GEAR MINITEST
Monitors
Five high-end displays to ensure that your on-screen colours match those in your images
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HOOSING the best monitor is important. It’s crucial that you get a proper rendition of the detail, colour and contrast in your shots. When it comes to size, you might think that bigger is better, but 27-inch screens tend to be a size/quality sweet spot. It’s a good compromise between screen space and a comfortable working distance.
Conversely, with resolution the more dots the greater detail you’ll be able to see. Cheaper screens tend to max out at Full HD (1920x1080) res. That’s fine in a smaller screen, but at larger sizes (20-inch and above) you’ll start to see the dots. With high-resolution 4K or ‘Retina’ screens, you don’t see the pixels.
Colour gamut refers to the range of colours the monitor can produce, and is measured by two industry-standard ‘colour spaces’; the base level standard for all displays and devices is sRGB, which every device will support. In commercial publishing however, the larger Adobe RGB colour space is used.
FIVE THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR
01 Aspect ratio
Screens with a 16:9 aspect ratio give space for tools and palettes when editing.
02 IPS vs TN
IPS (in-plane switching) screens have superior colour and contrast consistency than TN (twisted nematic) panels.
03 Can you handle it?
It takes a lot of computing power to display 4K properly, ensure your machine’s up to it.
04 High coverage
All these monitors can display 99-100% sRGB. AdobeRGB has many more colours, so monitors will struggle to display 100% of this colour space.
05 Accessible
A USB-C connection makes it easy to hook up your monitor to the latest computers.