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MRrainer

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 8, 2008
1,563
1,139
Zurich, Switzerland
Hi,

I'm thinking of buying a new display for a maxed-out 2012 i7 Mini (2.3 GHz).

I don't do much photo-editing, no video and obviously no gaming.

At times, I do some VMs and have a lot of terminal-windows open (I'm a unix sysadmin). I may need to write documentation, draw-up stuff in OmniGraffle...

So, the question boils down to: are the additional 160 pixels worth the price?

I would love to hear from people who have used both.

Actual models I'm considering:
- Dell U3014
- HP z30i (if I get a decent discount via $work)
- HP z27i (dito)
- ViewSonic VP2770 LED
- Dell U2713H (apparently same LG display as below, as per PRAD.de review) - is this the "best" of the U27xx displays? They have far too many models for my taste...
- NEC PA272 (expensive, but I have a penchant for good displays and the price is still OK-ish, compared to their Spectra-View offerings which I really don't need anyway)
- maybe just be cheap (after all, it's mostly text what I'm after) and get one of the cheap 2560x1440 offerings from AOC, ASUS, Benq or Phillips? They're essentially between a third and a half of the price of the above NEC.
- NEC's PA302 looks nice - but price-wise it's most likely beyond what I can "sell" my GF....(cough...cough)

I really want a solid display that is easy on the eyes and good for text-work.
I do watch movies on my Mac, but I could live with sub-par performance on that front.
At work, I have dual HP ZR24 with Linux, which is OK, but I feel I could make more of a single large display (Eizo's new 24" screen with the 1mm bezel also looks interesting - the bezel of the ZR24s is far too big for my taste)

I live in a country with relatively "weak" consumer-rights.
If I'd order e.g. a cheap Benq GW2765HT (which is basically a 3rd of the price of the 27" NEC) and it would suffer extreme backlight-bleeding, this alone would not be a reason to return it. I could maybe return it (on my own cost), but the most I would get is a voucher for the value (minus a restocking fee, because I opened the box...).

I've always spent more money on displays than anybody else in my surrounding. It paid-off in the CRT days and I feel it should still pay-off these days.
Even though I don't plan to spend that much time in front of it - after all, I work full days in the office...
 
I own a PA272W and use it for coding and love it. The KVM functionality works great and I use that every day.

I don't miss the 30" displays as they were a good deal more money at the time I purchased and most of the 30" panels weren't as good as the 27" ones.

My 2cents... Good luck.
 
Thanks. Do you calibrate the display?
From what I read on a pro-photographers' forum, these displays are factory-calibrated with equipment much, much more precise and expensive than e.g. a i1 display pro.
I do admit I don't want to spend the 200-something dollar-equivalent (or whatever an i1 goes for) if I don't really need it anyway.
 
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