I’ve been really keen on an ultrawide monitor for a long time now. Then recently I started doing research about maybe buying one and my dreams got shattered. For now at least.
The problem being that there isn’t a single ultrawide monitor available in South Africa that doesn’t have some kind of issue.
On one side you have the IPS monitors. Great response time, looks good but man oh man I saw shocking photos of backlight bleed. And after my fiasco with my tv and its backlight bleed I want to stay away from that as far as possible. Apparently these days you just have to accept that there will be IPS glow and often backlight bleed on the ultrawide IPS monitors. I just can’t.
Then you have the VA monitors. There’s a Samsung one especially that looks good when you read initial reviews. You don’t have to worry about IPS glow and backlight bleed and as long as you sit still in front of the screen then you don’t have to worry about the colours changing. I saw lots of people return their monitors because of that but that doesn’t bug me. What bugs me is that at Amazon the monitor has gotten ridiculously bad reviews. Dead pixels, the monitor stopping working, so many many issues. Plus for gaming there’s apparently some input lag.
My ideal ultrawide would be an OLED but it’s going to take another couple of years still before we see those. LG is bringing out new monitors that will hopefully address the backlight bleed problem but reports are that they are going to cost €1399. Can you imagine how much that monitor will be when it reaches South Africa?
That’s if it does.
I found a couple of ultrawides that don’t look too bad but they aren’t being sold in South Africa.
Oh well. Stupid ultrawides and stupid South Africa. Maybe we’ll get a good one in the future.
I think @Flex posted a picture of a his new monitor recently. I might be mistaken but i think it was a curved ultrawide. Might be worth while asking him where he got his one?
I can’t understand why anyone would ever consider spending that much on a monitor alone. For that sort of money you could get a solidly specced full build PC with a decent 27" 4K monitor.
I have the 34" LG Ultrawide IPS monitor, and I love it! playing games like PUBG I actually get to have a wider field of vision and get a more immersive experience. Also, Excel and this monitor was MADE for each other.
The 34" is basically a 27" with extra width. As a 1080p ultrawide it does feel like it needs a higher pixel density. a 1440p ultrawide would be my next monitor.
I do not notice any light bleed, possibly because I dont know what to look for. But I do notice a small amount of ghosting when dark objects moved over very light objects. Think of a tree on a horizon with a bright sky behind.
Anyway, I cannot think about going back to a normal 16:9 monitor. I love my ultrawide too much!
For now I don’t want anything bigger than 27". The 27" with 1440p feels like a very nice sweet spot at the moment, and having a higher refresh rate also makes a difference.
The picture also looks much better/prettier on this monitor than it did on my old 24" 1080p Samsung. I’ll have to sell it when I move overseas but I really don’t want to.
Edit: On topic. You would mostly use this for gaming right @Solitude? Or would you also use it for multimedia, office use, etc., or is that not really a concern?
After some more digging, it seems you are right Soli.
The best Ultrawide monitor I could find from reviews seems to be the Samsung CF791, but it also has its problems (see review below if you haven’t yet).
From what I can gather, the sweet spot does indeed seem to be 27" 1440p monitors. There are quite a few of them and several have great review scores at varying prices.
So it seems you can either wait some more for a better ultrawide, buy the best ultrawide you can get right now and live with it or just settle for a 27" 1440p monitor
@Blazzok Yeah the CF791 is the Samsung VA monitor that I mention in the first post. Unfortunately it gets horrendous reviews on Amazon which makes me not want to buy it.
@Flex, I would love that but the resolution is too low unfortunately.
I can’t understand why anyone would ever consider spending that much on a monitor alone. For that sort of money you could get a solidly specced full build PC with a decent 27" 4K monitor.
