1440p monitor

[Icarian]

I'm looking to replace my current monitor with a 27" one but I'm concerned about having to run it in 1080p, mainly due text being smaller (0.269 pixel pitch on my current 24" 1200p vs 0.233 at 27" 1440p) and not being able to read it comfortably, as anything smaller than what I'm currently using would put quite an eyestrain, my eyesight is not good.

The other concern while not as worrying, should also be noted, I'm currently using a 670, so no 1440p gaming on modern games (not that I play many, I play XIV and older games for the most part) for now, but I can always upgrade down the road, more so with the new R9 290 being only 350€.

So, how do 1440p quality monitors look when downscaled to 1080p? is it worth it or should I get a 27" 1080p which are about 200€ cheaper than 1440p ones?

I'm quite undecided, I'm also not considering a 24" screen as I've been using them for the last 6~ years and I'd like to try something a lil bigger.

[Slott]

You can and should be able to increase font size in almost all applications/windows itself

[Icarian]

It also makes everything look really weird unlike lowering resolution, text is too big for the boxes and makes everything look out of place.

[hey]

Why on earth would you get a 1440p monitor and then scale it down to 1080p?

[Icarian]

Why on earth would you get a 1440p monitor and then scale it down to 1080p?

Gaming at 1440p whenever possible, I'll probably use 1080p at the desktop but it's always nice having the option to set it to 1440p.

Thing is, is it really worth it? Is IQ degraded much when a 1440p display is downscaled to 1080p? Would I be better off just buying a 1080p display if I'm gonna use it 75% of the time at 1080p?

I don't know anybody with a 1440p screen and there's no shops with them on display nearby, so I can't go look at them in person and see for myself, I want to make sure before pulling the trigger on either of them and regretting it later.

[The Stig]

I've got a 27inch monitor at 1440p, I can go home tonight and tune it to 1080p for you if you want to provide me a list of things you'd like to "test" (excluding games) -- I'll use a camera to take some (probably bad) photos.

edit: I should mention, I've used (laptop) 15.6, 16, 17.3 and 18.1 at 1080p and then all the way to desktop 21, 22, 23 and 24 at 1080 and frankly can't really tell the difference. If the screen you buy is native at its max size then I can bet you it'll look normal/fine. Think of 50inch TVs running at 1080p -- in fact if you got a TV with HDMI in, you can try to move your desktop next to your TV to give it a go. Won't give an accurate result but gives you a general idea.

One extra note: i'm generally clueless/ignorant about displays, so take what i say with a pinch of salt, but otherwise, think of it this way: if you run 1080p on a monitor for 1440p, you'll see a minor bit of "blurring"...

Use your current monitor and run it at 720p and you'll produce the same effect.

[Icarian]

I have a 40" 1080p TV next to my PC that I use for watching movies/tv shows, there's a bit of blurring when downscaling from native resolution on LCD screens due how they work, on a 1080p 40" TV running at lower resolution it's quite apparent cause pixels are gigantic, but on a 1440p 27" they're quite small and at a higher density, so interpolation shouldn't look as bad but I just don't know how much, I can't really test it on my current screens since have a different pixel pitch/ppi, if it's barely noticeable it should prove to be worth it to get a 1440p display, if only for having the option to put it at 1440p when needed/possible.

I'd appreciate if you could test it and post results.

[hey]

Oh god, i just tried 1080p on my monitor (27" 1440p). It looks disgusting as fuck. Don't do it.

[Icarian]

Okay, tested a bit with my current monitor and yeah, it looks really bad compared to native resolution and looking at hey's reaction, it doesn't seem to be much better at 1440p, so seeing as I won't be upgrading my GPU for at least another year, I'm probably better off buying a 1080p and upgrade to 1440p if I ever get the GPU power to run it instead of looking at a kind-of-blurry screen for a year+

Now it's up to me if I want to run the games at high instead of highest and run them at 1440p or just stick with 1080p and play the games at their highest settings.

[Jojimbo]

Tried it as well on mine, looks crap vs 1440p but isn't *too* bad for text other than everything looks huge and a bit blurry, gaming on the other hand looks awful. Everything looks blocky and blurry no matter how much AA was applied, just looked like a mess. 720p even though it fits nicely was just laughable though, don't have a clue how people could recommend playing at 1280x720 just because it's perfectly fits into 2560x1440 when it looks that bad.

[The Stig]

You still want me to test? It'll be no difference to what you've experienced just now on your own monitor.

[hey]

Now it's up to me if I want to run the games at high instead of highest and run them at 1440p or just stick with 1080p and play the games at their highest settings.

1440p at low/medium settings always looks way better than 1080p at high settings.

[Suteru]

If you're on a PC, change your DPI scaling:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...ller=windows-8

This will enlarge most programs' fonts, and will look tons better than just putting your monitor on 1080P.

If you buy a 1440p monitor to display at 1080P you might as well just be throwing it into the garbage.

[Icarian]

If you're on a PC, change your DPI scaling:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...ller=windows-8

This will enlarge most programs' fonts, and will look tons better than just putting your monitor on 1080P.

If you buy a 1440p monitor to display at 1080P you might as well just be throwing it into the garbage.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm testing right now with my current 1200p, I'm trying to make 1200p look as big as 1680x1050 and comparing them, and the results are what you're describing, lowering the resolution makes the screen look a bit blurry overall, changing the DPI to match the 1050p's size while in 1200p makes it look as if it was 1200p, just the texts/windows are bigger

Well, I think that settles it, I can get a 1440p screen and change the DPI if I find the text is too small, if for whatever reason I need more real estate I can always change it back, it's more flexible.

As for gaming, does 1440p really look better compared to 1200p if I were to settle for, let's say, worse shadows/ambient occlusion/no AA? If so, I think that settles it.

[hey]

As for gaming, does 1440p really look better compared to 1200p if I were to settle for, let's say, worse shadows/ambient occlusion/no AA? If so, I think that settles it.

Certainly if you're using a 1440p monitor. Hard to say if it'd be better than playng on a 1200p monitor with higher settings. Keep in mind too though that losing AA isn't as big a deal as it would be for lower resolutions.

[Boyiee]

I run 1600p and I can't imagine ever wanting to downscale to 1080p for anything. I tried downscaling to 1080p for recording and streaming once, just to get the shitty 16:9 scaling, what a joke that was.You should just get a 27inch 1080p monitor.

I wear glasses at the computer and on my monitor text looks sharper, if its too small, I ctrl+scroll wheel.

[Hellfury]

I'm using a 27" Dell UltraSharp at 2560x1440 privately, never ever gonna give it up (etc.!), in most newer everyday applications (office, webbrowsers etc.), you can scale the size of most content holding ctrl+scrollwheel on mouse if the content doesnt' scale automatically (try it with the applications you use before buying, see if it does it for you).
In Windows, well, how often do you actually need to read what the icons are to know what is where. Unless you use a lot of applications that don't scale, it's not really an issue.
Never tried downscaling @ home, but I know a lot of people at work do it, because 1920x1080 is "too small", and when they do it, it looks like shite, I don't get why, it technically shouldn't, but maybe I'm just biased because I run everything at 1080/1440 personally.

[The Stig]

A lot of people at work here downscale 1600x1200 to 1024x768 too lol

Some even don't use the second monitor (every desk has a second monitor).

[Icarian]

Yeah, after testing it myself on my monitor (kinda should've done this before posting lol), downscaling is pretty horrible, it doesn't really matter if you're only reading text, but playing downscaled is just as hey said. utterly disgusting.

So now it's just a matter of which display to get, I'm torn between the Asus PB278Q and the Dell U2713HM like maaaany people are from what I gathered reading the net, it just seems that for every pro one has, there's a flaw, I just can't decide, price-wise they're almost the same, with the Asus at 519€ and Dell at 499€.

Will be used mainly for gaming and web browsing.

[Jojimbo]

Looked into the 1440p Korean monitors? Same panels used in Dell/Apple displays just B/A- grade instead of A+ but they can be under half the price of other 1440p monitors.