[MYEYES]

Hey y’all,

I’m looking for an ultrawide to replace my old monitor that I broke by accident. I’ve gone through quite a few panels and had eye strain issues with all of them to one degree or another. After doing a ton of research and doing spectral emission graphing on the monitors I was testing, I found the culprit to be the KSF backlight. I was able to determine this by the strange sawtooth shaped spike for the red wavelengths.

This brings me here.. I’m looking for a 1440p ultrawide that either uses an AUO or Samsung quantum dot panel. I think all of LGs panels are out because they exclusively use KSF (aka Nano-IPS) in their modern wide gamut panels.

Anyone have any recommendations?

Also, budget is around $1000 and 4k is acceptable too, but would require me to upgrade my GPU sooner.

[PCM2]

Hi MYEYES and welcome,

You’re correct that the vast majority of wide gamut LCD ultrawides (whether VA or IPS) that are <$1000 use KSF phosphors for the backlight. You could consider a standard gamut option instead such as the HP X34 we currently recommend in the productivity recommendations section. When you say ‘4K is acceptable’ do you mean you’re willing to consider 16:9 options as well and if so what size? I assume so as ultrawide models don’t really have a ‘K’ equivalency system and shouldn’t be referred to in that way as the resolutions are very different to their 16:9 counterparts where ‘4K’ generally refers to the UHD resolution of 3840 x 2160. That would certainly broaden out your options but I can appreciate it may force a GPU upgrade you otherwise wouldn’t need to make in the shorter term.

It’s also worth noting that Samsung Display doesn’t make LCD panels any more, they’ve delegated that out to CSOT. But they do make QD-OLED panels which of course don’t use KSF phosphors and have much more even spectral emission. It would be difficult to find one within your budget, but it can depend on sale prices and they may occasionally slip below the $1000 mark.

[MYEYES]

Hah, funny enough I have the X34 sitting on my desk right now and it’s an absolute gem. The problem is that the availability is non-existent and I need a second one for my wife’s build. I managed to get lucky and happened to snag one that was randomly in-stock at Walmart. Since then I’ve been checking multiple sites everyday and haven’t been able to find it. I contacted HP sales and they said it’s out of production and won’t be restocked.

And sorry, I should’ve been more specific with my post. I’m looking for something that’s at least 32″, fast and has a PPI of 100 or better. Ultrawide and extended gamut would be nice extras, but would probably be the first things I’d be willing to sacrifice.

[PCM2]

That’s a double or perhaps triple shame about the X34 then. The fact it works well for you, you’d need another AND that HP seems to have now discontinued it. Well I’ll have to strike that off as a recommendation (sigh). You might get on with the BenQ EX3210U in that case, it has a QD LED backlight and whilst it isn’t the fastest model out there in terms of pixel responsiveness, it’s not bad either and they’ve tuned the panel it uses pretty well. Annoyingly enough there isn’t really an ultrawide equivalent to this, the QD LED backlights are used on some of the significantly slower and more expensive VA ultrawides, such as the Mini LED ViewSonic XG341C-2K.

[MYEYES]

Yeah, the 3210u was one of the monitors on my shortlist. I was also eyeing the Xeneon 32UHD144 which uses an AUO QD panel similar to the 32QHD165.

I really don’t want the performance penalty of 4k, but that might be the only option at this point. Thanks a lot for your help so far. At least now I know that most midrange monitors use KSF these days and I’m not just having terrible luck picking panels.

[MYEYES]

Hey,

Just wanted to post a quick update.. I went ahead and ordered the Xeneon 32UHD144 and it came in today. Initial impressions are good. Very little backlight bleed, no dead or stuck pixels and the gamut is insane. I currently have it running in DCI-P3 mode because it’s fairly natural looking and has just a bit of extra color to make things pop. So far it seems easy on my eyes, despite the huge gamut. White is much more mild and closer to gray as opposed to the blinding glare that I got from the KSF panels.

The one issue that I’m running into is that it’s only giving me the option or 8 or 12-bit color at 144Hz. It shows 8 and 10-bit 120Hz, but not at 144Hz. Really confusing considering the bandwidth requirements for 12-bit are higher than 10-bit color.

I can do some testing and share my results if you’re curious about how it measures.

[PCM2]

I’m glad the Corsair is working well for you so far. That is odd that 10-bit isn’t selectable but 12-bit is. I’ve noticed this with HDMI sometimes, but usually DP will include 10-bit is an option if 12-bit is there. And yes, feel free to share further findings.

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