Help me choose a monitor! Overwhelmed and not sure what to do.

[husseinHr]

There are so many lists and options and there's always more and then more after that. I'm feeling quite overwhelmed with all these choices and so on.

Okay, so my budget is ideally below £280 and I need a monitor with a 100% sRGB IPS display at either 4K or 2K (QHD) resolution (though I'd prefer 4K) and at 24-27 inches. If you have suggestions outside of these parameters, fine. I'm open to new ideas.

My needs: I'm going to be using this for graphic design, photo/video editing, reading/writing and some gaming when I get the time.

The computer powering the monitor: currently a 13.3" MacBook Air 2014 with an i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and Intel HD 5000 1.5GB GPU. 1440x900 display.

Current monitor finds that I've saved:
UHD monitors
£280 Acer KA270HK 27" 4K UHD Monitor
£290 LG 24UD58 24" 3840X2160 IPS 4K FreeSync
QHD monitors
£190 Asus VX24AH 24 inch Frameless IPS 5 ms 2560 x 1440
£270 AOC Q2577PWQ 25 Inch QHD Monitor With IPS Panel
£230 BenQ BL2420PT 24" 100% sRGB QHD IPS Monitor
£216 DELL 24" P2418D WQHD Slim Bezel IPS Monitor
£260 ASUS 27" Quad HD 2K IPS Monitor 75Hz

Alright, I'm getting quite frustrated because I can't find any actual screenshot or photo comparisons of what 2K and 4K look like on the same display size! If people could share pictures (either screenshots or photos with a camera/phone) of their 2K/4K 24 or 27 inch displays, that'd be great!

 

[nomdeplume]

For graphic design I would start by excluding any gaming monitors and focus on not just color gamut coverage but actual quality reproduction of it. Even then you need reproducible calibration which is not a given. This again narrows your options considerably within the given price range. So lots of compromise. Have you tried searching prad.de?

 

[husseinHr]

For graphic design I would start by excluding any gaming monitors and focus on not just color gamut coverage but actual quality reproduction of it. Even then you need reproducible calibration which is not a given. This again narrows your options considerably within the given price range. So lots of compromise. Have you tried searching prad.de?

I've tried to include only monitors with 99% sRGB ratings, aiming for 100% sRGB. I'm not working at a high-stakes level when it comes to design or any work I'd do with the monitors, so I'm not too worried about getting extremely high-quality reproduction at this point, since I'm used to working with my TN MacBook Air display. My brother's got a MB Pro 2014 with 98% sRGB and that look amazing, so I'm thinking that anything better than that will be do me well. As for reproduction, I'm really not sure how to check that... will that involve hours of article reading and so on? And how do I check for reproducible calibration? All this stuff means nothing to me, as I don't know anything about it! I'm looking at prad.de, which seems cool. Luckily I'm German-born and still speak the language fairly well.

 

[nomdeplume]

I may take the whole color reproduction and screen calibration thing a tiny bit more seriously than you. Whatever you get you should at least look at calibrating it for your primary purposes. By which I mean something that sits on your screen and runs software to dial it in far beyond what is normally possible. Sorry I couldn't make any valid suggestions since the EU market is so far removed from what is available here and pricing with VAT is tough to figure for us 'Mericans.

Hopefully prad will be useful for you.

 

[husseinHr]

I may take the whole color reproduction and screen calibration thing a tiny bit more seriously than you. Whatever you get you should at least look at calibrating it for your primary purposes. By which I mean something that sits on your screen and runs software to dial it in far beyond what is normally possible. Sorry I couldn't make any valid suggestions since the EU market is so far removed from what is available here and pricing with VAT is tough to figure for us 'Mericans.

Hopefully prad will be useful for you.

Alright. I'll definitely look into the calibration because that's something that does matter to me and will only matter more in time. Thanks very much for your help

 

[flmatter]

Benq has a photo line of monitors. Although the only one in your price range is a 24" 1080p. Dell Ultra Sharps are a good go to as well. Color Munki and Spider are good for color calibration too.