PC Hardware → Dell P2815Q 4K monitor for schematic viewing only - any good?

I am looking for a new monitor for a very specific application. I want to look at complex schematics & layouts on one screen. The software I use renders the layout on its own with zoom features, and the schematics are in PDFs, so it will render properly even if I have a monitor with a high resolution.

Right now I use two 1600x900 $100 acer monitors for this purpose and they are terrible. Everything is hard to see unless I zoom in a lot, at which point I can only see small portions at a time.

This will not be used to display media content, video games, movies. Its sole purpose in life will be displaying still, black & white schematics and layouts where it is important that I can make out the text and the little stick-figure like drawings.

Would this be a good choice for this application, or would it be worthless crap? I also saw it is TN, I will be looking at it at an angle. Nothing nuts, but I move around a workbench a lot, and this would be in the middle.

Thanks!

This is going to be an issue for you going forward. Having a 4K monitor will make the image smaller and you'll still be zooming and not see the whole drawing. I doubt how clear it will be on the zoom will change much as you're still going to be dealing with a digital zoom.

I don't know how well a 4K monitor would respond to working at a lower resolution. Working at a lower resolution would eliminate the digital zoom issue. This is one area where a CRT provided a better experience.

the higher the resolution the clearer the schematic is when it is zoomed out. At 1600x900, a zoomed out schematic looks like bunk. On 25**x1600, a zoomed out schematic is readable because the text doesn't turn into little blithers of blurry junk.

I was looking at some high resolution monitors, i just feel silly reading about color accuracy and refresh rates when I am viewing black & white, static material.

That makes sense honestly. It's a lot like using Visio or a CAD program doing floor plans or other architectural drawings. I've got a floor plan drawn on Visio right now in it's default scaling (1:48 or a drawing paper size of 24x36) at 100% zoom I can see just a couple of rooms. To zoom out and get the entire house on screen (1080p 22" monitor) I'm at roughly 60% zoom and it's difficult to see any detail. So I either work zoomed in just a couple of rooms at a time or zoom it out to see the overall.

To be honest, I wouldn't worry about color accuracy or response time but refresh rate you don't want to go below 60 Hz. There are some 30 Hz ones IIRC, don't get those, from what I remember reading you will get noticeable lag just moving the mouse across the screen. Viewing angle and contrast levels would be the thing I would focus on. If you can find the monitor setup somewhere such as Frys where you could possibly load a large PDF and test it out, that would be best.

How much can you spend on it?

If it's paid by a company, I'd probably go for a 32" 4K monitor, or get a 4K TV with a bigger screen -- the 30 Hz refresh rate shouldn't be an issue when you view schematics.

I'm looking to cap it at $750 which is cheap as hell,but considering I don't need good color/gaming refresh I'm hoping I cna find something high resolution that looks good with white background/black text.

I've been reading around and apparently a lot of these cheaper ones can't even do text right, it's fuzzy and washed out. I'm going to go to best buy and see if any of them are willing to let me try them out.

Right now I have two 4K display options I use. The Samsung U28D590D 28" (60Hz at 3840x2160) and the Seiki SE39UY04 39" UHDTV (30Hz at 3840x2160).

It looks like all of these 28" 4K monitors use the same TN panel. 28" may not be big enough for your needs especially so if you are not using typical viewing distances for such a monitor (i.e. walking around a desk). Many people may find that a 3840x2160 28" monitor would be difficult to use without scaling but this can depend on the intended use case. There is some color shift and wash-out given it is TN but it isn't extreme.

The 32" and larger range is probably your best bet. A 30Hz refresh rate for looking at static images shouldn't be an issue. Something like the Seiki SE39UY04 should serve your needs fairly well if you have the desk real-estate for it. However, its not without its issues.

»tiamat.tsotech.com/4k-is ··· grammers

B&W text isn't a problem on such a display (UHDTV), you simply need to turn down the sharpness setting to zero. I have heard some people say there is an issue with bleed on red text with a black background but I haven't seen any evidence of that.

The Seiki is about ~$330 on Amazon.