new monitor 27"

[Dune]

I'm looking to replace my 24" eizo for a more modern 27" monitor with Display port input (which I now lack, and which gives issues). Color accuracy must be good, gaming (so refresh rate) is not important, and price should be reasonable. So I came to 2 monitors I liked and which seem pretty good: AOC U2790PQU and the ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV.
But I'm in doubt about the resolutions mentioned. I currently work  in 1920x1200 resolution, which I like. I'm afraid a 4K monitor with very high resolutions will show images or letters too small, so I need to know if I can easily set resolution to about 1920x1200 or thereabouts on a 27" 4K screen like the AOC. Not easy to find good info on that, so I hope some of you guys have any experience.

[KlausK]

Just saw your post...short answer: you can drive both monitors in 1920x1200. should technically not be a problem.

But, whenever you choose NOT to use the native resolution of the panel, the picture quality decreases.
It will be interpolated to the chosen pixel resolution.
I never had a monitor which I liked when I changed the resolution to anything non native.
Other than that they seem to be quite good. I`d go for the ASUS in that case. Better colour representation.

27 inch for 4K would be too small for me. I bought a 32 inch. Much mor pleasing to the eye and not too big for my workplace.
You don`t have to turn your head too much to see the far left and right sides of the monitor.
It is a pleasure to have 4 times the area of 1920x1280 at your disposal on a screen.
On the other hand you can try to change the text size in Win7 or use the scaling options in Win10 and see how that works out.
I do not remember if TG scales well at this time. Other applications are more modern in that regard

Since you read/understand german here are to reviews:
https://www.prad.de/testberichte/test-aoc-u2790pqu-preiswerter-4k-allround-monitor#Einleitung
https://www.prad.de/testberichte/test-asus-pa278qv-allrounder-mit-bestleistung#Einleitung

CHeers, Klaus

[Dune]

Thanks very much, Klaus. I knew you'd reply! Good advice too about changing resolution. In that case, the asus would indeed be better too. It was my favourite already.

Very interesting and elaborate reviews too. Handy to be able to read German

My main concern with the old eizo is that it only has dvi import, and it might be the converting cable (DP to dvi from my 1080Ti) that gives some sort of sparkling pixels in certain grey areas, which move with the image. I think with a more modern monitor and better direct cabling, it will work better. And 27" is more pleasant too, and was on my wishlist anyway.

[WAS]

I wouldn't go too big with a monitor. I don't know about things these days, but even before these massive screens they softa advised against large CRTs in art design from what my teacher said. He said if your screen is too large, your focal area shrinks, and you have a higher likelihood of overlooking crucial details which could affect the overall fidelity of your work. I don't know how true it is but I've always kept screens that consume my whole vision, but don't exceed it.

Going out of native resolutions will definitely be no good for art either. Different displays have different support but if my monitor is not in 2k or 4k, gamut is like 25%, and refresh rate is below 30hz. Everything will be blue-tinted to which is just no good.

[Dune]

It's always hard to see what is right if you can see directly what it means, resolution and screensize wise. This 27"monitor would have a 2% higher screen than my current screen (24"), and 15% wider, the resolution would be 20% more vertically and 33% more horizontally. Ratio would be different too, from 1.6 to 1.7778. I just can't grasp what that means, all getting smaller on screen, or all information spread over more pixels, so kind of the same size (though the width of the screen permits more space), but crisper?
I really should go to a real shop

There's a guy on a forum who says: "I have both 24" and 27". My eyes get tired on 24" pretty quickly. 27" is very comfortable." Would that be so? I'd love that as my eyes aren't getting any better over time, working at the screen almost all day.

[KlausK]

I can`t help it

You need to consider a few things here, I think.

- Resolution --> the number of pixels that are displayed on a screen
- Screen size --> the physical size of the panel (the space to put the pixels on so to speak)

So, a screen size of 27 inch that is filled with 1920x1280/1200/1080 pixels is what we are used to more or less.
A very comfortable relation between the number of pixels and the size of the panel.
Working with a monitor like that is easy on the eyes (provided the panels picture quality is good).
Two 27 inch monitors is still a very good way of working.

Now, if you fill the same screen (27 inch) with UHD 16:9 with 3840x2160px (NOT 4k (which is 4096x2160px) like it is wrongly titulated)
you can imagine that the text and/or icons displayed on that screen will look small, a lot smaller!
And no: "all information spread over more pixels" is not happening here - when the size of the screen/panel stays the same (in this case 27 inch).
More and more OSes and programs let you counter this by scaling up your content on screen.

You can imagine that a larger monitor is better suited for a large number of pixels.

The next thing is the "native resolution" of a given panel.
As I said earlier, changing this requires software or the gpu to interpolate between pixels.
So the picture quality will suffer depending on how good the algorithms are.
Scaling down is what would happen in case of a native "4k" resolution monitor to HD sized content.
Picture quality after that process can differ a lot...

You can get a feel for what is happening when you change your display settings to a much smaller resolution:
set it to 1680x1050 for example. The (virtual) desktop size gets smaller - displayed content gets larger.
This is the same effect as when you change from 4k to 1920x1200 pixels on the 27 inch monitor.

Some pics:
just remember that you need to "re-project" the Full HD resolution to the area occupied by the Ultra HD resolution in the picture.
This represents your (new) monitors native resolution (UHD) and the screen size (27 inch).
To look at Full HD (1920x1080px) the content needs to be up-scaled to that screen size
and the number of pixel is "reduced" (more pixels show the same picture element).
See above - how well this is done by software inside the monitor is the thing that makes a good screen.

I hope this helps a little and does not sound to patronizing (Oberschullehrerhaft)
And of course, sorry, if you have read or know all that already...and hopefully I did not make any mistakes

CHeers, Klaus

[Dune]

I knew it!   But I really appreciate your input, Klaus. I just need some confirmation now and again, but also look up a lot on the web.

Luckily, the native resolution (which I will stick by, so I've learned already) of the Asus 27" is 2560x1440px, so it doesn't differ hugely from 1920x1200 which I have now on my 24" screen. So the actual screenwidth increases quite a bit (15%, or 7.7cm), but the height doesn't really (from 32.8 to 33.6cm, so not even a centimeter), but I would get more pixels spread over that area.
I figure 'things' will be a little smaller, but not hugely.

I could of course purchase another (more modern) 24", but I've read a lot of posts where people say they're very happy with 27", and couldn't go back, so I will probably just purchase one, and keep the 24" for my rendering machine, or my internet machine, which I don't use as often.

And I wonder if there's any 27" screens that have a native resolution of 1920x1280/1200 or so, and if so, if that would be 'better' than 2560x1440...

[WAS]

Weird those 4k charts don't have standard 4k Ultra wide 3440x1440

[Dune]

I really like the asus ProArt monitor, and the difference with the Eizo is quite strong. The Eizo tends to have a yellowish hue over everything, never noticed that before I could compare.

The photo doesn't do justice to the screens, though. In reality it's much nicer of course, without the blownout areas.

[WAS]

Oh wow. That is a strong yellow hue. Its like when othet monitors are out of native resolution and take on a blue hue.

[Dune]

Yeah, terrible. And I've worked for years on that 'thing'. Can't get rid of it either, color temp is 6500K. Have to check some other settings maybe. Or the pixels have just 'faded' into yellowed old age

[WAS]

I honestly think this explains some of the green tones of some of your work. On that monitor greens would be much richer with the added yellow hue, so on another monitor they are almost touching the blue tinged side.

[KlausK]

Did you ever download the EIZO ScreenManager Pro for LCD (USB Connection) for your monitor? Doesn`t look like it.
You cannot alter every setting on the monitor directly, I think. But the manual knows

Yeah, terrible. And I've worked for years on that 'thing'. Can't get rid of it either, color temp is 6500K

Which is the preferred colour temperature for print work. That is daylight, midday sun, overcast.
Not too much red and not too much blue. Pretty neutral white colour. After all it worked out fine for you, did it not?
All your printed work - books or museum - seemed to have come out just right...

The new monitor is set to 9300K, I guess. Which is not the right colour temperature for print work at all.
And which looks - to my eyes - terrible. I tend to lean to a warmer colour palette.
It is what people have gotten used to because that is the preferred setting for TVs nowadays. Way to "blue" aka "cold".
It is based on the old Japanese NTSC Standard for TV. Where do TV panels come from?

Monitor panels degrade over time, true. But your yellow tint is also just THAT yellow
because of the proximity to the very blue-ish new panel right next to it. But you know that from your painting experience.

Here is the link to EIZO Global:
https://www.eizoglobal.com/support/db/products/software/search?k=FlexScan+S2431W&x=43&y=21

Get the EIZO ScreenManager Pro for LCD (USB Connection), install it and hook up your monitor to your PC via USB.
You can then alter the settings via this little program. To get the values active choose "Custom Mode" in the settings dialog.
It registers the settings per software, but in "If unregistered application starts up, apply" choose "Custom Mode" there as well
and every software you start gets the settings applied you made in "Custom Mode" earlier.

You should be able to get the colours on both monitors more matching and friendly to your eyes.
There are other utilities, helpfiles and manuals as well.

Btw: There is no way of making any informed statement about the colours in the pictures posted here in the forum anyway.
We would have to use all the same CALIBRATED panels to judge any of that. We don`t. Simple as that.
Every panel looks different. There is no such thing as a reliable colour representation between the interfaces.

Just mein senf...
CHeers, Klaus

[Dune]

I think you're right and I have to adjust the new monitor. I like the liveliness of colors, but it's indeed a little too blue.

I can't hook the eizo through usb as it only has vga and dvi inputs. But I'll do some more research! Thanks very much again, Klaus!

Interestingly, I just received a printer's proof to check for a book, and the colors were about as lively as on my new monitor. I've always worked with yellow sunglasses on, apparently

[WAS]

Even in print, ambient light should be blue-tinged, as it is IRL. "Print Ready" it may be, but is not realistic, and looks pretty bad. Reminds of early Photoshop days where you duplicate the image, blur it ever so slightly, and then change the hue to orange or yellow and put it on hard light to make a fake "summer image" which just looks fake. Natural sun lighting is 5900k, and if the lighting is mid-day, it should be white and around 5780k. Even if it was earlier or later, if not a sunset, you would never have such strong bathed shadows IRL.

Sorry, on that monitor its all wrong. Also, never been told to change my color temps from anything other then true light (5900k) when working on art.  True Light, and the working temps for most artists is 5000-6500k. Usually most artists settling around the sun or surface temp.

Also, that range is supposed to represent the colour conditions of earth, 5000k - 6500k, where above the atmosphere it is a constant 5900k, and midday around 5780k in the atmo (minus abnormally smoggy/ozoney sunrises/sunsets).

And not really sure thats the colour temps of modern print. Which all seems true colour. And some of his obviously screen-picked greens are on the blue side of the spectrum, because of the added yellow making those picks seem more natural vegetative green.

PS for print, you just work in print colour space in post, or in output form TG. Shouldn't be willy-nilly with your monitors color temp.