Monitor for movies and streaming

[Confused1]

I'm looking to build a computer in the near future and I think some of the components I'll be putting in it will be dependent on the monitor I get. I've read many threads asked by people looking to buy a monitor for gaming purposes, and although I'll be doing some form of gaming, the most use out of this rig will be for watching movies, streaming videos, and viewing photos. I'm a little lost as far as which type of panel to get.

I'm on a very old laptop right now and I watch a lot of videos online with it and I notice major ghosting/blur (if that's the correct terminology). I'd imagine color is pretty important for movies and what not and although I've seen a lot of recommendations on IPS monitors for this type of application, wouldn't TN monitors be beneficial in regards to having a better viewing experience?

[lexlazootin]

> I notice major ghosting/blur

Ghosting is that smearing effect were you drag a window across the screen and you get weird colours trailing behind it. TN can help reduce this but simply being a TN monitor doesn't necessarily mean that the ghosting is any good. It's all controlled by the monitor, some times there is a setting called Overdrive in the monitor which can effect this but on a lot of consumer 60hz nothing much you can really do most of the time.

in this test you can really exaggerate the ghosting effect: http://testufo.com/#test=ghosting

IPS will do you much better as you only sacrifice a little bit of ghosting when gaming for much better colour and viewing experience. Less ghosting when watching movies or youtube doesn't really matter so much, so in that respect you should really worry about it.

The Dell IPS monitors are really good and trustworthy. If you can get one of them in the size you like 24"/27"+ with IPS it's going to be a good monitor. But they are 60hz.

How important is high refreshrate and gaming?

[Confused1]

How important is high refreshrate and gaming?

Gaming isn't too important. I haven't gamed in years but, I'd build a strong enough rig capable of handling games at decent settings since that's one of the things I'd like to start casually doing again. Games like counter strike, BF, GTA, starcraft, etc. I don't do any competitive type gaming either. It's mostly just to get my mind off work and relieve some stress.

As far as the importance of refreshrate, well that's what I was hoping to find out

In addition to my OP, in regards to video editing/analyzing where playing videos in slow motion come in, will that make a difference at all in choosing a monitor? It's all amateur stuff, nothing professional.

Thanks

[RealNC]

If you can get a monitor with a 75Hz panel, gaming is going to be quite a bit better.

You can tell if a monitor has a 75Hz panel if it supports VESA resolutions like 800x600 75Hz. If the monitor supports even just one 75Hz resolution, it's a 75Hz panel. You should then be able to use CRU to add a 75Hz native resolution.

Trust me when I say that 75Hz vs 60Hz makes a big difference. It may not seem like much ("it's just 15Hz more"), but it has a big impact on motion clarity. To me at least the difference it quite night and day.

[lexlazootin]

> In addition to my OP, in regards to video editing/analyzing where playing videos in slow motion come in, will that make a difference at all in choosing a monitor? It's all amateur stuff, nothing professional.

Na, not really.

I also very much agree with with RealNC said. 75hz although doesn't sound like much, it does make a bigger difference then you think.

[Confused1]

It seems like a higher refresh rate is pretty significant, but you guys would still recommend IPS for the picture quality? I just want to be sure I know what to expect before making a purchase

[lexlazootin]

Like i said, the Dells are pretty nice. Also the NON-GAMING 60hz IPS benqs.

There are a lot of monitors to cover but you can get a pretty good idea about likely the different brands will perform from the tftcentral tests.

It would be much easier if you find a monitor/s that you can buy in your area and we just confirm that you are making a good choice.

[Confused1]

Ok after looking around, the Dell UltraSharp U2515H monitors look pretty good. 25" is probably the most I'd want to go. It doesn't appear to be 75hz though, I guess that really shouldn't matter in terms of movies/streaming anyways. What do you all think about that monitor in terms of picture quality?

[RealNC]

That's a 1440p monitor. 25" is rather small for that resolution (things are going to be TINY on the screen.)

You might want to switch to 1080p 24" perhaps? There's good words about the Samsung S24f350FH. Good panel (PLS) and support for 72Hz, which works very well for movies, which are 24FPS and thus will play perfectly, and also for games. It has DisplayPort 1.2a if you ever want to use FreeSync on it (AMD graphics cards support this.)

If you want to stick to 1440p, 27" or even 28" is the minimum size I would recommend. There are workarounds for running 1440p on a 25", like DPI scaling options in Windows, but they don't always work. You will come across apps and games that will appear very, very small on the screen.