Need some new monitors

I currently have (2) 24" HP Monitors and I also use the screen on my laptop. The parts I'm working on are getting more complex, and my eyes are aging.

Between MasterCam windows, and Solidworks, plus having prints and other reference materials open, I need more real estate. I just recently sucked it up and increased the size of the fonts and icons in my Mastercam settings.

I spoke to the boss, and he said order some new monitors. I think 32 would probably be too big for my desk setup, but I was looking at 27/28" monitors. Would it be worth it for me to step up to 4K? I don't think I need fancy gaming monitors, but then, I don't know jack about monitors.

I don't want to abuse the company money, but I also want to get something that's going to work for me. What suggestions do y'all have??

Has anyone tried the Ultra Wide monitors, instead of dual monitors?

Workstation is an i7 HP Zbook, with a Quadro T1000.

Mastercam and 4k do not play well together. I would research this a little before making that move.
Gaming monitor, no, you don't need one. The high refresh rates are of no benefit...unless you plan to game on it.
Going bigger than 27 with 1080, I think you are going to start seeing some pixels. Might not matter to you but maybe head to a bestbuy or something to have a peek to make sure its something you're ok with.

Mastercam and 4k do not play well together. I would research this a little before making that move.
Gaming monitor, no, you don't need one. The high refresh rates are of no benefit...unless you plan to game on it.
Going bigger than 27 with 1080, I think you are going to start seeing some pixels. Might not matter to you but maybe head to a bestbuy or something to have a peek to make sure its something you're ok with.

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I looked at the local Best Buy, and most of it was focused on gaming, curved monitors, etc. Do you have any particular monitors you'd recommend? I will stay away from 4K since I've also read Solidworks doesn't do great with it, even though that was a few year old forum thread, I'd rather not take that chance.

I found these. Seems like a good price for a pair of 32's. Maybe I'll just rearrange my desk to make it work. Do you think they'd be a good option?

HP Pavilion 32" QHD Dual Monitor Bundle (32_Pavilion_QHD_DualMonitor_Kit)

JBethell said:

I looked at the local Best Buy, and most of it was focused on gaming, curved monitors, etc. Do you have any particular monitors you'd recommend? I will stay away from 4K since I've also read Solidworks doesn't do great with it, even though that was a few year old forum thread, I'd rather not take that chance.

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Amazon.com: Dell S2721H 27 Inch Full HD 1080p, AMD FreeSync IPS Ultra-Thin Bezel Monitor, Built-in Speakers, Silver, Black: Computers & Accessories

I snagged two of these 27" a couple months back at a cheaper price than they are listed for right now and I'm pleased with them. Same setup as you, Mastercam and Solidworks.

Goose is right though. There's another guy in the shop that has a setup with one smallish monitor and another 32" monitor with 1080. That 32" monitor looks terrible, pixel wise.

dodgin said:

Amazon.com: Dell S2721H 27 Inch Full HD 1080p, AMD FreeSync IPS Ultra-Thin Bezel Monitor, Built-in Speakers, Silver, Black: Computers & Accessories

I snagged two of these 27" a couple months back at a cheaper price than they are listed for right now and I'm pleased with them. Same setup as you, Mastercam and Solidworks.

Goose is right though. There's another guy in the shop that has a setup with one smallish monitor and another 32" monitor with 1080. That 32" monitor looks terrible, pixel wise.

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Nice, that looks like a good option too. Do you think that 32" at 1440 would look pretty good? I may make a cardboard template and see how the 32's would do, lol.

I have a 32" widescreen flat panel 1440 and have no real complaints. No games but it does display videos just fine, and of course cad too. I would suggest going as big as you possibly can and go for 4k minimum!!! You can always set the resolution lower if you need to and have the option to raise it when your software gets good enough, and when you do get a new computer it would be nice if your monitors are still keepers. A bigger monitor will always seem huge at first but after a few weeks you will think anything smaller would really suck. Good monitor arms would be real nice too, much better than the stands that come with them.

I like non glare monitors, after that nothing too fancy. I have a larger surface tablet for my PDFs and misc internets on my desk to. Having touch monitor for your pdf is nice, and your work monitors are free to do work.

27" 1080p is pretty pixely, especially if you are coming from 24" 1080p - you will notice it, and it will irritate you.

1440p is pretty nice at 27". 30" and bigger is 4k territory. I use 2x 4k 31.5".

Anti-glare coating, IPS or VA panel, and flicker-free backlight are mandatory for me for monitors that I'm going to spend time sitting in front of.

High quality IPS panels have much better colour contrast than cheap TN panels, and apart from just looking a lot better, it actually reduces eyestrain, at least for me.

There are not too many monitors that have genuinely flicker-free backlights, so you need to do your homework. Modern monitors have very (too) high peak brightness, so you end up running them with the brightness cranked right down. Cheaper monitors have fairly low frequency PWM driven backlights, so running at low brightness causes them to flicker noticeably. Very hard on the eyes.

gregormarwick said:

27" 1080p is pretty pixely, especially if you are coming from 24" 1080p - you will notice it, and it will irritate you.

1440p is pretty nice at 27". 30" and bigger is 4k territory. I use 2x 4k 31.5".

Anti-glare coating, IPS or VA panel, and flicker-free backlight are mandatory for me for monitors that I'm going to spend time sitting in front of.

High quality IPS panels have much better colour contrast than cheap TN panels, and apart from just looking a lot better, it actually reduces eyestrain, at least for me.

There are not too many monitors that have genuinely flicker-free backlights, so you need to do your homework. Modern monitors have very (too) high peak brightness, so you end up running them with the brightness cranked right down. Cheaper monitors have fairly low frequency PWM driven backlights, so running at low brightness causes them to flicker noticeably. Very hard on the eyes.

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Damn, I was hoping that 32" I posted above was a good buy, but it's only 1440. I guess I need to do some more research.

QHD (1440p) 27" works for me to get around the scaling issues in Windows.

QHD or 4K 32" might also work.

Orange Vise said:

QHD (1440p) 27" works for me to get around the scaling issues in Windows.

QHD or 4K 32" might also work.

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The 32" monitors I'm looking at are QHD 1440. I've read 50/50 on whether that's a high enough pixel density or not. Hopefully my eyes are garbage enough to not know the difference.

Dunno about MasterCam, but 2 x 32" Samsung curved monitors here, both set to 3840 x 2160 with scale @ 150%.
Not only do I love it, but just after one glance 4 others loved it enough to literally go out the next day and get it for their rigs as well.
One of those did not have enough desk real estate, so he lumbered up some risers for them. 8" above the desktop on an elevated platform.

Primary tools here are Inventor, AutoCAD, FeatureCAM, BobCAD V17, NcPlot, occasional SW ( version from 2008 ) and the typical other desktop applications, not a single issue with Windows-10

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Windows-7 (which is set up on another machine with 4K displays) as that required a bunch of DWI to make it acceptable.

SeymourDumore said:

Dunno about MasterCam, but 2 x 32" Samsung curved monitors here, both set to 3840 x 2160 with scale @ 150%.

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I would say beware of extremely high resolutions. I've got a similar 3840x2400 res on a 22" monitor (200 dpi), it makes text really small, and Windows scaling only gets you so far. Plus a lot of applications kind of screw up when you go extreme on font sizes. Haven't tried Windows 10 so maybe they are better at it now but except for things like photo retouching and the like, I wouldn't get super carried away on resolution.

EmanuelGoldstein said:

Haven't tried Windows 10 ..

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Hence my last line in the previous post .....

SeymourDumore said:

Hence my last line in the previous post .....

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Windows in general is absolutely fucking deplorable at handling high DPI displays. 10 is marginally better only because it has more band aids hacked on.

I also use Featurecam on windows 10 at 4k, and it does not support high DPI, so it requires the DPI scaling to be manually overridden or the interface runs extremely slowly. Older solidworks I know for a fact also doesn't behave properly on high DPI scaling, so I have to question your "not a single issue" statement...

JBethell said:

The 32" monitors I'm looking at are QHD 1440. I've read 50/50 on whether that's a high enough pixel density or not. Hopefully my eyes are garbage enough to not know the difference.

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You should try and find a way to try it out rather than taking my word for it. Monitor quality, while being objectively quantifiable, is highly subjective amongst different people. Things like dot pitch, strobing, uniformity, backlight bleed, IPS glow, colour accuracy etc. are all noticed differently depending on the person looking at it.

Whether or not you use it comparatively or exclusively also plays a big part in how you notice it's flaws.

On my gaming pc at home I have a very expensive 27" 1440p 144Hz IPS monitor. If I wake up in the morning, don't use any other computer all day, and sit down to use it in the evening, then I like it. If I come home from work having been sat in front of my 4k monitors all day and use it, it looks pixelly, but not unbearably so.

However, if I sit down to play some games after having used my 27" 5K mac for a while, the 1440p monitor looks absolutely awful and I hate looking at it and resent its entire existence and the fact that I spent money on it.

gregormarwick said:

I have to question your "not a single issue" statement...

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Gregor

If you can, try to use Orcad on a Win7 machine with 4K displays and you will know what "issues" really mean.

SeymourDumore said:

Gregor

If you can, try to use Orcad on a Win7 machine with 4K displays and you will know what "issues" really mean.

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I am 100% willing to take your word for that.

Every version of windows prior to 10 is worse than 10 at high dpi displays, that is absolute fact. But 10 sucks at it too.

JBethell said:

I looked at the local Best Buy, and most of it was focused on gaming, curved monitors, etc. Do you have any particular monitors you'd recommend? I will stay away from 4K since I've also read Solidworks doesn't do great with it, even though that was a few year old forum thread, I'd rather not take that chance.

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Hi JB:

I bought a couple of Dell U3219Q monitors (32" 4K) about a year and a half ago, and am quite happy with them so far. It looks like you can get these for about $800-900; I think I got them for slightly less on sale. They're setup side by side on a Humanscale monitor arm that I scrounged for cheap (they're like $500 new! Who pays that?...crazy) at a local used office furniture place. Remember that if you want to go the monitor arm route, the monitors should have the VESA mounting holes on the back of the monitor; not all do, of course. The monitor stands that come with the monitors themselves are actually pretty good, but the arm lets you tweak things a bit more for better ergonomics. I've realized the importance of this as I spend more time in front of a PC than on machines...ugh.

4K is nice (or can be, I should say), but as others have said your experience may vary depending on how well your frequently used programs support it. I program using TopSolid 7, and it works pretty well, though I *did* play around with the (application-specific) DPI scaling in Windows to improve some interface elements. I have noticed that some older programs will have certain portions of the interface that don't seem quite "right", but nothing that's a show stopper. I think I learned that even though an application claims to support 4K, there might still be few interface elements that don't seem quite right.

I forgot to add that I also run SolidWorks 2021 occasionally on this setup, and it does OK-though I don't spend all day in it anymore. I'm curious to hear what troubles MasterCam has with 4K (@Gooose?).

If I could make any recommendation, it would be to try to see your applications running on the monitor(s) that you're considering before purchasing (can you drag your laptop to the retailer and try it perhaps?), or confirm that you can return them easily/cheaply and try again if you find them unacceptable. It did take a couple of days for me to get used to them, and as I mentioned previously a couple of interface elements were just too small to be usable till I played around with DPI scaling.

Some info about DPI scaling (I bet there's something a little more recent out there, but here you go):

App Scaling on High DPI Displays (FIX 2019) - Dan Antonielli

Cheers, Brian

SD&M said:

Some info about DPI scaling (I bet there's something a little more recent out there, but here you go):

App Scaling on High DPI Displays (FIX 2019) - Dan Antonielli

Cheers, Brian

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Thanks Brian. Unfortunately most retailers near me are out of stock on most anything decent, so I may not have the option of test driving it first. I'll do some more checking this weekend though!