New Monitor - LG 29EA73 29 inch 21:9 UltraWide IPS Monitor
I don't normally do reviews on just products themselves, but thought i'd make an exception.
I was in the market a few months ago for a new monitor and as the last time I bought one was over 5 years ago much had changed (both how I use a computer and what is available). I mostly multitask between coding, emulators, emails, web and chat which means I need a lot of screen real estate to avoid alt-tabbing every 2 seconds. The monitor I had at the time was a 24" Acer monitor which was fine, but was VGA driven and I have a Macbook Pro Retina which required converting from DisplayPort to VGA. For reference, I have two brands of this converter, the official Appleone and a 3rd Party. Both are terrible and are prone to flickering and general crappiness. This more than anything coupled with not enough screen pushed me to get something different.
So, after a few weeks of research I settled on the LG 29EA73
With it's super wide aspect ratio at 21:9 vs my old 16:9, I could have email, chat and a 3rd window all open at the same time. It had the added bonus of having the same aspect ratio as cinemascope films, which look great on screen. Games look equally great, some don't scale well (Dungeon Keeper), particularly the older ones, but the modern ones look great (Grid).
Inputs are equally great. I use DisplayPort as the primary input and is by far the best method to utilise the screen, why? Well HDMI again works great but isn't designed to utilise such a wide aspect ratio, meaning the screen has to be stretched. DVI equally cannot support the super wide resolution, but if you hook up a dual link DVI, then it works fine. I'm not a colour profiler or spend too much time tweaking the screens gamut, but I seem to get a better picture if I use DisplayPort. The screen also has USB ports, one for connecting the screen to the laptop and a few more to connect phones, hard drives, etc.
Overall a great monitor, quality is good and it does have built in speakers. I don't use them myself, but a bonus is that you cannot see them. The monitor is super thin and i've got my mounted on a desk arm, this one for reference
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I was in the market a few months ago for a new monitor and as the last time I bought one was over 5 years ago much had changed (both how I use a computer and what is available). I mostly multitask between coding, emulators, emails, web and chat which means I need a lot of screen real estate to avoid alt-tabbing every 2 seconds. The monitor I had at the time was a 24" Acer monitor which was fine, but was VGA driven and I have a Macbook Pro Retina which required converting from DisplayPort to VGA. For reference, I have two brands of this converter, the official Appleone and a 3rd Party. Both are terrible and are prone to flickering and general crappiness. This more than anything coupled with not enough screen pushed me to get something different.
So, after a few weeks of research I settled on the LG 29EA73
With it's super wide aspect ratio at 21:9 vs my old 16:9, I could have email, chat and a 3rd window all open at the same time. It had the added bonus of having the same aspect ratio as cinemascope films, which look great on screen. Games look equally great, some don't scale well (Dungeon Keeper), particularly the older ones, but the modern ones look great (Grid).
Inputs are equally great. I use DisplayPort as the primary input and is by far the best method to utilise the screen, why? Well HDMI again works great but isn't designed to utilise such a wide aspect ratio, meaning the screen has to be stretched. DVI equally cannot support the super wide resolution, but if you hook up a dual link DVI, then it works fine. I'm not a colour profiler or spend too much time tweaking the screens gamut, but I seem to get a better picture if I use DisplayPort. The screen also has USB ports, one for connecting the screen to the laptop and a few more to connect phones, hard drives, etc.
Overall a great monitor, quality is good and it does have built in speakers. I don't use them myself, but a bonus is that you cannot see them. The monitor is super thin and i've got my mounted on a desk arm, this one for reference
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