Samsung releases 49-inch desktop monitor with 32:9 aspect ratio The Register doesn't spare a glance for news of monitors but we made an exception when we learned of Samsung's new CHG90. The reason? It's a bit outrageous. As the shot above (or here for m.reg readers) shows, the monitor is rather wide and curved. Samsung rates it at 49 inches. But the aspect ratio is where it gets weird: …
I thought we were past that now? for the non 1920x1080 monitors at least...
I still have my old 16:10 1920x1200 monitor because the screen size is nicer than any of the alternatives I have used.
Consider a 1080p monitor costs a few hundred, few hundred more for a second one, oh and then double it to get rid of the bezel...
I can see why gamers might want a dual screen setup with no bezel, but not worth it for others imho.
"Alternatively with a decent Linux GUI you just rotate the screen 90 degrees."
*sigh* because the drivers for my card would *never* allow me to do something like that on my non-*nix desktop....
Seriously, why do people feel the need to to turn *every* fucking subject into "linux rulz! windoze sux!" competition? Just try growing up FFS!
It's not like there isn't enough actual shit in the world to get arsy about
>Alternatively with a decent Linux GUI you just rotate the screen 90 degrees.
Which Linux GUI provides an iOS style of transition between portrait and landscape?
Also you do need an orientation-aware monitor and driver.
It has always irritated me that the mainstream desktop OS's didn't properly support display rotation out-of-the-box. I have a Dell XPS-18, whilst it does support display orientation rotation, a side-by-side comparison with iOS shows just how basic and slow the MS version is...
My ultra-wide Dell is "only" 32", but is 3880x1440, a much better combination.
I still have an LG 24" monitor with 1920x1200 at home, but at work we just have 24" movie viewers (1920x1080), the lower pixel density makes them much harder to look at than a "proper" monitor.
As I'm lucky enough to work in IT at my company, I was pleased to find one of the last 1920x1200 screens left in our stock which I promptly snaffled for myself. As you say, all new ones now are 1920x1080, and they just feel cramped and unpleasant for working on.
For my home office, my company sent over a 24" 1920x1080 screen. I don't use it, I prefer to use my own 16:10 screen via KVM.
>> "most monitors these days are 16:9 to deliver HD images at 1080 x 720"
You mean 1920x1080.
Even then, I'll be giving this a miss as it still has less vertical resolution than my main (and aging) 1920x1200 monitor. As for work, I'd rather have multiple monitors as it's far easier to snap multiple apps in place that way (I actually use a 1920x1200 main screen with a 1600x1200 monitor either side of it).
And just imagine the fun of browsing web pages down a miniscule column in the middle...
I'm sure some people will like this, but it's not for me.
Stuff the practicality...this thing will surely be a big babe magnet! 49" will really impress. Anyone with one of these on their desk must be really serious about their work as well - although what's the betting it's only the boss gets one, who uses it to play solitaire and surf dodgy websites.
Well, the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Screen-LED-Lit-Monitor-LC49HG90DMNXZA/dp/B072C7TNC5/ref=sr_1_1”>Amazon link I found says the “item weight” is 33 pounds (still not light), so the larger figure includes packaging, the odd cable, inadequate printed docs and maybe a power brick.
I remember changing an old 19" CRT for a 23" LCD for the first time.
Heaving the beast to the side of the desk so I could reach the cables to unplug it, then struggling to get the eormous bugger down the stairs without it tipping out of my hands, as it was so lopsided with all the weight in the screen.
Then holding the new 23" in one hand, while plugging it in with the other. Much more relaxing.
"You always put the screen against you."
I soon worked this out when I had a Saturday job at Woolworths. The TVs were in the lock up in the basement, so every time I sold a TV I had to go fetch and drag it up the stairs.
Best memory of those days was having all of the TVs showing Live Aid.
Depends on the monitor. I still have two 21" CRTs, and yes, they're a faff to move around although doable by yourself. Re-arranging the study recently was annoying. I still like them, regardless.
However my main TFT (HP, 1600x1200) is not exactly light either. You can hold it in one hand, but only just. A lot of weight is probably in the stand.
When one of the CRTs die, I'm probably going 1440p rather than 4K, but we'll see.
"Samsung rates it at 49 inches. But the aspect ratio is where it gets weird: most monitors these days are 16:9 to deliver HD images at 1080 x 720. The CHG90 is 32:9 and 3840 x 1080."
This really caught my attention, until encountering the disappointment of the resolution. I'm writing this on a 3840x2160 UHD Sammy, and ultra-wide aspect ratio or not, I cannot imagine switching to a system with half the pixels I have now.
Fifteen years ago when I was doing lots of project management, I had three Eizo SVGA monitors side by side, an absolute boon considering the way Gantt charts can get so wide. I'm too old to lust after shiny kit as a rule, but I'd love to get my hands on something twice the width of my current Sammy, for say 7680x2160: doubling up or tripling displays is fine, but, bezels, y'know ...
Personally, it's hard to see how 32:9 and 49" is particularly useful with such weedy resolution? Use cases, anyone?
It'll be focused on Gamers. 4k is wonderful for raw pixels but you need very high end hardware to run games at a decent framerate while pushing that many pixels. This monitor is about equal to two standard 1080p monitors so you'd get all the benefit with none of the bezelly downside.
Yes, you can afford a stonking great powerful PC. For gaming, 4k isn't a huge huge deal unlike 21:9 ultrawide which provides more screen real estate, whether you're pushing 2560x1080 or 3440x1440 like I am.
As far as I know, the general feeling in gaming is that 4k is too much on the graphics intensive side to have a good balance between graphics & smoothness. You could be running an i7-7700k overclocked up to 5GHz with dual 1080Tis in SLI and you would still probably have to drop some settings in the latest AAA releases to maintain a consistent 60FPS.
Honestly, I'm not sold on this monitor. I think that a 34" 3440x1440 monitor gets the balance just about right. The only reason I would seriously consider this one is if there were games I played gained a huge benefit from being played on two screens, without the bezel in the way and lost that benefit when they reached three screens. Not a large overlap on that Venn Diagram.
Finally, it occurs to me that if you regularly have to deal with working from multiple documents at the same time, a screen this wide will allow you to have seven or eight word docs open, side by side by side...by side and not have to constantly search for the correct document from the toolbar.
And still, it doesn't say nothing useful. 125% *how* - unless you see its colour space plotted, it's of no use. But I guess game players are little interested in gamut. For true photo editing, you need something close at least to the AdobeRGB space, and for video editing something with the right color space (not 95% of it).
> Samsung's built the monitor for gamers,
Whenever I see any word that means game, gamer, gaming, I automatically assume it is like "organic" - meaning more expensive but with no discernible improvement. So a "gaming" mouse is just a mouse - but at 3 times the price. A "gamers" mouse mat is just a mouse mat, but by costing anything up to £60 (yes, really!) they are somehow better, make you more proficient, or just give you something to brag about.
The same applies to everything else that is meant for "gamers". Just like aficionados of high quality audio are targetted with oxygen-free cables and gold plated power switches and many other things that do not matter.
But relieving such people of their money is no bad thing. If buying overpriced stuff pleases them then fair enough. And for the rest of us, the words act as a warning.
No different to audiophiles, motor enthusiasts, or any other sector where people consider themselves to have an expertise that few others have.
They all buy expensive toys that they think professionals use to make themselves seem "more" professional, whether or not they can even use them effectively.
I look at my Facebook and I see people with fishing gear costing thousands, which they then use in reservoirs where there are no fish. I see car nuts buying bits for their cars that are totally worthless and unnecessary and the cost of which would cover buying a better car. It's the same for all sorts.
My technician was telling me only yesterday that he was in a store and a guy was buying a "gold-plated optical audio cable". I can't even fathom how that works. But the guy paid a fortune for it because "it'll make it sound better".
Everything from the guy with the large 4K TV, to the bloke with go-faster stripes and under-car lighting, to the gamer with the 48-button, 10Mdpi mouse, they're all the same.
And they all whine like hell with excuses when your run-of-the-mill, bog-standard, but you spent a tiny bit more than the minimum and actually researched, purchase beats their super-duper kit into a cocked hat. They all then pull out the "Yeah, but that's just electronic timing / digital audio / carbon fibre / whatever, it's not as good as my ancient mechanics / dust-strewn LP's / stick of wood even if you think it is".
they're called "hobbies" or "toys for big boys" - what a sad and depressing life it must be to be so cynical about everything.. but I bet there is something you spend without much care and thought on.. stamps? lenses for your plane spotting? a nice notebook for your train serial number notes? new liners for the basement so the screams can't be heard above ground?
Do what you like as a hobby.
But wasting money on snake-oil products vaguely related to said hobby? That's the silly part.
I'm a gamer. I operate gaming servers too. I don't have any of that "gaming" junk (Amazon today has a "gaming" sale, consisting of little routers with about 12 antennae on them and light-up keyboards - and yet my ping is lower than anyone else's because I just have proper QoS on the connection, local network, etc.). My mouse is a TeckNet cheapy. But I'll still kick your backside at Counterstrike with it, though.
I'm an astronomer. I have telescopes, mounts, camera bodies, image-stacking software, None of it cost very much at all, and all of it produces results that even a guy in the street would go "Oh, wow, yeah, that makes a big difference". You could spend £1000 on a filter. Or £10k on a massive Schmidt-Cassegrain. I don't. Because other factors - not least the expertise to use it, clear skies to make it worthwhile, or limited value of the difference I'd get from using it - mean it's not worth it.
There's a case of choosing the right tool, and it improving the output of someone skilled in the use of it. But being skilled in the use of it is more important no matter what tool.
Buying snake-oil products like Killer Ethernet cards, or super-duper-carbon-fibre fishing rods, or some professional set of £2k golf clubs when your handicap is still in the double-digits, or some special spark plug doesn't magically make things better than you could have got anyway, and rarely provides any kind of return-on-investment, especially for a hobbyist.
In fact, the more you avoid that snake-oil junk, the more you can get out of your hobby, the more hobbies you can have, and the more drinks you can have down the pub with your mates afterwards. It's the people who bore you to tears about some thousand-pound snooker cue and its manufacturing process when they can barely hit the ball, that then try to justify it, and never have any money left for anything else that I would feel sorry for.
I've just bought a gaming mouse...it has 2 programmable buttons which come in handy for twatting the enemy; the thumb buttons have contouring so you can definitely tell which one you're pressing; on-the-fly adjustable DPI so you can have fast (for bouncing round the landscape with enemies all around you) or accurate (sniper scopes etc); and best of all, all the microswitches have a little haptic click so you definitely know you've pressed them.
It's the right tool for the job. Cost me £10 from eBay and I'm very pleased with it.
My technician was telling me only yesterday that he was in a store and a guy was buying a "gold-plated optical audio cable". I can't even fathom how that works. But the guy paid a fortune for it because "it'll make it sound better".
Well, it's obvious, innit! The gold plating helps the light bounce around better inside the tube with minimal leakage. The cheap tat with just a black coating absorbs the light leakage instead of reflecting it back in like wot the gold does, innit! So you get a better and stronger signal at the other end. Lossless, innit!
Not sure I'd agree, it's definitely arguable that some gaming products are overpriced, but there are discernible improvements.
There's a lot of monitors running GSync/Freesync which improve fast motion display. Stereoscopic monitors/glasses literally add an extra dimension to games (quality depends on the game). Gaming mice have higher/variable rates of responsiveness, additional programmable buttons etc. Gaming keyboards have working multiple key rollover.
Gaming mice are often useful for productivity too, as the extra buttons can be programmed for useful functions. Some of the higher quality gaming keyboards won't cost much different than a buckling spring mechanical keyboard.
There's probably some areas where the benefit is minimal (PhysX hasn't seen a wide takeup, for instance, and there's a lot of fan controllers for overclocked systems that are useless bling (fan control should always be automatic)), but I think it's a tad unfair to criticise the products too much.
With 'ribboned' applications determined to rob you of as much vertical screen estate as possible, a low vertical resolution might be OK for gaming, but is very poor for productive work. I run a dual 20"/21" screen setup, with one in portrait mode at 1050x1680. (Hey, it's old - that was good when I got it.) It makes working on A4 documents so much easier. That could be tricky with this one.
Just to add some (useless) extra detail (becuse I'm a useless extra detail kind of guy), CRT measurement is not actually from outside edge to outside edge, it is of the picture tube. The edge of the picture tube is somewhere between the edge of the visible picture and the inside of the outer case. Measuring outside edge to outside edge, you should get roughly one inch (varies with model) more than the claimed measurement by a notional honest manufacturer. With LCD, ther is no picture tube, so you just measure the picture.
(Just in case you are interested, note that it is probably easier to find a working 37 inch CRT monitor than it is to find an honest manufacturer.)
Useless for anything else as to see the whole screen you either have to keep swinging your head from side to side, which would give you a stiff neck in no time, or sit so far back normal sized text would be unreadable. Sure, you could bump up the text size but that would reduce the effective resolution.
I use a 3440x1440 34" monitor which works well for both work and gaming. Also, you don't need to phone a friend if you want to rearrange your desk layout. I'd like more vertical resolution but it starts to get expensive.
I found that there are only two reasonably nice monitor configurations to work with comfortably (for me):
Either a single 32~40" ultrawide, or three 20-21" 4:3, maybe with a 24" 16:10 (1920x1200) in the middle (though I'd love to take three of Eizo's square 27" screens for a spin).
The ultrawide fills my field of vision naturally, but leaves enough room above and below and to the sides to give peripheral vision something to process (if I'm totally immersed, I find I always do involuntary moves to see what's going on around me).
If I'm watching a movie or playing a game, I don't see individual pixels at all, but when I'm working, I can see them just fine which makes the screen 100% useful (no screen real estate wasted for eye candy).
I can't understand the infatuation with ever higher pixel counts, as I mentioned before, I think 5120x2160 is more than I would ever find useful (although I think something like 4320x1800 would already be perfectly enough).
"It's good for films too "
I can easily imagine some chav getting one to use as a TV via cable or sat box and then setting everything up for ultra-stretchyvision cos, "well we paid for all that space so we're gonna use it" cos of black bars on "normal" wide screen broadcasts :-)
I'm sure we've all seen people with 16:9 TVs watching stretched 4:3.
No one has pointed out people who work with 2, 3 or more screens. Like stock brokers for instance. Rather than having 3 screens with 3 power cords, running off several graphics drivers, this could be good as a solution. I use two 22inch screens slightly pointing inwards to each other. A curved screen might to the job... the price has to come down significantly first though...
If you can show your applications side-by-side unsnapped doesn't the need to snap go away?
It can be a pain to have to manually resize and move all the windows to fit, compared to just maximising them on one monitor. To the best of my knowledge, you can no longer tile application windows in current versions of MS Windows.
And certain applications don't necessarily show all the content if they aren't maximised - a classic example is RDP sessions, which (depending on the resolution of the remote machine) may not show the whole desktop and taskbar unless the window is maximised.
"If you can show your applications side-by-side unsnapped doesn't the need to snap go away?"
When you snap to full-screen an application may be able to dispense with title/menu bars - My VNC viewer does this so that I can see the full screen on the remote computer (which is also 1080 pixels high) without needing scroll-bars. Also, if I run an application full screen on the remote computer I don't get confused with two layers of title/menu bars!
Just resizing a window to fit onto half an extra-wide display wouldn't have the same effect.
Haven't got a 1703 system here but on Windows 1611 it's still possible.
Shift+right click the application on the taskbar and show side by side/stacked
You can also use Windows+Left or Windows+Right or drag the windows to the edge of the screen to snap a window to half a screen. Windows 10 now also then lets you choose which open window to snap to the other half.
I think this monitor would be good if it wasn't 1. too expensive, 2. lacking vertical resolution.
One feature of Windows 10 that I liked a lot (before I wrote off the possibility of using it for anything productive) is the ability to use keyboard shortcuts to move windows into halfs AND quadrants of the display. WinKey + up/down/left/right .... Not sure how it would handle on something like this though.
I use three screens, occasionally 4 if I have my laptop screen open as well. Snapping 3-4 apps into place is a doddle with this (drag to the screen I want, then to the top to maximise to that screen). However with a single monitor, I'd either be restricted to two apps snapped at a time, or I'd have the faf and palaver of manually resizing multiple windows to fit - not ideal when you've got Outlook, a web browser, 7 copies of Excel, two copies of Word, an RDP session and two remote apps running via Citrix all open at once :)
Another disadvantage is that with a monitor like this, you've put all your display eggs into a single basket. When that monitor fails, and sooner or later it will, what do you do then?
Meanwhile, those of us with just as much overall desktop real estate composed from physically independent monitors sat side by side, top to bottom, or whatever particular combination floats our boats, will just have to cope with a fraction of that real estate being out of action for however long it take a replacement to arrive, whilst still being able to continue working with what's left in the meantime.
Then there's the question over how well it'll fit on your desk compared with two side by side monitors where you've got the ability to adjust the angle between them as required to get them both tucked neatly into whatever free space is available. And then is the curvature of this one big screen just right for your personal preferences, or would you really have liked it to be a little bit flatter/more curved?
I mean, yes, I can see the appeal of having a single seamless display which is presumably nicely colour/brightness/sharpness/etc matched across the whole area, as opposed to a bunch of display areas seperated by bezels of varying widths, and where consistency can't even be assumed if you're using multiple identical monitors all bought from the same batch, let alone if you've cobbled together a multi-monitor setup in a more piecemeal fashion. And having just one physical display would also stop Windows from randomly deciding to reallocate your primary and secondary screens on startup. Oh how I laugh when that happens, how I giggle with mirth at the jolly prank the MS coders have just pulled on me...
But I just couldn't see myself feeling happy about spending that much money (particularly in comparison to how much it'd cost to get two identical 1920x1080 monitors of comparable quality to this behemoth) on something which, whilst stunning to look at, also brings with it a bunch of compromises of its own.
And as others have mentioned, at the end of the day it's only a 1080 display, no matter how many pixels are available in total... Given the abundance of 16:9 1080 panels available due to their use in LCD TVs, I can understand why it's now so difficult to find a 16:10 1200 monitor, but for a screen like this I'm not sure that explanation holds much water.
I have a 42" LG 4K Satellite TV with HDMI 2.0b input for working from home.
I tend to have 3 or 4 applications side by side, with each making use of the full height. Rock steady output from a Dell laptop at 29Hz.
Great for software writing and static/dynamic analysis work.
I personally wouldn't want anything larger as I have to physically move my head around vertically - even at the ergonomically correct arms length from the screen.
Best of all was £300 price tag though!
Seriously? Ugh! Why?
I use an LG34UC99 - Ultrawide 3440x1440 resolution with a single USB-C cable connected to my laptop carrying video, data and power. That's minimalist. My desk never looked so clear.
I would have contemplated the LG38UC99 with its 3840x1600 resolution but its nearly 50% costlier. Much in the same range as this silly monitor with its paltry 1080 vertical resolution. Plus look at that butt-ugly stand! I'll take LG over Samsung anyday. Samsung have lost the plot on this one. Aesthetics be damned.
FYI LG's OnScreen Control software enables you to split the screen in numerous ways so windows/applications snap or open automatically in the defined areas. It's simple and effective.
Companies see that 2 "Full-HD" monitors next to each other are popular, therefore they bring out one that combines the same number of pixels.
Instead they should look at the underlying problem, and realize that people would also like to have more pixels in height, because they can already get more pixels in width by placing 2 monitors next to each other.
So the smart thing would be to bring out a 40 inch or larger "4k" monitor.
"Companies see that 2 "Full-HD" monitors next to each other are popular, therefore they bring out one that combines the same number of pixels."
Yep. The primary bit of software that our section of the company relies on 90% of the time was always a pain on the 4:3 screens because they put the main menu in a column down the left side so we were forever scrolling right. They finally fixed that issue about a year after widescreen monitors were standard issue and put all the menus along the top. Now we are forever scrolling down. Twats!
"The US$1,499 price tag will also be easier for business to swallow, more so when you consider the GPU needed to make the monitor look its best."
It's not so long ago that a decent 1920x1080 monitor would cost over £1000, and the GPU required to run a monitor with half the pixels of a 4K monitor really doesn't need to be that impressive. Hell, I've been using a 2560x1600 monitor with pretty much the same number of pixels for nearly a decade, and you can't even buy a GPU as wimpy as I had back then any more. It's not the cheapest monitor in the world, but even as a pure fashion statement it's not especially expensive, let alone for anyone who actually has a use for it.
Thats a whopping 81 pixels per inch. I will stick with real 4k.
I have been intrigued with the ultra wides (21:9) aspect ratio, but I cannot get myself to downgrade from 3840x2160. Once you get used to this resolution, anything under 150 PPI really sticks out. I guess I will have to wait for the 4k ultrawides (5120x2160) @ 120hz :D
More than about 19" is too wide for reading, and especially reading glasses.
If you want to simulate a real desktop then you need about 1700 pixels high at 200 dpi, or about 2500 pixels high if 300 dpi.
About 133dpi is a minimum if you rely on sub pixel addressing at edges of fonts, but 200 dpi or higher with subpixel addressing on text off is better.
One, seemingly working in full-screen, who can barely understand why one would want such a big monitor.
The other one, probably working with a windowing system, who want to get as many windows as possible onto their screen.
There's another group of people who use vector fonts, which complain about that display only having 80 dpi, instead of the 200-300 dpi they want to have.
27" iMac with Retina Display.... 5120 x 2880
Second monitor running in whatever resolution I want. Useful for testing for users with shit resolution screens, for example.
Width is useless unless you have the height to match so no idea what Samsung are thinking.
My iMac is a refurb model and the second monitor wasn't much. The entire thing didn't cost that much more than this Samsung monitor alone!
a few months ago. I've already got a Dell U2913WM (2560x1080) at one of my desks which I really like but I sometimes find myself pulling one or the other closer when I'm reading (yes, I wear reading glasses). The ultra-wide curved monitors seem to have stuck north of £500 probably because Samsung seems to be the only producer. Then I found the Samsung C24F390 (1920x1080) for about £150 each. Even with the cost of a twin arm monitor stand its still waaaay cheaper. Don't notice the bezels. Much better then using 2 flat wide-screens which I've had to at some clients.
I agree it would be useful to have more room vertically.
Can't see the point of curved TV's but curved monitors are the way to go.
P.
It really is 'size trumps all', and I'm not convinced. What about the LG 43UD79 - 3840x2160, or some other Asus ROG series for gaming that have a higher resolution and a mid thirties screen size.
I'd prefer a monitor that does portrait well - I've some monitors in portrait in various places, and it works, but the visual are not as good as horizontal.
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