Choosing the perfect monitor... harder than one might think

I decided recently to buy a new monitor to replace my almost 7-years-old BenQ GL2430. Not that there's something wrong with it; it's actually quite good for its price. But I wanted something better, especially since I have a PlayStation 4 Pro.

There were several things I was looking for.

Panel type

That old monitor used a TN (twisted nematic) display. The advantage of that panel type has historically been a much cheaper price, and good refresh rates. Although in this particular case a 5 ms refresh rate is nothing to brag about. The biggest disadvantage of TN panels is that they have extremely poor viewing angles, especially vertically: With that monitor (as well as most other TN monitors as well), you only need to raise or lower your head a few degrees to see a significant change in colors. It's in fact so bad that the upper area of the display will have a visibly different pixel coloring than the lower side, for the simple reason that the viewing angle is different for them (unless you are watching from quite far away).

A much higher quality alternative is the IPS (in-plane switching) panel. While not absolutely free of that viewing angle problem, it's nevertheless only a very small fraction of that, compared to TN panels. Also IPS panels tend to have more vibrant colors, and be able to reproduce the entire sRGB color spectrum better and more accurately (which is why they are preferred by professionals dealing with graphics, such as printing). Historically their disadvantage has been a higher price, and slower refresh rates. However, in recent years both things have improved significantly, up to the point that IPS panels are seriously starting to compete with TN panels in terms of reaching the mass market.

Since I'm upgrading my monitor, I really prefer the IPS option.

Resolution

The next consideration was the resolution. While 1920x1080 of that BenQ monitor is not horrendous, if I'm upgrading my monitor I would prefer a higher resolution. There are several options for this, but the two most common ones with a 16:9 aspect ratio are the WQHD resolution, ie. 2560x1440 pixels, and the 4K UHD resolution, ie. 3840x2160 pixels (which is exactly twice the amount of pixels of the standard 1920x1080 on both directions).

Now, if I had been buying this for my PC only, then the WQHD resolution might have been the perfect spot. That's because my PC, while quite a hefty gaming PC (i5, GTX970), is not exactly capable of rendering most modern graphically-heavy games at 4k resolution at 60 FPS. But that 2560x1440 ought to be fine. The problem is, however, that I am also buying the monitor for use with the PS4 Pro.

The PS4 Pro only supports "standard" TV resolutions. That means 1080p or 2160p, but nothing in between. If you connect a 1440p monitor to it, it will simply use a 1080p resolution. (This information was actually surprisingly hard to find online.) Using a 1080p resolution on a 1440p monitor might not be the best possible scenario (as each source pixel will be scaled to 1.333 size for the display, meaning that two thirds of the pixels will be blurry.)

While buying a 1080p monitor was not completely out of the question, it was really tempting to be able to use the PS4 Pro at 4k. Thus, preferably, the new monitor would be a 3840x2160 "4k" monitor.

There was one additional requirement for the 4k monitor, though: It had to support HDMI 2.0 as input. That's because HDMI 1.x only supports 4k resolution at 30Hz, while HDMI 2.0 supports it at 60Hz. The PS4 Pro has a HDMI 2.0 output, and can, at least in theory, output in 4k at 60Hz. Some games (current or future) might even do that.

So, primarily I would be looking for a 4k monitor, with a fallback to a very good 1080p one if everything else fails.

G-sync

The next consideration was a long-time dream of mine: G-sync support. It would just be great to be able to have g-sync, and not worry anymore about games not just quite reaching that golden 60 frames per second, and me having to resort to some sort of compromise (ie. either lower the graphical quality, or accept a 30-fps lock.)

And, of course, the price of the monitor shouldn't be exorbitant. While I was ready to spend a decent amount of money on it, I'm not exactly super-rich.

Conclusion

So, one would think that the best possible solution to all of the above is, well, all of the above. Except it turns out that, at least at this point in time, there doesn't seem to be a monitor available with all of the above features!

The closest thing that seems to exist is the Acer Predator XB271HK: 3820x2160, IPS, g-sync. That would seem like the jackpot, except for two things: It only has an HDMI 1.4 input port (meaning that the PS4 Pro wouldn't be able to use it at 60Hz), and a rather hefty price. That former limitation is quite a killer; if only it were HDMI 2.0, it would be an almost perfect monitor, even considering its price. It's really incomprehensible why Acer decided to put a HDMI 1.4 input in it (given that they have HDMI 2.0 in many of their other 4k monitors.)

4k monitors with g-sync are still a real rarity, even if using TN, and especially if using IPS.

Perhaps quite surprisingly, my fallback plan doesn't seem to be much better either: The combination of 1080p, IPS and g-sync seems to be almost as rare! There just don't seem to be almost any monitor with that combination either. (This would be a much easier choice given that it wouldn't even need to have HDMI 2.0.) Basically all 1080p g-sync monitors are TN.

There are quite many 1440p IPS g-sync monitors out there but, as said, that's a bummer in terms of using it with the PS4 Pro.

I in the end, I decided to purchase an Acer S277HK: 4k, IPS, HDMI 2.0, and quite good reviews. And at a discount when I bought it (normally almost 700€, but discounted at 597€). No g-sync, but I'll just have to live without it, as I have done so far.

(In the end, g-sync has a lower limit of 30Hz, after which it just stops working and resorts to your normal screen-teared no-sync, or regular sync. Playing at 30Hz with a regular monitor is not all that bothersome to me, so I suppose I'll just have to be content with that, with the heavier games.)

So, does it look good?

It actually looks better than I expected, both on the PC and the PS4 Pro. In the latter, for instance, prior to this purchase, I was playing Titanfall 2. After I got the monitor I continued the game with it, and it looked really great. I don't know if this game in particular is using 4k natively, or that 2x1080p checkerboard-interpolation scheme, but it certainly looks like native 4k nevertheless. All edges are crisp and razor-sharp, and everything is full of tiny details.