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Summary: This is an article for consumers who want to find a 4k high-quality monitor for their multimedia consumptions such as console gaming, web-surfing and movie-watching. A good 4k monitor should provide great viewing experience while ensuring viewing comfort. Different specs should be taken into consideration regarding different usage. For instance, console gamers should pay attention to specs of the response time, refresh rate and color performance. As for movie lovers, specs like HDR, contrast ratio and the wide color gamut are important factors. What’s important is that you need to find the right monitor that fit your needs in order to have the best viewing experience.
Have you ever wondered how many hours a day you spend in front of a screen? According to a survey, the average American spends more than 11 hours a day on different screens, be it a smart phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, or a computer monitor. And if we’re continuing the current trends, people will spend more and more hours watching a screen. Imagine your eyes having to focus on the screen for such a long period of time. This is why more and more people suffer from digital eye strain, headaches, blurred vision, sensitivity to light or even shoulder, neck and back pain. If you don’t pay any attention to your digital eye strain and these symptoms, the situation will only get worse.
But is there really an easy or practical way to reduce your screen time? Well, as people nowadays rely greatly on the screen to get their job done as well as to enjoy their multimedia consumption, meaning the key usage of the screen has transited from the past “multi-tasking” mode to the present “multimedia” mode, it’s less and less possible for us to avoid the screen. What we can do instead is find a high-quality monitor for everyday consumption of console gaming and movie-watching. Before you go on to enjoy these visual experiences, there’s more you need to know.
What kind of screen would you need if you want to use the screen comfortably for a longer period of time? The best choice for you would be a larger sized screen, such as a computer monitor, which is better for your body and eyes. A monitor less than 15” will make digital eye strain worse if you want to look clearly. Besides viewing clearly and comfortably, you need not just any monitor, but one that can provide you with wonderful visual enjoyment. A 4K monitor is obviously your best choice, as now 4K monitors are available everywhere and the price is at a reasonable range. 4K refers to the resolution a display can support, be it 3840 x 2160 or 4096 x 2160 pixels. The more pixels the sharper the picture quality. Now that you know the monitor resolution, the basic ‘spec’, the following section will focus on the essential feature, two important user scenarios, and the important specs required to fulfill the following demands: eye care, console gaming, and movie-watching.
As the screen time is getting longer and longer, the eye care feature has become an essential one a monitor has to be equipped with. Without it, human eyes would be exposed to harmful blue light for a long time and digital eye strain would become inevitable. What is blue light? Well, blue light is the specific section of the visible light spectrum which can do harm to our eyes and affect our sleep in the night. Long-term exposure to blue light will make your eyes suffer, especially from digital eye strain. With low blue light technology, the first criterion for consumers to take into consideration, they can enjoy eye comfort as never before. Besides low blue light technology, anti-glare and flicker-free are the two other must-buy features.
Users can also try to find the latest exclusive technology which can easily adjust on-screen brightness and color temperature according to the ambient light detected by the sensor to maintain a visible level of clarity and intensity. With eye care feature, consumers can treat themselves to console games and movies to their heart’s content.
When it comes to console gaming, you need to pay attention to response time, refresh rate and color performance if you don’t want to experience any choppy images. Response time refers to the time it takes a pixel to transition from one shade of gray to another. The smaller the figure, the better. Refresh rate is the time (per second) it takes to update the entire screen, which is measured in Hertz (Hz); the higher the better. If you are a gamer who cares about visual effects on the frame itself, then you need to look into the color performance of the monitor, meaning the wide color gamut and the presentation of darker areas.
If you’re the movie enthusiast, you will definitely focus on HDR, contrast ratio and the wide color gamut to offer you the best multimedia experience. HDR is the latest technology which can create a higher level of contrast between light and dark images on the screen to make the images much more realistic. If you want to get the best effect of HDR, make sure that you have a 4K monitor, with a 3840 x 2160 (or, 4096 × 2160) resolution, which will offer better picture quality. The contrast ratio is the ratio of the luminance of the bright colors (white) to that of dark colors (black); it refers to the contrast a display can produce. The higher the contrast, the more details in the darker areas the monitor can present; with it, you won’t miss any climax. As for the color gamut, a movie enthusiast will definitely notice that the colors in the movies are quite different from those in real life or in the videos. That’s why you will miss a lot of details and cannot have yourself immersed fully into a movie if you don’t own a wide color gamut monitor. Pick out the display that suits your visual needs by paying attention to HDR, contrast ratio and the color gamut a monitor can provide.
After checking all of these options out, you might be even more confused: does all of this mean that we need to buy different monitors for different usages? No. This article is to help you find out what specifications you need to focus on in order to satisfy different scenarios at the same time, be it for comfort-viewing, console gaming or movie-watching. As customers have already noticed, monitor manufacturers have made more and more kinds of monitors that suit the needs of their consumers, as they are conducting customer research. Therefore, finding your dream monitor will actually just become a lot easier. Monitor resolution is always the primary concern if you want excellent picture quality, after which you need to find out what specs are important to you so that you can have a great time enjoying all of your multimedia purchases.
