I love them.

[baracca]

er... is it suitable for working with terminal windows?

I have a 27" Asus VS278Q monitor 1920x1080.
It has built-in speakers and a DisplayPort, and got it on rebate for less than 240 bucks.

The reason I chose a 1920x1080 is that I have a fixed full-HD resolution output from my tablet PC and I wanted a big external monitor as a desktop mirror.

In terms of resolution, overall size, interfaces and power consumption, I'm happy.

But there's one thing I hate. Its "black", even at the lowest brightness/contrast setting, is actually grey. This happens when using HDMI and DP ports, while it does not happen when using the VGA port. I bet that its circuitry converts DP/HDMI to a VGA signal before feeding it to the panel (yes, believe me, engineering quirks like this are not uncommon), and that the conversion incorrectly shifts up the lighting.

I spend a lot of time in ssh terminal windows. Even using "green on black" setting for the terminal, the "black" still punches my eyes.

I considered sending it back to the seller, but figured that I may probably get the same results.

So I suggest: before going for the "highest resolution available", check for its lowest brightness setting and consider how much time you will spend without full-screen "gaming" and "videos".

When reviewing monitors, Michael should add this little test: "working two hours in a green-on-white terminal window".

[entropy]

While it is great that we finally can get our hands on more HiDPI displays, even at an affordable price tag,
I can only advise people to first test the displays with Linux distributions before buying - if possible.
From my experience (Thinkpad T540p 3K display) the typical desktops are not ready yet for high DPI.
That might change in a year or so - not sure how much the improvements in Gnome 3.12 will help - but for
now the situation is just bad. Really bad.

Edit: My point is: getting a 27", 1080p monitor probably isn't such a bad choice for now as it may seem.
Some more pixels are fine, unless you don't reach the "Retina-like" DPI regime.

[schmidtbag]

I don't know why i should buy more than 1080p.
Watching videos? Does it make a difference?
Gaming? I don't want to buy a high end pc just to be able to play at ridiculous resolutions.
For daily work it wouldn't really make a difference, does it?

You see ... crying "it's not enough" is not enough. Why do you need more, guys?

I completely agree - it amazes me how much people feel so "entitled" to larger resolutions and shun 1080p as a low resolution. I'm not saying I have a problem with higher-res monitors, but I don't see the appeal to them if you're sitting at a good distance. For productive purposes, I think "smaller" resolutions are better, because everything is easier to read and the mouse is easier to control. Maybe if I used a Mac or Windows 8 I'd want an UHD screen, but Linux doesn't need it. I don't care about fitting as many programs as I can on 1 screen at a time because I have virtual workspaces. I've found that even 1080p is too big for most websites. I would find 2 1680x1050 screens more useful for production purposes than a single 3K or 4K screen. Depending on the game being played, anti-aliasing gives just as good of results as a higher resolution except I didn't pay as much.

There are VERY FEW things that have a noticeable strictly-positive benefit of higher-res screens. Sure the image in everyday use looks more natural and crisp, but working with computers my whole life, that is hardly something I personally feel is a necessary experience. For the record, I think higher PPIs on tablets and phones is a good thing.

[DanL]

I'm looking at the BenQ BL2411PT as my next monitor. It's a 24" 1920x1200 (16:10) monitor with IPS panel. I find vertical res of 1080 too limiting on a bigger screen.
Any thoughts?

[TheLexMachine]

4K monitors will be more common over the next 8 months as the 28-inch panels are now widely available and the new GPUs coming in that time are all 4K capable with video decoding for 4K h.264. Save your money!

[GreatEmerald]

No DisplayPort? Pass.

What's going on with the lack of DVI sockets in new screens??

HDMI has a latency overhead that makes it inappropriate for gaming.

Lack of DVI is fine, it's an obsolete standard, DisplayPort is the official successor. But no DisplayPort is the strange thing. It's even a royalty-free VESA standard, unlike HDMI. And like DVI.

Well, for starters "because we can" is a pretty good reason. Pushing the limit is always fun.
Other than that, I guarantee that after reading for a long time on a low(er) DPI display my eyes hurt a lot more than on a high DPI display. Admittedly at some point it starts getting useless, but we're not there yet.

My main issue with this (and most) screens is the useless 16:9 ratio. I have two 4:3 displays connected to my main PC, and I wouldn't change them even if you gave me a 16:9 for free (I'd consider 16:10).
People are a lot better at reading vertically than horizontally => for written content widescreen makes no sense at all. Hollywood won that battle

We're there already if you sit far enough from the screen (which you should). Though for a 27" it's a bit extreme, yes, because for it to become "retina" your eyes need to be 107 cm away from the screen. On my monitor (21.5") the distance for that is only 86 cm. You can test other configurations here: http://isthisretina.com/

Also, one thing I don't like about high resolutions is the bad backwards compatibility of certain games and whatnot. FPS games adapt to higher resolutions perfectly, but things like older RTS games? If they used static images, then increasing the resolution increases the area you can see, but the items in the area become extremely small.

As for the ratios, I agree, 16:9 is not really good for reading. Though some monitors allow you to flip the screen to get 9:16 instead (but at least on my tablet it's even less good for reading that way, because pages always have margins that take a lot of space, and the size of the screen is lower than an A4 page, of course). In general I feel that 1:1 might be a pretty good standard, which also allows for extensibility with multiple monitors. Monitors are flat, yet our vision is circular, so the more break points, the less distortion there is.

The only reason I use big screens is for daily work. They offer as much pixels as two separate monitors, but without the frames in between. For webdesign, code on the left, browser on the right. For latex, code on the left, pdf-viewer on the right. And in general, it allows a lot of multitasking without hiding any windows.

Yes, that's certainly a fair rationale. The thing with 1920x1080 is not the height, but the width. 1920/2=960 which is less than 1024, the baseline lowest resolution people tend to optimise their programs or webpages for. So for having two things open simultaneously, you generally need 2048 or larger width (usually a bit larger, as you also need to deal with window decoration space). However, there is still the problem of window managers. You need to use a tiling one to make the most use of it. While with dual monitors you can use the desktop paradigm to manage them separately, so you can work efficiently without switching out the window manager or changing the usual habits.

Personally I'm considering going for a dual-monitor setup right now, as some things I do could really benefit from it in terms of productivity, and my current monitor is pretty bad as it is...

[TheLexMachine]

What's going on with the lack of DVI sockets in new screens??

HDMI has a latency overhead that makes it inappropriate for gaming.

DVI is being phased out by manufacturers of GPUs and HDMI is cheaper to implement now not to mention that it's preferred simply because there are far more HDMI devices like game consoles, smartphones, and tablets than there are DVI devices.

[blackout23]

DVI is being phased out by manufacturers of GPUs and HDMI is cheaper to implement now not to mention that it's preferred simply because there are far more HDMI devices like game consoles, smartphones, and tablets than there are DVI devices.

Yes, but HDMI is shit for anything > 1080p. You can blast 2560x1440 @ 120 Hz and 32 Bit colordepth (about 14 Gbps of data) over a short high quality Dual-Link DVI connection. Try that with HDMI. I haven't seen HDMI 2.0 anywhere.

[TheLexMachine]

No DisplayPort? Pass.
Lack of DVI is fine, it's an obsolete standard, DisplayPort is the official successor. But no DisplayPort is the strange thing. It's even a royalty-free VESA standard, unlike HDMI. And like DVI.

DP comes once DVI is dead, which happens with the next generation of monitors that will do away with LVDS. Then many monitors will be packing HDMI and DP.