I can’t quite believe how much pricing for UHD televisions have fallen. Now you can get a 43″ UHD TV that is a terrific monitor for you home computer for just $249. 4k.com has a great list of smaller monitors. I
What you need to make it work? Divvy
I’ve used both 40″ and 43″ monitors and when you combine it with a $99 Amazon Basics stand, they are really terrific and although it says it only works for 32″ monitors, in practice it works well for the larger ones. The only real issue is that most television use Vesa 400mm x 400mm spacing and this stand uses 100mm x 100mm, so you need an adapter to make it fit which you can get from Vivo or Wali
While they are too big to take in all at once when you are looking two feet away, with a stand, you can have different things on the screen and then just move the screen around so you can focus on what you want. In essence, you can leave all the windows open and field and then never have to worry where that windows is hidden.
A tool like Divvy on the Mac makes that easy because you can setup key sequences to have up to six tiled windows on the screen. That thing costs $15, but is pretty worth it. There is also a free alternatives like ShiftIt (currently looking for a new maintainer) or Hammerspoon which is a more general purpose API for MacOS user interface using Lua. Or you can try Spectacle but the last update there was three years ago.
Best TVs to Use as a Monitor: TCL for $250
4k.com has a good updated list of great monitors at 40-43 inches and rtings.com has a good general list. I think 49 is probably too big even more me 🙂 For future compatibility, you probably want one that is 4K and support HDR assuming that someday laptops will allow higher color output. But for right now, the Samsung UN43NU7100 for instance at $400 accepts HDR but doesn’t have a wide gamut display, but has good image quality with 10-bit video. It is also low lag, so good if you are playing games.
The great budget option is the TCL 43S517 which is just $250 at Amazon right now. It doesn’t accept HDR, but at the that price, it’s a great developer monitor. Both Rtings.com and 4K.com say this is a great budget option.
As an aside, if you just want a great television, then the LG OLED B8 models are still probably the best if a little bit pricey. The blacks are incredible in say the 65″ OLED65B8PUA which costs a cool $2K. That’s way down from even a few years ago. The C8 and the E8 are less expensive but still have that great panel. Main thing to watch out for is burnin, so if you buy one, make sure to turn that screensaver stuff on. And it has real HDR and all those goodies.
The the midrange at 49″ is the Sony X900F, it is $1K for the 49″ model XBR49X900F, so I might try it someday as an experiment to see if you can go bigger than 43″. It does use a VA panel, so side view isn’t as good. This does seem like a decent panel to try if you are doing photo editing given the wide gamut it supports.
