Quick Look - LG 31" DCI 4K Monitor

[Mike Nagel]

My point was the opposite. The difference between 4K and 1080 is very obvious on my 55" from 5'. On the 31" LG on the other hand, I found the value of 4K to be less obvious. For my purposes, the size of the screen turned out to be much more important than the accuracy and true 4K of the LG. I already have a nice Flanders reference monitor that is my primary tool.

yes, lots of people agree that for 4K a screen size of 40" or larger is recommended... once the physical pixel size gets too small, the eyes have a very hard time actually seeing the detail (--> perceptional threshold)... YMMV ;-)

as a workstation screen, this may work as the person usually sits pretty close to the screen.

 

[Jonas Klittmark]

as a workstation screen, this may work as the person usually sits pretty close to the screen.

Probably, but for what it's worth, I was never blown away by my footage on this LG the way I am watching it on the 55". I sometimes find myself just staring at it mesmerized... Wide shots with a tad sharpening - it's a whole new experience. I want to hold on shots like that for 10-15 secs instead of 3-4.

Maybe it's a miniaturization effect or something? Making it harder to believe I'm watching a real nature landscape when the monitor is only 31" and I'm sitting a foot away from it. Like the problem with 3D.

 

[Will Keir]

I'm finding that's the case. I might start looking into larger 4k monitoring options. These icons and GUI text in OS X and Windows will make me go blind. I need a work flow that's useable, easy to see.

yes, lots of people agree that for 4K a screen size of 40" or larger is recommended... once the physical pixel size gets too small, the eyes have a very hard time actually seeing the detail (--> perceptional threshold)... YMMV ;-)

as a workstation screen, this may work as the person usually sits pretty close to the screen.

Might be worth taking a look at this 55" display. Which model are you liking and how are you using it in your workflow which I assume is editing?

Probably, but for what it's worth, I was never blown away by my footage on this LG the way I am watching it on the 55". I sometimes find myself just staring at it mesmerized... Wide shots with a tad sharpening - it's a whole new experience. I want to hold on shots like that for 10-15 secs instead of 3-4.

Maybe it's a miniaturization effect or something? Making it harder to believe I'm watching a real nature landscape when the monitor is only 31" and I'm sitting a foot away from it. Like the problem with 3D.

Will a 55" display take more GPU power than a 31"?

 

[Will Keir]

I noticed at 2k this monitor looks worse than my Apple Cinema 30" Display. It MUST be in 4k to shine? I can't make it a scaled down 2k that's better than a 5-7 year old display?

What's going on here. Can someone explain?

When I sub sample 4k to 1080p, the footage looks better than 1080p native in side by side comparisons. I was expecting something similar.

My Test consisted of a few popular PC titles.

StarCraft II
Guild Wars 2
Diablo III
and MechWarrior Online.

At 4k, I noticed the games looked slightly better, thank 2k, expect for Guild Wars 2, which has something really special going on at 4k. Matched up evenly at 2560x1600, the old Cinema Display clearly had greater detail, responsiveness, vivid colors than the LG 4k display.

 

[Phil Holland]

I noticed at 2k this monitor looks worse than my Apple Cinema 30" Display. It MUST be in 4k to shine? I can't make it a scaled down 2k that's better than a 5-7 year old display?

What's going on here. Can someone explain?

When I sub sample 4k to 1080p, the footage looks better than 1080p native in side by side comparisons. I was expecting something similar.

My Test consisted of a few popular PC titles.

StarCraft II
Guild Wars 2
Diablo III
and MechWarrior Online.

At 4k, I noticed the games looked slightly better, thank 2k, expect for Guild Wars 2, which has something really special going on at 4k. Matched up evenly at 2560x1600, the old Cinema Display clearly had greater detail, responsiveness, vivid colors than the LG 4k display.

Yes. It's a 4K monitor and if you are feeding it anything smaller than UHD 4K or DCI 4K it's scaling up, which traditionally doesn't look great. Which is what this whole 4K thing is all about in reality. On the flip side of things, due to the nature of down sampling and the benefits that come from a higher resolution source material you will end up with a better quality image. Which is what this whole 4K+ thing is really about.

PC Games are tricky one as there are variables here. Some games look fantastic in 4K. However, some game do not. There are many factors, too many to list. But things like the engine, character models, and texture resolution come into play. But some look utterly amazing in 4K and it's nuts.

I'll likely have some DCI 4K footage I'll be able to share after NAB and can put a beefy file online to view. When watching properly finished DCI 4K content on this display it's pretty bad ass.

If you're curious I'm sitting about 2 feet away from the monitor when working and viewing on it.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

For standard work, I use the Monitor in a scaled 3K (?) HiDPI setting on OS X to enlarge the GUI a bit, which looks good.

 

[Will Keir]

I feel like both Windows and Mac OS X will update their GUI to be more friendly to 4k screens. Not if, but when.

For standard work, I use the Monitor in a scaled 3K (?) HiDPI setting on OS X to enlarge the GUI a bit, which looks good.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

OS X is doing pretty good with the scaling support, but in recent releases there has been a couple instances where they have locked out full resolution and it would be nice if they allowed for a bigger variety of scaling options at times. I think Apple got the message on the full resolution option as it hasn't been an issue lately.

Windows is another story. The scaled resolution support is pretty muddy still and causes more problems than it should. Windows 10 is looking like they have much better support for this. It seems like Microsoft was pretty slow on the uptake of high DPI display tech and software support for it.

Ultimately, the scaling system is the way forward because we're going to start seeing a lot more 4K, 5K, 6K and 8K screens over the next few years and GUI elements seem to work quite well at specific physical sizes in relation to display size and intended usage. This does not align very well in a direct sense with resolution. Desktop and even many notebook displays are all going UHD 3840x2160 and using this on a 13" screen is a totally different deal than on a 42" screen. We're moving from a world where monitors have been consistently around 96~105 ppi for well over a decade and now that's all being thrown out the window.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

I just hope they will manage to make a scaleable GUI without having to scale the resolution.

 

[Dimitri Boschma]

If you're curious I'm sitting about 2 feet away from the monitor when working and viewing on it.

For me exact the same....
I wouldn't go back, If I use my 30" Cinema display sometimes, everything looks so freaking huge

@Phil Do you have 2 screens connected (LG) or 1?

 

[Phil Holland]

For me exact the same....
I wouldn't go back, If I use my 30" Cinema display sometimes, everything looks so freaking huge

@Phil Do you have 2 screens connected (LG) or 1?

On the box I use the LG screen on it's the only monitor and I like this. It's my primary workstation. It's also hooked up to a larger 70" UHD 4K screen for review when I feel I need to do that.

I'm using in the 2-3 foot range from the display. It took me a about a week to really get comfy with things being so different. Now I'm not thinking much of it at all. It's changed many workflows for the better because I'm using the screen real estate for it's strengths. Over the last few months when working on this box I have to use several software packages all at once and it certainly has benefits for that. Especially the project I worked on this week and last week. Adobe applications have been interesting as I'm dividing the screen up optimally for each project. My last edit was all native .R3D for about 1.5 hours of content and it worked really well for that. Especially QC'ing while selecting and editing clips in Adobe Premiere Pro and REDCINE-X PRO.

 

[Eric Santiago]

The LG MU97 dropped and works with the REDRAY.

That was anti-climatic and spent sometime scrutinizing the grey-scale chart.

Tried all kinds of settings so far AdobeRGB sorta wins.

Now the business of getting this to work as a desktop is next.

Any tips and yes I can read over all 24 pages of this topic but maybe a quick crash course using a new Mac Pro

Thanks!

 

[Dimitri Boschma]

Yes It really depends on person to person I guess...
I was working on 2 X 30" Cinema displays. But found it to big (Physical dimensions), almost counter productive...
On 1 x 31" 4K , the interface is just perfect. Some applications get even fun to use (50 Layers in After Effects)

Really thinking of buying another a second one as 'review' monitor. But maybe a 55" UHD is a smarter choice (In my case)

 

[Will Keir]

I too LOVE the screen real estate a 4k screen provides.
LOVE to put two apps side by side without flipping windows back and forth.
LOVE to see how images look in 4k.

I just can't get used to the application GUI text being so small and hard to read. Are you just getting used to it or using some sort of scaling? I feel like I'm terribly damaging my vision working this way.

I can increase text size (Apple + or Control +), works well for web browsing. Does the newest version of OS X provide scalable GUI? I'm on Mavericks still, latest build. If so, where I turn it on?

My thought is while I like the real estate, I need to be able to read GUI text, would a 50"+ screen by my solution? Because of the larger screen size, the GUI text would be larger? I'd like to see this in person before I buy a huge screen.

Phil, could I pick up some lunch and watch you working for an hour or so?

Yes It really depends on person to person I guess...
I was working on 2 X 30" Cinema displays. But found it to big (Physical dimensions), almost counter productive...
On 1 x 31" 4K , the interface is just perfect. Some applications get even fun to use (50 Layers in After Effects)

Really thinking of buying another a second one as 'review' monitor. But maybe a 55" UHD is a smarter choice (In my case)

 

[spaulgal]

Is the censuses that this LG monitor is the best in it's class/price point?
We are in the market for a 4k monitoring solution and would love get input here with you pros.
We have used Dell IPS monitors in the past

 

[Will Keir]

I just returned mine. Without having a bunch of screens tuned into their best settings it's really hard to tell and comes to down your personal experience. I wasn't that impressed. I brought the screen back because the GUI was so small and I realized, "hey, if I am spending $1600 when all is said and done, might as well invest a bit more and get a really awesome 65" TV and use it as a monitor." We'll see how it goes and a bit more research needs to be done before the purchase.

I know I don't need 10 bit color. If I can get a TV tuned up for a great "client monitoring" option. I'm okay with that.

One more question I asked myself today. People watch movies on TVs right? Not monitors? I watch all my movies on computer monitors....


Great video for these type of questions if your making a new monitor decision.

Is the censuses that this LG monitor is the best in it's class/price point?
We are in the market for a 4k monitoring solution and would love get input here with you pros.
We have used Dell IPS monitors in the past

 

[Jason Osterday]

Will what are you changing to for your desktop GUI now? I just grabbed one on a scratch and dent sale for about $550 off list, so a good $300 after tax off everyone's $1200 asking price these days. Seemed like the right thing to do. We'll see if she's beaten and battered on Weds.

Has anyone put this up against a CM250, XVM, or Sony yet to see if it can yield good calibrated results should we want a second one?

 

[Mike Nagel]

Has anyone put this up against a CM250, XVM, or Sony yet to see if it can yield good calibrated results should we want a second one?

CM250 is a high-grade 1080p OLED... this one won't hold up against it, but it's also wayyyy cheaper... ;-)

u need a 4K LUT box to calibrate it, which doesn't exist (except Pluto with add-ons for US$9K)... only other option is to use Resolve's preview LUT option to calibrate that way, but that obviously does not calibrate your OS GPU output... it only affects Resolve's output...

would love to see screen uniformity tests if one of u has time and the gear...

 

[Björn Benckert]

Why would you need a lut box? could you not just make new display curve with a i1display or such and us it in the GUI?

 

[Mike Nagel]

Why would you need a lut box? could you not just make new display curve with a i1display or such and us it in the GUI?

which GUI ?