Home office upgrade

[virtuo]

I'm looking to improve my home office setup, which currently stands at 2x 23" 1080p monitors.

I'm starting to find the resolution quite low on these screens, particularly for work (I'm a web/software developer).

I'd ideally like to increase both the size and resolution of both - I've demoed a couple of 4K monitors and found the text far too small on them, and not particularly easy to adjust in Windows 7. I don't think my eyes could cope with 2 of these side by side. And I don't want to be nudging 30" to make the screen large enough to appreciate the resolution.

So, a nice compromise seems to be a pair of 1440p screens, 25-27". Aside from coding I do like to do a moderate amount of gaming so would also be looking at upgrading my current GPU - something that'll happily drive 2 1440p displays but also not break a sweat running games at this resolution at high settings. I'm guessing a 970-980 or some sort of SLI setup would be good.

G-sync/FreeSync and super high refresh rates are not terribly important, decent colour reproduction and low response times are more important.

I'd also like something that has a good amount of height adjustment in the stand, and the ability to rotate 90 degrees to portrait would be a bonus.

Price I know is going to be a bit steeper than 1080p monitors, but I'm looking at this being a professional investment so only the totally ridiculous prices will be a problem.


So, I'm looking for some recommendations that fit my slightly fussy requirements. I keep asking myself if I should just jump in to a 4K screen, or two and update to Windows 8/10 which better support High DPI screens? I've also seen those ultrawide 1080p screens, which look nice but a probably a bit of a pain for gaming at "normal" aspect ratios.

[Saracen]

Dell U2412M??

It's always a trade-off, at least between price and spec, and sometimes one spec v another, too.

At about £200, that gives you 24", IPS, good colour gamut, 16:10 1920x1200, built-in USB hub. I use one, find it pretty accurate, colour-wise, out of the box, and very good once hardware calibrated.

There are better monitors, but "silly money" comes to mind unless you really do require top-end. That Dell is, IMHO, quite a lot for not much more than budget monitors.

That said, I've not really looked at newer releases.

[TheAnimus]

I've switched to one of these:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u3415w.htm

Currently toying with the notion of getting another. Amazing screen, text looks great but colour fidelity hasn't suffered like many high DPI displays.

[b0redom]

Keep an eye on the Dell website for specials. I got a U2713HM for £380 back in Dec 2012. The deals seem to come along every 6 months or so.

[virtuo]

Thanks for the input so far, I did consider a pair of 1920x1200 screens but they don't give me quite enough extra screen area. I used to have the exact model that you have, Saracen, but sold it on to go towards a dual 1080 setup I have now!

TheAnimus, that screen looks brilliant, I hadn't seen any ultrawides over 1080 pixels in height, but that looks ideal. Where did you get yours from? Looked on Amazon and they seem to come from Germany for £650. Might check Dell's site see if they manage to get any on special. Don't know if you have tested, but can you run games at 16:9 A/R and just have black borders either side?

One thing I did spot on the related items was a U2515H for £250, 2 of those would be cheaper but wouldn't look as good.. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-U2515H-.../dp/B00P6O3YYO

[TheAnimus]

Ours came from Amazon, it was a fulfilled by amazon job, arrived next day.

Nice thing about them is they've got daisychainable display port, I had my Surface powering two of these! Also it's got both HDMI, and that exact same plug as HDMI but don't call it HDMI as well as the display port and mini display port. The USB hub is that new whatever they are calling it super speed kind, which is good to have too.

All in all, would recommend, we've ordered a few more.