Well, it depends on the "pro" side of the prosumer - i.e. upon the main use case(s). Some people care about color accuracy in a professional context, and some don't. For instance, if you're a coder or engineer who needs to fit a lot of windows and/or content on the screen but doesn't do anything artwork-related, you may not care about color accuracy as much. But I doubt any self-respecting professional would want to risk being caught dead anywhere near a glossy glass screen - regardless of use case...
Given the success of monitors and laptops with glossy displays, even in the professional space, you demonstrate a remarkable lack of awareness with that sweeping statement.
Not in my experience. Most professionals who are not lucky enough to work from home or to have private offices, wind up having to deal with well-lit communal office spaces where screen glare and reflections are an unmitigated plague. Matte screens are the only way to go in most real work environments.
Sure, but they (or more accurately, their companies) pay through the nose for the 'pleasure'... I suppose if your main product of concetn is built for OS X or iOS you don't have much choice - since Apple offers none. At least where laptops are concerned - though everyone I know who is stuck with MacBooks tends to use matte screens for their main desktop when docked. IMO glass screens are especially silly on [ultra-] portables, since the glass only adds weight and bulk while increasing fragility; and if you need to use your laptop in bright sunlight, oh boy....
>"For instance, if you're a coder or engineer who needs to fit a lot of windows and/or content on the screen but doesn't do anything artwork-related, you may not care about color accuracy as much."
It's not just about fitting content on the screen, it's about readability. 5k is my target for my next upgrade, I primarily do coding but I plan to run it at 2560 virtual, but with the massive increase in sharpness (like modern smartphones or rMBPs or the like). From experimenting with high DPI displays in general (tried out those 5k iMacs for example in a store and borrowed one to code on for a while), the extra sharpness is wonderful for not just smaller text but readability of kanji and kana for those of us who didn't learn it natively as kids. 2560x1600 (or I'd settle for 16:9 if necessary) with high DPI sharpness will be glorious for me. It's a solid amount of real estate but with great extra readability for smaller fonts and non-ASCII.
>"But I doubt any self-respecting professional would want to risk being caught dead anywhere near a glossy glass screen - regardless of use case..."
At this point I'd say it depends on the exact technology used. I've got an IT cave I work in anyway so reflections are less of a concern period, but I've also been really impressed by the latest advances in eliminating internal reflections and the like. I'd consider a 27-30" 5k glossy screen if it was using the latest coatings, glass bonding to eliminate the air gaps and reduced internal reflectance, etc, if it was the right price. I doubt we'd see all that in a cheap display for the being, but I'm not longer as militantly opposed to it as I was when I got my current professional NEC displays.
Valid points, but if you're going all-out for reflection- and glare-mitigation at added cost and weight as well as increased fragility, then I'd have to ask why even bother with the glass surface to begin with. Glass is all about bling - i.e. typical consumer-space mentality of form-over-function.
It's pretty great for people who primarily work with black & white text with a handful of basic colors, like programmers. I switch back and forth between 94 dpi monitors at work and a 276 dpi 13" laptop at home, and after getting used to the crisp text on the laptop, it's hard to go back to pixelated monitors. The only current desktop monitor that hits 276 dpi is the Dell 8K 32" for $3700, so considering dpi/$, getting 217 dpi for $900 is a lot closer to reasonable. I'm also very excited to see DisplayPort 1.4 in a shipping monitor, since GPUs have supported it for like two years now (since NVIDIA Pascal & AMD RX5xx).
There's definitely more people who want the increased sharpness of 5K than people who need calibrated color accuracy. It's not like this thing will just pick colors randomly...
Seriously, when will 6-bit go back to whatever hole it crawled out of? We had 24-bit color as a standard feature in the nineties, there's no excuse for backtracking to 18-bit. Especially when nothing will feed the monitor 18-bit signals anyways. I am sick of things being WORSE than I had twenty years ago!
Ofcourse you can buy 8 or 10 bit monitor that I better and cost 2000-5000$ this is just cheap variant. Not all people Are willing to pay for something that They don`t need.
Fine, let me clarify. When I say that I'm not sick of things "being worse" than they were twenty years ago, I mean that I'm sick of the basic minimum standard of twenty years ago being an expensive premium option now. 24-bit color should not be a goal to aspire to, reserved for premium products. Computers should not be GETTING WORSE as time goes on. I dare say that 30-bit color should be standard by now, but... we can't even get 24-bit color reliably because of monitor manufacturers deciding that a minimum standard should be a premium feature.
I guess we'll have to settle for 18-bit and hope technology doesn't get any worse, because I swear to Wozniak that if we backslide further and 256-color displays become the standard I'm going to end someone.
That's an odd attitude. "I don't like it so it shouldn't exist". Do you really believe that all specs should only ever go upwards and there should never be a balancing act between resolution/accuracy/speed/price/design/connections/etc?
Having a high res monitor with lower colour accuracy is an acceptable tradeoff for lots of people. Back in my sysadmin days this would have been great for me, loads of real estate and high dpi = many useful windows on my desk. Might even have been able to downgrade from my 4 monitors to just 3! I never cared about billions of accurate colours, it was good enough for my purpose.
If you don't like it then don't buy it, no-one is forcing you to. You can spend $'000s if you want and still get the colour depth etc which you want.
I don't WANT to spend thousands of dollars for a feature that should be standard even on rock-bottom displays. I want 24-bit color to return to being a standard feature even at the bottom end. I am sick to death of being told that a standard feature from two decades ago is an expensive premium feature that adds hundreds to the cost of a product. How hard is this to understand?
And if it does add so much to the cost, then... I miss CRTs. Sure they were heavy and took up a lot of space, but I got 24-bit color and zero latency and perfect off-angle viewing no matter what display I bought. Hell, my old 100-dollar CRT is the only display I have right now that is 30-bit capable(but it is reserved for my older hardware).
It's not hard to understand. Everyone who has worked with a computer all day long for a few years understands and agrees with you. The problem is people that never saw a decent monitor in their life and think there's no difference.
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23 Comments
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boeush - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
"Like many prosumer displays, the ProLite XB2779QQS supports ... " " ... glass from edge to edge, that can produce a glare."Alrighty, then...
Hurr Durr - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
I thought 6bit would be enough to disqualify.boeush - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
Well, it depends on the "pro" side of the prosumer - i.e. upon the main use case(s). Some people care about color accuracy in a professional context, and some don't. For instance, if you're a coder or engineer who needs to fit a lot of windows and/or content on the screen but doesn't do anything artwork-related, you may not care about color accuracy as much. But I doubt any self-respecting professional would want to risk being caught dead anywhere near a glossy glass screen - regardless of use case...tim851 - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
Given the success of monitors and laptops with glossy displays, even in the professional space, you demonstrate a remarkable lack of awareness with that sweeping statement.boeush - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
Not in my experience. Most professionals who are not lucky enough to work from home or to have private offices, wind up having to deal with well-lit communal office spaces where screen glare and reflections are an unmitigated plague. Matte screens are the only way to go in most real work environments.Spunjji - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Tell that to the hundreds of professionals I know and work with who use iMacs and MacBooks..!skavi - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Macs have very low screen reflectance, compared to a lot of other glossy screens.boeush - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Sure, but they (or more accurately, their companies) pay through the nose for the 'pleasure'... I suppose if your main product of concetn is built for OS X or iOS you don't have much choice - since Apple offers none. At least where laptops are concerned - though everyone I know who is stuck with MacBooks tends to use matte screens for their main desktop when docked. IMO glass screens are especially silly on [ultra-] portables, since the glass only adds weight and bulk while increasing fragility; and if you need to use your laptop in bright sunlight, oh boy....zanon - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
>"For instance, if you're a coder or engineer who needs to fit a lot of windows and/or content on the screen but doesn't do anything artwork-related, you may not care about color accuracy as much."It's not just about fitting content on the screen, it's about readability. 5k is my target for my next upgrade, I primarily do coding but I plan to run it at 2560 virtual, but with the massive increase in sharpness (like modern smartphones or rMBPs or the like). From experimenting with high DPI displays in general (tried out those 5k iMacs for example in a store and borrowed one to code on for a while), the extra sharpness is wonderful for not just smaller text but readability of kanji and kana for those of us who didn't learn it natively as kids. 2560x1600 (or I'd settle for 16:9 if necessary) with high DPI sharpness will be glorious for me. It's a solid amount of real estate but with great extra readability for smaller fonts and non-ASCII.
>"But I doubt any self-respecting professional would want to risk being caught dead anywhere near a glossy glass screen - regardless of use case..."
At this point I'd say it depends on the exact technology used. I've got an IT cave I work in anyway so reflections are less of a concern period, but I've also been really impressed by the latest advances in eliminating internal reflections and the like. I'd consider a 27-30" 5k glossy screen if it was using the latest coatings, glass bonding to eliminate the air gaps and reduced internal reflectance, etc, if it was the right price. I doubt we'd see all that in a cheap display for the being, but I'm not longer as militantly opposed to it as I was when I got my current professional NEC displays.
boeush - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
Valid points, but if you're going all-out for reflection- and glare-mitigation at added cost and weight as well as increased fragility, then I'd have to ask why even bother with the glass surface to begin with. Glass is all about bling - i.e. typical consumer-space mentality of form-over-function.olafgarten - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
This is a pretty pointless monitor, who needs a 5k resolution but no colour accuracy?torchedguitar - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
It's pretty great for people who primarily work with black & white text with a handful of basic colors, like programmers. I switch back and forth between 94 dpi monitors at work and a 276 dpi 13" laptop at home, and after getting used to the crisp text on the laptop, it's hard to go back to pixelated monitors. The only current desktop monitor that hits 276 dpi is the Dell 8K 32" for $3700, so considering dpi/$, getting 217 dpi for $900 is a lot closer to reasonable. I'm also very excited to see DisplayPort 1.4 in a shipping monitor, since GPUs have supported it for like two years now (since NVIDIA Pascal & AMD RX5xx).tim851 - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
There's definitely more people who want the increased sharpness of 5K than people who need calibrated color accuracy. It's not like this thing will just pick colors randomly...mr_tawan - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
developers who works with 4K target resolution?nfriedly - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
The Planar IX2790 is another 5k / DP 1.4 monitor that might have better color accuracy. I'm still hoping to see you guys review it.Lord of the Bored - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
Seriously, when will 6-bit go back to whatever hole it crawled out of? We had 24-bit color as a standard feature in the nineties, there's no excuse for backtracking to 18-bit. Especially when nothing will feed the monitor 18-bit signals anyways. I am sick of things being WORSE than I had twenty years ago!haukionkannel - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Ofcourse you can buy 8 or 10 bit monitor that I better and cost 2000-5000$ this is just cheap variant. Not all people Are willing to pay for something that They don`t need.Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Fine, let me clarify. When I say that I'm not sick of things "being worse" than they were twenty years ago, I mean that I'm sick of the basic minimum standard of twenty years ago being an expensive premium option now.24-bit color should not be a goal to aspire to, reserved for premium products. Computers should not be GETTING WORSE as time goes on. I dare say that 30-bit color should be standard by now, but... we can't even get 24-bit color reliably because of monitor manufacturers deciding that a minimum standard should be a premium feature.
I guess we'll have to settle for 18-bit and hope technology doesn't get any worse, because I swear to Wozniak that if we backslide further and 256-color displays become the standard I'm going to end someone.
mkaibear - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
That's an odd attitude. "I don't like it so it shouldn't exist". Do you really believe that all specs should only ever go upwards and there should never be a balancing act between resolution/accuracy/speed/price/design/connections/etc?Having a high res monitor with lower colour accuracy is an acceptable tradeoff for lots of people. Back in my sysadmin days this would have been great for me, loads of real estate and high dpi = many useful windows on my desk. Might even have been able to downgrade from my 4 monitors to just 3! I never cared about billions of accurate colours, it was good enough for my purpose.
If you don't like it then don't buy it, no-one is forcing you to. You can spend $'000s if you want and still get the colour depth etc which you want.
Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I don't WANT to spend thousands of dollars for a feature that should be standard even on rock-bottom displays. I want 24-bit color to return to being a standard feature even at the bottom end.I am sick to death of being told that a standard feature from two decades ago is an expensive premium feature that adds hundreds to the cost of a product. How hard is this to understand?
And if it does add so much to the cost, then... I miss CRTs. Sure they were heavy and took up a lot of space, but I got 24-bit color and zero latency and perfect off-angle viewing no matter what display I bought. Hell, my old 100-dollar CRT is the only display I have right now that is 30-bit capable(but it is reserved for my older hardware).
UsernameToComment - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
It's not hard to understand. Everyone who has worked with a computer all day long for a few years understands and agrees with you. The problem is people that never saw a decent monitor in their life and think there's no difference.FXi - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
36", HDR (multi zone), Gsync, 10 bit and high refresh and you've got me :) Ok that is a ways off...