43" 4K Ultra HD TV as a monitor v. 2x HP ZR30w 30" monitors

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Patrick

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Inspired by @dba I just ordered: Amazon.com: VIZIO M43-C1 43-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (2015 Model): Electronics and am going to give it a shot as a daily use monitor, replacing two HP ZR30w 30" displays.

I am making a thread here to give thoughts. Monitor should arrive tomorrow. $488 with the $10 discount for Prime members.

Photos of the swap
Before picture: Dual HP ZR30w it was nice being able to have so much space.

Dual HP ZR30w on desk.jpg
Space made for the new setup. I did notice that I needed fewer cables since the Vizio does not have a built-in USB hub and only requires one Ethernet cable (unless you use wireless or do not want networking) and one HDMI 2.0 cable. I have extremely inexpensive Logitech speakers and was half hoping the Vizio TV would have half decent speakers so I could get rid of those as well. It turns out that will not work.

Cables leftover from dual monitors.jpg After picture: Single Vizio M43-C1 - this particular example has a few dead pixel clusters so there is another one en route.
VIZIO M43-C1 on desk.jpg

Power consumption
If you saw from the photos, I did bring out the Extech 380803 power meter.
  • HP ZR30w each: ~158W (316W total)
  • Vizio M43-C1: ~126W
  • Power savings: 190W which I am guessing given my usage will be worth about $15/ month in power savings.
Dimensions
The Vizio has 37" viewable width and about 20.875" tall viewable area for 772.375 square inches
HP ZR30w 25.25" wide and 15.875" tall so there are about 801.688 square inches of viewable space

Net loss is only about 30 square inches or about 3.6% of the screen space. Pixels being displayed went up about 5% so density is actually higher now with the Ultra HD monitor. Still, the loss of viewable area and perhaps most importantly, the 13.5 inches lost of viewable width is very noticeable.

Reclaiming desk space is very nice though. Mountain View, California real estate is about $1,000/ square foot so saving space is good (otherwise I would have a deeper desk!)

Still more to come.
 
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tjk

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Inspired by @dba I just ordered: Amazon.com: VIZIO M43-C1 43-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (2015 Model): Electronics and am going to give it a shot as a daily use monitor, replacing two HP ZR30w 30" displays.

I am making a thread here to give thoughts. Monitor should arrive tomorrow. $488 with the $10 discount for Prime members.
Good stuff! What GPU are you going to drive this with?

With a monitor that big, do you have to change your viewing distance at all?

I've got the UW 34" Dell, and was thinking of another one of those vs one of these, I'll wait to see how your experiment works out now.
 

Patrick

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Good stuff! What GPU are you going to drive this with?

With a monitor that big, do you have to change your viewing distance at all?

I've got the UW 34" Dell, and was thinking of another one of those vs one of these, I'll wait to see how your experiment works out now.
Right now it is an ASUS STRIX GeForce GTX 970 Overclocked 4 GB DDR5 256-bit DisplayPort HDMI 2.0 DVI-I Graphics Card: Computers & Accessories which I hope will drive this monitor!

No idea on viewing distance - there is going to be some learning tomorrow I think.
 

T_Minus

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I look forward to your feedback, after having 2-3 monitors for +10 years now I can't imagine just having "1" no matter the resolution, I like to organize ;) LOL!!
 

Patrick

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I look forward to your feedback, after having 2-3 monitors for +10 years now I can't imagine just having "1" no matter the resolution, I like to organize ;) LOL!!
That is me as well. The other question is what will become of the HP's.
 

rubylaser

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I wonder about input lag as well. We have bought a couple cheap 4K TVs at work and the lag drove me nuts for things requiring accuracy like Photoshop. I'm sure not all 4K TV's suffer from this but our budget ones certainly have.
 
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T_Minus

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How do you plan to handle scaling or do you plan to run at 4K w/no scaling?
 

CreoleLakerFan

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I predict you will find the useability of the 30" far outweigh the benefits of the sheer size of the 43" 4k. My 40" 4k panel makes a great display for gaming and media viewing, but I downsized to a pair of 1080p 23" IPS for productivity. I considered a pair of 27," but am going to try 34" 3440x1440.

The quality of the large consumer 4k panels just doesn't stack up to the professional IPS displays, IMO.
 

T_Minus

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I predict you will find the useability of the 30" far outweigh the benefits of the sheer size of the 43" 4k. My 40" 4k panel makes a great display for gaming and media viewing, but I downsized to a pair of 1080p 23" IPS for productivity. I considered a pair of 27," but am going to try 34" 3440x1440.

The quality of the large consumer 4k panels just doesn't stack up to the professional IPS displays, IMO.
I can say that my Dell 24" 4K is amazing looking. The HP Zr30W I have next to it is nothing to complain about but the 4K Dell 24" is a much higher quality looking image.

With that said, I got 2 of the Dell 24" 4Ks and one doesn't look as nice as the other, but I haven't run any 'calibration' on them yet... I use the '3rd' monitor so rare I don't mind it enough to spend the time :D

For anyone curious I talked to EVGA Rep today and was told an NVIDIA 950 model that tops out at 90w will run all 3 displays just fine. (2x 4K, 1x 2560x1600, not sure it could run 3x 4K but maybe ?) Either way for a $130-160 card you can't really beat that price!! I'm going to down garde my 980 GTX TI as I don't game enough to justify it, and was curious hwa tI could use to power all 3 at once with 1 card still :) that used MINIMAL power.
 

Patrick

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Well, hopefully I am here tomorrow when it arrives. Should be a lot of fun to see it in action.
 

Patrick

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Initial impressions (pictures to follow):
  • This freed up a LOT of desk space over the dual 30" displays
  • Power consumption is going to be about 1/3 of the dual HP ZR30w setup. I pulled one of the Extech 380803's just to see
  • Google Chrome looks TERRIBLE!!!!!!! Text is almost impossible to read and is highly pixelated from the tabs/ URL bar to the text and pictures on websites. I tried doing the regedit high-dpi-support to no avail. Microsoft Edge looks fabulous.
  • Looking to the corners of the screen there is certainly some loss of brightness.
  • Game mode resulted in flickering. I ordered another two HDMI 2.0 cables to see if that would help.
  • This particular unit is going back there are several completely black pixels in the middle and a few grey pixels on the left side of the display. Luckily Amazon already has a replacement order on the way. I would be extremely nervous about getting a refurbished display, especially if "refurbished" really means "someone returned it but it looks OK to us".
@dba you said you got a bunch of them, any with big dead pixel issues? How are you dealing with the Chrome pixelation?
 
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