Your HP ZR30w is a 16:10 format monitor, pushing 2560x1600, at a pixel pitch of 0.2505 mm. Two of these put 8.192 Megapixels in front of your eyes.
Your new M43-C1 is a 16:9 format TV, pushing 3840x2160, at a pixel pitch of 0.245 mm. This single TV puts 8.2944 Megapixels directly in your line of sight, and that's an increase of 1.25% additional screen real estate. Plus the 190W (or $15/month power savings). That's not too shabby.
I believe it is important to state that everything is a trade-off. Furthermore, what works for one STH viewer, might not work for another for various and often difficult-to-articulate reasons; so please keep this in mind when you read what follows.
I started my hunt for a new monitor by visiting MicroCenter. They are the last great bastion of computing products in the local Cincinnati area. Gone are the days of CompUSA's dominance and Best Buy's monitor selection is embarrassing. I viewed a variety of monitors at different resolutions and screen sizes (inches diagonal), but decided to make comparisons based upon the very familiar 1920x1080 resolution. The 1920x1080 @ 27" monitors were too large. They conjured images of the large-button TV remotes or calculators for my grandparents. Shrinking down the 1080p image from 27 inches to 24 inches was starting to look appropriate, but wasn't quite tight enough. While there, I put my eyeballs on the Samsung S32D850T 32" 2560x1440 monitor and thought that had promise.
I went back home empty handed and looked at the monitors on my desk: 1280x1024 @ 19", 1680x1050 @ 20", and a laptop monitor of 1920x1080 @ 14". Here are the calculated dot/pixel pitches for my old monitors:
* 1280x1024 @ 19" = 0.2944 mm
* 1680x1050 @ 20" = 0.2564 mm
* 1920x1080 @ 14" = 0.1614 mm
Before we continue, I want to also show you some popular sizes/pitch of 1920x1080 monitors and one 4K monitor, to put things into perspective:
* 1920x1080 @ 27" = 0.311 mm
* 1920x1080 @ 24" = 0.276 mm
* 1920x1080 @ 23" = 0.265 mm
* 1920x1080 @ 22" = 0.248 mm
* 1920x1080 @ 20" = 0.222 mm
* 1920x1080 @ 15.6" = 0.179 mm
* 3840x2160 @ 27" = 0.155 mm
The 1680 @ 20" looked the best to me. Now I can say the following statement and let it guide my hunt for a new monitor:
I believe that a dot/pixel pitch around 0.26 mm, viewed at a distance of 23" sitting up and 37" leaning back is appropriate for my 36 year old eyes, without glasses (I need glasses for distance), for IT type work.
If you are following along and are also shopping for a monitor, I implore you to also write such a statement. This is an important step because it eliminated all the 4K monitors at or under 32 inches from my search.
NOTE: I measured the 23 the inches distance by gently placing one end of the tape measure against my monitor and stabbing my eyeball with the other. Painful, but it worked. While leaning back and measuring, I switched and stabbed the other eye because I like to stay balanced.
If you are building a new system from scratch, what comes next might not be an issue for you, but it was for me because I was adding a new monitor to an older laptop. 4K monitors, while getting cheaper every day, come with additional requirements: high-bandwidth connections, and a fully-working scaler/GUI that is provided by your Operating System. Windows 10 seems to have the scaler issues worked out, but Ubuntu 15.10 (my desktop OS) does not. Furthermore, my desktop is actually a laptop with only an HDMI 1.4 external monitor connection, so I cannot push a 4K screen at 60Hz. The laptop's CPU is an Intel i5-4210U with an integrated HD4400 graphics engine. There is no way that can push 4K pixels even during light gaming.
Once I had settled on a good dot/pixel pitch for my eyes, at a good viewing distance that would work on my desk, I set about trying to find a monitor with more pixels that would stay around my ideal pitch of 0.26 mm, that featured an HDMI connection. Newegg has the best search engine for this type of query. The link is below. I set it up to look for monitors between 30-40 inches diagonal, with a dot/pixel pitch between 0.2555 mm to 0.277 mm. Only five results came back. The Samsung S32D850T was in the result set and was on sale at MicroCenter for $500. Sold.
I've been working on this set-up for a couple weeks now and am very satisfied.
Useful links:
*
PX CALC: DPI Calculator with Dot Pitch, Size, Aspect Ratio, Pixels, and Megapixels
*
Dot pitch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
*
Newegg Monitor Power Search
