Question Repacement monitor required --- suggestions please ?

[GammaPaladin]

Back in 2010, LED backlit TVs and monitors were still pretty new, and getting your hands on one with the fancy new DCR tech was extremely expensive. I so wanted one though, I kept looking at all the listings hoping the prices would come down. Enter the AOC e2237fwh, a 21.5" monitor with DCR, MSRP about $399, but AOC was a company that was just trying to get the world (Or at least the west) to notice them, so their products were regularly sold WAY below MSRP. I snagged one for $95, on the theory that even if it turned out to be just mediocre, that wasn't too expensive.

It was the best monitor I'd ever owned. My first 21 inch, my first 1080p, and my first LED backlit monitor with DCR. Picture was sharp and clear and the colors were vibrant and saturated, even if maybe a bit inaccurate. I loved it. I bought a second one.

The first one eventually had the capacitive "buttons" to turn it on and off die. That was fine, at that point I was only using the one, with two cheap monitors to either side of it just for web browsing and chatting and other desktop tasks. The middle monitor, my favorite, was the one I did everything on. My primary tasks would happen there. So I took the second one I'd got and replaced the first. All good.

But ever since that day I've been dreading the inevitable, eventual death of my last e2237fwh. And today, my UPS decided to randomly shut down--as it turns out, after much troubleshooting, it decided to finally display a "replace battery" indicator on its front panel, so yeah--and when it did, it killed my beloved monitor.

This monitor and its brother served me for 12 years. All my movie watching and TV watching has been on them. All my gaming. I've been dreading this day because I knew I'd gotten an absolutely ludicrously good deal on those monitors, and between that and inflation, obviously it would cost much more to replace with anything comparable. Worse, since I've been using the same monitors for the past 12 years, I have very little idea how to judge current monitors, as I just haven't been following monitor tech.

So I need suggestions.

My budget is $200-300, closer to 200 would be better, obviously. Could potentially stretch a few (Like, 5-10) bucks above 300 for something perfect.

I'm a gamer, but I'm not a competitive gamer and never want to be. So my criteria are image quality, rich vibrant color (Oversaturated is better than undersaturated, for me. I live in SoCal, where the desert sun means RL has brighter colors than in most other places lol), and HDR, with latency being a concern because I am still a gamer--and one of the games I play most is Rocksmith, so display lag is REALLY a big deal), with refresh rate being probably my lowest priority. Like, it's nice but I'll take a 60 or 75hz monitor that does the rest of what I want for sure.

I probably don't have room on my desk for anything too big. Going from my old 22 inch to a 24 would be easy enough, 27 would probably be doable, but 32 is probably too big. Resolution wise, 4k would be overkill for me, my video card is just a GTX 1060, it can't handle 4k games really. I wouldn't rule a 4k monitor out if it was a great deal and fit all my other criteria of course, it might be cool when I next upgrade my computer, but it's not critical. I do generally feel that I'd want a 1440p if it were 27 inch, but I might take a 27 inch 1080p if it fit the bill well enough in every other way.

I guess in order it would be:

1. HDR with a good number of dimming zones
2. Picture clarity, pixel density, and vibrant color
3. Input latency (Needs to be low enough to not throw me off when I'm playing Rocksmith)
4. Pixel latency (Not a bit fan of ghosting, but my old monitor was only 5ms and that was fine with me)
5. Refresh rate

It doesn't help that Fry's closed up shop. There's no place I can go look at any reasonable selection of monitors in person any more. I really, really want to love my next monitor as much as I loved the last one. Please help ;-)

 

[ohio_buckeye]

https://www.microcenter.com/product...60-x-1440)-165hz-curved-screen-gaming-monitor

Not sure if you’ve got microcenter nearby but I just picked this up yesterday. AOC 27 inch, 1440p, 165 hz, 1ms response time, has an hdr mode. Can’t tell about all the dimming zones etc, but colors do feel bright with hdr mode on and it seems to have a great picture for the price.

As for size, my desk front to back is right art 24 inches I think, so I put it at the back and with the curve it feels perfect.

I actually had purchased a 32 inch gigabyte screen in October that had similar specs but I had issues getting it dialed in correctly. Once I did it seemed fine, but 32 inch that close can be overpowering imo. So anyway I’m going to sell that one. Hence why I bought the AOC above. In hindsight I should have bought the AOC to begin with but I thought I would like the 32 inch better than I did.

There are of course many choices out there but I can tell you when I talked to a rep at microcenter, and told him I wanted about a 27 inch, to spend about 250 dollars, and that I had the 32 inch I wasn’t happy with, he said the AOC was what he would buy. So I ended up going with his recommendation. I like it pretty well thus far. Spent a good amount of time yesterday playing call of duty ghosts, as well as mount and blade 2 and those look pretty good imo. Spider man looks good also imo.

 

[GammaPaladin]

I've added that to my list of monitors to consider

As I do more research and more searching, I'm realizing that a big part of my problem in finding a monitor I want with the right specs and the right size in my price range is... Other people just don't use small-ish computer monitors as their primary movie and TV watching station. Anything with good HDR and local dimming features tends to be 40 inches or bigger, because those features aren't great for gaming or general desktop application use.

But I don't have room for a monitor that size--even if I could afford one--and in fact I couldn't use a 40+ inch monitor even if I had desk space for it, because the space my computer is in only has room for my chair to move back another foot or two. Which means I'm viewing the monitor from maybe 4 feet away, and that's just not far enough away to be able to take in the full area of a 40+ inch monitor IMO.

But since people aren't looking for small monitors for movie and TV watching, small monitors designed for that just... don't exist :/

 

[GammaPaladin]

I ended up ordering a BenQ EX240.

After two solid days of just searching google and amazon and reading articles and reviews, I finally came to the conclusion that the techs I'd really want are probably a few years away from reaching the $300, 22-27 inch monitor range, if they ever do--the aforementioned problem of there likely not being enough people who want to watch TV and movies on a small monitor may keep things like OLED and Mini-LED from ever reaching the small budget monitor market segment.

So I went with one that was cheap ($200), gets high marks for color fidelity, and can do 120hz (Which is a multiple of both 24 and 30, so it's ideal for a movie/TV monitor since nearly everything is filmed in 24 or 30). I figure I'm not likely to love anything in my price range at the moment (Local dimming like my old one could do is just not really a thing at the $300 or less point any more), so I picked something relatively cheap that I can live with until maybe one day someone will make a 22-27 inch OLED.