I am an university student wondering what monitor to buy.

[Mihail Milchev]

Hello there,

This is the first time I am ever posting, so I will try to make it quick.

So, I have a Lenovo E431, a decent laptop, the GPU is nVidia GT740M with 2 Gigs of memory.

I was snooping around for a monitor that might fit my needs. The two options I have in mind are: a 1. 1080p 24" Monitor from AOC, Power consumption - 25W (mainly chose it because of the design. Silver with sweet looking bezels on the side, haha)
2. a 30" 2560x1600 Monitor from Alibaba.com (Chinese, of course) Power consumption - 125W

I am mainly going to use the second monitor for:
Writing
Photo editing
Programming
Surfing
Gaming is not really an issue, because I really don't use my laptop for gaming that much. Minecraft, Serious Sam series, and that's pretty much it.

So my questions are:
Is the Chinese montior actually worth it because of the resolution? I have never had experience with such a high-res monitor. I guess it would be pretty neat for watching movies, but other than that I am wondering if it would be more uncomfortable for my eyes because of the screen size.
The other issue is the power consumption. Is such a monitor worth the extra electricity costs. For now, I am living in a dorm room, so it's not a problem, but when I move?

tl;dr:

Wondering if a chinese 30" WQHD montor worth it, and would it be more useless than a smaller 24" 1080p screen

 

[OriginalCadaver]

More screen real estate is always nice, I think it comes down to your preference. I've used monitors of all sizes, and personally I prefer the 24-27 inch range. I wouldn't worry too much about the power consumption, you could probably run your PC 24/7 and it would cost around 10 dollars a month.